Mark Wedel, Special to the Gazette

A gateway between dimensions will open up at the Kraftbrau this Sunday, Nov. 28. Dr. Xeron and the Moogulators will step into our time/space continuum and mess up the fabric of reality with primitive drumming, analog electronic instruments and costumes.

We could not get actual contact with the lead singer Dr. Xeron, since he spends most his time in the nth dimension. But somehow an email came through, passed along by Ken Knott, former lead for Lansing punk band The Monoculators.

"I became crazed to the point of insanity," is the key phrase from Dr. Xeron's long and rambling story on using electricity in breaking through planes of existence, as detailed in the email. It seems that he was a scientist who's experements caused him to be possessed by a being from what he calls "the nth dimension."

"My name was Dr. Zachary Johnson. My obsession, from a very early age, was to find a way to verify the unseen infinite planes of existence around us. This obsession probably came from reading stories by the author H.P. Lovecraft, watching too much science fiction on television and also a game that I seem to remember as 'Dungeons and Dragons.' Hence, I became a scientist."

Johnson's hubris apparently caused him to tamper with powers he did not fully comprehend. So he's now cursed to perform as Dr. Xeron with his human helpers, the Moogulators, in Lansing bars.

The humans are Richard Bowser (drums, guitar, bugle) and Brad Miller (theremin, guitar), Kalamazoo residents and longtime WIDR-FM disk jockeys.

They said that the sender of the email, Knott, is a major part of this nth dimensional project. He may in fact be Dr. Xeron.

"Kenny's real into the science fiction," Bowser said.

The roots of the trio go back to 1973, where Bowser and Knott were friends in the brass section of their junior high band in Jackson. When in 1981 they became students at WMU, the two began punk band Violent Apathy.

Bowser hadn't been in a regular band since 1984. For Christmas of 2003, he got a drumset. He didn't know how to play, but he gave it a shot.

Early in the summer Miller bought a theremin, an old electronic instrument -- as heard on the theme to "Star Trek" -- that one plays by waving one's hands around its rods. He and Bowser began jamming in Bowser's basement. They threw in bugles and an old Radio Shack moog synthesizer.

In July, Knott''s band the Monoculators broke up. He had a commitment to fill gigs at Mac's Bar in Lansing. He asked Miller and Bowser to be his new band.

They said yeah, Bowser said, "but we play total abstract noise and s--- like that. He said okay."

Their set is one piece, "Music From the nth Dimension." "It's a somewhat composed piece. It's always different because there's always improvisation and you can't control certain noise aspects of it. But there is kind of a set to it," Bowser said.

"It's chaos within structured parameters," Miller added.

It''s not rock, but it has a beat, one that Bowser called "primitive."

Also, "Kenny and I both play bugle, a bugle duet in the piece. I play a little bit of guitar, Brad plays a little bit of guitar too," Bowser said.

"I play my guitar with a drill.," Miller said. "And I play short-wave (radio) when I can get reception, which depends on the club."

Costumes are important. The Moogulators wear protective yellow body suits to keep themselves safe from intradimensional gasses. Dr. Xeron wears a silver cape and what looks like a Mexican wrestling mask.

Dr. Xeron, for the trio's Kalamazoo debut at the Barking Tuna Festival in mid September, sang with a small glow stick in his mouth, so it would appear that he was glowing from the inside. He bit on it too hard and impressed the audience by drooling glowing chemicals.

"We're all sort of stuck in our own little worlds when we're on stage," Miller said. "But afterwards, after we got off stage, he was, what I thought, vomiting into a garbage can. But he was not vomiting, he was trying to clear his mouth of the semi-toxic chemicals that he bit into." Miller saw a video of the show. "It was quite lovely. It went well with the smoke machine."

The Moogulators -- who are actual adults with real lives and jobs that they wished not to reveal -- thought this would only last a few gigs. But they're on their ninth, and have three more lined up. "It seems to have a mind of its own at this point," Miller said.

So far they've been stuck as opening act, so it's a risk for the trio when an audience that didn't expect it looks into the nth dimension.

Response has been "indifferent to good," Miller said. Usually people waiting for the main act just sit and stare, silent, at the trio.

"If we do everything right," Miller said, "when we get done, they don't clap, they don't talk, they don't do anything until we're absolutely positively done and we're out of the room. And then somebody will start with a," Miller does a slow clap, clap, clap. "And there will be a slow build up of applause, and we'll be backstage going, 'Yeah!'"

Dr. Xeron and the Moogulators will open at 8 p.m. at the Kraftbrau for Kalamazoo's Mondale and New York City's Derek Richmond with Black Caulk. Cover is $5. Call 384-0288 for more information.