Laptop Battles: The Modern Scratch Off?

I have been meaning to blog about this for a while, but never really knew where to go with the topic, so I decided I might as well just have a little introductory post.

Laptop Battles have been a sort of hot topic in the West coast music scene for the past couple of years, and it is just now starting to make its way to my area out in Chicago. As laptops have become more and more prevalent in LivePA, more and more artists have hopped up on stage to perform. While laptops have gotten more people on stage, doing more with their music, the laptop itself is a rather boring object for the audience to look at. I found this fantastic post on NPR talking about laptop battles and this quote just popped out at me.

via NPR

"There'd be some guy sitting on stage in a pool of light with his computer, playing music. But for all the audience knew, he could have been checking his e-mail or surfing the Web. There was no energy."

The laptop battle format was created to spark life and energy into the laptop performer by introducing a battle format where competitors compete against each other in an all out performance blitz lasting anywhere from 2-10 minutes. The result of the entire experiment is an insanely animated and often times auditory wall of sound that ranges from genius to chalk board screech. The format was setup by Kris Markle aka. Kris Moon, and has now expanded across the country offering listeners a new form of LivePA that some of us purists or traditionalists might not appreciate.

In all though if you get the opportunity to see a laptop battle in your area, you should check it out, or better yet, tote your laptop along and lay down for two minutes and see what you really are made of.

For more information, and if there are battles in your area check out the links below:

.:LaptopBattle.org:.
.:Myspace.com/Laptopbattles:.