As with all its nine predecessors, variety is the key to the American Composers Forum's widely lauded annual festival of electro-acoustic music, Sonic Circuits. The disc from year ten provides ample evidence of the festival's ultramagnetic appeal, bursting as it is with the rare and precious admixture of gravity and levity that juxtaposes the whimsey of Michelle Kinney's "I Don't Like Americans," and "Variations on a Door, Not a Sigh," Jon Christopher Nelson's inspired tribute to Pierre Henry's seminal work, with the mystery of Malte Steiner's "Signale," the narrative depth of pioneering electron wrangler Hans Joachim Roedelius's "Frag's Pferd," and the weapons-grade blastitude of Atsushi Yamaji's "Petsound." Ending the disc with a bang--literally--is Barry Schrader's "816," the sonic equivalent of a furious bumper-car session in a piano factory.
From microsound to meltdown, a compilation less genre-specific than Sonic Circuits X is every bit as hard to imagine as it would be to execute, which is exactly as we like it.
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