had helluv fun at the Great American Music hall on 12-30-02 here in SF. Captured by Robots was entertaining enough for forty minutes (any longer would have stretched the hilarity kind of thin). Thank goodness people who build robots put them to this kind of use, I guess. Isis was pleasant enough, my first exposure to them. Gotta love a keyboardist who tries to cut through/keep up with three fuzz-powered axe-wielders. The epic approach to composition, and the mix of metal, basic rock, and feedback/noise dreamscapes, held my interest, kind of prog without the capes and pretense. kind of jazz-odyssey minus the jazz. But i'm on the outside of this scene, about a quarter-century behind/beside the times, so maybe this stuff is dull and predictable to most of you. Two laptops, two kaos pads, and one other thing..either a drum machine or a mixer? Kid 606 is a virtuoso. Is there anyone on this list who was there, or who keeps up with the laptop scene, wanna venture a guess as to which laptop was doing what? Melvins Rocked. Is there anywhere on this planet where they get to play for 15,000 people? The final set was Merzbow/Patton and kid606's stuff was on stage....i assume he played though when i left it was still just Maldoror. they kicked up a nice tsunami of loud abstraction. merzbow with two laptops and patton with a variety of mics going in and out of various devices, notably one of those mdular synths with the little pegboard matrix (someone help me here with the brandname.....same kind thomas lehn uses in konkpack, i think). all the cathartic transcendence (an old acid survivorcould want!) with none of the burdensome academic justification! .....I heard thatcalvin weston was maybe gonna play (alongside ben perowsky) with electric masada at Tonic on NYE. can someone who was there confirm or deny? cheers......graham connah