Maschinenfestomo: Some Notes on Day Three

By the third day, you’re pressed against the only stage at Maschinenfest, both hands braced on either side of your own bruised ilia, spanning several bars of black and yellow caution tape with sticky fingers.

The venue is Kulturfabrik in Krefeld, Germany. Krefeld is small, pleasant, and slightly dowdy, sheltering large, serious citizens in shades of beige and blonde. An odd place for this sort of soiree. I’d figure the likes of Maschinenfest for Berlin, but I assume costs in a big city would be prohibitive.

You’re studying the way one of Militia’s drummers lands his blows on his oil drum, knocking the stick exactly into a dent that was pounded into a tailored concavity over years of performance. Nonchalant flicks of forearm land it on this divot again and again: perfect. This is junkyard kodo, and you feel their impacts right in the swamp of your guts. And then, only then, can you write about it.

Behind you, one thousand people sop it up. Men and women self-consciously shoulder historical German military garb, Saturday’s trend. I stare at a nerdy-looking man in a peaked SS officer’s cap. I am obviously Yankee, in my Earheartesque ensemble, and his eyes flicker to the side. We beat you, I think. I find out later that he’s Irish.

Maschinenfest 2008 [Jairus : Flickr]