Electronic Music

The main question associated with the Identity Festival has been asked in various forms for the past 15 or so years: Is America ready to embrace electronic music? In the late 1990s, it seemed almost inevitable. But even as a barrage of flashy British acts such as the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim arrived with big exposure and bigger beats, electronic music and the culture it spawned — where people joyously danced to DJs in warehouses until the break of dawn — remained a mostly underground phenomenon.

It's past midnight on a Sunday and the line outside the W Hotel stretches all the way to Hollywood Boulevard. A hundred or so disgruntled dudes fold their arms and swear to an aloof doorman that they're "on the list. " If you can talk your way past the velvet rope, you enter an elevator bathed in red light and ascend to the rooftop. This is Dim Mak Sundays at Drai's , a poolside Vegas-style nightclub that hosts weekly electronic dance music bacchanalia. On the roof, Dave Nada — the...

There's no shortage of websites that enable you to tune into electronic music streams ( Digitally Imported leaps to mind), but that doesn't mean there's no way to better the offering. Just take a look at Play.fm for example, which we covered favorably earlier this year when they launched their public beta . A new serious contender that is making its debut today is Mugasha (from 'music-gather-share'), and its strategy is to focus on the top DJs in the world primarily rather than having the largest collection of sets.

Only a few songs into a sold-out performance at U Street Music Hall , Josh Young, one half of the electronic beatmaking duo Flosstradamus, hopped on the microphone and shouted, "It feels like a house party in here!" Beneath four laser beams stretched out across the dance floor, a sea of flat-brimmed baseball caps bobbed madly in approval. If this had been an actual house party, all the china would have been smashed, cops would be at the door, and someone's parents would have been furious upon...

Since his path-breaking "Silver Apples of the Moon" brought electronic music into the mainstream in 1967, the composer Morton Subotnick, who turns 80 in April, has grown from a pioneer of electronic music to one of its elder statesmen. But he's still very much on the ramparts, and on Friday night Subotnick — joined by the new-music vocalist Joan La Barbara and two other stalwarts of New York's new-music scene — took the stage at the Library of Congress for three of Subotnick's works that probed the...

A little more than a decade ago, a nerdy, lanky black teenager from the Bronx stood in front of a mirror in his bedroom. He had come home from a dance party at a debate tournament and was duly embarrassed that, of all his friends, he had the least amount of rhythm. For two hours, he gazed into that mirror trying to learn a dance he had spotted in a hip-hop video with G. Dep and P. Diddy for the song, "Let's Get It. " He shuffled his shoulders; wiggling arms from side to side. Soon, he got it. And he vowed he...

Two weeks ago at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, a duo performed sumptuous, pulsating dance tracks wearing African-style masks that obscured parts of their faces. Who were they? After a few songs, the drummer in the black T-shirt said, "We're SBTRKT . " His name is Aaron Jerome. But it doesn't appear on the stellar album that SBTRKT — pronounced "subtract" — released last year. That's because Jerome, a London-based musician, wants listeners to think of the group only as...

Only a few songs into a sold-out performance at U Street Music Hall , Josh Young, one half of the electronic beatmaking duo Flosstradamus, hopped on the microphone and shouted, "It feels like a house party in here!" Beneath four laser beams stretched out across the dance floor, a sea of flat-brimmed baseball caps bobbed madly in approval. If this had been an actual house party, all the china would have been smashed, cops would be at the door, and someone's parents would have...

New York-based DJs Michael Vincent Patrick and Theodore Paul Nelson, more affectionately known as Designer Drugs, played a raucous three-hour set at U Street Music Hall on Saturday night. Or at least, I think it was them. Signed to electronic music giant Ultra Records in February, they are on a world tour promoting their first album, "Hardcore/Softcore," a deliciously dark dish of punishing house tracks. Unfortunately, very little of their set drew from it. Instead, the duo delivered what food critics would call a...

PHILADELPHIA -- It's a story of love deferred, love lived by proxy, love finally realized late in life. It's the story of "Cyrano de Bergerac," of the prominently proboscised hero of Edmond Rostand's late-19th-century play, doomed to unrequited love. But it is also the story of composer David DiChiera and his opera, "Cyrano. " For the story of "Cyrano" -- which had its world premiere in Detroit in October and is now at the Opera Company of Philadelphia through Sunday -- is itself an...

Sibelius certainly rocks. That is the takeaway thus far after the third orchestral offering of the Kennedy Center's Nordic Cool festival. Monday night brought the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in the evergreen Grieg Piano Concerto, the very rarely heard complete "Lemminkainen Suite" of Sibelius, and U.S. premieres of two works by young Icelandic composers. The two previous programs (by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the National Symphony) also featured the Finnish master, but the ISO's...

MOUSE ON MARS "Wow" Kindred spirits:  Oval, Conlon Nancarrow, Colourbox Show:  Tuesday at U Street Music Hall. Show starts at 7 p.m. 202-588-1880. www.ustreetmusichall.com . $15. " Wow ," the latest offering from Mouse on Mars, is in keeping with the pioneering German duo's earlier work, for it easily hits its quota of synth-triggered jump cuts, percolating interludes and rhythmic eruptions. When everything clicks, the music is unpredictable, unclassifiable and unwaveringly...

A little more than a decade ago, a nerdy, lanky black teenager from the Bronx stood in front of a mirror in his bedroom. He had come home from a dance party at a debate tournament and was duly embarrassed that, of all his friends, he had the least amount of rhythm. For two hours, he gazed into that mirror trying to learn a dance he had spotted in a hip-hop video with G. Dep and P. Diddy for the song, "Let's Get It. " He shuffled his shoulders; wiggling arms from side to side. Soon, he got it. And he vowed he...

As an opera student at McGill University in Montreal, Mary Alouette developed an interest that didn't necessarily correspond to her studies: electronic music. It took moving to Brooklyn and embarking on a career as a gypsy jazz singer to finally bring electronica into the mix in the form of a new EP, "The Lark. " "Growing up doing opera, especially in Montreal, I felt like I could never reconcile the two," Alouette says, "but now they're all blending and they don't feel so segmented.

Is there a seat for electronic music at the live music table? Alex Clare is on the case. The singer-songwriter and bearded Brit lays soulful pop vocals over dubstep, dub reggae and even drum-and-bass to merge the two worlds, territory most notably navigated by fellow Londoner Katy B . But unlike his spunky and self-assured neighbor, Clare hasn't quite settled on a musical identity. Is it pop music or electronic dance music? Or is it electronic pop music? And, most important, is it any good?

Since his path-breaking "Silver Apples of the Moon" brought electronic music into the mainstream in 1967, the composer Morton Subotnick, who turns 80 in April, has grown from a pioneer of electronic music to one of its elder statesmen. But he's still very much on the ramparts, and on Friday night Subotnick — joined by the new-music vocalist Joan La Barbara and two other stalwarts of New York's new-music scene — took the stage at the Library of Congress for three of Subotnick's works...

Is there a seat for electronic music at the live music table? Alex Clare is on the case. The singer-songwriter and bearded Brit lays soulful pop vocals over dubstep, dub reggae and even drum-and-bass to merge the two worlds, territory most notably navigated by fellow Londoner Katy B . But unlike his spunky and self-assured neighbor, Clare hasn't quite settled on a musical identity. Is it pop music or electronic dance music? Or is it electronic pop music? And, most important, is it any good?

Com Truise takes yesterday's smooth sounds and adds bumps. On Wednesday night at the Black Cat's Backstage, Seth Haley performed a 45-minute set of jittery and funky, but vaguely relaxing, electronic music. Using a laptop computer and a couple of synthesizers, the Syracuse, N.Y.-based producer dialed in tunes from his debut LP, "Galactic Melt," in front of a room crowded with nodding heads. Live, Haley is accompanied by a flesh-and-bone drummer, adding some physical heft to ethereal tunes such as "VHS Sex" and...

Porter Robinson and Zedd are two of electronic dance music's rising stars. Known for producing electro-house music that combines synth-heavy instrumentals, ethereal vocals and enough bass to rattle your ribcage, both received mainstream acclaim after touring with Skrillex in 2011. Now they're co-headlining a fall tour, sharing the DJ booth and spinning back-to-back tracks. You can catch them at Virgin Mobile FreeFest on Saturday at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Porter Robinson Oh, to be a famous DJ. On the...

At 80, composer Morton Su­botnick is tying up the loose ends of his philosophy of music creation. In 1966, his iconic all-electronic piece "Silver Apples of the Moon" was written specifically to be recorded and listened to alone at home rather than in live performance: The experience of hearing it was devoid of anything communal, visual or spontaneous. However, technology and his thinking evolved. By 1978, when he wrote "A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur," he had joined forces with visual...