San Francisco Tape Music Festival
Fri/20–Sun/22, CELLspace

IT'S THAT TIME of year again, to sit back and really listen to a particularly 20th-century form of sound at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival. Now in its seventh year, the fest gives folks the chance to experience works made exclusively for tape in a 16-channel surround-sound environment – kind of like Imax for the ears. You've got your classics: Luciano Berio's 1958 "Thema (Omaggio a Joyce)," with the composer manipulating Cathy Berberian's reading of the "Sirens" chapter of Ulysses (perhaps a nice belated-birthday/whet-your-appetite-for-Bloomsday tribute to the author?); the Beatles' 1968 "Revolution 9"; and Steve Reich's 1965 "It's Gonna Rain," a historic minimalist piece that takes its cues from a recording of a San Francisco sidewalk preacher. And you've got your cutting-edge, historical-in-a-different-way compositions, like Robi Kauker's "Vessels," which uses musique concrète-style field recordings from every deck and cranny of the ArtShip before it was evicted from the Port of Oakland; Erdem Helvacioglu's dreamy, electronic sonic travelogue of Istanbul, "Wandering around the City"; and sound ecologist Hildegard Westerberg's recordings of an old-growth rainforest, half of which has since been clear-cut by the logging industry. About six compositions by a talent pool ranging over the oceans and decades are played each night, so sit back, close your eyes, and listen. 8:30 p.m., 2050 Bryant, S.F. $10, $25 festival pass. (415) 614-2434, www.sfsound.org/tape.html. (M.P. Klier)