REPORTING LIVE: WOBBLESAUCE

Photos by Christian Esten. Wobble Wednesdays by The Brain Trust.

Standing in the middle of the dance floor at Wonder Bar for Wobblesauce’s “What Does This Button Do?” EP Release party, I can’t figure out which way to look. The magically inventive synth symphony is becoming entangled with the sparkling streamers hanging above us, the technicolor projections above the bar are dancing along with the bubbling jams, the pretty girl to my right is making live art right before our eyes:

Wonder Bar has reached total transformation.

The room is a kaleidoscope of oscillating dynamics, a dense jungle of layers, basslines, beats, and bodies and WAIT. “What does this button do?”

When words fail, press play to figure it out:

“Hello family!” bassist Jake Boynton says as he takes the stage, fedora on and grinning widely.

“We don’t play here every week—get that through your fucking heads [Laughs]—but we’re playing tonight! And we got some brand new tunes that you guys haven’t heard before.”

When words fail, cut to Wobblesauce LIVE:

Wait, standing? That’s not the right word to begin this article with at ALL. Like the 200+ kids in the sold out crowd around me … I’m neither standing nor thinking. I’m totally lost in a whirlpool of sounds, my arms waving, spinning and looping to Boynton’s driving basslines. We’re all bouncing off the walls like Michael McCarthy’s bouncing fingers and key progressions and breaking it down to Cody’s crashing symbols.

Completely lost in the music, we’re finally found.

Wonder Bar feels like home tonight. Billy the Pancake Prince is running around hoisting a cardboard sign above his head reading, “Free Beats $1 7/12.” (“Honestly, we’ve been saying it for years. No one knows what it means,” he tells me). McCarthy is literally standing behind what Flanders rightly calls a “fortress: 2 three-tiered stands stacked with keyboards, controllers, synthesizers, laptops, and a mixer.” Christian is standing on top of seats taking photos from above and I keep running into huge hugs—one of the only good things to run into.

As I’m dancing through the crowd, every eye I catch is met with a smile and an understanding nod, or a laugh, or a

“this is fuckin’ nuts!”

… which all mean pretty much the same thing. Every dance circle is open for business—I’m having one of the best times I’ve ever had here, just because of the overwhelming energy.

The smile on Jake’s face that’s always there when he plays is reflected by the hundreds from the crowd as they cheer on a live electronica trio that’s been “officially” a band for just under a year—a year that feels like forever if you take into account their bookings in so short a time: unhinging states up and down the East Coast and hitting fests like it’s there job, including  Desiderata, The Big Up, Bella Terra, Heads in Harmony and headlining Hempfest and playing alongside the likes of Beats Antique, D.V.S. and even Skrillex—WHAT?!

Because it … is their job. And once they pass through, we’ve heard rumors that each unhinged state has become addicted to their mighty morphin’ sounds, to Cody’s Berklee-trained bass pedal, and—oh—that each town has become a lot more wobbly (sorry hehe).

Now, back at home and visibly having a blast while celebrating their first EP release, the excitement is as contagious as the music.

Later in the evening, members of Lespecial, the Hornitz and Goosepimp orchestra take the stage with Wobblesauce, jamming out like family. The bouncers look nervous—the bar is WOBBLING (last time!). They’re afraid it’s going to fall. The hometown love in this room is palpable… pretty soon it’ll be spilling out the door and onto the streets of Allston.

I mean, come on, only for a Wobblesauce Wobble Wednesday would Wonder Bar do the one thing they know all of us would ask for if we had thought of it:

There’s a COUCH outside the bar on Harvard Ave.