Wednesday, September 23, 2009

TVD Recommends | Sonic Circuits 2009

The ninth annual DC Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music kicked off last night and continues until Sunday at multiple venues.

Tonight's action involves two shows back to back:

At Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage will be a trio of local acts Nine Strings+Pilesar, Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind, and The Twenty-First Century Chamber Ensemble. That's a free show, beginning at 6pm.

The evening concludes at 9pm at the Velvet Lounge (915 U Street NW) with a program that ranges from insane noise to precision electronics and elegant compositions. $10 gets you in. Details:

Fern Knight is a quartet based in Philadelphia and DC led by cellist Margaret Ayre, and delivers a heady blend of progressive rock, pagan folk, 60's psych improv, and the new wave of British heavy metal. Imagine Pentangle with a flying V...

Swiss audio magician Luigi Archetti might be known to some as the guitarist behind latter-day krautrock pioneers Guru Guru. He's also done fantastic work as a sound installation designer and solo experimental musician. His recent release Transient Places is a wonderland of drones, textures, and deeply heavy minimalism.

Netherlands-based madman Odal cannot be described, it must be experienced. Peter Zincken's Odal project is a full-on assault of old-school noise with a physical presence that is uniquely.....Odal.

DC native Chester Hawkins (known to some blog readers as Intangible Arts) has been performing as Blue Sausage Infant since 1986. The sound of BSI can range from brutal noise to deep drones, heavy rhythms, and psychedelic walls of sound. The goal is to induce epic trance states and a vaguely paranoid kind of euphoria...

Twilight Memories of the Three Suns is a DC-based experimental collective that explores unique methods of sound creation, from amplified objects (bug zappers, building materials, heartbeats) to abused or altered instruments. Watching Twilight Memories in the act is as enlightening as hearing the resulting sounds.

The Sonic Circuits festival celebrates unexpected music in all its forms, and offers a unique chance to see some world-class examples here in DC. Check dc-soniccircuits.org for further details.

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