This Friday, the 10th of February, Meat Beat Manifesto is performing at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. I caught MBM over the summer at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and it was a great show that expertly avoided the dull trappings of many electronic music concerts. If you are a gear fetishist, you'll be pleased with the array of sound-making devices Meat Beat tours with, but the real treat is the live visuals provided by Ben Stokes. Usually operating at least two seperate projections, Stokes' VJing is treated as the centerpiece of the show on stage, with the performers themselves flanking the images on either side. Stokes mines movies and pop culture ephemera for his images, which he adeptly controls in time with the music. Sometimes the audio from his clips becomes a part of the music itself. Its top notch VJing and if you are interested in seeing the state of the art while getting a serious bass injection, you'd do well to catch Meat Beat Manifesto. If you're a fan, you'll be glad to know that they play material from all over the MBM discography.

Picture above by taken by 5anche5