Beanbenders at Berkeley Store Gallery - October 13, 1996
 

Wobbly
Wet Gate: Peter Conheim, Steven Dye, and Owen O'Toole
Scott Looney Quartet, w/ Aaron Bennett and Dan Plonsey, saxophones; Richard Saunders, bass.
 

Wobbly, entirely unknown to me, was on this occasion a single person named
Jon who made great little tape loops and sometimes added live piano on top.
The piano style is hard to describe. So are the tape loops. I liked it a
lot! I give Wobbly seven-hundred stars! He has CDs; you can hear for
yourself.

About 118 people paid good money to see Wet Gate. Wet Gate is like a
celebration of projectionists. You see the three projectionists projecting
from onstage onto the back of a screen between you and them. Each one had a
dozen or more film loops, and they spent almost as much time changing loops
as showing them. They also processed the sound tracks, mostly (exclusively?)
by changing speed and adding delay. Many of their loops seemed to come from
industrial and commercial films. I liked them a lot too. I liked seeing them
working to project. The actual images were pretty mundane, but sometimes
they superimposed them, or reflected them onto walls. The flimsiness of film
itself as a medium was also close to the surface of the performance, what
with the difficulties experienced and the occasional breakage. They can come
back again!

Scott Looney is relatively new in town. We didn't do a great job with the
tunes, but the improvs were good - the addition of tiny toy instruments
worked well, I thought.

Another varied evening! How nice for us, isn't it?

- Dan Plonsey