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]

The Way is a worldwide, nondenominational Biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry headquartered in rural Ohio. It is designed to teach those who are hungering and thirsting for the truth how to understand the Bible.

What the website of this humble, thirst-quenching, nondenominational Christian group fails to mention, however, is the natural ability of their congregation to get down. Luckily, footage from their March 2007 concert series does all the talking. Featuring dope beats and mad lyrical stylings, The Renewed Mind Is the Key is a tour de force of staid, Christian synth-pop. Indeed, if this were the extant of the talent featured, The Renewed Mind Is the Key would do little to distinguish itself from its peers.

However, there is more — oh so much more — to this fabulous, though nameless, trio. That which I refer to is, of course, the aforementioned “getting down”. It takes only a glance at their precision choreography, the fluid moon-walking, the precise popping and locking, for the viewer to realize that they are witnessing a phenomenon, perhaps even, a miracle. Oh what graceful entertainers these be; what awe they inspire. If proof is needed of the existence of a higher power, surely these unearthly entertainers, frozen, rictus grins in place, their souls full of evangelical fire, provide it. Surely.

The Renewed Mind Is the Key [The Way International] : Youtube : Thanks, Dude17!

No one rocks the maroon and white like Neil Grant Vosburgh. Nobody. Yes, when God created Neil he put a kerchief on that bad boy and then promptly broke the mold.

Love is blind [LP Cover Lover] : the Percy Trout hour

If I have to suffer with these images all day so do you!

Slightly NSFW.

Poison Sexyback [YouTube] : Pointing blame at kinsleia

Ah, Canada, that frozen wonderland to the north, with its lush, rolling fields of moose, beer waterfalls, and socialized medicine. Truly, it is a snow covered Eden. This week’s Saturday Morning Cartoons is (mostly) presented by Canada, featuring animators (mostly) from Canada, or films distributed (mostly) by The National Film Board of Canada. If you are so inclined (and you should be) all of these videos, with the exception of the first, can be viewed in a higher resolution on YouTube.

• The Cat Came Back: From Cordell Barker. Mr. Johnson has a yellow cat, which he is desperately trying to rid himself of. His efforts prove…unsuccessful.

• Last Time in Clerkenwell: Russian animator Alex Budovsky’s follow-up to Bathtime in Clerkenwell featuring more mind bending flash animation and infectious music.

• The Danish Poet: Torill Kove’s 2007 Oscar winning mediation on her birth, and the serendipitous events which led to it. Simple, clean lines lend this one a children’s book aesthetic which works perfectly.

• Ryan: Directed by Chris Landreth, Ryan is an animated tribute to Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Winner of an Oscar in 2005, it’s a film whose visuals tell just as much of its story as its dialogue does.

• How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels: Craig Welch’s fantastic, creepy, surreal, Gorey-esque little film about a scientist’s quest for knowledge that is, perhaps, reserved for beings other than mere mortals. Cross hatching should be used more often in animation.

• Yellow Sticky Notes: Nine years worth of Jeff Chiba Stearns’s To-Do lists, written on sticky notes, animated with, well, sticky notes. Trust me, it works.

• Harvey Krumpet: I’m a big fan of Australian animator Adam Elliot’s work, having first seen his shorts Brother, Uncle, and Cousin through The Animation Show. Harvey Krumpet, narrated by Geoffrey Rush, continues the tradition of Elliot’s intimate storytelling; detailing the life of Harvey Krumpet, from his birth in Poland to the end of his life in Australia.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XXXIX: Oh Canada (Mostly) [YouTube]

Presented here, another casualty of the practice of circuit bending. Considered by many to be a lovable, if perhaps slightly hyperactive lightning mouse, this creature has been gutted and run through, his visage now resembling the offspring of an unholy tryst between Pinhead and a member of the Borg. After finally being sodomized with an amplifier cord, the poor creature is finally ready to perform; his modified and truncated cries becoming music for his sadistic torturer. Surely, even this rat, annoying as he can be, deserves a better end than this.

Bent Pikachu Limited Edition [YouTube] : Pink Tentacle

I don’t mind telling you, dear readers, that the past few days have been atrocious. Ensconced in a sputum plastered nightmare illness, I have been limping, hunched and oozing, through this week; the phlegm constricting my chest and vocal chords causing me to sound, by all accounts, like a sniffling, hacking Barry White. The rest of the Ectomo staff has quarantined me to my office, leaving me alone and ignoring my melodious, threatening bellows.

What the current plague I suffer from has to do with this mash-up of Sesame Street and M.O.P.’s “Ante Up”, I cannot be sure. Perhaps in my current state I find myself on the same, depraved wavelength as The Tubes; my fever allowing me some sort of expanded Understanding. It may explain why I find this so funny, the image of Bert and Ernie spitting mad, aggressive rhymes sending me into fits of pulmonary convulsions. For those who may not like it, always remember: nothing despises you or your childhood more than the internet.

Bert & Ernie tries Gangsta-Rap [YouTube] : poeTV

Another very popular Pimba artist is Quim Barreiros. […] In most of his songs, Barreiros makes extensive use of ambiguous words, often with obvious sexual suggestions. One of Quim Barreiros’ biggest hits was “A Garagem da Vizinha” (The [Female] Neighbour’s Garage), which is a metaphor for the female genitalia, but he is also known for hits such as “Mariazinha”, where he asks a woman named Mariazinha to let him smell her “codfish”.

In an upcoming NdJ post, I’m going to take a huge shit all over the practice of sampling. Specifically, the over-sampling of certain films in certain genres. Until then, I offer this as an example of sampling done right: sampling for the betterment of mankind.

Artist Pogo has a four-track album of Wonderlandian downtempo. Individual tracks are available for download from Last.fm, and the album “Wonderland” is on iTunes and Amazon.

Download “Alice” mp3 [Last.fm : thanks Intoner]

Based on a remix contest by Radiohead for the song “Nude”, James Houston assembled an elderly choir of obsoletia that grinds, beeps, and chirps their way to something unexpectedly haunting.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

I was scrambling for this week’s NdJ theme, not having been brung low by any songs lately, and was blessed by this today. I admit freely that I choked up. Not just for nostalgia, though the dot matrix is an old friend and the scanner knows me yet, but for the pathos of pastured machines.

It solidifies for me, this video, that the early consumer-computer era has really passed, can be patted into a packaged time, a turned page. Out of etymological playfulness, what would we call it? Pixelpunk?

Thanks to Fixer667, who I believe Ectotweeted this.

Same deal as last time, gentlemen: you find me in the heaving crowd, I’ll do you up an Octobee, on the house. (clue: my hair is mintyblonde, and I will be dressed as a biplane-hijacking escapee from Mad Max’s personal bellydancing troupe)

This is Bong-Ra’s first US tour, and he’s augmented by a lineup of excellence including Pneumatic Detach, and Enduser, craftsman of one of my and Qais’ all-time favorite albums, Bollywood Breaks.

Ectofriend DJ Intoner, who put the show together, will be spinning between sets.

In case you, my treasured readership, are not yet familiar with Bong-Ra, allow me to advance the notion that he is fucking insane:

As for the rest of the cast, just click your dainty pointers below to be bathed in the relevant phat beats.

Bong-Ra pre-show tickets available [DNA Lounge]

A wonderfully surreal press conference by the one and only Tom Waits for his upcoming “Glitter and Doom” tour, in which he pontificates on the act of planning, astrology, and the strange acronym PEHDSTCKJMBA.

Tom Waits Press Conference [YouTube] : grow-a-brain : Laughing Squid