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Beat connection
DuoTone in the corner; theremin marks the Honeyspot; Enormous turns three
BY WILL SPITZ
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Jake Trussell (DJ C) and Anthony Flackett (DJ Flack) can usually be found rocking their steady Monday-night experimental-electro "Beat Research" residency at Enormous Room. But now that they’re turning Beat Research into a label (see www.beatresearch.com), they’re branching out a bit, and last Thursday night they barricaded themselves — along with turntables, laptops, and video projector — in the Middle East’s corner room. While F.W. Murnau’s silent-film classic Sunrise played on a projection screen, the pair took turns bouncing from drum ’n’ bass to hip-hop to dub to IDM — sometimes within the context of a single song — without sounding scatterbrained. Then they crammed onto the restaurant’s tiny stage and combined Voltron-style as DuoTone, performing live remixes of Blondie’s "Heart of Glass" and Joe Jackson’s "Is She Really Going Out with Him" and the Buggles’ "Video Killed the Radio Star" with Trussell on PowerBook and Flackett manning the wheels of steel. Later, they ditched the machines in favor of a pair of microphones: Trussell, who looks like a dead ringer for Beck and displays as much guero soul, dropped beatbox science while Flackett played MC. "This one’s about getting around in this crazy city of aahs," announced Flackett before launching into "Driving in Boston." "While some major cities employ a grid system, there doesn’t seem to be a speck of logic in our wisdom," went one verse. "Winding one-ways to learn or get burned, end up farther than you started thanks to one wrong turn." Ain’t that the truth. The following night, I heard a very different encore of "Video Killed the Radio Star" at Honeyspot, a new JP boutique opened by Punk Rock Aerobics instructor and Count Me Outs guitarist Hilken Mancini and her friend Laura Dembski earlier that day. Perched on a platform behind the counter, Jon Bernhardt — best known for his long stint as one of the hosts of WMBR’s Breakfast of Champions and as one of four theremin players in the Lothars — played the song’s vocal melody on a theremin to a MIDI backing track playing from a nearby boombox. Bernhardt informed a packed house that the theremin was the first electronic instrument ever invented, and "through manipulation of the antennae, you can play beautiful melodies, like this." He then proceeded to play along to a MIDI version of "Smells like Teen Spirit." Other highlights included "Dancing Queen," "The Rainbow Connection," and "Blitzkrieg Bop" (complete with the theremin growling the heys and hos). The effect was hilarious and hypnotic — Bernhardt concentrating on the subtle hand movements required to produce the familiar melodies over an eight-bit Nintendo-sounding accompaniment, as if this were primitive electronic karaoke. Mancini, dressed in a honeycomb sweater, and appearing a little frazzled from what was no doubt an intense day, directed people to a chest in the dressing room filled with ice and mini-beers and once those were gone offered plastic cups of whiskey. (There was also candy for the minors.) The next night, the folks at Enormous Room celebrated the lounge’s third birthday with a bland set of dance tunes from DJ J Dennis, on loan from Manhattan’s pace-setting record store Other Music. The room — which in fact is quite small — was stuffed with conscientiously dressed yuppies, and people waited to get in at the bar’s downstairs affiliate, Central Kitchen. When asked whether he keeps a playlist, Dennis — an Austin native who had worked at the late Harvard Square Other Music — replied, "It’s completely random. I don’t remember what I played 10 minutes ago." Neither did I. Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com
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