About Unsound: Reviews: Gate to Moonbase Alpha/Mike Benedetti

About Unsound: Reviews: October 1999 at Gate to Moon Base Alpha by Mike Benedetti

From: "Benedetti, Michael" <Benedett@bluestone.COM>
To: "'phiba-improv@wnur.org'" <phiba-improv@wnur.org>
Subject: [phiba-improv] Test--please ignore
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:37:11 -0400
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* The Philadelphia: City of Improvisational Zeal page has moved: http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~benedett/zeal/

This page will be a little easier for me to maintain. As it happens, there's not much music in Philly this week anyway.

* Review of Gate to Moon Base Alpha:

I got about 50 e-mails complaining about my last review. Well screw you all. I hope I get a hundred after this one.

"The Rotunda" is a big building on the campus of one of those West Philly universities. The front part of the building has a rotunda. The back part, where this event was held, is a big room with a flat ceiling and a large balcony on either side. Arcing from the balconies to the floor were strips of black plastic, meant to look like spiderwebs. Amongst these hung colored lightbulbs shrouded in white cloth like ghosts. When the lights were turned off, the decorations made the room seem much smaller and a little creepy.

Over by the door were some bottles of Snapple, some rolls, and lots of pasta salad, all free. At the front of the room was a stage covered in equipment. In front of the stage were two stacks of TVs. The images on the TVs were controlled by Andrew "Android" Eisenberg.

The first performer was Dominic Zappa. DZ played throbbing loops and chaos and little yakking guys. You couldn't tell what was happening on stage, because the lights were low and the TVs were bright and changing; thus, this was a purely musical performance. DZ could have been naked for all the audience knew.

I was scared at first, and sat in the corner and read Jane Austen. After awhile, I moved to the middle of the room. DZ began to work with high, painfully loud tones. DZ finished up, and during the break you could hear confused conversation between the now-deaf audience members:

A: The TVs remind me of Doctor Who.
B: What?
A: Doctor Who. The TVs remind me of the intro to Doctor Who.
B: That was a great intro. All electronically-generated.
C: What?
B: It was all electronic.
C: What?
A: Doctor Who.

Then Unsound performed. It was their "Under-Thirty" show: all sounds under 30 hertz. Started off with very low vocalizations, run through all their gear. Creepy.

This got thicker and thicker and soon you plunged into the wall of the egg, preparing to fertilize it. You travelled on and on through the wall, till finally you were inside the egg, inside that giant chamber where low booming sounds echo. After some time, the egg began to divide, and stray high pitches entered the mix. And the egg split and split and split and soon Unsound sounded like Unsound normally does, though without their trademark unwanted feedback.

The boys got some loops going, and Mike "Flash" Ciul leaped into the audience. Somehow he was wearing red tights, and ran in a circle in the middle of the room. He began to dart back and forth and Jim "2001" Speer stepped off the stage into the dim lights, where he did a little hip shake dance to the looped beat.

They got back on the stage, and played more music. I thought to myself "It would be nice if the music stopped right NOW" and at that moment the music stopped.

During the break I think Ben Morgan spun some records, and Unsound tore down their stuff, and Charles Cohen talked to this dude about electronics, and Aharon and I started a nationwide network of underground clubs where men could beat each other to a pulp, and then I turned it into a terrorist cult, and Aharon became annoyed at this, and then Aharon realized that I was actually the evil side of his personality, and threatened to shoot himself, but I said "No Aharon actually I'm the evil side of Dave Champion's personality" and Aharon busts out this submachine gun and empties it at Dave Champion but all the bullets went into the bell of his trombone and quick-thinking Dave spun the mouthpiece around and all the bullets went into Aharon/me and we were both dead.

But before we died I heard a little of the third set, by Perfect Pieces of Fruit, which included Dave and Ted Casterline and Yanni Papadopoulos and others. They did a psychedelic drone thing and if I had to die I was glad that was the last sound I ever heard.

Mike