Week 6: Dr. Levers and the Voltage Villain
Live at Easy Tiger Beer Garden, Winston-Salem, NC
This session was a trip through sonic circuitry and plant-powered piano ballads. Ryan Hsu, now fully stepping into his role as Voltage Villain (and dressed accordingly in a gleaming kimono), brought his modular synthesizer back to the residency, igniting strange new landscapes and deep analog dream states. Joseph Dowdy—a.k.a. Dr. Levers—traversed tenor, alto, and soprano sax, plus flute and live effects, delivering both cinematic tension and meditative release. Jonathan Greene held it all together on drums with grace and precision, elevating and anchoring the session in equal measure.
A philodendron named Phillis joined us on one track, wired through a PlantWave to a piano and synth bass, creating an eerie and gorgeous bed of harmony and pulse while I (John Daniel Ray) played only the melody on bass. It was sparse, honest, and possibly our most emotionally transparent moment yet.
The title track Dr. Levers and the Voltage Villain kicked off with an improvised duet between saxophone pads and modular patch cords—levers and voltages in conversation—before the rest of us entered the scene like background characters stepping into a graphic novel.
Other moments ranged from low-orbit ambience (Flight School, Lavatube) to full group abstraction (Pet Phage, Equals X) to something resembling dystopian funk (Future Mosquito Drones).
The lights were glowing, the plants were thriving, and the room once again transformed into a capsule of shared imagination.
