Up-to-date Musical Thing

I'm already going, he'd said. Then I woke up.

Did he mean that the dream was over, or that he was going to the up-to-date musical thing at the Science Exchange? I resolved to look out for a man in red trousers.

The Science Exchange that evening was hosting a presentation of Works of Slightly Misused Technology, by an experimental electronic music composer and hardware hacker, with the aid of some local musicians.

We sat upstairs because the downstairs bar was full. From here we looked down on the jacket and jeans clad musician-professor, who sat at a desk fiddling with a laptop. A note was played on a trumpet by an assistant musician and an electronic green scribbly pattern appeared on a screen on the wall. I wondered what was going on. I looked at the program. I learned that I was hearing feedback on a self-stabilising network of circuitry. Everyone else looked seriously entranced. I looked seriously entranced as well.

The next piece was the ultimate in geekitude. Six men in shapeless jumpers and baggy brown pants stood around a defunct piece of circuitry with wires sticking out of it. The professor sat at his desk working his laptop, which was somehow connected.The six men poked at the circuit-board with electronic probes, making unmusical oscillating electronic sounds until someone we couldn't see told them to stop. I suspected it was the heavy set bearded man in the black and white striped beanie who was sitting at a table nearby drinking beer from a glass and using one finger to beat out the time. He appeared to be in disguise. I attempted to look at his trousers, but I couldn't see under his table.