MUSIC

Sonic Circuits, the excellently curated annual festival of experimental music, kicks off tonight at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. Local ensemble STYLUS will accompany two silent experimental films—James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber's Lot in Sodom and Man Ray's Emak-Bakia— using 10 vintage record players and two cellos. 8 p.m. $12.

It's time for another Moombahton Massive—the more-or-less monthly showcase of the microgenre created by D.C. DJ Dave Nada—but this time things are a little different: This time Nada and some of his compatriots in moombahton are facing off against the Bay Area's Tormenta Tropical DJs, who specialize in cumbia. One holdover from past Moombahton Massives: Nada's mom will be selling her homemade empanadas. The show is $6. Empanadas are $3.

I really can't tell you what to expect from tonight's acoustic Marah show, but feel emboldened knowing this: The alt-country band has made great albums that are raucous and rough-and-tumble (If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry) and great records that are polished and poppy in the Elvis Costello vein. Odds are good it'll be a treat. 7:30 p.m. at Jammin' Java. $15.

BOOKS

Best place for some erudite chuckles is Calvin Trillin's book event tonight at Politics & Prose. 7 p.m. Free.

DANCE

The influential modern-dance duo Eiko and Koma perform Regeneration, a sort of mini-career retrospective that includes pieces from 1976, 1984, and 2010. This is very sold out, but maybe this kind of thing has scalpers?

Sound experiments galore, courtesy of Sonic Circuits: Eli Keszler, Benjamin Nelson, Ben Miller, Berührung, David Pate, and Yolt perform at Pyramid Atlantic. 8:30 p.m. $8.

Prog, revisited: Nektar, Brainticket, and Huw Lloyd-Langton (from Hawkwind) get noodly and long-winded at Jaxx. 8 p.m. $25.

The band's origins are dark, but North Carolina's The Love Language knows how to write a pop song. 9 p.m. at Rock & Roll Hotel. $12.

Producer/songwriter Dntel is also one-half of The Postal Service. He makes clicky, acoustic-flecked electronic music for emo kids. 9:30 p.m. at Red Palace. $10-$12.

These days, German duo Digitalism traffics in big, gooey electropop songs. 8 p.m. at 9:30 Club. $30.

Gipsy Kings: The soundtrack to your produce-buying experience in Takoma Park. Or, Toy Story 3. Tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Wolf Trap. $25-$42.

American Idols Live!: Exactly what it sounds like. 7 p.m. at Verizon Center. $45-$65.

Fourplay and Marcus Johnson Project: It does not get any smoother than this. 7:30 p.m. at Carter Barron. $24.50.

FILM

City Paper film writer Tricia Olszewski recommends The Names of Love, which opens tonight at Bethesda Row. Sara Forestier is Baya, a liberal who sleeps with right-wingers in order to convert them; Jacques Gamblin is Arthur, a conservative who just can't get enough of her. "Their ensuing relationship is rocky for them," says Olszewski, "but delightful for the viewer."

THEATER

Tonight and this weekend, catch reprisals of four Fringe shows at Warehouse: Flyboy, The Bird, But Love Is My Middle Name, and Cabaret XXX: Les Femmes Fatales. Tickets are $15 per show at City Artistic Partnerships.

ALCOHOL

Beer week wraps up this weekend. Check out our list of the remaining events.

The festival doesn't boast the huge headliners it did the past couple years, like Faust and Jandek in 2009, or Fennesz, Magma, and Merzbow from last year. But Sonic Circuits Festival director Jeff Surak points out that the 2011 event brings several local and national premieres—longtime conceptual group The Haters has never been to D.C. before, nor have cellist Okkyung Lee, German improviser Annette Krebs, Berlin-based tape artist Rinus Van Alebeek, or pan-Atlantic group Voltage Spooks. And of course, the customary eclecticism remains intact. "People will experience a mix of approaches each night," says Surak, including "free improv, noise, sound art, drone, Hindustani vocal music, minimalism, and really really unclassifiable stuff, sometimes all within the same piece."

Download the festival program here, or see an HTML version (and buy tickets) at the Sonic Circuits website.

MUSIC

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival continues with the 6th Annual J. Dilla Tribute and Fundraiser at the 9:30 Club. Since producer J. Dilla died of a rare blood disease in 2006, Jon Laine and The Players have been carrying the torch by reproducing his tracks live. Tonight, the band is joined by The Pharcyde, Gods'Illa, Wes Felton, Maimouna Youssef (after she wraps up her performance at the Kennedy Center), and many others, in a tribute to the artist and a fundraiser for the J. Dilla and Lupus foundations. The promoters advise guests to arrive early. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. $20.

Fiery Furnaces guitarist Eleanor Friedberger shows up at the Black Cat Backstage to play some songs from her solo album Last Summer. Romania (Roman from The Oranges Band) opens. Doors 8:30 p.m. $10.

Soundgarden recently released a (live) album (recorded in 1996), reunited, and booked a tour. Now that Chris Cornell is trying to forget his terrible Timbaland-produced solo album, he's forcing us to remember the '90s. The Mars Volta opens. Doors at 7:30 p.m. Tickets still available at $59.50 plus the usual fees.

Jen Shyu, Violet, and Safe Fast and Effective play Bella Cafe as part of the Dave Mann/Sonic Circuits-curated concert series at the restaurant. 8 p.m. $5.

The U Street Music Hall hosts a tribute to Kristen Bell (Kristen Renee Wolcott Bell), a local woman who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash on the Capital Beltway June 8. DJs Gavin Holland, Jackie O, Keenan, The Nobis, and a bunch of others will DJ and play live to raise proceeds for a trust fund set up for Bell's two-year-old son Conan. 8 p.m. $5 minimum donation.

DANCE

The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet's master class ends at noon today, but you can still catch their performance at Wolf Trap's Filene Center tonight at 8:30 p.m. The company is presenting a Wolf Trap commission by contemporary choreographer Jorma Elo. 8:30 p.m. $4 lawn tickets, $40 in-house.

BOOKS

Musician and jazz historian Ricky Riccardi stops by Politics & Prose to talk about What A Wonderful World, his book about the latter career of Louis Armstrong. 7 p.m. Free.

THE ONLY PLACE YOU WILL HEAR ERIK WØLLO TONIGHT

Washington Post music critic (disclosure: my former colleague) Chris Richards DJs his monthly new age night, Glide, at Café Saint-Ex tonight. It's the best place in this town to hear tranquil hums, warm synth waves, and other pleasing sounds of the universe while cramming sweet potato fries into your face. 9 p.m. Free.

Fridge owner Alex Goldstein

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 with its neighbors.

But when the Fridge had to scale back its ambitions last month, kow-towing to neighbors registering noise complaints, it didn’t involve the usual suspects—no scrappy devotees of street art, no mind-scraping experimental musicians. It happened in August, when, with Congress in recess and the summer quickly bleeding days, the neighborhood can feel like a ghost town.

The culprits? Noisy new agers.

There’d been rumblings earlier. Fridge owner Alex Goldstein says he began hearing some noise complaints about three months ago. Although the building has been sound-proofed, some noise occasionally escapes, “especially when there are drums,” he says.

But “August is kind of a dead month for us,” says Goldstein, 39, so he decided to turn over the space, which he originally conceived as solely an arts gallery but soon began regularly hosting music, over to the organizers of D.C.’s Gaia parties for three weekends. The dance nights blend house music, immersive, multimedia performances that can include light art and video and body paint, and an earthy, Eastern attitude. They’re blissed out events for people who can dance all night.

“There was apprehension among residents as [Goldstein] developed the spot,” says Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Kirsten Oldenburg, of ANC 6B. “From the very beginning there was some concern about it.” But complaints about loitering and noise “really flared up” in August, she says. “There’s not much space within the building,” she says. “As a result, all these kids would spill out into the alley.”

Goldstein says that the complaints are “directly related” to the Gaia parties. “It’s not that people were loitering outside, but these events got done around 1 a.m. and people were kind of noisy as they left,” he says.

Except for the fact that the Fridge doesn’t have a liquor license, Nico Laget, the man behind Gaia, found the space “perfect,” although he was aware of neighborhood tensions. “I knew that this was a concern going in,” he says, “but I was mostly concerned about the volume of the music inside.”

Laget says that he spent most of his time inside the Fridge during Gaia’s seven-night residency, overseeing the events. When he did step out into the alley, “whatever I saw was rather tame,” he says. “Maybe people laughing, but no fights, no smoking strange substances, no drinking. If this is the worst behavior that we have to worry about, then I’d say D.C. is in pretty good shape.” He estimates that the largest crowd any of his seven events drew was 150, with about 100 people at any given point in the night. “We never had a line out the door,” he says.

“It’s a bit of a nuisance that they are surrounded by uncooperative neighbors,” Laget says, adding that it’s unfortunate that the complaints made their way to the ANC. “If you don’t like something, just call Alex,” he says.

As a result of neighborhood feedback about Gaia events, Goldstein has instituted an 11 p.m. curfew and cut back on concerts, which in the future will only be acoustic. Because of the restrictions, Jeff Surak, director of last week’s Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, chose to relocate the festival’s two Fridge shows—which were certainly not acoustic-only—to the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring. “We just didn’t want to put them in jeopardy,” he says.

Goldstein emphasizes that the Fridge will still host musicians, but concerts will end earlier. Laget is even optimistic about working with the Fridge again. Two of the August Gaia events were Sunday matinees, which Laget hopes to revive “probably once per season,” he says. “Those events are extremely chill, so I think they will work perfectly with the Fridge.” Goldstein isn’t so sure. The collaboration was “kind of an experiment,” he says. “We decided to host them and see if it would work for us, and we determined that it didn’t.”

In August, Goldstein worked with the office of Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells to write a letter to Capitol Hill residents. “The gist of the letter was that we were sorry for disturbing them,” Goldstein says. But he emphasizes that it’s a small minority of neighbors who have complained about events at The Fridge. “The whole situation has been overblown,” he says. “Nine out of 10 people I talk to express love for what we do.”

The Fridge isn’t the only venue of its kind in Capitol Hill—just the only one to butt heads with neighbors. The Corner Store—an art gallery and performance space that operates in a renovated residence—is located a fifth of a mile away. Opened by Kris Swanson in 2002, the Corner Store “is not problematic at all,” says Oldenburg. The neighborhood concerns about the Fridge, the commissioner says, should not suggest any sort of avant-garde allergy, but are rather “about management.”

Goldstein, also a DJ and graphic designer who lives in the Fridge space, says he has a professional and personal investment in maintaining good relations with his neighbors. He plans to meet this week with the Capitol Hill Business Improvement District and with the Barracks Row residents group to work out any lingering concerns. As for whether Oldenburg and other ANC 6B commissioners will receive noise complaints about the Fridge in the future? “It’s not going to happen,” Goldstein says.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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 treat, featuring a band that will probably never play in the United States, much less the D.C. area, ever again: Univers Zero from Belgium.

If the name isn't ringing any bells, you're not alone. As we've said in previous coverage of this band, Univers Zero toils in a nearly invisible netherworld between the spheres of popular and "serious" music. Despite its obscurity, Univers Zero is among the key figures behind a uniquely Francophone style of chamber rock music and, much like Magma, who headlined Sonic Circuits' first weekend, the group essentially created its own genre. Univers Zero's style defies glib description, if only because any such attempt makes it sound like the worst kind of cheesy prog-rock imaginable. A reasonable point of comparison might be with the so-called "post-rock" bands that tend more toward the abstract, like a more complex, ensemble-oriented version of Rachel's.

Univers Zero in 1979

This month, Cuneiform Records issued an expanded, remixed and remastered version of the band's sophomore album from 1979, Heresie. Widely known as Univers Zero's darkest album, Heresie is a record that prog nerds like to blast from their stereos on Halloween just to freak out unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. That it gained this kind of reputation while relying almost entirely on acoustic instrumentation (harmonium, oboe, bassoon, violin, and viola figuring most prominently) is particularly impressive, although it's likely that this stems solely from the first seven minutes of the opening 25-minute beast "La Faulx." The track starts as formless noise, which slowly coalesces into a dark wall of sound punctuated by a series of vocal roars reminiscent of death-metal howls years before that style of vocal came into fashion.

After that, the band's strategy changes abruptly from horror soundtrack music to intricate chamber music. What keeps it firmly in rock territory is the drumming of Daniel Denis—a true artist behind the kit whose doesn't keep time so much as he drives the music onward and upward, his insistent rolls somehow striking a balance between classical percussion and rock 'n' roll propulsiveness. Over the course of three long tracks ("Jack the Ripper" and "Vous Le Suarez en Temps Voulu" clock in at 13 minutes apiece), the ensemble works its way through chamber music that is sometimes melodic, sometimes noisy, usually dark, and always compelling.

This reissue features gorgeous, clear sound with remarkable definition of the instruments, a new sound that is particularly revealing when it comes to Denis' drumming. It also contains a 12-minute bonus track, "Chaos Hermetique," penned by guitarist and original group member Roger Trigaux (who soon after Heresie's release left the band to found the equally fantastic, more overtly rock-oriented chamber ensemble Present). This track is a fascinating archaeological find, and actually sounds more like proto-Present than a true Univers Zero track, featuring much more straightforward rhythms and a largely linear compositional form. In fact, hardcore Present fans will likely recognize a few passages here and there that have appeared in Present compositions recorded as recently as 1999. Even without the excellent new remix and remaster, this reissue would be worth a look just for this bonus track.

But Heresie came out over 30 years ago. The version of Univers Zero that plays tomorrow at La Maison Française will look and sound quite different; modern-day UZ makes liberal use of electronics and electric instruments, in sharp contrast to the early band's reliance on acoustic instrumentation. Like many bands of the era, Univers Zero went on extended hiatus starting in the late '80s, before reforming in the late '90s with a more rock-oriented sound. The instrumentation became more electric, and more importantly, compositions became more concise, even with some traditional song forms popping up here and there. That said, Univers Zero's music has remained complex and challenging and Daniel Denis' drumming is as fascinating as ever.

What's more, in a musical landscape where there's nothing new under the sun, Univers Zero and the few bands that have explored similar territory (present and other chamber-rock groups like Art Zoyd, Shub Niggurath, Aranis and so on) are pioneers in developing an intelligent hybrid of Western contemporary classical music and modern rock. These bands all seem to be concentrated in France and Belgium for some reason, and it's a rare treat to have one of them in North America.

Photos of Univers Zero courtesy Cuneiform Records

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 opinion of his troubled tenure helming the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2003 to 2008 hasn't changed:

After a few years, the orchestra management polled the Philadelphia players and let Eschenbach know that the majority weren't happy with his leadership. Eschenbach's own view is that the management was influenced by a few malcontents and negative reviews from one of the Philadelphia Inquirer's classical music critics. "This was a mismanagement," he says. "And now everybody knows." Whatever happened, it led to Eschenbach's second contract not being renewed.

I had trouble getting through Ann Hornaday's profile of Carey Mulligan, but wanted to aggregate it here as an excuse to 1) point you to Tricia Olszewski's review of the Mulligan-starring Never Let Me Go; and 2) mention that I am really, really disappointed with the new Belle & Sebastian record (more on this later, I'm sure) but that the song "Write About Love," which features some guest vocals from Mulligan, is really lovely. Even though I don't quite buy it when she sings about hating her job.

MOVING ON: Lots of stuff to do this weekend. Sonic Circuits wraps up! Check back here later for more Sonic Circuits previews. FreeFest! I will be there with a small army of WCP people. More on this later! The National Book Festival! Here's TBD's take; look for ours (you guessed it) later today.

Speaking of Sonic Circuits, the Sockets Records blog has some cool video from last night's show with US Girls, Black w/ Bear, and Tone Ghosting. Here's US Girls:

The Going Out Gurus report that the upcoming Night of Free Theater won't include any D.C. performances. Boo-urns.

You should probably read the shit-ton of great posts we had on Arts Desk yesterday, and note this: arts seems to be infecting the rest of the WCP site. TO WIT: Yesterday Moe Tkacik brilliantly skewered the rightish intellectualish types crying foul (not always honestly!) about Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. And earlier in the week, Lydia DePillis recommended you see The Other City, a film that chronicles every corner of D.C. where the story of AIDs plays out.

Last night I saw Caribou at the Black Cat, and the group made tripped-out, shimmery dance music to a projected background that basically looked like SpinArt. The nerd-heavy audience got down.

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 off the final weekend of this year's remarkable incarnation of Sonic Circuits.

The average vaguely curious music listener has probably heard of Merzbow, but who's this Pinhas guy?

He's has been active for over 30 years; fans of obscure prog-rock know him as the leader of Heldon, an electronic rock band whose prolific 1970s output started in Fripp/Eno territory and ended up somewhere much closer to King Crimson. Even before Heldon's eventual demise (their final album, Stand By, was released in 1979), Pinhas embarked on an equally fruitful solo career, one that has only picked up in recent years. In 2008, Pinhas and Merzbow released their first collaborative album, the remarkable Keio Line, which we gave very high marks. Now comes the sophomore effort from this duo, Metal/Crystal, out this month on Silver Spring's Cuneiform Records.

Oddly, the record is credited solely to Pinhas, although it contains contributions by Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, and a host of musicians formerly from Heldon and Magma, including bassist Didier Batard and drummer Antoine Paganotti. The presence of a rhythm section on Metal/Crystal immediately lends this album a very different feel from its predecessor. Much of the first disc of this two-disc set feels more like late-period Heldon than Keio Line; accessible bass lines and clear rhythms give the three long tracks on disc 1 a fairly straightforward electronic rock sound. For those hoping for more of the same subtle yet nuanced sonic wallpaper of Keio Line, this might be disappointing; however, those folks might get more mileage out of disc 2, in which 40 minutes pass before there is any sign of a rhythm section.

In fact, "Hysteria (Palladium)," the 28-minute first track of the second disc and perhaps my favorite on the whole album, swings all the way to the inaccessible side of the spectrum, featuring lengthy high-pitched squalls with Merzbow's trademark throbbing noise percolating underneath. It's a far cry from the thumping rhythm of parts of the first disc, but it's a welcome change of pace and a sign that even with literally hundreds of records under their collective belts, Pinhas and Merzbow still have interesting things to say.

It should definitely be worth the time and money to listen to them speak in their particular languages of noise tomorrow night at 8 p.m. With the help of a firmly placed set of earplugs, of course.

Photo of Richard Pinhas courtesy Cuneiform Records

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 and Anthony, a guitar and cello duo, followed, with a long set of minimalistic compositions. They were joined by pianist and electronic musician Arturas Bumsteinas, who tickled their songs with piano arpeggiations and sound glitches.

But the crowd reserved most of its anticipation for Christian Fennesz, who rarely performs in this country. The Austrian Fennesz is known for creating organic soundscapes with his electric guitar, pedals, and a laptop. Before his set, Fennesz spoke with Washington City Paper.

Washington City Paper: How did you decide to perform live with laptop and a guitar simultaneously?

Fennesz: Well, I got frustrated with the guitar, and the symbol of it. There was just, you know, so much noodling going on with it. When I started using software programs, I discovered a complete, new universe of making music. There's this certain sound that I want to make, and by using a laptop and a guitar, I can do that, with that combination of analog—the guitar—and digital—the computer. Then I have this whole network of pedals, guitar, and computer. It just becomes one big instrument.

WCP: What main software program do you use?

Fennesz: Maxim SP Max/MSP. With it, and my pedals, I can build effects and change things around. It's really like one, big studio in a box.

WCP: How do you seek out software and programs then? And with technology constantly changing and improving, do you upgrade frequently?

Fennesz: Well, I'm not a programmer. I'd rather spend my time making music, and using the programs, so I have programmers find and make programs for me. I do upgrade, a lot, because I like having state-of-the-art technology. The software gets more complex, and loses its compatibility with older computers. There'll be issues with RAM, and memory…so yes, I upgrade.

WCP: While you're creating new music, do you ever return to your older computer systems and software?

Fennesz: Yes, I do, because I'm familiar with how they work. And sometimes I like the limitation that older systems have. Looking back at when I started off, I think now that limitation can be a good thing. I mean, when you have everything you need, sometimes it's too much. It's interesting what limitation can do.

WCP: And while speaking about returning to things, do you ever listen back on older recordings?

Fennesz: No, I really can't listen to my old stuff. Except Endless Summer. To me, that album felt like pop music that had its own life. Like it was made by someone else. It's nice pop. Influences from Brian Wilson.

WCP: There are a lot of musicians that take influence from Brian Wilson, and The Beach Boys. Animal Collective, especially Panda Bear, have stated that before.

Fennesz: Yes, it's definitely true, The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson are influential. But it's good to know that they've been influential for a while, and that bands have been making music from that influence.

WCP: The title itself too, takes influence from a movie, right?

Fennesz: Yes, Endless Summer is a surfing movie. Wonderful documentation about surfing, people traveling just to look for that perfect wave.

WCP: So how did surf culture find a way into your album title?

Fennesz: Well, I was just really into surfing for a while, surfing in Bali, just for fun.

WCP: Water seems to be a recurrent theme in your music, mostly in your titles and album art, and parallel, receding lines.

Fennesz: The album art, that's a special part of Touch Label. I just let the art director take control there, since he's got a certain aesthetic, but we definitely talk about things first. Whereas water, it's always had an influence on me. I grew up by a lake, and loved the sounds of water and wind. Just being able to hear the elements at an early age like that was great.

WCP: So are you trying to recreate those sounds in your music?

Fennesz: I think I'm just more so influenced by those sounds.

Photo by Jonathan L. Fischer's BlackBerry. Video by Andrew Noz.

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 improv fans that the festival has traditionally drawn can look forward to two of the most notable, critically adored names in those spheres: Fennesz and Merzbow. And so it’s a marquee year for the area’s umbrella of experimental music, whose homegrown acts can now regularly be seen at venues like Bossa in Adams Morgan, Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, and Orion Sound Studios in Baltimore.

But more than 30 years ago, D.C. also housed a constellation of progressive and experimental acts—a small scene that emerged but never quite flourished in the 1970s.

And then, says Steve Feigenbaum of the well-known, Silver Spring-based experimental label Cuneiform Records, D.C. punk rock killed it.

So it might be appropriate that The Muffins—an obscure, D.C.-based prog group that’s made music in the area since the mid-’70s—is headlining the first event of Sonic Circuits this Saturday. It’s a well-deserved spot. Despite its relatively under-the-radar status, The Muffins have made six challenging full-length albums; performed at numerous experimental music festivals, including at the prestigious Rock in Opposition festival in France; and collaborated with high-profile names like experimental guitarist Fred Frith.

While jazz-rock is the easiest label to apply to The Muffins’ music, no one descriptor suffices. Heavily influenced by the British “Canterbury” scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s (think early Soft Machine, Henry Cow, and more obscure practitioners like Hatfield and the North and National Health), The Muffins take this aesthetic and throw in collective improvisation, noise, and a touch of psychedelia. It’s a sound that at first impression can seem aimless and unfocused but, if you have the patience, eventually rewards.

This kind of demanding music is well in character with the progressive rock scene of the 1970s, and although D.C. was hardly a hotbed of prog, The Muffins weren’t alone. Grits (another jazz-rock band with a pair of out-of-print releases on Cuneiform) were an influence, and Muffins drummer Paul Sears lists a host of other D.C.-area groups of varying obscurity that formed at the time a loose local scene: Happy the Man, Crank, Love Cry Want, Sageworth, and Drums.

While the scene was small, it was active: Feigenbaum, 52, says he saw a number of “decent to pretty good” progressive rock bands at bars and outdoor shows. “Every bar used to have live bands back in the ’70s. That was a standard currency of the time… [but] The Muffins didn’t go over well in bars, because their music wasn’t good drinking music,” he says. “So for bands like The Muffins or Happy the Man or whoever, it was generally DIY spaces or ‘time to rent the Washington Ethical Society and do another show.’”

“Gigs were hard to come by,” says Sears, 57. “We did some university gigs, gigs in churches, coffeehouses, and a few nightclubs like the Psyche Delly in Bethesda, and Childe Harold in Dupont Circle.”

The Muffins’ DIY spirit didn’t end with gigs. The band—which also includes Tom Scott, Dave Newhouse, and Billy Swann, multi-instrumentalists all—created a label, Random Radar Records, which in the last few years of the 1970s released The Muffins’ first two official full-lengths, Manna/Mirage and <185>, and a handful of other recordings, including a U.S. pressing of the debut album by Art Bears, one of the earliest Henry Cow spinoff groups. Perhaps most importantly, Random Radar was a collaborative effort between The Muffins, Feigenbaum (who actually contributed some guitar parts to Manna/Mirage), and others. Feigenbaum helped keep the band’s music in print even after its initial demise.

That demise came in 1981, as The Muffins suffered the same fate as countless prog bands: changing musical trends and transient young members.

Feigenbaum blames punk. “It killed [the local progressive scene] dead,” he says. “You have to remember what punk did. For good or bad, punk was the great cleansing fire. It changed everything that came after. It’s very open now, but at the time, lines were drawn in the sand: Anything that existed before it was ‘bad.’ Anything that smelled of what came before was ‘bad.’”

In a punk-rock town like D.C., that seismic shift was pronounced, Feigenbaum says: “The audiences were getting smaller, the chance to be reviewed was getting smaller, and this for a band that had certainly paid some dues and had done some higher-level projects. What we were all doing was always marginalized, but by 1980 or ’81, it was marginalized and also mocked.”

Although Sears found the then-new D.C. punk scene “severely insular,” his judgment is a bit less harsh. “I thought we had more in common with some of them, and today I regret that we, or specifically I, did not try to initiate some collaboration,” he says. “We knew some of them. Tom Lyle from Government Issue was a friend of ours before he was in that band. He even set up at least two shows for The Muffins at American University that I can recall…When Fugazi hit the scene I thought I recognized a name—Canty. I knew Brendan Canty’s family back in the ’60s when he was, I’ll say, quite young!”

Regardless of the causes—and putting aside whatever a Muffins/Fugazi collaboration would’ve sounded like—after The Muffins’ split in 1981, Random Radar dissolved and Feigenbaum went on to found Cuneiform Records, which continued releasing challenging music in what Feigenbaum calls the “dark ages” of the 1980s. The Muffins found a posthumous home on Cuneiform, which reissued Manna/Mirage and <185> and has printed each of the band’s subsequent full-length recordings. This includes recent reunion albums Bandwidth (2002) and Double Negative (2004), recorded after the band reformed in the late 1990s for a gig at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in Adams Morgan. That show happened after the band realized it still had an audience: Web reviews and retrospectives on The Muffins—an active and highly explorative Internet prog community developed in the 1990s—were almost universally positive.

Ironically Feigenbaum, perhaps the band’s biggest supporter (“They are pretty much single-handedly responsible for why I do what I do,” he says), was opposed to the reunion. “I’m a little ashamed to admit that I thought it was a bad idea, that they couldn’t do it again, that it just wouldn’t work,” he says. “They proved me quite wrong. And I’m glad. I think their work since their reformation is quite splendid and they still sound like themselves without repeating themselves.”

Since the release of their last Cuneiform full-length in 2004, The Muffins have played sporadic shows and festivals, made a short recording with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, and are working on a new album, Palindrome. Of course, the band’s music is as unfashionable as ever, and its gigs remain few and far between, but now there’s now a thriving, open D.C. experimental music scene that exists beyond Sonic Circuits’ week of shows. In other words: The Muffins, cool or not, have young, like-minded peers.

That just leaves one problem: Sears is moving to Arizona immediately after Sonic Circuits, which means The Muffins’ D.C. shows will become even more rare. But that might be OK for a group that found a far-flung audience but few fans in its hometown. Says Sears: “We will work remotely and still play festivals.”

Photo courtesy Cuneiform Records