Review: In.Car.Nation by Electronic Planet Ensemble
by Michael Meigs
Classic cars of the 1950s float in the collective consciousness of Americans, but as David Jewell gently admonishes us, they'll soon be gone, as distant and vanished as the dinosaurs that enchant our children today.
Jewell is the solo narrator, actor and verbal imager for In.Car.Nation, while Sergio R. Samayoa provides the live soundtrack with computer-synthesizer and guitar. Jewell gives different first-person voices for his unnamed spoken characters, different rhythms, with a keen but deadpan sense of drama. Between them is the screen that flickers with video, kaleidoscopic images and transforming stills, a non-linear dream of transportation as power, elegance, and adventure. They first explored this hallucinogenic territory back in 1997, and the current live two-man concert runs again only tomorrow night and Saturday night at the Hyde Park Theatre.
It's a seance, an incantation, an trip into memory and into the alternate reality of sweeping streamlined designs and the curiously empty landscapes of the mind. Electronic Planet Ensemble makes a rich triple score of this one. Jewell is a master of the prose poem -- one would call them lyrics, although they do not rhyme, because they are so carefully fit into Samayoa's music. Blues riffs, power thrumming, alpha wave music, up-tempo improvisations, translucent walls of sound. And the video, all new for this edition, a collaborative magic lantern.
The program, available below, provides closer characterization of the twelve numbers and associated imagery and video. Better to understand the sensory ride you take in this all-too-short hour at the Hyde Park Theatre, click on a video below. These come from the Electronic Planet Ensemble website. They'll give you a notion of what this art is all about, but you won't get the full effect unless you sit with them in the dark.
Along the way, Jewell will share with you the text of Clyde Barrow's letter to Henry Ford, praising the getaway powers of the Ford V-8, as well as other testimonials. But most of all, you can cut loose into that dream world of word pictures, transforming video and music.
Recommended!
In.Car.Nation
by David Jewell, Sergio Samayoa, Chad Salvata
Electronic Planet Ensemble
