(HUDSON, N.Y.) – The second annual 24-Hour Drone: Experiments in Sound and Music festival takes place at Basilica Hudson beginning Saturday, April 23, at 3pm and running through Sunday, April 24, at 3pm. The immersive event – featuring musicians and sound artists experimenting within the spectrum of drone, which are sustained tones shaped by voice or instrumentation – also includes expanded offerings, delving deeper into the drone theme, encompassing sound artists, film screenings, interstitial sound pieces, long-duration video, interactive art installations, a 24-hour coffee bar, and more.

Admission allows attendees to come and go, and many attendees make the commitment to this endurance-based, long-duration work for the full 24 hours of communal, creative collaboration.

The festival is co-presented with Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, Netherlands, in collaboration with Second Ward Foundation and Wave Farm / WGXC.

Performing in-the-round in Basilica’s Main Hall is the legendary and eclectic experimental NYC band Oneida; US-based Moroccans Innov Gnawa, with an ecstatic take on North Africa’s trance-inducing Sufi tradition; Hospital Productions DRONE BLOCK (curated by DRONE 2015 alum and Hospital Productions founder Dominic Fernow) with the machine rhythms, synthetic voices and operatic arias of Alberich, the eerie atmospheric sound collage and hard industrial beats of Dual Action, and the opiated atmospheres of Lussuria; Tinnitus Series DRONE BLOCK (curated by Adam Shore and Pitchfork’s Brandon Stosuy), with the immense sonic cacophony of Dreamcrusher, the cross-disciplinary Camilla Padgitt-Coles mixing synth, flute and voice, and Bonnie Baxter of NYC-based band Kill Alters; Quelque Show DRONE BLOCK featuring Montreal-based artists including Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), returning to Basilica with a solo drone project, a collaboration between Jessica Moss (Silver Mt. Zion) and Kevin Doria (Growing, Total Life), and Gambletron, a queer interdisciplinary sonic artist and musician based out of Montréal presenting her multi-AM Radio Theremin.

Drums & Drones, a project of Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Collapsible Shoulder, Beech Creeps), explores the natural acoustic resonance of drums, sustaining their tones to reveal hidden frequencies using just intonation; Noveller summons a rich sonic palette using only a guitar; Ceramic TL’s dense blankets of sound is traversed by the dancers of Toronto-based movement collective Open Fortress; violinist, composer and software engineer Christopher Tignor is joined by critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist, and vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello; Long Distance Poison invokes temporary relations to nothingness by means of minimal drones; and hARBOUR is an experimental trio featuring local legend Jack Walls on clarinet.

Newly confirmed acts include Daniel Lauter, playing one of the oldest original sets of quartz crystal bowls and Patrick Stephenson, founder of subterranean music series Cave Music, bringing his Cave Music Tube Orchestra to Basilica’s factory. DRONE 2015 alum Eric Fraser, an Indian classical musician and songwriter/composer, leads OMium, consisting of human voices plus harmonium drones, while DRONE 2015 alum Nathan McLaughlin explores bowed banjo as companion to reel-to-reel tape.

A number of musicians will perform pieces created specifically for 24-HOUR DRONE, many of them DRONE 2015 alumni. As the sun rises on Sunday morning, guests will experience a Cosmic Planetary Gong Panacea with Theresa Lyn Widmann and Friends. Multiple Paiste symphonic gongs will be set up in Basilica’s Main Hall to mirror their namesake planets’ formation in the sky at the time of the performance. Baltic, the solo project of D. James Goodwin, performs a piece based on the measurement of sea waves and the patterns they create in the Russian port city of Baltyisk. Tyler Wood’s piece evokes the oft-mournful whistles of Hudson Valley’s freight trains. Megafortress will be playing a new piece for saxophone, clarinet, double bass, percussion, and field recordings. Bobby Previte will present SCREENING ROOM, two processed drummers and looped Baritone saxophone. Patrick Higgins (Zs) collaborates with Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Hubble), and Arone Dyer’s (Buke & Gase) Dronechoir returns for a Pt. Deux!

Three Main Hall acts will rely on audience participation: OMium, Cave Music Tube Orchestra and Arone Dyer’s Dronechoir Pt. Deux.

 

FILM, VIDEO & BROADCAST

Second Ward Foundation will present a series of videos – from their collection and beyond – in the North Hall during the darker hours.

Wave Farm will present Radio Drone at this year’s 24-HOUR DRONE. Presented interstitially between live performances are commissioned works by Matthew Biederman, Anastasia Clarke, Gonçalo F. Cardoso, Max Goldfarb, Victoria Keddie and Lee Weaver. Alon Koppel’s site-specific durational video work, installed in Basilica’s Main Hall, documents the passage of time, and includes live video drone performance.

Wave Farm will stream 24-HOUR DRONE in its entirety on wavefarm.org, as well as broadcast Saturday through Sunday morning on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM.

In addition, Basilica’s Kiln Films will feature two works which highlight drone-based human expression by exploring connections between contemporary and ancient cultures side by side. Mono ((((?))), “a film on stones and single tones” by Sangam Sharma, is a mystical film on monolithic architecture, monophonic music and the ancient female old. Her Bijî G?ranî, a film by George Mürer, highlights a new and ever-evolving Kurdish music movement.

 

VISUAL ART & MORE

Basilica Artist-in-Residence Dylan Kraus’s paintings regarding the fabric of time will be on view in the Main Hall; No Wave artist and photographer Barbara Ess creates a sound art installation based on field recordings; two sculptures – Comparator and Reverb Tank – by frequent Basilica collaborator Kris Perry will be on view on Basilica’s grounds; and Hudson-based artist Vita Rabinovich explores cosmic radiation with her copper dome and pyramid sculptures.

Installed in Basilica’s Back Gallery and curated by Wave Farm, Continuing Effect (April 23 – May 7) presents thesis works from the 2016 Columbia University School of the Arts Sound Arts MFA program students Alice Emily Baird, Cameron Fraser, Chatori Shimizu and Frank Spigner.

 

OTHER HAPPENINGS

New this year, the DRONE ZONE affords attendees ample opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the event. Guests can partake in the stroboscopic, hallucinogenic effects of Marina Masic’s Hypnogogic Light Machine; resonate, elevate, escalate and expand in the chamber of reflected SELF with meditations by dronEYEgazers (Omkar, Destefano and Jennie); receive a stick-and-poke style tattoo from Basilica Artist-in-Residence Dylan Kraus; or visit the HYPNO BOOTH by UNLIMITED project, “found on the corner of conscious and subconscious” (Morgan Yakus and d Cummins).

24-HOUR DRONE will include late-night food and drink courtesy of Hudson’s own Taste of India Food Truck and a cash bar. Landscapes Cafe will provide high-quality coffee (roasted by NYC-based institution Joe Coffee) and tea for the duration of the event so attendees can be sure to keep their DRONE going strong.

24 limited-edition, first-run DRONE SURVIVAL KITS are available for purchase in advance – $48 for 24 hours of comfort complete with sleeping pad, blanket and reusable water bottle tucked in a 24-HOUR DRONE tote.

 

About Basilica Hudson

Basilica Hudson is a non-profit multidisciplinary arts center in Hudson, N.Y., supporting the creation, production and presentation of arts and culture while fostering sustainable community. Founded in 2010 by musician Melissa Auf der Maur and filmmaker Tony Stone, Basilica Hudson makes its home in a spectacular solar-powered reclaimed 1880s industrial factory on the waterfront of the historic City of Hudson.

Weekend destination events comprise the core of Basilica Hudson’s music, performance, film, food and literary programming, alongside regular film screenings series, art exhibitions, and other community gatherings. The artistic program has taken shape thanks to many partners, collaborators, visiting artists, friends, adventurous audiences and community members.

Located only two hours by train from NYC, and just across the street from the Amtrak station, the event is set in Basilica’s 7,000 sq. ft. Main Hall, and will be a fully immersive experience in-the-round with no stage. Because Basilica is a unique industrial setting with limited seating, organizers recommend that drone attendees bring camping pads, yoga mats and/or pillows; sleeping bags/blankets, warm and comfortable clothes, bottles for refill at Basilica’s water fountain, and endurance-enhancing snacks.

 

About Le Guess Who?

Now in its tenth year, Le Guess Who? has become the Netherlands’ go-to event for experimental, collaborative, and otherwise out of the box musical thinking. Le Guess Who? is a four-day festival that takes place each November in the heart of Utrecht, The Netherlands. The New York Times says, “The festival has grown into a wide-ranging event for alternative or obscure or historical tastes, taking place in churches, galleries and theaters around the city.”

 

Le Guess Who? 2016 takes place 10-13 November and Wilco already has been announced.

 

 

Lea Bertucci performance at 24-HOUR DRONE: EXPERIMENTS IN SOUND AND MUSIC, 2015 by Jeff Economy.