MOCHIPET: NOT another lame laptop guy. That was going to be my closing line for this review, but it's pretty weak, so I figured, why not get it out of the way at the start so as to give the sense of building toward, and finishing on, something of a higher note.

The first time I saw Mochipet was at a basement show on Mission Street a couple of months ago, at which time I had no idea who he was. But he earned points, first of all, for wearing a Testament T-shirt and drinking a beer during his set. Not that I should be endorsing the use of alcohol, especially since I work with potentially susceptible teenagers, but if anybody's gonna drink a few beers, let it be the laptop people. Not to get into stereotyping, but many of them could stand to loosen up and quit being so cool and sophisticated.

Another plus, which I discovered when I looked up Mochipet's Web site (www.mochipet.com) last month, is he has a song called "Dessert Search for Techno Baklava." This is clearly a reference to "Desert Search for Techno Allah" on Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante, which happens to be my favorite album.

And it's nice, for a change, to see someone who's influenced by the band focusing on something besides the 10 minutes of obnoxious funk-metal on that album. Mr. Bungle made plenty of other obnoxious music that's far worthier of attention.

This show was the second time I've seen Mochipet, and it was every bit as good as the first time. I wouldn't be going overboard in calling it a "revelation." There wasn't really much to see, per se, just a guy bobbing his head, wiggling his mouse, staring at his computer screen, and occasionally reaching over to adjust the dials on his mixer. But it didn't really matter, because there was so much music to take in and the sounds produced were so shape-shifting and kaleidoscopic.

In fact, this set confirmed a suspicion I've recently been harboring about laptop music. That is, I used to make the excuse that laptop shows were generally boring because they lacked the visual element that rock bands or jazz combos brought. After finally seeing Kid606 play a good show or two and now witnessing Mochipet, I realize it wasn't the laptop medium that made those other shows boring; it was the music.

Despite the lack of visuals, Mochipet's half-hour set was enough to keep any short-attention-spanned laptop skeptic on his or her toes throughout. Isolating specific moments is tough, because there were no set breaks and it all flew by at such a fast pace: out-of-control jungle beats, metal guitars, cartoon music, somebody's cover of "Everybody Have Fun Tonight," and plentiful shards of Merzbow-grade noise. There were also samples of Arabic, Indian, and, I think, Eastern European folk music, but they weren't thrown in there with the pedantic, quasi-mystical "one world" touch of someone like DJ Cheb I Sabbah. As I sit here typing and listening to a couple of Mochipet's CDs, Randbient Works (Btrendy) and the upcoming Combat (Violent Turd), I can recognize a bunch of material from his LiPo set, although the show was much noisier and more aggressive than either of these discs.