September 22-27, 2009 - Washington, DC

The Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music was initiated by the American Composers Forum (ACF) to provide DC's music and art communities with the opportunity to sample experimental and avant-garde electronic music, with an emphasis on improvisation and artistic use of new technologies.

Now heading into its ninth year, the Washington DC chapter of the ACF has expanded the scope of the festival to include electro-acoustic compositions, free jazz, noise rock, electronic drone and experimental folk, as well as live video and film programs, presented year round.

Sonic Circuits seeks to foster the spirit of collaboration through the diversity of participating artists, and its varied programming appeals to arts enthusiasts of all types.

Archive for August, 2009

Sonic Circuits Presents Jeff Carey+Audrey Chen+Raed Yassin+Morten J. Olsen Quartet & SAFE Thursday Sept 3 @ Pyramid Atlantic

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

Sept 3

Thursday September 3
Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP
$7
PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org
INFO: dc-soniccircuits.org
Jeff Carey+Audrey Chen+Raed Yassin+Morten J. Olsen Quartet

American composer JEFF CAREY’S music is a blend of fixed-media composition and electro-instrumentalism — the music of the visceral, ecstatic, and electric moment. His inventions of fluid sound are in an ever changing state: a mobile moves in the wind, changes shape, and is in constant renewal. Listeners are invited to explore an abstract sonic universe and engage in a world inspired by fictional cosmology, code breaking, and mathematical conundrums.
http://jeffcarey.foundation-one.org/

AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician and performance artist born outside of Chicago in 1976. Using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and visual/sculptural concepts.
http://www.myspace.com/audreychen

RAED YASSIN: Born in Beirut 1979, a video, sound and visual artist, also works as a musician: (double bass, tapes and electronics), and a part-time curator. Graduated from the theatre department in the Lebanese university in Beirut. He works with image, music, text and concept. His work based on themes related to the media, the city, the history of contemporary art, Arabic cinema, pornography, pop culture, disasters, and archives. His work was shown across Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and Japan. Currently he lives and works in Amsterdam.
http://www.myspace.com/raedyassin

MORTEN J. OLSEN is active in the impro./contemporary music scene in Amsterdam. He’s part of the new movement called critical newism, the N collective, and plays with Thomas Dybdal, and in MoHa! with Anders Hana.
http://www.myspace.com/themoha

After a long hiatus Tyler Higgins and Dave Vosh return with their duo SAFE . Using electronics, acoustic instruments, and modular synthesizer, they build slowly evolving complex layers of sound.
http://www.zeromoon.com/?p=154

Sonic Circuits: Off the Grid - A Clamorous Exhibition of Acoustic and Battery Operated Brouhaha!

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Off the Grid

SONIC CIRCUITS: OFF THE GRID
A Clamorous Exhibition of Acoustic and Battery Operated Brouhaha!

Featuring performances by:

Neil Feather
Mike Tamburo
Pilesar + special guests
Avocado Happy Hour
Layne Garrett
Ize B. Pickin

Saturday, August 29th

Doors at 6:30, Music at 7:00 SHARP
$8 gets you in the door!

All Ages Show

Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center
8320 Georgia Ave
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Off the Grid is the first of hopefully many Sonic Circuits related events that will showcase various local talents creating unusual and exciting music with only acoustic and battery operated instruments. Participants aren’t allowed to use any equipment that requires being plugged into a wall socket but creativity and ingenuity are encouraged.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Sound Mechanic Neil Feather has been creating radical and unusual musical instruments for thirty years, and is increasingly known outside of Baltimore as one of the most original musical thinkers of his day. His instruments each embody uniquely clever acoustic and engineering principles, and are visually arresting. The music he plays on the instruments is equally original, embodying new principles and resulting in a nearly alien idiom of music. A founding member of THUS and THE OFFICIAL PROJECT, as well as the leader of AEROTRAIN, he has a long history of collaborative projects and solo concerts.

Neil will be debuting a new instrument called the Futura Ultra-Retro, which is a mechanical synthesizer that is powered by 19th century science. It is comprised of bicycle parts, batteries and highly modified speakers. The Futura will be played by Neil Feather and Bob Wagner and they advise you to sit close because the sound is very localized and shaped.

http://www.neilfeather.org

Mike Tamburo is a 21st century Renaissance man who has forged his way into the consciousness of the American underground music community. For the past 13 years, Tamburo has been relentlessly releasing records (31 releases and counting) under different monikers and projects including Meisha, Arco Flute Foundation & various imprints under his own name. He has performed over 500 shows all over the United States, traveling to every nook and cranny, searching for some kind of an understanding of what America truly is.

Tamburo is a man who continues to reinvent himself, recently finding his new musical passion in the hammered dulcimer; building upon his own unique compositional styling, he has developed a voice for the instrument that is very much his own. He is greatly inspired by American folk and minimalist music traditions as well as Indian classical music, but often expands outward to include influences from avant-garde to noise to modern compositional music. A Tamburo performance is always a very transportive experience.

http://www.myspace.com/tamburo

Pilesar (pronounced pie-LEE-zur) is a percussionist and songwriter who specializes in creating quirky soundscapes and rhythmically dense improvisations. Instrumentation includes drums, voice, toys, electronics, broken effects pedals, borrowed instruments, thrift store finds, tapes and various environmental factors.
As both a soloist and collaborator, Pilesar has released dozens of fiercely independent recordings on his DIY label, Chameleon Dish Archives. For fans of Black Dice, Boredoms, Mothers of Invention, Renaldo and the Loaf, Ruins, Tom Waits and Ween.

http://pilesarmusic.com

Avocado Happy Hour is a minimalist pop duo from Baltimore. Their music incorporates Rhodes piano, vibraphone, vintage keyboards, live percussion and loops.

http://www.myspace.com/avocadohappyhour

Layne Garrett works with found objects, found sounds and guitars, among other instruments. Recorded output ranges from songs drenched in sound collage to a new CD of improvisations on guitar and prepared guitar.

Recent activities include organizing a large-scale tape-loop intervention in Rock Creek Park and completing several construction projects, including a version of Glenn Branca’s harmonics guitar, a set of hanging car-metal gongs in the shape of a map of the USA, and a large freestanding playable structure about which it has been said: “Man, I would really love to play that big baby for 12 hours straight. It is obviously a meditation key.”

http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise

Mike Fuel is a self taught musician who is influenced heavily by Bach, Chopin, Monteverdi, Mozart, Led Zeppelin, The Cure, Medeski, Martin and Wood, and Kelly Joe Phelps. As the Grandson of composer and organist Carol Marvin Fewell, Mike approaches music as a vehicle to deep meditation.

http://www.myspace.com/izebpickin

Sponsors of Sonic Circuits