Results tagged “soniccircuits”

              

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.