My girlfriend actually told me about this after hearing it air last night, but it took me a while to get around to listening: a five-minute segment broadcast nationally on NPR’s All Things Considered about DC’s underground music scene, focusing on Sonic Circuits and the monthly Electric Possible series.

This comes right on the heels of an excellent feature story in the nationally distributed improvised music magazine Signal to Noise, which explored the same DC experimental music scene. (That article is actually mentioned in the NPR story linked to above.)

Sean Peoples, founder/czar of the SocketsCDR label, dropped us an email to answer questions and to dish about Little Women, Sonic Circuits, and “hip-hop from the future.”

This past year was busy. I can’t think of much by way of disappointments, but the following stood out and really made 2008 for me:

• Dmerit is a DJ/production duo who are killing it right now. I just caught a DJ set of theirs and it included a bunch of their own remixes. I expect even more from these guys in 2009.
• All Our Noise blog – Some friends of mine started this blog, which highlights Washington, D.C.’s cultural rebirth. AON Sessions films local artists performing live and provides a good alternative (not to mention local flavor) to YouTube’s video distractions. Read the rest of this entry »

The Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music may have officially closed the curtain in October, but the noise is far from over. On Nov. 23, the Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center in Silver Spring played host to another event curated by the Sonic Circuits team with a CD/CD-R/DVD/cassette release party for local label zeromoon, featuring live video and sound manipulations by Dead Violets and Video Love.

Dead Violets is a collaboration between zeromoon head-honcho and Sonic Circuits curator Jeff Surak, Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words‘ Thomas Ekelund, and local vocalist (and newest member) Bethany Moore, birthing a black hole of lyrical mysticism and growling electronics. Their new 3-inch, YZMRHS, was released in early November—now available via the zeromoon Web site. Sunday’s performance revolved around Surak’s dense, digital choruses crawling under Moore’s incantations. The two worked together well, with Moore’s lines often getting played back into the mix and toppling over themselves while the surrounding static built to a climax. Check the video below for a snippet of the performance:

The highlight of the evening, however, came with Video Love’s intoxicating amalgamation of French synth-pop and live video samples, which mixed and solidified masterfully. Local filmmaker James June Schneider worked the video loops and sound samples — projected on two of the surrounding walls — while his wife, Elise Pierre, sang atop buoyant keyboard beats. The interplay between the two was remarkable; it took me two songs into the performance before I realized that half of the sound samples were being taken from the projected footage, looped beneath Pierre’s staccato French. Images of twitching cobwebs faded into cuts of a young girl pouncing on the camera with a giant net; a clip of a man’s head frantically submerged beneath the sea gave way to a barrage of water-filled glasses similar liquid-based samples. Such deft integration of video, electronics, and pop sentiments was a textbook example of how multimedia experimentation can be successfully wrangled and exploited.

Schenider’s newest film, 1,2,3 Whiteout (The End of the Light Age), was also released via zeromoon in early November, and features a collage of original footage, found clips, and a tailor-made soundtrack emphasisng an exitential tug-of-war between light, dark, and sound. You can find more info on the zeromoon Web site, or view the trailer below:

According to Surak, Sonic Circuits will continue to host a variety of interesting spectacles at Pyramid Atlantic, as well as other venues around the District. Last Sunday featured peformances by Dan Conrad (Baltimore), Janel+Anthony+Violet (DC), and Myo (Annapolis).

If there was ever any doubt that D.C.’s experimental underground was alive and kicking, it’s been erased this week. Not only are we in the middle of the eighth annual Sonic Circuits Festival (ongoing through Sunday at the Velvet Lounge and the National Museum of Women in the Arts), but area artists also just unveiled District of Noise, a brand-new compilation of local music deviants released in conjunction with the week-long event. Sunday served as both the festival’s opening night and the record’s release party, hosting performances by many of the acts featured on the compilation’s 17 tracks. The show itself was a revolving door of musicians and on-the-spot collaborations, championing the vibrancy of the DMV experimental scene while exhibiting its incestuous network.

Compiled by festival curator and Zeromoon label-head Jeff Surak, District of Noise reveals a clique of artists steeped in audiophile philosophies and improvisation, emphasizing sheer sound and ambiance rather than traditional song structure or accessibility. It’s the first compilation birthed from the Sonic Circuits run, assembled from some of the area’s more active artists, though not completely all-encompassing of the numerous projects around. According to Surak, District of Noise “acts as a vehicle to promote local artists, in hopes that people will support them the rest of the year when they play out.”

The record eases in with BLK w/BEAR’s deft loop deconstruction, piling processed cello and bass atop prepared vinyl records. Such incorporation of rhythm or familiarity—however faint or obtuse—outlines the most successful approach to making difficult music more palatable for the average listener, serving as a launchpad for the surrounding overload. Both Blue Sausage Infant and Cash Slave Clique (MP3 below) invoke the technique as well; BSI drowns heavy metal riffage with synthesizer oscillations while CSC pummels a drum machine beat with seizure-inducing electronics. An enticing introduction, indeed.

Echolalia’s “Falling Out” ushers in the industrial cloud that hangs throughout the middle third of the record, mixing menacing drones with minimal flourishes. Individually, the tracks maintain their own subtle flair, but on the surface, the frigid, electronic haze and mechanistic growls melt together without much protest. Seamless or samey, it’s your call. But a close listen will reveal rewarding compositions, most notably Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind’s eerie gurgles, Janel & Anthony’s cello/guitar manipulations (mp3 below), and Northern Machine’s obliterated organ.

Tone Ghosting injects a ripple into the album’s flow with “Amaxana:Visitation,” a frenzy of clipped vocals relentlessly mutated atop flickers of drum machine and static. The meticulous sonic fetishism that the compilation emphasizes is perhaps most beautifully represented by Cory O’Brien and his Myo moniker: His contribution builds through hushed crackle that colors the background hum, escalating in pitch as the track progresses. Surak’s own electroacoustic outlet Violet concludes the record with a disorienting piece of digital skitter; a shortwave malfunction glowering in the doldrums.

District of Noise provides a welcome snapshot of Washington’s most bizarre, marrying the work of industrial/experimental pioneers like Maurizio Bianchi and Stockhausen with the new-school noise antics of NYC stable No Fun Productions. It may not have quite the subterranean notoriety of the latter’s annual No Fun Fest, but Sonic Circuits still provides an impressive array of art and innovation, putting a uniquely D.C. spin on the concept of experimental music.

Four full nights of music remain in the Festival, with several artists featured on the compilation still scheduled to play, including Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind, Myo, Janel & Anthony, Northern Machine, and RDK. You can find a full schedule up at the Sonic Circuits site.

DOWNLOAD:

Cash Slave Clique, “Sonicervex”

Janel & Anthony, “Improvisation 61″