The first Circuits in the Woods was supposed to be a one-off. Wendy M. Levy, the festival's founder, has said as much herself: while putting together the inaugural edition, she kept telling herself, "I hope this music festival goes so well, the only logical conclusion is to do it again." It went well. On Saturday, October 24, the festival returns to downtown Brattleboro for a second year, with more than 20 acts spread across four venues on Main Street, all within about a six-minute walk of one another.
The premise is simple and slightly strange: a full day devoted to using electronics to make or manipulate sound. Some performers work entirely with synthesizers and drum machines; others run acoustic instruments, field recordings, samples, or the human voice through circuits until they become something else. The genre list on the festival's own site reads like a dare — hip-hop, experimental improv, heavy psych, deep groove, yacht rock, operatic pop, ambient, motorik, synth pop, and, in the organizers' words, music that defies categorization.
That range is the point. Circuits is not a synthesizer trade show or a niche gathering for modular-patch devotees, though both would find plenty to do there. It is a festival built on the idea that there are as many ways to make music as there are musicians, and that a small Vermont city with a stubbornly independent streak is a natural place to prove it.
Because Brattleboro, as it happens, has a legitimate claim on the history. The analog synthesizer was completed here, in the workshop of Harald Bode, a German-born inventor who worked out of the old Estey Organ Company buildings on Birge Street. Bode, born in Hamburg in 1909, is less famous than Robert Moog but developed instruments and components — including ring modulators used in studios around the world — that shaped what electronic music became. Roughly 60 miles north, in White River Junction, New England Digital developed the Synclavier, first released in 1977 and described by former company programmer Matt Bucy as "the first commercial computer-controlled digital synthesis system," one that "brought the computer world from academia to musicians." The Synclavier grew out of a practical problem: at Dartmouth, composer Jon Appleton watched students burn their studio time patching a Moog, and the solution — put the whole instrument on a computer — became a Vermont export.
Circuits in the Woods leans into that lineage deliberately, tracing what its organizers call the ley lines that run from the Estey Organ factory north to White River Junction, back down through Putney, and home to Brattleboro. The festival's subtitle might as well be that Vermont invented this stuff, and it is still at it.
Levy is the thread connecting the festival to the town's radio culture. A longtime DJ, she co-founded Radio Free Brattleboro and has hosted shows on WVEW and WOOL; she now hosts "Wreck Your Own Adventure" on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio stream. She is producing Circuits with Eric Gagne of Nova Arts, the Keene, New Hampshire, arts organization that handles ticketing; Joseph Conrad and Trevor Robinson of the Stage 33 Live SynthFest in Bellows Falls; WVEW hosts Johnny Gifford and Jeremy Osborn; and musician Calvin Moen.
This year's lineup mixes newcomers with returning acts. Dälek, the Newark experimental hip-hop duo of MC dälek and Mike Manteca, formed in 1998 and long associated with Ipecac Recordings, makes its Circuits debut — a genuine get for a festival this size. So does Sunburned Hand of the Man, the Western Massachusetts collective that has spent more than two decades shifting shape through epic psych jams, alien rants over laid-back funk, and abstraction. Emergency Group, You Don't Nomi, Thorny, eMBee, Denny Kemps, Violet Nox, Snowglobe Almanac, Architrave, Tomestoner, Connor Lin Frost, and Nightmother round out the first-timers. Wet Tuna — the Vermont psych-and-dub project of Matt Valentine and Erika Elder — returns, along with Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders, Dave Seidel, Caldon Glover, Countermoon, and Burial Woods.
The venues are the same four that worked last year, and Levy has been explicit about why. "The venues worked out so well last year," she said. "The owners and workers were welcoming and helpful to us, the artists, and the attendees, and it all sounded great. I'm very happy to be working with them all again this year." The main stage is Marigold Bar & Cafe at 157 Main Street, with Tavernier Chocolates at 128, the record store Turn It Up! at 85, and The Wonky Press at 229 hosting performances and events of their own. It is a genuinely walkable festival — no shuttle, no fairground, no sprawl — which is part of the appeal and part of the charm.
Alongside the concerts, the schedule includes workshops, talks, demonstrations, and hands-on time with actual instruments. The Synth Petting Zoo, hosted last year by Bellows Falls musician Trevor Robinson at Turn It Up!, is the signature example: Robinson set up an MS20 Mini and other small synths through a four-track mixer and encouraged and assisted audience members in making their own sounds. The festival's stated aim is to bring together electronic music pioneers, contemporary performers, regional artists, and curious participants of all ages and experience levels, and the programming reflects that rather than treating education as a side room.
The first edition, held November 15, 2025, ran from midday until midnight and was recorded for later broadcast by Brattleboro Community Television. It also included a food drive benefiting FoodWorks, with collection bins at all four venues — an expression of the mutual-aid ethos that runs through the local music scene. This year's event runs from about 1 p.m. until around midnight.
Tickets work on a two-tier system. A limited number of $40 festival passes, sold through novaarts.org, guarantee entry to all performances throughout the day. Everyone else buys a day pass at the door, at any venue, on the day of the event only — cash only, by donation, on a sliding scale, standing room only. The organizers are firm on one point: no one will be turned away for lack of funds. It is a policy that says something about who this festival is for.
For a second-year event in a city of roughly 12,000, the ambition is notable. Vermont has no shortage of music festivals, but they tend to be rooted in folk, bluegrass, or jam bands — the state's familiar exports. A festival built entirely around electronic sound-making, staged across four downtown storefronts and anchored in the area's genuine history of invention, is something new. Levy's hope from year one has been answered. The logical conclusion, it turns out, was to do it again.
Circuits in the Woods runs Saturday, October 24, from about 1 p.m. to around midnight at Marigold (157 Main Street), Tavernier Chocolates (128 Main Street), Turn It Up! (85 Main Street), and The Wonky Press (229 Main Street) in downtown Brattleboro. Full lineup and details at circuitsvt.org; passes at novaarts.org.