UAG has been a welcome host for many Albany Sonic Arts Collective performances and plays a similarly vital role for many other grass-roots arts organizations and presenters. UAG has also been an important force behind the First Friday events. Support UAG today.

The Albany Sonic Arts Collective presents improvised and experimental music from Beijing and Chicago.

Yan Jun & the Matt Weston – Dan Godston Duo
Thursday, March 24
8:00 pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

Yan Jun uses feedback noise in his concerts. He also engages in field recording, site-specific sound art, voice, writing and publishing. He is the founder of Sub Jam/Kwanyin Records, which runs the weekly event Waterland Kwanyin (2005-2010) and annual festival Mini Midi.
http://www.yanjun.org/

Dan Godston teaches, composes music, and plays the trumpet and other instruments in Chicago. He works with the Borderbend Arts Collective to make the annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival happen. Chicago Calling provides opportunities for Chicago based artists to collaborate with artists living in other locations around the world.
http://dangodston.bandcamp.com/

Matt Weston plays percussion and electronics, and has worked with Arthur Brooks, Bill Dixon, Kevin Drumm and, most recently, has collaborated with Century Plants.
http://www.mattweston.com/

The Albany Sonic Arts Collective presents their first concert of 2011 with performances by some of the Capital Region’s most exciting experimental musicians including Century Plants with Matt Weston, Holland Hopson, SoundBarn and Insect Posse.

DEEP FREEZE: Experimental Music for Snowy Times
Saturday, February 19
8:00 pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

This will be my first Albany show of 2011 and my last performance before heading to the Atlantic Center for the Arts for a residency with David Behrman (more on that later…). I’ll be performing a set of music for soprano sax and computer. My current plan includes a piece using a DIY plate reverb as the primary electronic sound source.

More about the artists after the jump…

About Century Plants:
ASAC members Eric Hardiman and Ray Hare have been collaborating for years as Century Plants, utilizing voice, guitar, and complex electronics setups to create haunting, evocative works.  For this performance, they will be joined by Matt Weston on percussion and electronics, sure to add a new layer of intrigue.
For more information http://www.myspace.com/centuryplants and
http://www.mattweston.com/

About Holland Hopson:
Named by Metroland as the area’s “Best Retro-Futurist,” composer Holland Hopson will present a set of his typically challenging work in a rare solo appearance on soprano saxophone and electronics. Holland is preparing for an upcoming three week residency with composer and live electronics pioneer David Behrman at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna, Florida.
For more information http://hollandhopson.com

About SoundBarn:
soundBarn (Thomas Lail and Patrick Weklar) use heavily processed and prepared guitar to construct ad-hoc compositions that span the space from spare, minimal soundscapes to full-on noise with ever-shifting rhythms, pace and moods.

soundBarn has recently collaborated with Albany Sonic Arts Collective on full-length performances of Rhys Chatham’s famed “Guitar Trio” as well as performances at The soundBarn—a project of artist/musician Lail and artist/gallerist Tara Fracalossi located on what was once Heald Orchards in Valatie, New York.

Lail formerly performed with the experimental trio Lukomski/Majer/Lail  whose improvised sound Metroland weekly recommended ”for those who are turned way on by the gloriously weird guitarscapes of Sonic Youth’s late ’90s SYR recordings, or the dreamy, sometimes atonal soundwaves of Hovercraft…”  Both Lail and Weklar were founding members of the long-ago Albany post-punk band The Fauves.
For more information http://www.soundbarn.blogspot.com

About Insect Posse:
Insect Posse are the prolific and inscrutable Mark Lunt and Chris Bassett, purveyors of noisy yet hypnotic hymns to other worlds of nothingness. This will be their first official ASAC appearance.
For more information http://www.myspace.com/insectposse

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. In 2008 the Albany Times Union called ASAC a “sonic bright spot” of the Capital District arts scene.

Friday October 8 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

Robert Millis of the Climax Golden Twins will perform solo, and will also present a brand new Sublime Frequencies film, called “This World is Unreal Like A Snake in a Rope.”

Parashi is the solo project of Mike Griffin–microphones, pedals, tapes, synthesizers, guitar, metal bowl, washboard, tin box, tin whistle, noise generator, and more.

Saturday May 29 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

More about the artists after the break…PINE SMOKE LODGE = Matt McKeever and Hillary Dickerson from Portland, Maine. From Stunned Records: “Together Pine Smoke Lodge summit snowy banks of acoustical drone in ever-ascendant strides of bowed & plucked strings, icicle bells & xylophone, and heat-generating vocal mantra. The trail they follow is never steep, but vista-revealing peaks are reached in good order. Bookended between two stretches of sparkling activity comes a middle passage where one feels the clock has frozen as solidly as the ground underfoot. Such moments of palpable harmonic stasis trickle throughout ‘Haligdaeg’, making the climb worth it every time.”

CRUUDEUCES = Nate Brennan from North Adams, MA. Nate’s played ASAC before, when he dazzled with a clarinet and electronics set. It’s anyone’s guess what surprises Nate will pull out for this set, but we’re sure it’ll be amazing. Recent releases on Tape Drift and Kimberly Dawn Recordings, as well as live sets all over the Northeast. Not to be missed!

GRAB ASS COWBOYS = Jason, Christian, plus assorted others always deliver the noise goods at ASAC. We’ve seen them get impossibly better and better each time they perform, displaying increasing levels of instrumental and vocal prowess. Secret Albany treasures.

JEFFERSON PITCHER – Final ASAC performance (as a local, we hope he’ll be back to visit). He’s off to live in Canada, so come give a hearty farewell to this AMAZING guitarist. He has performed and recorded with many artists including Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Scott Amendola, Christian Kiefer, J. Matthew Gerken, Denison Witmer, Sarah Weaver, Mark Dresser, Mike Bullock, Tim Keiper, David Gibson, Kristina Forester, Ron Guensche & many more. He has twice found himself on NPR’s All Things Considered and has been well reviewed by the likes of Pitchfork and Harp Magazine. While much of his work explores free improvisation he also draws heavily from his love for melody, the simplicity of minimalist composers, a long love 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.

Ben Miller

Doug Van Nort

Albany Sonic Arts Presents Ben Miller/Doug Van Nort Duo, Barn Owl and Shape Shifting Shepherds

Saturday May 1 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

More about the artists after the break.

Ben Miller was a member of legendary Michigan proto-punks Destroy All Monsters with ex-MC5 bassist Michael Davis and ex-Stooges guitarist
Ron Asheton.  His intuitive approach to creating a multiphonic soundscapes features a deconstructed electric guitar modified with multiple pickups. First used in the Michigan art band GKW in 1982 and then with Chicago’s Dirty Old Man River in the mid-90‘s, Miller focuses on a textural, cacophonic amalgamation that defies standard guitar playing. With the addition of electronics and analog tape, it is difficult to discern where any one sound originates or where it is heading.

“If new expressionists closed their eyes and painted what they saw
then Ben Miller must be taping shut his ears and playing what he
hears…blood thrashing through arteries, nerves popping, synapses
burning,.. Formerly a part of the ‘anti-rock band’ Destroy All
Monsters, Miller takes the ‘anti’ idea a step further.” — Detroit
Metro Times

For this performance, Ben will be performing with Doug Van Nort, local sound artist and Pauline Oliveros collaborator.

Since their formation in 1999, Barn Owl has been one of Western Massachusetts’ most enduring and intriguing musical institutions.
Foxy Digitalis called them “fantastic. There’s all sorts of cut-up and manipulated electronic and synthesized sounds mixed in with the drums
and bass. It’s disorienting at times, like being totally smashed and hanging your head over the toilet waiting to puke.”  Between them, the
three members of Barn Owl (guitarist Chris Cooper, bassist Andy Crespo, and percussionist Matt Weston) have played with such luminaries as Paul Flaherty, Smog, and Fat Worm of Error, among others.

Hailing from Saratoga Springs, Shape Shifting Shepherds have crossed many fields to bring you improvisational herds of sonic sounds. They
are a duo who wander through aural soundscapes seeking to share their discoveries through experimentation. Up their collective sleeve is a mixture of analog and digital crooks used for milking the bulbous teat of uncertainty.

Saturday April 10th
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

8PM
Suggested Donation $5 (all proceeds go to touring performers)

This concert features Finnish- based composer/sound artist Marko Timlin alongside thenumber46, the collaborative effort of electro-acoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe and electronic musician Philip White. Both Timlin and thenumber46 employ improvisation and non-linear analog systems to create music in which a delicate balance exists between the human and machine. A music at once intuitive and mechanical. Explosive and subdued. Violent and meditative.

More about the artists after the jump.

Marko Timlin is a Helsinki-based sound artist, composer, musician and inventor of virtual and analogue instruments. He has developed an intuitive interaction with electronic media, creating his own unconventional sound adventures in an improvisational context challenging to both the ear and the mind. Maintaining a delicate balance between order and chaos, his music happens in real-time, often surprising the artist as well as audience. His performances are effectively a dialog between man and machine.

Timlin founded the Berlin-based group tritop with Antye and Jotka of Laub, with whom he released 2 CDs and a Vinyl-maxi on INFRACOM records. His collaborations include Merja Nieminen, Kristina Frei (Zeit_Raum), Klaus Janek, Pink Twins and Petri Kuljuntausta (Helsinki Invasion), NewImproMasters, Laub, Tarwater, Rope, Foo Fanick and the 17 Hippies. He has toured extensively throughout Europe with his “Sensor-Sound-Machine” instrument.

thenumber46 push and coax feedback systems, physically and psychologically, into ultimate audible terrains, extracting sonic extremes from their instruments and themselves. Consisting of Suzanne Thorpe on flute and electronics and Philip White on electronic feedback, the duo improvise on the precipice of unpredictable sounds, exploiting the volatile and explosive in their music. They have toured throughout the U.S., performing at galleries and venues including the Fractal Mind Gaze Hut, Oakland, CA; OK Mountain, Austin, TX; Redux Contemporary Art Studios, Charleston, SC; Monkeytown, Brooklyn, NY; The Stone, NYC; and the Pyramid Atlantic, MD. Their recording, “bleach and ammonia”, was recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, CA, and recently released in limited-edition cassette format on Tape Drift Records.

Suzanne Thorpe is a composer, improviser, educator and curator. She has performed with Chris Brown, David Dove, Annette Krebs, Maggie Nicols, BhobRainey, Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Zeena Parkins, Ulrich Krieger and more at places such as Issue Project Room (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Diapason (NYC), the Activating the Medium Festival (SF), the No Idea Festival (Austin), etc. In another life, she is a founding member of Mercury Rev, with whom she worked from 1989 – 2001, a member of The Wounded Knees and can be heard from time-to-time mucking it up with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., all three of whom she played with at 2009′s All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Nightmare Before Christmas in England.

Philip White’s performances center on a non-linear feedback system, which consists of a mixer and several homemade circuits. In addition to his work with analog and digital electronics, White has written extensively for chamber ensembles and created a large body of inter-media pieces that explore meaning in information transmission. His works have been exhibited in galleries across the US and Germany. In addition his solo performances he currently works with Suzanne Thorpe (thenumber46), Chuck Johnson (with chuck johnson with philip white) and Ryan Talman. Recent and upcoming performances/exhibitions include Bent Festival 2010, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Diapason (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Sonic Circuits (DC), Redux New Media Festival (Charleston, SC) and Galerie Neurotitan (Berlin). Philip was recently awarded a Meet the Composer Creative Connections grant.

Albany Sonic Arts Presents Lucre and Jonathan Chen

Sunday March 14 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

• Lucre is the improvising trio of Chris Cogburn , Bryan Eubanks, and Vic Rawlings who perform with exposed circuits, extended ampli?ed cello, low-? modular synthesis, and stripped down percussion.
• Jonathan Chen will perform a solo set of music for electronics, viola and violin.

Chris is a good friend from my Austin days and does great work with the No Idea Festival. I’m very excited he’ll be playing in Albany. And I’m equally excited that local artist Jonathan Chen is finally getting a chance to present his work.

More information about the artists after the break…

About Lucre

Working with exposed circuits, extended ampli?ed cello, low-? modular synthesis, and
stripped down percussion, Lucre, the trio of Chris Cogburn (Austin, TX), Bryan Eubanks
(Brooklyn, NY), and Vic Rawlings (Boston, MA), come together for the ?rst time to de-
velop their music for ten days in the Northeast. Long standing duo work exist between
all three and the idea for a trio came about during a gathering of musicians in Seattle
during August of 2009.

Vic Rawlings and Bryan Eubanks are familiar to Albany audiences through two previous
Albany Sonic Arts appearances. Chris Cogburn is making his Capital District debut.
Cogburn is based in Austin, TX where he presents the No Idea Festival, an annual
gathering dedicated to improvised music.

About Jonathan Chen

Jonathan Chen will perform a solo set of music for electronics, viola and violin. The
electronic work is created by producing feedback through a trumpet: a small micro-
phone is positioned in place of the mouthpiece and a small speaker is set next to
the bell. The feedback is altered by pressing or releasing the valves on the trumpet and
by ?ltering the frequencies via equalization and volume control on both an ampli?er and
a mixer. The work for viola, entitled “de-clime” involves the use of a metal mute placed
lightly on the bridge, coupled with bowing while changing pressure and speed. The re-
sulting sounds include difference tones and beating as the pitches gradually move
higher throughout the duration of the 15 minute work. The works for violin focus on tim-
bre and pitch while employing extended techniques such as preparations, sub-tones,
and micro-spiccatto. A wide variety of sounds are produced at dynamic extremes.

Born in 1974, Jonathan Chen is an improvisor, composer, and installation artist. His solo
work has  been presented in cities such as Atlanta, Beijing, Berlin, Chicago, London,
Luzern, New York and more. As a collaborator, Chen has worked with Tatsu Aoki, An-
thony Braxton, Gene Coleman, Nic Collins, Bill Dixon, Ensemble Noamnesia, Flux
String Quartet, David Grubbs, Alvin Lucier, John Zorn (brie?y) and many others, per-
forming both in the U.S. and internationally. Chen received his MM in Violin Perform-
ance from Northwestern University, his MA in Music Composition from Wesleyan Uni-
versity, and is currently working on his PhD in Electronic Arts at RPI in Troy, NY.

Jason Cosco was kind enough to post a video of me performing Wichita Mind Control for bent electronics with MaxMSP at the Upstate Artist’s Guild Gallery last April. This was the premiere performance of the piece. Though my pieces often changes incrementally (or sometimes substantially) as I continue to perform them, this first shot at WMC still feels definitive to me.

Here’s audio of the same performance (previously posted here)

Wichita Mind Control – Estate Capital

Saturday October 24 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

• Ben Miller plays sax, guitar, and analog electronics and was formerly in legendary Michigan group Destroy All Monsters.
• Matt Weston lives in Albany and is the newest member of the Albany Sonic Arts Collective.  He’s an amazing percussionist and if you haven’t seen him play yet, you’re in for a treat.
• Andy Crespo is from Western MA. and plays in Barn Owl with Matt (and Chris Cooper).  he plays bass in ways that will expand your mind.
• Jefferson Pitcher lives in Troy and is an accomplished guitarist who has released albums on a variety of labels with collaborators Christian Kiefer, J. Matthew Gerken, and others.
• Sam Sowydra recently moved to Albany. He is a percussionist and multi-instrumentalist who also performs as part of Baltimore musician Dan Deacon’s ensemble.
• Cruudeuces is the solo project of Nathaniel Brennan of North Adams, MA. He has also recorded with Twin Beds and has a slew of new releases out soon on a variety of labels.