Gil Mantera’s Party Dream at the Riot Room

​After watching Gil Mantera’s Party Dream load their equipment on stage and stutter through their soundcheck at The Riot Room Friday night, I didn’t expect them to vault back on the stage decked out in skintight leopard print leotards and sunglasses mere minutes later. 

It was odd due to the way Ultimate Donny (Richard Elmsworth) and Gil Mantera (Glen Whiteweather) parted their way to the stage: politely. It was like seeing Superman riding the bus, or watching cartoon TV heroes grounded by the physics of the real world. For a band that’s all about confusing reality with fiction and persona with performance, the Clark Kent-to-Superman transition that Gil Mantera’s Party Dream pulled in the Riot Room’s bathroom gives an insight into the duo’s outlandish performance art.

First, though, the music: you might call it retro-futurist. It’s what people in the ’80s thought the music of a Blade Runner-like future would sound like, with vocodor vocals and a deep warbling synth that sounds like a pop version of the Knight Rider theme. Songs like “Elmo’s Wish,” were high on melody and Ultimate Donny’s forced falsetto. Mostly, the tunes felt as if they came from a long lost band in some alternate timeline, where members of a theatrical ’80s hair metal outfit joined forces with new wave synth-poppers.