People love to mock Canadians for being placid, harmless, and adorable, but that stereotype of our neighbors to the north overlooks one critical fact: While folks from Toronto and Montreal might be peaceful and well-meaning, their neighbors in Vancouver don’t fuck around. Just a few months ago, crazed Vancouverites torched half their otherwise idyllic city [...]
Shiny entertainment or challenging experimentalism: Tonight's live music options give us the whole spectrum. If you're the kind of person who sips straight Campari and likes your bedtime reading Slavic and turn-of-the-century, try out Sonic Circuits' program tonight at Pyramid Atlantic. Prefer to tap the Rockies? Like your flakes frosted, your reading glossy? Form a [...]
Sonic Circuits, the massive regional experimental music festival, will return to alienate uncool parents and fans of Top 40 radio September 14-18 this year (with a pre-fest fundraiser on the 13th). Overall it's a smaller affair: Esteemed arts institutions the Kennedy Center and La Maison Francaise are out, Bella Cafe & Restaurant is in. But there [...]
Most shows on the Kennedy Center Millennium stage start at 6 p.m. Period. But tonight, those who drop by an hour early will get a bonus from the 10th Annual D.C. Hip-Hop Theater Festival and music website Okayafrica. Before the festival’s African hip-hop showcase begins, Rujeko Dumbutshena, a Zimbabwean dancer who [...]
The Fridge was never going to be an easy fit for Barracks Row. The art gallery-cum-classroom-cum-performance space opened in an alley off of 8th Street SE in September 2009, and immediately caused minor, NIMBYish ripples in its the well-heeled Capitol Hill neighborhood. Over the last year the outre-minded space has mostly enjoyed a tentative peace [...]
Tomorrow night, arguably the biggest, bestest Sonic Circuits festival yet ends with a bang at La Maison Française. This year's festival has seen a huge variety of local and (inter)national acts playing all around the D.C. area, drawing people from all over the country and even the world. Saturday's final show is a real [...]
Hello! This week, we led the arts section of our dead-tree edition with Mike Paarlberg's look at the beginning of the Christoph Eschenbach era at the National Symphony Orchestra. In this Sunday's WaPo Magazine, classical critic Anne Midgette has her lengthy take on the same topic—which includes an interview with the maestro himself. But his [...]
Back in 2007, French ambient guitarist Richard Pinhas, accompanied by longtime collaborator Jerome Schmidt on electronics, played to a packed house at the Velvet Lounge. Tomorrow, Pinhas returns, this time at La Maison Française with another collaborator twiddling knobs (or staring at a laptop screen): Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow. This kicks [...]
Last night's Sonic Circuits show at the Strathmore Mansion was a treat—and not just because the dark, wooden walls of the arts center's music room complemented the string-based openers.
The Low End String Quartet is a "reimagined" take on the string quartet; instead of cello and violin, there was a guitar and an upright bass. Janel [...]
The Muffins in Rockville in 1979
It’s a somewhat ludicrous thing to say about an event that spotlights so many alienating artists, but in its 10th year, the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music feels, well, kind of big.
This year there are veteran prog and avant-rock draws, like Magma and Univers Zero, and the noise and [...]
