Acting Up

Chris J. Magyar

ALL AXIS

Trying to probe inside the enigmatic project xy.

Gregory T. S. Walker speaks in the slow, loopy tones of a professional professor/ lunatic. He is an assistant professor of music at the University of Colorado at Denver, the concertmaster for the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, an accomplished violinist, a published composer, and a nut with an electric guitar.

Over the years, Walker has explored many different avenues for live performance involving electronica, developing a reputation for being a fairly dangerous musician (whatever that might mean). He's an innovator and a groundbreaker. He's just the kind of guy to send a puppet to his interview.

Uncle John-- the puppet-- is the star of Walker's upcoming show xy, premiering at the King Performing Arts Center on Auraria Campus. xy, Walker's collaboration with techno DJ wizard Chad Carrier, is a techno-theatre piece featuring live dance, puppetry, music, video projection, and mayhem. Or, as Uncle John told me, "xy happens to describe the chromosomes that separate, and bind, a man and a woman." A description beyond that is fleeting. Going to the show might be the only other way to understand xy.

Without warning, Uncle John launched into a tirade about the performers involved. "Chad Carrier is even more worrisome than Gregory. Chad has a disturbing tendency to wire himself with MIDI control devices and skulk around the stage like a Palestinian suicide bomber. The nubile Andi Trindle is a budding starlet from California. Ian Walker is a prize-winning sound designer and playwright as well as an actor who reminds me of myself back in the days when I was a young stud. This resemblance is, no doubt, the intention of my creator, Erminio Pinque of Rhode Island's Big Nazo Puppets, who has just returned from a tour of Indonesia. There is a small army of multimedia artists headed by the University of Colorado at Denver's Kent Homchick, Chris Tillman, and Huw Bowen. And then there is Mother. But we are not to speak of her." John coughs and looks at his feet ... or he would, if he weren't a puppet.

Steering the conversation away from Mother, I prodded John to talk more about Walker. There was a gleam in his eye (or was it glare from the overhead lighting?) and he leaned in conspiratorally, like a gossip on VH-1. "Gregory's background as a violin soloist with the Colorado Symphony and concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra may imply a certain musical ability at first glance. But he is little more than a headbanger. While there may be a certain classically-influenced progressive rock structure to his electronica, in the end it is all simply the information overload of a troubled mind."

But is he dangerous? "Gregory's work in electronic music and theatre has been controversial at best. While he did subjugate the Boulder community to a series of underground events, which combined rock music, theatre, dance, video projections, spoken word, and audience partcipation dating back to 1988's Abyssinia, he is, at his core, an unstable artist who is as much a threat to himself as to others. The Fiske Planetarium's star projector sustained at least minor miscalibration when he lept onto it mid-guitar solo during suspect identity in 1991. A Denver performance of Blinky's Last Ticket in 1995 was nearly halted when a member of the audience accosted one performer after being hit point blank with a water cannon. In xy, this assault can take the form of a water cannon soaking, public audience member humiliation, and, of course, puppet mutilation."

I wanted to ask him more about the puppet mutilation, but something in the way his disc-shaped protruding ears were wiggling made me think twice. There was an awkward silence, then Uncle John leaned back and pantomimed lighting a cigarette. "Those two like to think they're being original, but upon closer examination, one can discern a Haujobb cadence here, an Ozric Tentacles texture there. Then Gregory turns up his guitar and ruins it. That's xy. Aching eardrums. Bruised egos. Soaked undergarments. And irrefutable proof that any relationship between the sexes is predestined for a bad end."

Sensing a bad end was indeed near, I ended the interview and excused myself to do some more research on this enigmatic outfit. I was graciously given a copy of xy's soundtrack, a masterful score of screeching ambient techno, alternating between moods of crusty blues and thumping electronica (some of which brilliantly incorporates samples of modems and touchtone phones). Whatever transpires during xy's 60 minutes, the music will be fantastic.

Walker and Carrier both contribute vocals, which are heavily manipulated ... not in the sick-sweet Cher way or the cheesy-queasy Peter Frampton manner, but cranked up and blotted, giving just an impressionist's glimpse of a human voice. Carrier's beats make your heart pound without making you feel like dancing, and the tension therein creates an open vessel for xy's dark pronouncements of love and war and chat room antics. In tone, at least, this project reminds me of Darren Aronofsky's .

Uncle John sent an e-mail. He seemed worried, the way paranoid people some times seem worried. He wanted to tell me about xy's prospects for an international tour, but odd tangents carried him away.

"There is an ill-advised plan to take the production to San Diego, New York City, and some avant-garde European festivals under the auspices of Sonic Circuits, Inc., a curated, international touring exhibit of technology and music. And then there is my plan, to escape the violence-ridden cacophony that is xy. Puppets already dominate the 21st century, whether it be on "Sesame Street" or in the White House. Individuals who masquerade as the source of their messages, they really are no more than hood ornaments for larger corporate vehicles. The moment you listen to recorded, distributed media, you become a puppet just like me, manipulated and financially-harvested by larger interests. Now a live performance, like opera, even as it tells a story, is paradoxically more concerned with individual human truths. But movies and music videos are omnipresent. Perhaps it is time for a new, live and technological medium to combine the best of both worlds. Fascinating to contemplate, isn't it? On another subject, you wouldn't happen to have any single, available friends, would you? Sisters? What-- what was that sound?! You didn't tell Gregory I was talking to you, did you? I must be off."