Review: Viper Vixens of 2012 by Electronic Planet Ensemble
by Michael Meigs

The Electronic Planet Ensemble are magic men -- I can say that since percussionist Rachel Fuhrer apparently has disappeared this year, leaving poet David Jewell, keyboardist Chad Salvata and bassist/video artist Sergio R. Samayoa to deliver this piece assisted by drummer Doug Marcis.  I had to identify Marcis from the poster legend, since there was no program available at the Vortex this year.

Their January offering for 2012, Viper Vixens, falls far short of earlier Januaries:  Planet of the Mermaids in 2011, Surfin' UFO in 2010 and Spaceman Dada Robot in 2009.

Even the mail art display in the Vortex's Butterfly Bar was much smaller and less imaginative than in earlier years, hung in the semi-darkness and literally overshadowed by the Betty Boop cartoon projected on the wall by the bar.

The EPE's strength has been projecting a sci-fi universe of mythic figures before our minds' eyes, using powered rhythms and David Jewell's hallucinatory lyrics. Samayoa's imaginative video creations served as springboards into that trippy world.

Not so this year.

Their music still rocks, but Viper Vixens of 2012 pretty much abandons Jewell, even though he's still right there out front, wearing a fine voluminous shiny gray polyester suit and wearing a red tie, working his fingertips over a laptop fuzzbox  During most of the hour's adventure you can't really hear what he's saying.

 

This year EPE dumps voice for video.  Their half-hour video film Viper Vixens is a confusing send-up of 'B' movies, Flash Gordon sci-fi, corny porny and silent films. It's funny for a moment, for about the time that it takes to wince and marvel. The story has something to do with aliens returning to destroy the world:

"Join Electronic Planet Ensemble as they tackle every 2012 End of the World theory from Planet X, Planet Nibiru, and the Anunnaki to Mayan Calendars and the rise of Quetzalcoatl. Three human women are transformed by mad science into the part-Anunnaki Viper Vixens. With the immanent" [sic] "awakening of the plumed serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, the human race is in peril. The evil Viper Vixens are destined to take over the world unless the heroes of the Mexican Air Force can defeat them."

In the silent film that outshouts the music, David Jewell lurks behind dark glasses to play "Trillionaire mastermind Xuthus Xavier" with deadfaced irony, silently harranguing the three hardened women criminals into undertaking some murderous mission. Melissa Vogt-Patterson, Christina MacMulligan, and Joanna Wright as the Vixens have fun, overacting as exuberantly as everyone else in the cast. The written storyboard narrative between scenes is tediously clunky and wordy, the special effects are intentionally bad, the superhumans are awkward, and even the nudity is murky and unsatisfying, a bit like peeping through a wall of glass brick (sorry, ladies -- I know you must be enchanting in real life). Viper Vixens of 2012 is straight out of the prepubescent fantasy world that Salvata has been mining with Bonnie Cullum for years in the comicbook operettas produced by their company, Ethos.

Judging from the scattered yelps of laughter behind me in the audience, some of those attending were tipsy already or scandalized with delight at the clowning on screen. In the john afterwards I heard one guy comment to another, "Well, I didn't know what to expect.  You'd have to be drunk or stoned to get into all that."

The video runs out before the music does, reverting to more abstract visualizations, and only then, in the last three numbers, does the EPE exert its real talent and reach beyond cheap vaudeville. All three final numbers lean heavily on some of their previous best works -- Jewell speaking as "Anunnaki" the impassive fiend who has destroyed the earth, Jewell evoking the fantasy of a whale-like creature somewhere in outer space, and the finale, with the band driving with the power of a celestial locomotive into extraterrestrial space.

ANNUNAKI from Surfin' UFO, featuring David Jewell:

Viper Vixens of 2012
by Electronic Planet Ensemble
Electronic Planet Ensemble