A workshop on circuit-bending was understandably the least-attended event all weekend, tucked in a nook of Lakefront on Langdon Saturday night and shrugged off by the roving gangs of football fans and their quizzical Parents Weekend guests. But for those who dared face their childhood friends and brutally rip open their guts to move around wires and link new sound points on its circuit board, a whole "city" was lit on the battery-powered innards of the toy's "state," as Bianca Pettis, workshop leader and member of Beatrix*JAR put it.

And how is this pop music, again?

"Circuit-bending brings sound and art to people wouldn't call themselves musicians," said the other half of the duo, Jacob Roske.

If this is the music of the revolution, you wouldn't know it from the acts that followed, as the expensive-looking gadgets accompanying the Frankenstein monster-looking complex of dollar-store novelty items all seemed a far cry from the jack-in-the-box sounds coming from the amateur circuit benders.

Rodney Clark, founder of circuit-bending label Tiger Claw Records here in Madison, started things off under the alias Life As Number 5. Grounded in a repeating electronic loop, Clark manipulated dials, knobs, and switches, evoking a drum line playing in a combat zone, the whoosh and rumble of jet planes flying over-head. Another song added telephone dial tones and laser zaps to a hiccupping vocal percussion.

Then came Computron, the administrator of GetLoFi.com, a definitive authority on circuit-bending culture, tips and events around the country. Though at first shrug it would seem that circuit-bending musicians would be at home in the brutal sonics of the noise genre, Computron's warm, organic tones and glitching skips evoked a primitive IDM, electronica stripped to its bare roots. A malfunctioning flat panel screen affixed to his electronic deck, Computron created fluid, moving soundscapes, each flam, alarm clock purr, or down-tempo chime evoking an air of inquisitive wonder. Against this, even the drawling voice of a Union denizen discussing the terrorist implications of Iran and a Korean student loudly making a telephone call became part of the collage of found sounds.

But duo Beatrix*JAR from Minneapolis stole the show with wide grins as it spun trip and hip-hop instrumentals with canned tracks on a laptop and record player augmented by a circuit-bent Speak & Spell and other miscellaneous toys. The resulting sound would not be out of place on a Go! Team album.

Finally, Roth Mobot took the stage. Composed of Tommy Stephenson, who has designed electronic instruments for Animal Collective and Phish, and a bearded, bald ball of energy named Patrick McCarthy, the group forgoes traditional tonal sounds altogether in a dissonant, musique concrete cacophony composed of circuit-bent devices alone. While McCarthy held a shining red apple of uncertain purpose in his right hand and donned a purple helmet of a no-doubt brutal space dictator, the group composed a nervous and unsettled mixture of noise. After establishing a theme, like a customer ordering from a McDonald's drive-thru, they then proceeded to derange it, sending vocals into warp-speed and adding claustrophobic noises of click and chewing insects.

O Canada, We Tip Our Collective Hat to Thee