Gil Mantera gets serious on new EP

By John Benson

The emphasis is on the songs.

Singer-guitarist Ultimate Donny said the Youngstown-based act Gil Mantera’s Party Dream is taking a leap to more serious musicians on its recently released new album “Dreamscape.”

“I guess this album showcases more of a musicality, really good keyboard sounds, analog synth sounds,” Ultimate Donny said. “We wrote good songs but there’s still a little goofiness to it. With this album, we just really wanted to make a really strong and consistent song-based album.”

He added, “I’d say we have a reputation for being jackasses from the live show and with the release of [2005’s] ‘Bloodsongs,’ people started taking the songs more seriously and checking out our music. So this one hopefully furthers that. I don’t know where it’s going to really put us in the music world. We don’t really have much control over that.”

As far as “Dreamscape” being a song-based album, Ultimate Donny points to new songs such as pop-sounding “Dream Lovers,” the New Order-esque “Waking Vision” and the kraut-rock inspired and vocoder-heavy jam “Eyes of Blues.” Something else that stands out on the new album is the fact the band brought in a drummer on a conventional (read: not electronic) drum kit.

On the surface it sounds as though this live party band – featuring Ultimate Donny and Gil Mantera (keys, programming, bass, robot voice, songwriter) – known for its outrageous antics both in recorded form and on stage is attempting to change its sound and image.

“We’re not really trying to get away from anything,” Ultimate Donny said. “We like to have fun, and it’s really important for us that we give a fun, entertaining show. But these days, over the last two or three years, we’ve concentrated on playing really well as well as entertaining, and maybe five or six years ago songs didn’t matter that much.

“We were OK with doing whatever we needed to do to make people laugh. But we really like the balance these days.”

Apparently, so does America, which in recent years has been quickly warming up to the Gil Mantera’s Party Dream experience. Ultimate Donny said the twosome has enjoyed sold out gigs in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. While the act’s next hometown show isn’t until April 17 at Cedars Lounge, the duo has booked an extensive stateside five-week tour, which begins Friday in Kentucky.

At the very least, there appears to be quite a bit of momentum behind these self-coined jackasses.

“We do have high goals but I don’t know what we expect since we haven’t hired a publicist,” Ultimate Donny said. “We don’t have a label. We didn’t hire a manager. We decided not to even try for any of that stuff and do it all on our own, so our expectations, we don’t really have any. They’re not low. They’re not high.

“The goal is to try to get this out to as many people as possible on our own and do much better than we ever have with other people helping us. Already on paper this tour will have been the most lucrative tour we’ve done with the guarantees that we have.”

So could Gil Mantera’s Party Dream become to Youngtown what The Black Keys are to Akron?

“We hope so,” Ultimate Donny laughed. “It would be great.”