Musical genres tend to be slippery, if not meaningless, such as "world" or "alternative."

But there's one style that defies all attempts at description. It's been called "new" and "avant garde" and encompasses world, improv, post-rock and electronica. But it eludes definition. And when you're putting together a festival of it, that's a challenge.

"This music doesn't have a name, although I like 'dangerous music,' " says Ron Gaskin, who's putting on the eighth annual VT05 festival in various venues this week. "The phrase avant garde has been beaten to a pulp. It's not avant anything -- it's post-avant!"

VT05, an offshoot of Quebec's Festival Internationale de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, is a way for international artists to ease their financial burden by doing additional concerts in Toronto.

"I'm a guy who can provide stages for musicians who don't have them," is how Gaskin puts it.

This year's festival -- which characteristically spans the globe and many musical styles -- does have a theme, which is strings.

"There's a concert by Xu Fengxia featuring the guzheng, an ancient Chinese instrument," Gaskin says. "It's like a Salvador Dali rendition of the zither, or if you took a harpsichord's body away and pumped up the strings with testosterone. There's the strings in Stefano Scodanibbio's bass show, and Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet features Fred Lonberg Holm playing a burning, Hendrix-like cello. There are the piano strings in the Queen Mab Trio.

"And then there's Nels Cline. It's almost too twisted to say he's reinvented the guitar, so let's just say he's putting more joy into guitar performance than we've seen for a while. I think it's interesting that he goes from edgy jamming with Thurston Moore to playing with Wilco to his trio, which I think is a jazz band, even though they rock."

Other VT05 highlights are the European improv quintet Hubbub and the Jerry Granelli Septet's Sandhills Reunion, featuring drummer Granelli and band with spoken word performance by Paul Kennedy.

The festival runs tonight through next Tuesday. For more information, go to roughidea.ca.