Bryan Ferry’s music is the epitome of Euro soul: smooth and sexy, yes, but—unlike American R&B—steeped in Teutonic cool. The Roxy Music singer and solo star doesn’t make rip-off-your-clothes-and-get-freaky-in-your-bedroom jams; it’s all slow-motion espionage, illicit rendezvous in centuries-old hotels, and stolen kisses in the night. The 66-year-old sartorialist will forever look the part of a debonair gentleman, and his most recent album, 2010’s Olympia, still casts him in the role of romantic lead. But you need not gaze at Ferry to get weak in the knees. Just let the crooner caress you with his rounded tenor as gently wah-ing guitars and lightly funky drums soundtrack a European vacation in your pants. And mind. Bryan Ferry performs with The Phenomenal Handclap Band at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore. $55-$75. (301) 581-5100. (Christopher Porter)

MUSIC

It's Miami vs. D.C. night at Velvet Lounge: Bill includes Florida pop destroyers Dino Felipe and This Heart Electric and local noiseniks Animal Wigs (featuring members of Pilesar, Blue Sausage Infant, Timmy Sells His Soul) and Pilesar himself. 9 p.m. $8.

BOOKS

Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean writer and humans rights activist, looks back on his adventure after the military overthrew Allende in 1973 in his new book, Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile. 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose. Free.

Also, Ken Burns is discussing his documentary series Prohibition at 12:30 p.m. at the National Press Club. Go and get boozy!

FILM

The Latin American Film Festival continues at the AFI Silver. Of today's offerings, the most intriguing might be A Mysterious World, a discursive and jazzy narrative tour of Buenos Aires. At 9:20 p.m. $12.

ETCETERA

The Future of Music Coalition's summer continues at Georgetown University. Here's the schedule. Of particular interest to Arts Desk readers: Hays and Ryan Holladay of the duo Bluebrain are discussing their innovative location-aware albums, along with Beauty Pill leader Chad Clark. WaPo pop critic Chris Richards is moderating. 2:45 to 3:10 p.m. at Georgetown's Lohrfink Auditorium.

Leading this assault on easy listening is Jeff Surak, the soft-spoken but always ardent champion of Sonic Circuits. Since the first festival in 2002, Surak has continued to bring the brightest stars in the experimental firmament down to D.C.: Merzbow, Faust, Jandek, Matmos, Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Rat Bastard, and so on. But Surak the curator is also a creator called Violet; here his “Incapacitated by the Sun” is a steady, minimal drone, like one of Merzbow’s monoliths spiked with a nip of Mr. Bastard’s fuzz.

Meanwhile, Blue Sausage Infant’s “Gemüsemaschine” is pure kraut—feisty, filling, and highly fermented. In his recent review of BSI’s first-ever long player, Negative Space (put out by Surak’s Zeromoon imprint, no less), City Paper’s Joe Warminsky noticed the same precision-engineering care of guests Jeff Barsky on guitar and the motorik percussion of Jason Mullinax. And since D.C. is kind of a small town, both Insect Factory (Barsky) and Pilesar (Mullinax) show up on District of Noise Vol. 4, as well. I’ve long sung praises of Barsky’s unique textures, and I’ve been nodding in assent to Mullinax’s jams since our college days at the University of South Carolina. That said, their contributions (“Slow Bloom” and “Spider Bait,” respectively) sound more deliberate, more mature than anything I’ve yet heard from them. As Surak’s festival programming confirms, experimental music has a canon now, and the work of Chester Hawkins (a.k.a. Blue Sausage Infant), Barsky, and Mullinax are gunning for inclusion.

Of course, experimental music is often precisely that. Many times, the results fail to yield anything qualitatively good. I could do without the forced collaboration of TL0741 and Anthony Pirog on “Busy Bees.” Individually, I like both very much (in fact, I’m quite eager to hear what Pirog does with Terry Riley’s indefatigable In C at this year’s festival), but this meeting does neither party any favors. Likewise, I’ve heard better from Pirog’s other partner in crime, Janel Leppin. To be fair, we don’t see any visuals from her “Music for a Film, The Recipe,” so it’s hard to judge too harshly. Then again, Music From the Film’s “Animal Friends” succeeds because it’s playtime narrative let’s us make up our own. After all, not all experiments are serious experiments.

It maybe be a little early to call—like most releases of its ilk, the District of Noise compilations need time to percolate—but I think Borborites’ “Sunrise in an Opium Den at the End of the World” is my favorite cut. There’s a forward motion to its tainted slab of synth and treatments that compels an active listen. Just as Thomas De Quincey learned to appreciate the subtleties of opium, there’s plenty of nuance to Borborites’ sun-baked apocalypse.

Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center has had a busy week. With three shows curated by the Sonic Circuits crew in four days, the cozy Silver Spring gallery has given experimental music fans in the District plenty of opportunities to get their fill. Thursday's performances by Fast Forty, Area C, and Mem1 provided a pleasant bookend to the week, exemplifying how the ongoing Sonic Circuits series continues to highlight the breadth and diversity that the "experimental" umbrella encompasses.

Sunday's showcase kicked things off for the week, nipping at the heels of the free Flaming Lips show on the National Mall. Luckily, the Lips finished with just enough time for me to truck up to Silver Spring. My reward: sets by locals Corpus Callosum and Pilesar, alongside Philadelphia noise chanteuse U.S. Girls, and sample-happy Tzadik improv trio Brown Wing Overdrive. Compare that to the performance on Wednesday evening: Seminal NC folk weirdo Eugene Chadbourne delivered an intimate set of zany country tunes on an odd array of homemade instruments, including a five-string banjo and an electrified rake.

Thursday night's bill was especially exciting for me, given how endeared I've been to Providence's Erik Carlson and his Area C project over the last few years. His performance was equally as blissful and meditative as his recordings, so it was satisfying to see his music develop in real time. Encircled by a variety of effects pedals, samplers, and mystery machines, Carlson deftly navigated his guitar tones through glistening layers — a piecemeal composition of crescendo and restraint. More often than not, artists practicing a similar approach to Carlson's craft can send audiences straight to a snooze, but Area C has always proved remarkably engaging despite its gentility. His new CD, Charmed Birds vs. Sorcery, is out now on Students of Decay.

"Intense ambient" might sound like an oxymoron, but it does seem fitting for D.C.-based Keith Sinzinger's Fast Forty. Armed with a hanging rack of galvanized pipe, Sinzinger processed their reverberations through a circuit of delay pedals as he struck them with a rotating cast of mallets. A small ensemble of circuit-bent toys and triggered samples inserted an eerie playfulness to the mix: A woman's instructional countdown of "1, 2, 3" was immediately answered by a triplet of corresponding clangs.

L.A. duo MEM1 headlined the showcase — an exercise in coaxing a diverse sound palette from limited source material. The subject in this case was Laura Cetilia's cello, which was painstakingly manipulated by husband Mark Cetilia and his mix of laptop effects. Laura's minimal introduction was soon joined by a mutating chorus of electronic interpretations taken from her own instrument. From a crackling, static-laden background, to groaning mechanical pulse, Mark mixed Laura's plucks and scrapes — some more appealing than others — though the depth of their sound was certainly applause-worthy.

As Brandon Wu wrote yesterday, the Sonic Circuits crew will take part in the marathon of out-sounds that is the Avant Fairfax Festival this evening, with music starting at 6pm. And be sure to mark your calendar for the next SC-curated event at Pyramid Atlantic, scheduled for May 3rd. Check the Sonic Circuits site for more info.

*Photo courtesy of Cristina Bejarano