I was just lamenting to a good friend that the DC Music scene offers few options for viewing the kinds of artists we regularly listen to and whom we hear are performing elsewhere at places like Mutek or the Decibel festival. In fact, except for very occasional visits by David Sylvian (every 15 years or so), Robin Guthrie (about 5 years ago), or a recent stop by some members of Hammock and Stars of the Lid back in May, pretty much what you get around here are Pop, Country, cover bands, and “flavor-of-the-season-alternative-but-actually-pretty-mainstream-and-owned-by-the-labels” acts.
Where are Loscil, Sakamoto, SND, Murcof, Richter, BOC, AES Dana, Brook, Kiln, Noto, Budd, Isan, Eno…? Well, they aren’t around here. (Hell, most of them don’t come to the States now that I think about it…or if they do it is to New York, San Francisco, maybe LA or Seattle.)
Anyway, I just came across some info today about a “Festival of Experimental Music” right here in DC!
- District of Noise
The emphasis seems to be on Noise and Avant Noise Experimental type stuff. It’s not of the stature of a Mutek or Decibel (except for Matmos, I don’t recognize the names listed on the site), but, hey, you gotta start somewhere and it’s GREAT that there even IS something like this around here.
More info is available here.
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in the experimental community in DC! Even NPR agrees:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99046689