On Sunday, Sonic Circuits finished up another year of challenging perceptions on what music is, exactly. more ›

Layne Garrett has been experimenting with sound his entire life, but today he invites the public to join him for the SIlver Spring Sound Machine, the audience participation portion of Sonic Circuits. more ›

Close your eyes if you want the dual guitar drone of San Francisco's Barn Owl to transport you to a dark and beautiful place. We talked to them in advance of Sunday's Sonic Circuits' show. more ›

The Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music kicked off last night at AFI with one of many collaborative performances. Check out our comprehensive guide to the festival to help sift through the racket. more ›

The Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music came to its conclusion on Saturday, the same night that many other District residents attended some free event out in Columbia. While one of the highlights of the festival is the caliber of the talent that comes in from overseas (such as Magma, Merzbow, Fennesz and Richard Pinhas), a large chunk of the festival lineup hails from the D.C. metro area and Sonic Circuits regularly showcases these artists throughout the year. The third District of Noise compilation almost succeeds in being as sonically wide-reaching as the festival lineup, while also giving D.C. residents a taste of the very talented local experimental music community. more ›

French guitarist Richard Pinhas is no stranger to groundbreaking musicianship. In the 1970s, he played guitar for the influential band Heldon before breaking away from the traditional format. The result has been thirty years of collaborations and solo efforts that push the envelope of what a guitar album can sound like. His most recent release, Metal/Crystal contains dizzying, swirling guitar melodies, but also hissing, hypnotic drone that threatens to overwhelm the listener with its weight. It's alternately very dark and very freeing; the result of two years of tragedy for Pinhas. more ›

Last night marked the sixth night of Sonic Circuits, and culminated in the release party for the double-sided album District of Noise Vol. 3 - 100 Lock Grooves on Sonic Circuits curator Jeff Surak's Zeromoon label. BLK W/BEAR, Tone Ghosting, Sean Peoples and Cole Goins -- all featured on the record -- played alongside Megan Remy of Philadelphia's U.S. Girls. Peoples and Goins alternated with ambient DJ sets in between performances, keeping those in attendance filtering in and out of Silver Spring print studio Pyramid Atlantic's upstairs gallery in an effort to escape the stifling heat building up on the second floor. more ›

Wednesday evening, Italian-born veteran composer and multimedia artist Andrea Centazzo came to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage as part of this year’s Sonic Circuits Festival Experimental Music. With an artistic career spanning the last four decades, Centazzo has recorded over 150 albums and DVDs, written three operas, eight books, and created three one-man multimedia shows, from which he drew most of his material for last night’s performance. Centazzo's previous creative endeavors with big band jazz, opera and minimalist composition all come into play with his multimedia performances, merging syncopated jazz rhythms with East Asian drumming and European religious choral music. more ›

Sonic Circuits, D.C.'s annual experimental music festival, is in full swing this week, and tonight marks the second night of performances at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and the Pyramid Atlantic gallery in Silver Spring. Tonight's "Night of 100 Lock Grooves -District of Noise Vol. 3 Release Party" at Pyramid Atlantic features Philadelphia-based one-woman-band U.S. Girls and D.C.-based DJs BLK w/BEAR, Sean Peoples, Tone Ghosting and Cole Goins. more ›

This weekend, Sonic Circuits started their annual festival of experimental music with a bang. And a hiss. Plus a bunch of other sounds that might sound out of place anywhere else. more ›

Most bands can't even stick around for ten years, much less niche music festivals. Yet, the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music is back for its tenth year and still drawing renowned acts from places like Italy, Japan and Austria as well as from right here in D.C. "Experimental music" is such a loose, wide-reaching term that can encompass anything from jazz improv to hissing screeching electronica and often anything in between. There may be audience participation, there may be unlikely musical instruments and toys and there will almost certainly be a need for earplugs for at least one act per night. more ›

No, we don't relegate all of our noise music coverage to September. The folks at Sonic Circuits sponsor shows year-round, and Saturday's Off the Grid showcase proved that experimental bills need not be an exercise in sifting through diamonds in the rough. All six acts on Saturday were gems. more ›

Six nights of noise came to an end at the Black Cat on Sunday night, with a fistful of performances that ranged from highly anticipated to incredibly obscure, at volume levels from a low buzz to a constant stream of noise. more ›

Los Angeles quartet HEALTH is quite possibly one of the noisiest bands to have emerged from the underground and garnered some success. Their live shows could hardly be called controlled chaos, because the control is barely noticeable amid the leaping guitarists, primal shrieks and multiple percussionists. Their performance energy is more engaging than repulsive, and they have obvious talent, but there aren't exactly any "songs" easily picked out in a HEALTH set. more ›

We're two days into the Sonic Circuits Festival and it's already been an interesting experience. We've seen bicycle pumps used as instruments (Twilight Memories of the Three Suns), a classically trained vocalist snort like a Beluga Whale (Thomas Buckner) and one of our anticipated picks (Odal) a no show due to missing equipment. We've also seen virtuosos make good on their acclaim (Elliot Sharp, 21st Century Ensemble) and discovered some local artists that we were embarrassed to have been missing all this time (Blue Sausage Infant). There's still four days more of hisses, squeals and mind-bending entertainment. Our preview and picks for the coming weekend can be found after the jump. more ›

What happens when you take four musicians who are excellent, even extraordinary on their own and put them together in a room and just tell them to play? Tonight, you'll get to find out with the 21st Century Ensemble. Janel Leppin (cello) and Anthony Pirog (guitar) have crafted beautiful pieces on their own but when combined with the Lost Civilizations duo of Mike Sebastian (reeds) and T.A. Zook (basscello, miscellaneous instruments) they create a far more complex array of textures and sounds. And it's all improvised. The way the quartet played off each other at Pyramid Atlantic on Saturday night was sometimes loud and challenging and sometimes melodic and smooth, but never boring. We caught up with them after the Pyramid Atlantic show (celebrating the District of Noise, Volume 2 release). Catch them for yourself tonight on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage at 6 p.m. for free. more ›

No, nothing's wrong with your hearing, so don't mind the static. It's just time for Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, which is back for its ninth year and starts tonight at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland. The festival will hit a diverse group of venues, from the Kennedy Center to tiny Pyramid Atlantic hidden in downtown Silver Spring. The group of performers this year is just as diverse, ranging from avant-garde icons and highly lauded musicians to artists that eschew musical instruments entirely to create their sound. more ›