"The craziest moment had to be the last battle, when the winner, Skymall, drank a 1.5-liter bottle of champagne while performing," says Gair Marking (Dev 79), the founder of Philadelphia's long-running Laptop Battle and local experimental electronic music collective Seclusiasis. "Oh, and the full-on mosh pit during Duran Duran Duran's set at battle three."

Well that's encouraging. For a minute there, we assumed a "laptop battle" would be an incredibly boring clash of bit-crushing intellectuals — unless it involved contestants actually clobbering one another with titanium PowerBooks. Add to the air of inebriation the variety of performers Marking and co-promoter PJ "Starkey" maintain at every event. In the past, competitors have loaded traces of techno, downtempo, house, dub, hip-hop and, yes, Intelligent Dance Music, into their live sets. This installment is no different, featuring funk/soul/rap (Lil' Dave), leftfield world music (DJ PE), a returning champion who once left heavy incisions in an Interpol song (Velapene Screen), and seven other genre-jumping combatants. And to make matters more interesting, the winner of this battle will challenge October's for a spot in Seattle's national laptop architect championship.

Nice. Maybe this'll get bloody after all.