TWO shows this week!! TUES. and THURS.!!!

Tuesday Nov. 27:
 TINTINNABULATE HARMONICA BAND (with PAULINE OLIVEROS!) + ZOVI + MENSHEVIKS.  

Thursday Nov. 29:

ARTHUR BROOKS ENSEMBLE V + SHAPE-SHIFTING SHEPHERDS.


A mere $5 suggested donation is requested for each show.  Descriptions of all the performers below.

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Tues. Nov. 27 - Pauline Oliveros and her TINTINNABULATE HARMONICA BAND!!

On Tuesday night, Nov. 27, follow your Thanksgiving weekend with an amazing night of music presented by ASAC. Three sets of music for a mere $5 suggested donation. More is always appreciated if you can afford it. All of the money will go to Pauline and her band. If for some reason you're not familiar with Pauline's reputation and/or body of work, please consider attending this show! She is truly one of the world's most esteemed and accomplished improvisors and experimental musicians. At age 80, She rec

ently had a 10CD retrospective box set released on Important Records. To say that she is a legend and inspiration to all experimental musicians would be an incredible understatement. On this special night, she will bring a brand new ensemble out for their debut live performance!!

TINTINNABULATE HARMONICA BAND

ZOVI

MENSHEVIKS

Tuesday Nov. 27th
8:00tM
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY

The Tintinnabulate Harmonica Band, comprised of members and peers of Pauline Oliveros' Creative Collaborations seminar, is a fully improvisational group focusing on constructing sonic territories using harmonica as the primary instrument. The band works from themes, instructions, and guidelines around which to improvise. Harmonica is the primary instrument of choice, however other instruments and sound sources are also used.

The Tintinnabulate Harmonica Band is Pauline Oliveros, Doug van Nort, Dave Bebb, Eric Ameres, Melissa Mohner, Adil Soubki, Zovi McEntee, Torben Pastore, and Evan-Daniel Rose-González.

Zovi is the solo project of Zovi McEntee from RPI, also a member of Pauline's band above.

MENSHEVIKS is an improvisational unit featuring:
Matt Weston - percussion, electronics
Ray Hare - vocals, electronics
Mike Griffin - electronics
Eric Hardiman - electronics


**********************************************************************************

Then, just a paltry two nights later, it'll be...

Thursday Nov. 29th
8:00 PM
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY

ARTHUR BROOKS ENSEMBLE V

SHAPE SHIFTING SHEPHERDS

Trumpeter/composer Arthur Brooks is one of the unsung heroes of the new music, and has collaborated with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Frank Wright, Alan Silva, Sonny Sharrock, and many others.

For this performance, he will be joined by Anthony Santor (bass), and Matt Weston (percussion).

Also performing, psychedelic dronemeisters Shape Shifting Shepherds. 

Fossils+Cruudeuces+Parashi+Belltone Suicide + more!!

This is not an ASAC show, but we think you should attend regardless!! It's going to be a great great time.
 
Saturday Nov. 3rd at the UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD (247 Lark St.) in Albany. 

$5 suggested donation.

FOSSILS (trio w/ CRUUDEUCES)

BELLTONE SUICIDE + PARASHI (collab set)

MARTIN FREEMAN (rochester wizzard)

ISA CHRIST (mass. madness)

CASE (albany)

MAWJA + Heenan/Kocher on 9/25!!

Join us on Tuesday 9/25 for another incredible night of experimental music.  This one features the return of ASAC alum Mike Bullock, along with some very special guests. 

Tuesday 9/25

Upstate Artists Guild

247 Lark St.

Albany

8pm

suggested donation of $5

MAWJA (Bullock/Rawlings/Kerbaj)

                   + 

HEENAN/KOCHER

Mawja formed in 2004 in Boston, MA, USA, when Beirut trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj met bassist Mike Bullock and cellist Vic Rawlings at their first gig. The group has since performed in cities across the eastern US. Mawja was an ensemble in residence at STEIM in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during Kerbaj's curatorship there in 2007. They have released two CDs, on Kerbaj's al Maslakh and Bullock's Chloë imprints. Their music incorporates customized electronics, extensive instrument modifications, and modular synthesis.

Mazen Kerbaj, born in 1975, lives and works in Beirut.  His main activities are comics, paintings and music. He published 11 books and many short stories and drawings in anthologies, newspapers and magazines in Lebanon, Europe, and the USA, and exhibited his work both in solo and in collective exhibitions in Lebanon, France, England, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Dubai, Malaysia and the USA.

Mazen Kerbaj is also one of the founders of the Lebanese free improvisation scene, both as a trumpet player and as an active member in the MILL association that organizes the annual Irtijal festival (www.irtijal.org) in Beirut since 2001. In 2005 he launches Al Maslakh, the first label for this music in the region (www.almaslakh.org). In 2009, after fructuous collaborations with Lebanese cult punk rock band Scrambled Eggs he launches a new sub-label, Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu (www.johnnykafta.com) to produce alternative and experimental rock music from Lebanon.

Between 2000 and 2011, Mazen Kerbaj played in solo and with various groups in the Middle East, all around Europe, and in the USA. Regular and occasional partners includes: Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Sehnaoui, Raed Yassin, Charbel Haber, Franz Hautzinger, Lê Quan Ninh, Bertrand Denzler, Stéphane Rives, Mats Gustaffson, Guillermo Gregorio, Gene Coleman, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jim Baker, Jack Wright, Michael Bullock, Vic Rawlings, David Stäckenas, Martin Küchen, Axel Dörner, Ricardo Arias, Jason Khan, The Ex, Jarrod Cagwin, Thomas Lehn, Joe McPhee, Raymond Boni, John Butcher, Martin Blume…

Mike Bullock is a composer, improviser, intermedia artist, scholar based around Boston, MA. His modes of work include electroacoustic composition, installation, drawing, and video. Bullock performs across the US and in Europe, collaborating with a huge range of artists including Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Steve Roden, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley of nmperign, Mazen Kerbaj, and Theodore Bikel.

In 2010 he and Linda Aubry Bullock co-founded Shadowselves, a platform for their new media work. Bullock’s music has been released by numerous labels including Intransitive, Important, Winds Measure, Sedimental, Grob, 1.8sec, al Maslakh, and Homophoni. He received a PhD from the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and has taught and lectured in the US and Europe on field recording and improvisation.

More info at:

www.mikebullock.com

www.shadowselves.net

More info at:

www.kerbaj.com

www.mazenkerblog.blogspot.com

www.myspace.com/mazenkerbaj

Vic Rawlings (cello/ electronics) employs a still and unstable sound language ranging from visceral excess to extreme austerity. He uses an amplified cello augmented with extensive and invasive preparations of his design, adapted from Baroque-era designs. On this instrument he has developed a vocabulary of extended techniques, approaching near-total abstraction from the cello. As an entirely separate unit, he uses and continually develops a modular electronic instrument with a highly unstable interface, acoustically realized by an array of exposed speaker elements. His writings on music/ instrumentation and contemporary music education have been published in Leonardo Music Journal and Intransitive Magazine. He has authored sound-based music and listening curricula that engage students at all levels in participatory experiences in which they often encounter unfamiliar experiential/ aesthetic territory. He presents in settings ranging from Ivy-League Universities to juvenile detention facilities.

http://vicrawlings.com

Chris Heenan (Berlin) and Jonas Kocher (Biel/Bien) work with the unlikely pairing of contrabass clarinet and accordion using improvisation to create worlds of changing depth and mood that both expand upon and fixate on particular sonic zones while simultaneously belying the instrumentation of the duo. Sudden shifts in texture and tempo become to areas of quiet and stasis, a reprieve from constant movement that gives way to a burst of loud focused activity.

Accordion player and composer born in 1977 (CH), Jonas Kocher studied a.o. with Teodoro Anzellotti, Pierre Sublet and Georges Aperghis. He collaborates regularly as an accordionist in improvised and conceptual contexts with musicians such Michel Doneda, Christian Wolfarth, Olivier Toulemonde, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Luca Venitucci, Duo Diatribes, Jacques Demierre, Christian Kesten, Gaudenz Badrutt, Chris Heenan… Jonas Kocher's work explores the relationships between tone, noise and silence and the processes of listening. As composer he realizes projects that are situated between composed theater, installation and concert pieces. His compositions has been played at Biennale Bern 2010, Theater Basel, Zentrum Paul Klee, Festival Encuentros Buenos Aires, Umlaut Festival Berlin, Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel, Festival Concentus Moravie, Zagreb Biennale. He composes also for hörspiel, dance and theater. Jonas Kocher is also involved as an organizer of different events in Switzerland and runs the label flexion records.

www.jonaskocher.net

Chris Heenan (Washington D.C., 1969) lives in Berlin and is an active composer/ performer and organizer of experimental music. He performs on alto saxophone, contrabass clarinet, and analog synthesizer in contexts ranging from solo to large groups and in various ongoing projects. He uses these instruments to investigate new musical forms, noise, and improvisation both in his solo work and in collaboration with composers and performers such as actors, musicians, dancers, and visual artists. Heenan has developed a formidable solo voice on his wind instruments, particularly with the contrabass clarinet where he uses extended techniques, often incorporating multiphonics with surprising results, to reveal the subtleties inherent to the instrument. Heenan’s regular projects include Nordzucker (with Michael Maierhof, Birgit Ulher, and Lars Scherzberg), PIVOT (with Liz Allbee), Trigger (with Matthias Müller and Nils Ostendorf), Team Up (a trio with Jeremy Drake and a revolving third member percussionist), Phantom Limb and Bison (with Chris Forsyth, Jaime Fennelly, and Shawn Hansen), a duo with zitherist Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga and a contrabass clarinet and percussion duo with Michael Vorfeld.

 

www.chrisheenan.com

Chris Heenan and Jonas Kocher are performing with the support of Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council.

Kevin Greenspon + more TBA!!

Another fantastic night of electronic improvised music, presented by the Albany Sonic Arts Collective. This time we'll be hosting Kevin Greenspon from California. Plus more acts to be announced soon!

KEVIN GREENSPON

CENTURY PLANTS

MENSHEVIKS (Weston/Hare/Griffin/Hardiman)

Sat. Sept. 8
8:00 PM
Upstate Artists Guild

247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

$5 suggested donation

Kevin Greenspon is a musician from Los Angeles, CA that blends ambient, electronic, drone, field recording and harsh noise composition into short songs that can be likened to miniature film scores. Primarily using guitar, effects and tape collage techniques, each song is an emotionally engaging arrangement of melodies and electronics fueled by a storytelling nature.

Century Plants are the Albany-based duo of Ray Hare (electronics, guitars, vocals) and Eric Hardiman (guitars, bass, electronics).  For the past 5+ years, Century Plants have explored the abstract intersections between genres such as psych, dub, noise, minimalism, rock, and others. Ever restless, their approach to any given show can vary wildly and the results are always entertaining. 

Mensheviks is the moniker for a one-time collaboration between 4 of Albany's busiest experimentalists - Matt Weston, Ray Hare (Fossils from the Sun/Century Plants/Burnt Hills), Mike Griffin (Parashi/Burnt Hills), and Eric Hardiman (Rambutan/Century Plants/Burnt Hills).  Who knows what to expect when this foursome gets going?

 Restraint and subtlety are key elements in Kevin Greenspon's work, carefully balancing between sparse quietude and dense layering of orchestral melodies and crackling textures as fingerpicked guitar notes seemingly swell in from reverse, weaving a constantly shifting atmosphere with deliberation and focus, never losing control of the space as a medium for channeling sound into song.

Extensive touring history includes hundreds of performances at galleries and universities such as the Berkeley Art Museum as well as unconventional spaces ranging from meat lockers, buses, factories, clothing stores and countless houses and DIY art spaces across the country. Past performances include shows with bands such as Growing, Future Islands, Former Ghosts, Lucky Dragons, Eric Copeland (of Black Dice), Dan Deacon, Cloud Nothings, Daniel Francis Doyle, Lee Noble, Pulse Emitter, Pedestrian Deposit, Sean McCann and many more.

You can see videos, hear music, and read more about Kevin here:

http://www.kevingreenspon.info/

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!

Lescalleet to play UAG!!

Come celebrate the end of summer with this incredible show at the UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD in Albany. Lescalleet is an absolute master of analog tape manipulation, and is touring in support of a fabulous new 2CD set, "Songs About Nothing" on Erstwhile. 

DON'T MISS THIS ONE!!
FRIDAY 8/31
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany
$5 suggested donation




JASON LESCALLEET

PITCHER/CHEN/VAN NORT

CRYSTIN MAGNUS
 
Jason Lescalleet explores a sound world that occupies a space between noise, contemporary composition, and minimal electronics. Using decidedly primitive tactics and equipment his work focuses on microscopic audio detail set awash in exaggerated and exploited site-specific acoustics. He has released recordings on such labels as Erstwhile, RRR, Intransitive Recordings, Kye, Celebrate Psi-Phenomenon, Hanson Records, Chondritic Sound and his own labels, Glistening Examples. Jason has collaborated with Graham Lambkin, Phill Niblock, Joe Colley, John Hudak, Greg Kelley, Rafael Toral, Thomas Ankersmit, Ron Lessard (as Due Process), and nmperign. Lescalleet has built a solid reputation for delivering a visceral live experience in his concert performances. He lives in Maine.

Jefferson Pitcher/Jonathan Chen/Doug Van Nort will be presenting a first time live collaboration for guitar, violin, and electronics. Each brings a wealth of improvisational and experimental music experience to the table, and this set is bound to be a winner.

 
Cristyn Magnus received her PhD in Music from University of California, San Diego in 2010, where she studied music technology with Miller Puckette and composition with Philippe Manoury and Rand Steiger. She has a Bachelors in Cognitive Science and her musical interests lie at the intersection of the two fields. She likes playing with algorithms and interactivity. Her work explores the way groups of performers, audience members, and computational agents interact to make music. She's written pieces for performers whose interactions are defined by rules with no computational mediation, pieces where sounds map onto video game controls so that the act of playing games will produce musical output, pieces for recorded sounds that exist as artificial life forms interacting in artificial worlds, and so on.

Wed. 8/8 show! KBD(uo) + PARASHI + SHAPE-SHIFTING SHEPHERDS

Don't miss out on this fantastic night at the Upstate Artists Guild in Albany (247 Lark St).  Everything starts at 8pm sharp!

KBD(uo) - From Toledo, Ohio: Michael Kimaid & Gabe Beam: "Modernity isn’t going anywhere. Technology will make old habits seem new and new music will make old ideals seem attainable. In the meantime, KBD will be tracking the big sound wherever it manifests: in theory and in practice, in acoustics, in electronics, and in the spaces they inhabit."

www.thenoisyattic.com/main

- PARASHI - Mike Griffin playing microphones, pedals, electronics, field recordings...
http://soundcloud.com/
parashi

- SHAPE SHIFTING SHEPHERDS - electronics duo from up north (photo above).  Awesome sounds.


There is a $5.00 suggested donation for this performance

TWO shows on Friday night 6/29!!!

Come join us in TROY this Friday night (June 29th) for an incredible night.  5 hours of music, 13 acts, so much amazing music you won't be able to see anywhere else.

Here's the deal:

6:00pm at the ARTS CENTER OF THE CAPITAL REGION (256 RIVER ST. Troy), there will be a FREE sampling of (relatively) local noise/experimental music from the likes of...

Insect Posse
Rambutan
Nonhorse
Zenglop
Fossils From the Sun
Shape Shifting Shepherds
Matt Weston
1983
Spreaders


Then, immediately following that extravaganza, walk down to 51 3rd St. for a night of experimental ambient noise and sound scape.

51 3rd Street in Troy NY
Friday 6/29/12 8:30 pm (!)
Come early with something yummy to throw on the grill!

INSECT FACTORY (Washington, DC) http://soundcloud.com/insectfactory

PUBLIC SPEAKING (Brooklyn) http://jasonanthonyharris.bandcamp.com/

NONHORSE (Troy!) http://nonhorse.com/

Insect Factory:
Insect Factory is music from Silver Spring, MD musician Jeff Barsky. Insect Factory focuses on texture and mood, building layers of dense sounds that slowly evolve into hypnotic andatmospheric drones. Since the 90′s, Barsky has continuously played in bands and improvisational collectives, and has performed frequently on the east coast of the U.S., in Canada, throughout Europe, and Japan. Barsky’s various projects have shared the stage with acts as diverse as Richard Pinhas, Nels Cline, Acid Mothers Temple, and Carla Bozulich, and he has performed at Suoni Il Per Popolo festival in Montreal, Terrastock 7 in Louisville, KY, and D.C.’s Sonic Circuits, Queering Sound, and Fringe Festivals. Insect Factory’s first release, “Air Traffic Control Sleep”, was released in the late summer of 2007, to acclaim from the likes of Washington Post, the Wire, and Terrascope. Following a recent split 7″ with RST (New Zealand), Melodies from a Dead Radio is Insect Factory’s second full-length and vinyl debut.

http://www.insectfields.org/
http://www.soundcloud.com/insectfactory

Public Speaking:
Public Speaking is the music of Brooklyn solo artist Jason Anthony Harris. Utilizing found objects, radio, tape recorder, and vocoder, he pores over pedals to loop, warp and augment these sources. His performances are highly improvisational, with an emphasis on immediacy and site-specific actions.

The electronic capturing and mangling of acoustic sounds is an obsession for Public Speaking. Pieces of metal, wood, plastic, and video cassettes are stricken to the pulses of polyrhythmic, textural compositions. A microphone is pummeled against the floor in place of a bass drum and slashed across speakers to create reprocessed digital sweeps. One performance found him beating and scraping a wooden chair across the stage to create a bed of dissonant clatter to croon over.

Nonhorse:
G. Lucas Crane is a sound artist, performer, and musician whose work focuses on information anxiety, media confusion, and recycled technology. Using a combination field recordings culled from the underbelly of the contemporary sonic media landscape and homemade electronic instruments, oscillators and broken machines, he creates compositions and performances as a reaction to, and illustration of, our information detritus choked times. Past work has dealt with musicality of a location or route, horror and phantasm in the information age, technology as abomination, the mystical presence of obsolete recording technology, recording as ritual, and the religious, poetic, and magical connotations of feedback and improvisation. Many of the soundscapes and collage work are built around quickly moving tape manipulations, the common cassette being a perfect example of old technology as iconic personal Gnostic totem. Years of environment recording and sample hunting have resulted in a broken library of material that is collaged together live, an information life that is constantly folding back on itself fractal-like, which he believes illustrates modern experience. Tape manipulation harkens back to the early days of experimental music, and in the context of the digital era it creates a sonic counterpoint on the continuum between hi and low fi, folk outsider and academic composition. Crane's work exists in a meditation on the blurred boundary between new and old tech and the emotional and social toll created by the rapid advancement of the technological sonic/environment.

Collaborations include sound design for the Performance Thanatology Research Society’s production of ‘History of Heat’ and 'The 50 Greatest Ladies and Gentlemen" at the Ontological Hysteric Theater in New York ; a batshit crazy full US tour with Woods; a European tour with drone collective Vanishing Voice; a production of ‘Oh What War’ at Here Theater in NYC with the Juggernaught Theater company; a ghost story album with Baltimore experimental vocalist Ric Royer; Machine design with New York electronic Instrument company CasperElectronics; Studio and performance work with musical entities Woods, Castanets, Grizzly Bear, and Wooden Wand; and solo performances as Nonhorse in the US and Europe. He also co-runs Silent Barn, an experimental art and performance space in Queens, New York City.

SUSAN ALCORN!! JEFFERSON PITCHER!! soundBarn!!

Come join us on a rare TUESDAY night show at ASAC. We'll be at the Upstate Artists Guild (247 Lark St. in Albany), and this amazing show will feature two astoundingly creative and well-known guitarists. Susan Alcorn will be visiting from Texas, displaying her improvisational skills on the pedal steel. Also performing will be Jefferson Pitcher, a phenomenal local guitarist soon to be moving out of the area. Make sure to catch him before he's gone!

Both sets will provide proof positive that the electric guitar (in its many guises) still holds the power to inspire musicians and audiences alike. Don't miss out!!

FULL BIOS are below...

SUSAN ALCORN

JEFFERSON PITCHER

+ soundBarn

Tuesday June 26th
8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY
$5 suggested donation for the traveling musicians.

www.albanysonicarts.blogspot.com for more information!

Susan Alcorn is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer and musician who has received international recognition as an innovator of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument whose sound is commonly associated with country and western music. Alcorn has absorbed the technique of C&W pedal steel playing and refined it to a virtuosic level. Her original music reveals the influence of free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and other musics of the world. The UK Guardian describes her music as "beautiful, glassy and liquid, however far she strays from pulse and conventional harmony."

In addition to frequent tours throughout North America and Europe, Susan has performed in the UK at the London Festival of Experimental Music, the On The Outside Festival in Newcastle, and the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra Improvisation Festival; in France at the Musique Action Festival in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, Ateliers Tampon and Instants Chavires in Paris; in Germany at the Leipzig JazzTage and with the ICI Ensemble in Munich; The Stone, CBGBs, and Issue Project Room in New York; Il Continiere in Rome; and at Arsenic and Cave 12 in Switzerland.

Though mostly a solo performer, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne., the late Peter Kowald, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Maggie Nicols, Joe Giardullo, Joe McPhee, Mike Cooper, Lê Quan Ninh, Ellen Fullman, Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, and John Butcher as well as continuing projects with Caroline Kraabel, cellist Janel Leppin and Scottish guitarist George Burt. Her newest release Touch This Moment is available on Uma Sounds.

Jefferson Pitcher is a guitarist and composer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent his formative years involved in the DIY Berkeley punk-rock scene, at 924 Gilman Street, which still influences him today. Yes, he was at Operation Ivy’s last show.

While much of his work explores free improvisation, he also draws heavily on his gift for melody, as well as on the simple repetitions of minimalism, the space and North African influence of flamenco, and a history of performing and recording in the West Coast indie-rock scene as a singer-songwriter, where he fronted the band Above the Orange Trees.

Since that time, Pitcher has released music with Standard Recording Co. (USA), Digitalis Recordings (USA), Camera Obscura (Australia), Tape Drift Records (USA), Moonpalace (Spain), Dutch East India (USA), Words on Music (USA), Tract Records (USA), and his own Mudita Records (USA). He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists including Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Scott Amendola, Rosie Thomas, Christian Kiefer, J. Matthew Gerken, Denison Witmer, Sarah Weaver, Mark Dresser, Mike Bullock, Tim Keiper, David Gibson, Kristina Forester, Ron Guensche and many more. He has twice been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and has been well reviewed by Pitchfork, Blurt, The Melbourne Sun, Prefix, and Harp magazines.

Pitcher holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he studied improvisation and composition with Pauline Oliveros and Neil Rolnick. He is married to author and visual artist Keri Smith, and can often be found on some hilly country road riding his bicycle while daydreaming about the minutiae of guitars and the endless wonder of sound.

soundBarn has been mining the possibilities of extreme guitar for years.  Thomas Lail and Patrick Weklar ply prepared and altered guitars, overprocess signals and pile loops of sound to orchestrate an arching instrumental tale of creation and destruction.  www.soundbarn.blogspot.com

Help us say goodbye to Holland Hopson!!

Join us on Saturday June 16th at the Upstate Artists Guild in Albany for an incredible night of music. Help us bid farewell to Holland Hopson, one of our ASAC co-founders, who is moving southwards.  Featured performers will be:

BEN MILLER - alto sax, tapes, the zoo, voice and projection in support of a new release on Living Records. Ben has performed at ASAC a few other times, and was formerly a member of Destroy All Monsters, Sproton Layer, and other units. He's one of the best out there, and you shouldn't miss this performance.

HOLLAND HOPSON - one of the founding ASAC members, and an incredible multi-instrumentalist. This will be Holland's last performance as a local Albany resident. He's moving to Alabama (you know the rest of the song, right?!?), so this will be your best opportunity to see him live before he skips town.

BARN OWL - amazing trio of improvising musicians extraordinaire. Matt Weston on drums/percussion, Andy Crespo on bass, and Chris Cooper on prepare guitar/electronics. You're always in for a treat with these guys.

CLAYMATION - solo electric guitar improvisation from C. Baird Buchanan. We're excited to have Baird bring his solo project to ASAC for the first time.

SATURDAY JUNE 16th
UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
247 Lark Street 
Albany, NY

8PM Sharp!!
5$ donation suggested for touring musicians

SEE YOU THERE!

SUNDAY 5/20 = Joseph Hammer / LA Lakers / Case / Rambutan !!

Join us on Sunday May 20th for yet another astounding night of strange and wonderful music, featuring experimental music legend Joseph Hammer! 


JOSEPH HAMMER 

LA LAKERS 

CASE 

RAMBUTAN


           at the 

UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
8pm on Sunday 5/20
247 Lark St. Albany, NY

Joseph Hammer has actively created experimental works since 1980 as a member of the LAFMS collective. His practice draws on the complexities of the process of listening and playing, reflecting on the role of the audience versus the performer, and uses music as it influences our notion of time, memory and intimacy as the basis for improvisation and abstraction. In various collaborations, solo, and as a founding member of the trio Solid Eye along with several other projects (Joe & Joe, Dinosaurs With Horns, Dimmer, Points of Friction), Hammer has performed widely and is an influential contributor to the Los Angeles underground scene.

Jack Wright/Evan Lipson/Johan Nystrom!!

Join us on Sunday May 6th for an incredible night of music + poetry! 8pm on Sunday 5/6 Upstate Artists Guild 247 Lark St. Albany, NY Jack Wright, alto and soprano saxes, Easton PA Evan Lipson, double bass, Brooklyn Johan Nystrom, drums, Philadelphia Michael Peters will also be reading poetry. Jack Wright was a soprano choir boy and a marching band saxophonist in the fifties, a bluegrass washtub bassist in the early sixties, a university lecturer in history, and a revolutionist in the late sixties and seventies. Since then he has been playing freely improvised saxophone, touring the US and Europe, and has been dubbed "the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone --to support the tottering universe. His roots are in Philly, where he owns a house for wayward improvisers (Johan Nystrom is one of them and Evan used to be). Jack plays with everyone but performs and tours only with the finest, which usually means the most obscure, from Europe and the US. He and his partners are among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship. www.springgardenmusic.com Evan Lipson (b. 1981) has been active as a bassist, composer, and improviser since adolescence, now living in Brooklyn. From Philly (like a great portion of the best musicians). In an on-going pursuit of all things occult and aberrant, Lipson acquired an early interest in the latral realms of visionary & experimental music -- quickly seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. This particular 'left-hand path' has afforded him the opportunity to work in a wide variety of contexts and styles (esoteric and otherwise); his formative experiences being primarily rooted in modernist composition, underground rock, jazz, outsider pop, noise, as well as various modes of improvisation. Johan Nystrom is a drummer working with sound and things he finds on the street. Activities since 2005 include playing high concept composition in a large orchestra for pirate TV, gamelan, amplified food, and countless free improvisation solos and groups. He has developed a range of extended percussion techniques that have more to do with electro acoustic and microtonal musics than paradiddles, but he refuses to relinquish the musicality of simple sticks and skins. Rather than dissociate these two elements, he plays a traditional kit but with a jerky, polyphonic fluidity to move as if he played a pitched instrument: the drum is a voice. He has been active on the East Coast, USA (Pittsburgh to Philly) and in London, U.K.

Wed. 4/18 @ VALENTINE's!!

ASAC folks,

please join us on Wed. April 18th at VALENTINE's MUSIC CLUB for a fantastic night of music, featuring:

DISAPPEARS (members of the Ponys and SONIC YOUTH!)
LOTUS PLAZA (solo project from Deerhunter guitarist)
LOCATION ENSEMBLE (multiple guitar ensemble featuring many ASAC members!

8pm start - get there early to see all the sets!

Valentine's
17 New Scotland Ave.
Albany

Suzanne Thorpe returns! With Philip Greenlief!

Saturday April 7th 8:00pm

Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. in Albany

ASAC presents Suzanne Thorpe & Phillip Greenlief at the UAG gallery. More info to come.

West Coast saxophonist Phillip Greenlief visits New York, and mixes it up with East Coast electroacoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe. Together they explore what it sounds like when warm winds of the west meet cool breezes of the northeast, and the spaces in between, with electronics, singalongs, and improvisations.

We'll also be unveiling new chairs for "enhanced listening comfort" (TM) complete with music for amplified folding chair.

Plus one more act TBA!

Collective DRONE event - join us!!

On March 7th, join us at the ARTS CENTER OF THE CAPITAL REGION in TROY (265 River St.) for a collective DRONE event!

Bring an instrument and spend some time making drone-music together.

7pm start time

Hope to see you there!

RANGDA + CENTURY PLANTS!!!

ALBANY SONIC ARTS COLLECTIVE, in partnership with WCDB Albany is proud to announce....

Monday Feb. 27th in Albany, NY - the mighty RANGDA (Drag City Recording artists), featuring SIR RICHARD BISHOP, CHRIS CORSANO, and BEN CHASNY! Three musicians of the highest caliber you're likely to find anywhere on the globe. Don't miss these gentlemen on the opening night of a rare minitour of the Northeast. Rangda, the child-eating demon queen of Balinese mythology, finds a sonic voice via the epic, thrashing jammerisms of Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and the incredible Chris Corsano.

Special opening guest will be Albany's own CENTURY PLANTS, providing their take on guitar-centric noisy psychedelia, with guest Phil Donnelly sitting in on drums!

RANGDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hudHpfUbuuI&feature=related

CENTURY PLANTS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xm2gUZpr6Q

Monday Feb. 27 @ 7:30 PM
Valentine's
17 New Scotland Ave.
Albany NY

See you there!

HUGE EVENT to HELP SAVE the UAG!!!

JOIN US FOR THIS INCREDIBLE EVENT!!!

To help save the Upstate Artists’ Guild, an essential resource for the Capital Region’s art and music scenes, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is proud to present a showcase event, featuring an array of local performers in the Albany area’s improvised and experimental music world. Now in its 5th year of programming exciting and innovative music in the Capital Region, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective wants to officially thank and give back to the Upstate Artists Guild, which has so generously helped support and develop the local music community.

Sunday January 29th, 2012
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY
4:00PM - 10:00PM
$5 suggested donation.


All donations at the door, and all proceeds from merchandise sales will benefit the Upstate Artists Guild!! Special raffles/doorprizes too!

On Sunday January 29th at 4PM sharp, ASAC will present an extravaganza of local experimental music talent in new and fascinating configurations.

Highlights will include:

* Century Plants performing Spacemen 3’s DREAMWEAPON in its entirety

* Jason Cosco & Asa Morris premiering a new duo project, CONTINENTS

* Holland Hopson transforming the gallery’s front windows into loudspeakers

* Pete Edwards (Casper Electronics)

* Nonhorse (G. Lucas Crane)

* Parashi

* Jefferson Pitcher

* Shape Shifting Shepherds

* soundBarn

* Matt Weston both solo and with Insect Posse

* Plus surprise guests!

Video projections by 1983 (Jason Cosco) will be displayed during the event.

Facing a financial challenge in the coming year, the UAG is in danger of losing its current gallery space. UAG president Rebecca Schoonmaker Finnen has issued a call for support: “We need to generate a continuous flow of money from as many sources as possible so that our organization can continue to keep a roof over its head.”

ASAC and UAG have worked together since 2007 to provide a regular space for audiences to experience a wide range of musical styles not represented by other area venues. Some of the many memorable performers ASAC has brought to Albany include:
- Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore
- legendary music critic Byron Coley
- former member of 70s punk pioneers Destroy All Monsters, Ben Miller
- former member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, trumpeter & composer Arthur Brooks
- acoustic guitar virtuoso Jack Rose
- Chinese sound artist Yan Jun
In November of 2008, ASAC and UAG hosted the marathon River of Drone, producing a continuous 12-hour drone of sound.

About the Albany Sonic Arts Collective:
The Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is a grassroots organization dedicated to building a thriving community of listeners and performers of music that exists outside of traditional boundaries. The Collective supports a wide variety of music and sonic art forms, with an emphasis on those that stress freedom and exploration of new ideas. Styles include free improvisation, drone, noise, electroacoustic improvisation, electronic music, avant jazz, and many others. ASAC have been presenting regularly since November 2007. The Albany Times Union called ASAC a “sonic bright spot” of the Capital District arts scene. In 2011 ASAC celebrated the 99th birthday of composer John Cage, with 99 consecutive performances of Cage’s seminal “silent” composition 4’ 33” followed by an evening length performance of Cage’s music.

Sunday January 29th, 2012
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY
4:00PM - 10:00PM
Donations at the door and proceeds from merchandise sales to benefit the Upstate Artists Guild