I had this dream once — though it may have been an elaborate acid flashback that coincided with a nap — where I was trying to find my way out of Burlington’s Centennial Woods, following my late grandfather’s dog Fritz.
I had lost my way in the forest, and it was dark out, with a sky full of stars blinking like annoying Christmas lights, but I was sure Fritz knew the way back to the parking lot. It was hard to concentrate on the path: The trees were pulsing with neon colors and issued a drawn-out, sonorous B-minor chord that eased into an unrelenting F-sharp major.
It felt like I was living inside a Ryuichi Sakamoto composition, with the sounds turning to colors and bleeding into the dirt and leaves around me. The synthetic world was merging with the natural one, a dream version of the Anthropocene. I awoke with an odd sense of discovery and said as much to my therapist later that day.
“I think I was hearing what Vermont actually sounds like,” I told her. “Vermont sounds like Beatrice Dillon, a little bit.”
My therapist is over hearing this kind of stuff. I can tell because she makes this weird clicking sound in the back of her throat whenever I bring up things like acid house music or my theory that, in a better timeline, the debut Traveling Wilburys album would have ended the concept of war.
“Remember when I asked you to refrain from mentioning obscure bands and then acting shocked when I don’t know who you’re talking about?” she replied.
“Beatrice Dillon, though?!”
“Yeah, so this is what I’m talking about.”
“Tangerine Dream, then. Maybe Ultravox?”
“Please stop naming things. Let’s talk about your grandfather’s dog.”
“Right, but Beatrice Dillon makes electronic music, super spatial, lots of computer sounds and polyrhythms, and I’m, like, 90 percent sure that my dream was confirming that if we as people could actually hear the vibrations and sounds of the physical land of Vermont, it would sound very much like ‘Basho’ by Beatrice Dillon.”
She just made the clicking sound again, but louder.
While my therapist didn’t agree with my interpretation of the dream, I can tell you someone who does dig my theory: Wendy M. Levy.
“I’ve never liked this notion that Vermont is some kind of anachronistic place full of hicks,” Levy said. “In actuality, there are a lot of times when Vermont is actually so far ahead of the curve, no one knows what to make of us. Our relationship and history with electronic music is a perfect example.”
Levy would know. She’s a longtime DJ and the president of Bellows Falls. (More towns need lofty positions like this, in my opinion. I would make an excellent duke of Colchester, just saying.) She’s also a journalist who has written for the Brattleboro independent paper the Commons, where she helped uncover Vermont’s somewhat obscure role in the history of electronic music.
And she’s curating the second annual Circuits in the Woods festival this Saturday, October 24. The all-day celebration of the Green Mountains’ electronic sounds takes place across downtown Brattleboro, at the Marigold bar and café, the Wonky Press screen-print shop, Turn It Up! record store, and Tavernier Chocolates. The big lineup of electronic, experimental, ambient and psych-rock music features experimental hip-hop duo dälek, noise rockers Emergency Group, Burlington darkwave artist Burial Woods, electronic artist Nightmother, psych-folk act Sunburned Hand of the Man and many more.
“When we launched Circuits in the Woods last year, a lot of people thought it was maybe an EDM festival,” Levy said. “It’s not — the common denominator is that the artists are using electronics somewhere in their performance. But I’m a free-form radio DJ; I know how many shades and genres there are. So I wanted to highlight as many corners of this world as I could.”
Through her reporting, Levy had already learned of the area’s role in the advent of electronic music. She’s written about Harald Bode, a German engineer who moved to Brattleboro in 1950 to work at the Estey Organ Company and invented the first modular synthesizer; and Jon Appleton, a Dartmouth College professor and inventor who helped develop the Synclavier in the early 1970s. But her inspiration for Circuits in the Woods came from a pair of back-to-back shows highlighting local electronic artists at Stage 33 Live in Bellows Falls and Nova Arts in Keene, N.H.
“There were so many incredible electronic and experimental musicians from here,” she said. “I thought to myself, We need to do something with all of this talent and all of this history.”
With the help of volunteers, including Nova Arts programming director Eric Gagne, Levy launched the festival in 2025. For her first attempt at producing a music fest, she kept her expectations low.
“I told myself last year that if things went well, people showed up and it didn’t actually drive me insane, well, we’d have to do it again,” she said. “And that’s what happened! We sold out, we didn’t lose money, everything even started on time, and folks seemed to really love it.”
A person would be hard-pressed to not find something to intrigue them.
Wendy M. Levy
This year’s highlights include the return of the popular Synth Petting Zoo, organized by Rockingham musician Trevor Robinson at Turn It Up! records. People can try out a range of electronic instruments and maybe awaken their own inner ambient producer. Levy is also excited to see the performance by You Don’t Nomi, a tribute to the late German singer and performance artist Klaus Nomi.
“We’ve got heavy psych. We’ve got power pop, yacht rock, serious ambient stuff, experimental, freak folk … A person would be hard-pressed to not find something to intrigue them,” Levy said.
I mentioned my dream-inspired theory of Vermont’s beating electronic heart, and, indeed, Levy had my back. Who needs a therapist? (Me, actually. If you read this, Dana, don’t dump me. I value your work.)
“There is some serious juju at work in the area,” Levy said, pointing out the possible geographical advantages of southern Vermont. “The Abenaki knew how important it was. Any spot like Brattleboro that sits at the confluence of two rivers, like the Connecticut and the West River, there’s going to be something in the air.”
Whether you’re interested in Vermont’s decades-long history with electronic music or simply want to see some industrial darkwave in an artisan chocolate shop, there’s nothing out there quite like Circuits in the Woods. ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Vermont’s Electronic Heart | Circuits in the Woods Festival Returns to Brattleboro”
This article appears in The Tech Issue • 2026.
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