What’s the difference between postmodern brilliance and utter crap? At the ongoing Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, Jeff Surak has been the person to make that call. Surak, who became director of Sonic Circuits in 2006, has been performing in various experimental music projects since the 19080’s, both in the U.S. and in Russia.
His current project, Violet, produces sounds out of cassette tapes, various pieces of electronic equipment and other found items. As Violet, Surak actually performed in the first Sonic Circuits Festival in 2001, then again in 2005, and has actually collaborated with several of the artists on this year’s bill. Surak also runs a label called Zeromoon, which has recorded work by dozens of experimental acts. So if anyone is qualified to make such a judgment call, it would be him. We sat down with Surak after the release party for District of Noise, Vol. 2 to talk about the particulars of this year’s festival, which continues tonight at 7 p.m. at Pyramid Atlantic.
Mayor Fenty endorsed Sonic Circuits this year. Had he done that in the past?
Jeff: No, no. First time. I thought of it last year that, “we’re going to do a program guide and we’re going to have a letter from the mayor inside.” It took some time, but, we got it.
Reading the letter and the description of the types of music that Sonic Circuits has grown to include, my first thought was, “You haven’t always included these types of music.”
Jeff: Well in the beginning, it was more geared toward electronic music and things like that, but over the past couple of years it’s grown and expanded in terms of different genres or different approaches to experimental music. So, it’s not all electronic. Like, we had Nine Strings and they’re pretty much all acoustic, but sometimes they employ electrical items as well. It’s really a wide scope of approaches and sounds.
When the lineup for this year was first announced, initial press indicated that the festival would only last for three days this year. But it’s clearly expanded.
Jeff: Yeah, what happens every year in terms of scheduling and venues when they’re available and then trying to coordinate artists who are on tour, when they can travel so sometimes it’s like, OK, we really want to have this person come but they can only make it this night, and this venue’s only available on a certain night, so it’s a lot of gymnastics to juggle everything and sometimes the festival gets bigger.
