Next ASAC event = SAT. April 25th!!

ASAC returns on THURS. April 16th!

Don't worry - we haven't disappeared. We're all happy to announce that ASAC is back and ready to begin shows again at the Upstate Artists Guild. We're super happy to be back in action with some exciting shows coming up for spring and summer.

Mark your calendars for this one now!!

THURSDAY APRIL 16th
8pm
UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

Albany Sonic Arts Collective presents

AREA C

MUDBOY

HOLLAND HOPSON

MORE ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:

Area C is Erik Carlson, a composer, media artist and architect based in Providence, RI. His work examines sound as an evocative presence, often acting as a marker, in the physical and mental spaces we inhabit. Since 2002 he has been recording and performing under the name AREA C, whose compositions work with timbre, texture and live loops, exploring cyclical relationships and the details of their decay over time. Improvisation plays an important part in both recordings and live performances, encompassing extended explorations of minimal rhythm and melody, drawing on remnants of other times and places, outdated and untested technologies, signals sent out but never received

Mudboy is also from Providence RI, and has been described as a "doctor of experimental organomics", a patch-cable conjurer, and a shadowy avant provocateur. Musically he casts a hypnotic spell that should not be missed.

Holland Hopson is a founding member of ASAC. He is also a composer, improviser and electronic artist. As an instrumentalist, he performs on soprano saxaphone, clawhammer banjo, and electronics. He has performed at ASAC numerous times, and each time has wowed audiences with his musical mastery. He was last seen swimming in the "River of Drone", a 12-hour live drone performance at the Upstate Artists Guild in November 2008.

SATURDAY Feb. 7th event!

Hope you can all make it to this one. Stay tuned for details on ASAC-sponsored shows happening EVERY Saturday in February too.

first show of 2009!!

yes, that's right - we are back and ready to bring on 2009 in style! More details soon, but here's the basic scoop:

Albany Sonic Arts Collective Presents...

TRAUMA
HERONS
SLEEPY DEMONS
TWILIGHT of the CENTURY

WEDNESDAY January 28th
doors 7:30, music 8pm (Sharp)
247 Lark St. Albany, NY
UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
$5 suggested donation

Trauma is the duo of Ben Hall + Chris Riggs from Michigan. Ben also plays drums with Graveyards (featuring John Olson of Wolf Eyes). Chris is a serious guitar shredder. Together, they create powerful, post-free jazz and punk informed music that could be described as DISCHARGE meets AMM, with a healthy dose of Morroccan Gnawa trance music thrown in. Not to be missed!

Herons hail from Annandale-on-Hudson (ie Bard College) just down the river. They make wonderful sonic stews that one might descibe as psychedelic, hypnotic, heavy, deep, and utterly engaging. They often perform with excellent multimedia video projections.

Sleepy Demons are from Hudson and feature musicians who have played ASAC before in the past year (Cyrus Gengras, Jeremy Kelly). An amazing amalgam of talent, they dabble in drone, noise, psychedelia, homemade electronics, and much much more.

Twilight of the Century is the resident ASAC collaborative group of Linda Aubry Bullock, Mike Bullock, Ray Hare, and Eric Hardiman. They each play in several other projects, but together they conjure a unique blend of improvised and often atmposhpheric doom-laden beauty.

Should be a fun night - come help us start the year off right. Only a $5 donation.

see you wed. 1/28!

RIVER of THANKS!

Thanks to everyone who performed and/or attended our RIVER of DRONE event. We had an incredible time, and it was a great experience for all of us. We will see you all in 2009 with lots more exciting events!

Here's a great composite shot from the event, courtesy of Chris Harvey. Thanks Chris!

A RIVER of DRONE -- Sat. Nov. 22

Hey everyone - hope you can all stop by for any part of this great event. We'll be there from noon to midnight, and the sound will be continuously evolving, so pop in when you can! And if you're really adventuresome, why not stay for the whole thing and experience something very rare in live music!!

ALBANY SONIC ARTS COLLECTIVE presents a celebration of its first anniversary. Come join us as we offer a 12-hour continuous live drone performance:

A RIVER OF DRONE

The Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY
Saturday Nov. 22, 2008
12 Noon Until Midnight
Free


Capping off a compelling first year of performances that ranged from the intensely quiet Berlin sound master Andrea Neumann to the roaring noise of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, with many stops in between, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is proud to present our first anniversary celebration at the Upstate Artists Guild. For this very special event, several ASAC sound and video artists will be collaborating live to create an immersive sonic and visual environment. The "drone" is a part of life, from the constant hum of electricity to the constant rush of traffic around us. Music from all parts of the globe has drawn inspiration from the sounds found in drones. In celebration of the universal harmonic power of drones, the ASAC musicians will conjure a continuous river of sound, building on sustained tones and repetition.

Inspired by LaMonte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music and Dream House installation, along with the music of Charlemagne Palestine, Phill Niblock, and others, the goal is to develop a musical vehicle for immersion, reflection, deep listening, meditation, and concentration. Video projections throughout the gallery will accompany the ongoing music. Attendees are encouraged to bring pillows, chairs, and snacks, and to stay for as little or as long as they would like. Unlike a traditional performance, performers will be located throughout the gallery, and may move during the performance in order to explore subtle acoustic phenomena. Attendees are also encouraged to walk around, enjoy the art on the walls, watch the video projections, and discover new relationships to the sound in the drone.

The collectively summoned drone will be harmonically rich and full of mysteries for the listener to discover. By presenting a 12 hour continuous performance, the music will unfold and develop in an evolutionary way unlike any ordinary concert. Parts of the drone will be quiet, others will be loud; parts will be relatively still, while others will be dynamic. Such diversity mirrors the range of sound we experience in the world every day.

We hope you will join us to meditate, listen, self-hypnotize, bliss out, or simply enjoy a swim in the RIVER OF DRONE!

Musicians:
Eric Hardiman
Ray Hare
Holland Hopson
Jason Cosco
Michael T. Bullock
Linda Aubry Bullock

Video:
Jason Cosco
Roy Buckley
Michael T. Bullock
More TBA

Sat. Nov. 1 in Saratoga = MV/EE + Wovoka!!

While you're waiting for the next ASAC event (Nov. 22, by the way), why not stop up to Saratoga this weekend to see MV/EE and Albany group Wovoka?!?

Saratoga Arts Center (right at the corner of the park)
320 Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY
8PM
$5 to get in

Great venue, great music, great time. Be there!

Next ASAC event = SAT. Oct. 25!!

Don't worry, we haven't gone away! We're very happy to announce the next monthly ASAC show at the UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD at 247 Lark St. in Albany. It's this coming Saturday, October 25th, and we've decided what better way to spend the evening than to celebrate Glenn Tipton's Birthday and everything else that is great about Autumn.

COME JOIN US! On tap, we'll have:

* Holland Hopson (the dynamic chimeric), banjo and electronics (Albany)
* Aaron Phillip Tate (Ithaca's finest, his first Albany appearance!)
* Twilight of the Century (Albany/Troy)
* Cyrus Gengras (Hudson's Antique Brother and Sleepy Demon)

Twilight of the Century = Century Plants (Eric Hardiman and Ray Hare) PLUS rise set twilight (Mike Bullock and Linda Aubry Bullock). This will be their second appearance at UAG, and it's bound to be a scorcher.

Doors at 7:30, music at 8:00.
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany

TUESDAY 9/30 @ VALENTINE's!!!!

hi again everyone! Last Saturday's show was amazing - we were really happy with how everything turned out. BIG thanks to Steve Pierce and the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy for letting us collaborate with them. And an even bigger thanks to Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, and Peter Evans, who put on a beautiful set, as did the Empty Cage Quartet.

On to the next thing now! We're presenting an unusual show outside of our normal monthly events on Tuesday Sept. 30th. This one will be at Valentine's on New Scotland Avenue in Albany. We really hope you can be there - it's going to be a great night of music, only $5 too!!

It'll be the first Valentine's appearance for Century Plants, featuring ASAC's Ray Hare and Eric Hardiman. Blues Control are an amazing psychedelic duo from Brooklyn, with an LP on Woodsist and an upcoming one on Siltbreeze. Psychedelic Horseshit hail from Ohio, have graced the pages of Spin Magazine, and apparently stole the show from everybody at SXSW in Austin, TX. Finally, Pink Reason also come from NYC and they offer a fantastic and unique take on garage rock.

So the sounds will range from deconstructed, shambling garage rock to lo-fi pop nuggets (think early pavement or GBV!) to trippy psychedelia to raging cathartic drones. And I'm sure there will be plenty of stops in between.

Definitely another ASAC event not to miss! Holler if you have any questions...

BLUES CONTROL
PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT
PINK REASON
CENTURY PLANTS

VALENTINE's in Albany
17 New Scotland Ave.
TUES. 9/30 at 7pm

SEE YOU THERE!!

SEPT. 20 EVENT!!!!

It's that time again, and it's big news. For the first time ever, ASAC will be co-presenting an event with the amazing Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. We could not be more thrilled about this, and hope you will all make it across the river for this extraordinary show! The Sanctuary has been one of our inspirations in starting ASAC this past year, and the chance to combine forces for this night will be great!!

Here's the scoop:

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A double feature showcasing:

the Empty Cage Quartet (Los Angeles) and
the Weasel Walter Trio (Oakland, CA)

The Sanctuary for Independent Media
3361 6th Avenue in north Troy (at 101st Street).

The Empty Cage Quartet will perform at 8 PM; the Weasel Walter Trio begins at 10 PM. Admission for the all-ages show is $10.

Call (518) 272-2390, email info@MediaSanctuary.org, or visit www.MediaSanctuary.org for directions and more information.

SEE YOU THERE!!!! Some information on these amazing musicians follows:

EMPTY CAGE QUARTET

The Empty Cage Quartet has consistently been praised as one of the most powerful and original new jazz groups to emerge from the American West Coast. For nearly six years the group has explored imaginative new ways to integrate a diverse mix of musical influences ranging from shuffle swing to free jazz blowouts, minimalist
percussion loops to complex modernist gestures, robotic grooves, odd- meter marches, heavy rock, and nearly everything in between. Performances of this music involve an elaborate system of on-stage cues to navigate the flow of improvisation in, around, and out of modular compositional structures designed to cycle, overlap, combine
and recombine. The result is a continually evolving, multidimensional approach to jazz and new music performance, improvisational acuity, and compositional craft that Amazing Sounds Magazine has likened to an "urban folk music of the future."

The Empty Cage Quartet has toured extensively in the Western United States and in Canada and Europe, and they have received support from the American Composers Forum, the International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM), and Chamber Music America’s French-American Jazz Exchange. To date they have released six CD recordings that have been featured on jazz radio stations around the world and reviewed favorably in publications including Signal to Noise, The Wire, All About Jazz, Cadence Magazine, Jazz Hot, Paris Transatlantic Magazine, LA Weekly, Tucson Weekly, and Stride Magazine. Stratostrophic, their most recent album, is out now on the Clean Feed label, and in September they will make their New York City debut with a concert at
the Living Theatre co-sponsored by Clean Feed Festival III and the Sixth Annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT).

Instrumentation
Jason Mears - alto saxophone, clarinet, flutes
Kris Tiner - trumpet, flugelhorn
Ivan Johnson - double bass
Paul Kikuchi - drums, percussion, electronics


WEASEL WALTER TRIO

A drummer whose current material straddles the many lines between punk, free jazz, no wave, improv, and much more, Weasel Walter will be playing with Mary Halvorson on guitar and Peter Evans on trumpet.

Weasel Walter (born Christopher Todd Walter in Rockford, Illinois) is a composer and instrumentalist who founded the band The Flying Luttenbachers in Chicago in 1991 with late jazz cult figure Hal Russell. Over the years, the band has included noted Chicago musicians such as Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Dylan Posa, while creating an uncompromising and mercurial body of abstract music drawing equally from no wave, death metal, free jazz, gamelan, noise music, hardcore punk and modern classical. Walter relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, where he formed the latest of many Luttenbachers lineups, remaining on percussion with
the addition of bassist Mike Green (Burmese), and virtuoso guitarist Ed Rodriguez (ex-Colossamite, Gorge Trio). Singular guitar phenomenon Mick Barr (Octis, Orthrelm) joined the group in 2005. The Flying Luttenbachers ceased to operate in late 2007. In addition to leading various free jazz ensembles under his own name, currently he is a member of XBXRX and Burmese.


Before relocating to the West Coast, Walter was a major contributor to the Chicago no-wave/noise/improvised music underground during the '90s and early 2000s. During this period, he performed as a founding member of bands such as The Flying Luttenbachers, Miss High Heel (with Jim O'Rourke and Azita of The Scissor Girls), Lake of Dracula (with Marlon Magas and Heather M. of the Scissor Girls), To Live and Shave in L.A. 2, and Hatewave (replacing founder Nandor Nevai) among others. Walter has collaborated with artists like Marlon Magas and Jim O’Rourke, Tom Smith in To Live and Shave in L.A., Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith, Vinny Golia, Joe Morris, Frank Gratkowski, William Winant and Ken Vandermark as well as many influential underground rock bands including Bobby Conn, U.S. Maple, Cock E.S.P., Curse of
the Birthmark, the Scissor Girls, Erase Errata, The Chicago Sound, Harry Pussy, Quintron, Sharon Cheslow, and Cheer-Accident, in addition to producing albums by the Coachwhips, Burmese, Total Shutdown, Arab on Radar and Glenn Branca.

Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival
Hall, Leo Records) and Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline, John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega and Jason Moran. Current projects which Mary composes for and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica Pavone (On and Off, Skirl Records, 2007); The Mary Halvorson Trio with John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant- rock band People (Misbegotten Man, I & Ear Records, 2007). She also performs regularly in ensembles led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady, Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.

Peter Evans is an American trumpet player based in New York, who specializes in improvisation and avant-garde music. Evans has been a member of the New York City musical community since 2003, when he moved to the city after graduating from The Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Peter currently works in a wide variety of areas, including solo performance, chamber orchestras, performance art, free improvised settings, electro-acoustic music and composition. In addition, he performs regularly as part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, which is held annually in New York City.

Local presentation of the Empty Cage Quartet and the Weasel Walter Trio is co-sponsored by the Arts Department at RPI and Albany Sonic Arts Collective, made possible by volunteer labor, small financial contributions from hundreds of patrons of The Sanctuary For Independent Media and support from the New York State Music Fund.

The Sanctuary for Independent Media is a community media arts center located in an historic former church in Troy, NY. The venue is an intimate and acoustically excellent space which seats about 150. The Sanctuary hosts screening, production and performance facilities, training in media production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds.

# # #

Empty Cage Quartet website:
http://www.myspace.com/emptycagequartet

Weasel Walter website:
http://www.myspace.com/weaselwalter

Mary Halvorson website:
http://www.maryhalvorson.com/

Peter Evans website:
http://www.myspace.com/peterevanstrumpet