Space is the place

After five months of inflating giant balloons, skipping CDs and mulching noise out of his laptop for the delight, bewilderment or indifference of Björk fans worldwide, Jay Doerck needed to relax. Best known by his alias of “Lesser,” he served in the avant-noise band Matmos, who opened for the Icelandic singer in last fall’s Vespertine tour. Lesser spent much of January in his San Francisco apartment with girlfriend, Bevin Kelley, watching a DVD set of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. After watching all 13 hours of the series, the couple talked about departing into an alien realm.

What arose was Sagan, a multimedia-improv group that fuses the toned-down elements of Lesser, and Blectum from Blechdom (Kelley’s schizo-funk act, where she goes by “Blevin Blectum”). Instead of assaulting heart rates with the sounds of schizophrenia set to wicked jungle beats (Lesser), or glibly singing about mysterious, toilet-lurking mammals called “snauses,” (Blectum), Lesser and Blevin worked with video artist Ryan Junell to concoct something that Mr. Sagan himself might enjoy. “We want it to be a sonic audio/visual environment that affects people in a slower way than the flashy, MTV quick-edit stuff,” says Blevin.

It wasn’t so much the famous concepts and conceits like “billions and billions of stars,” but rather the PBS documentary’s interplay between the narration, the dreamy orchestral score and the exotic imagery, that intrigued the group. “We were influenced by the deliberate pacing in Cosmos, so we’re creating something that lets things progress, and not trying to be completely frenetic,” says Lesser. This Saturday night at the Espresso Metro, expect to see Lesser and Blevin hunched over their laptops and playing sound files in response to the images of “amateur Nature films” that Junell will project onto an 8 (mm, maybe guys??) cloth screen.

“We’re all fans of documentaries and their immediacy, but we’re not necessarily trying to be trippy,” assures Junell. The musicians take a visual premise, whether it be a 40-minute video of them wandering around Golden Gate Park or a shot of Junell’s tabby, Cisco, sleeping, and then create a loose story with a melodic but surreal “introspective” soundtrack. Junell selects new video footage “on the fly” with a mixer, to accept the sudden changes in the music—which will be frequent, given Lesser and Blevin’s knack for violent mood swings.

Right now, Sagan is still soul-searching. “We’re still trying to figure out what we’re all about. I mean, I can’t really describe our music,” says Lesser. With their visual stimulants, Sagan wants to flee the notoriety that typically addles live laptop music. “Video adds another dimension to the show, since laptop shows can be boring for audiences,” says Junell. The usual stage presence of a “laptop jockey,” sans the video candy, is equivalent to watching someone surf the Internet at a distant café table for half an hour.

So far, Bay Area audiences have been receptive to the Sagan experience. “Things have been going good, since people tend to respond to the video and seeing people [onstage] interact,” recalls Blevin. Their Sacramento show will be their eighth gig, and they have no idea what the reaction will be from a city better known for giving the world Tesla and Rush Limbaugh than for embracing electronic music. “It’s going to be uncharted territory, but if things go well, we might do more shows up here,” says Lesser.

Above all, the Sagan project is meant to give Lesser and Blevin a break from their usual personas as noise-making oddballs. “The music is about genuineness. In our typical work, we’re incredibly jaded about music and the ‘scene,’ ” Lesser observes. “For me to do a pretty keyboard line would be completely embarrassing to do [solo] as Lesser.”

But in staying true to his contrarian spirit, Lesser claims he has no qualms about Sagan alienating some fans in peculiar favor of a certain demographic. “I’m going for a more hippie crowd,” he concludes. “We’re a jammy band, so think of Sagan as the ‘Grateful Dead of electronica.’ ”