Guitars, Artworks and Readings Featured at Basilica SoundScape

Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Minimalist-metal duo Bell Witch, black-metal duo Wolves in the Throne Room, indie-folk rocker Angel Olsen, and Texas post-rockers Explosions in the Sky headline this year’s Basilica SoundScape festival, at Basilica Hudson on Friday, September 16 through Sunday, September 18. Artists featured include Cal Lane, Heather Benjamin, and Lisa Laratta. Spoken-word performers, reading from the rafters, will include Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Amber Tamblyn.

Performances take place beginning at 6pm on Friday and 5pm on Saturday. On Sunday, the doors open to Basilica for free for a brunch prepared by Nicole LoBue of Alimentary Kitchen accompanied by a Mini Basilica Farm & Flea.

The weekend of music and art that’s been called “one of the more adventurously curated and intimate programs in the New York area” is a carefully curated event that’s been called “the anti-festival” for offering a thoughtful mix of music, visual art, and literature.

“We are so excited about this year’s Basilica SoundScape, our fifth weekend devoted to music + art in our industrial church.” said Melissa Auf der Maur, Basilica Hudson Co-Founder and Director. “It is a very HEAVY line up, lots of loud guitars to match the scale and grit of our industrial factory, and as always we are striving to create an immersive pilgrimage to the Hudson Valley, where rural, industrial and urban collide. Dive into exceptional local food, freaky pop-ups of one-of-a-kind things, camping, Hudson River School sunsets, and of course the delightfully haunted City of Hudson.”

The festival features site specific works by New York-based sculptor Cal Lane, sex-psyche Illustrator Heather Benjamin, and set designer Lisa Laratta.

Co-curated by Brandon Stosuy (the Creative Independent), Brian DeRan (Leg Up! Management), Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone (Basilica Hudson), Basilica SoundScape is a carefully curated two-day event that’s been called “the anti-festival” for offering a thoughtful mix of music, visual art, and literature.

The festival is partnering with the unveiling of The Creative Independent, an ad-free website that serves as an oral history of the creative process, featuring people working in music, books, film, and art, among other disciplines. TCI is supported by Kickstarter, and led by returning co-curator Brandon Stosuy, who is editor-in-chief of this new site.

“In my mind, The Creative Independent shares the same values as Basilica Soundscape—BSS is a small, carefully curated, multidisciplinary event focused more on artists than ad revenue. This seems unique to me, as far as festivals go…especially in 2016. It’s the same kind of ethos we’re espousing with The Creative Independent—we’re focusing on people, art, and ideas…not clicks. We see TCI as a real oral history, not something disposable or cheap,” said Stosuy.

Kiln Films is a video installation series inside Basilica’s former forge and foundry brick kiln. This weekend, Kiln Films honors the life and work of Tony Conrad with Outlier, a selected screening series of Conrad’s films and videos, curated by two former students (at SUNY Buffalo) and friends of Tony: David Gracon and Basilica Hudson partner Brandon Stosuy. Conrad passed away on April 9th, 2016 at the age of 76.

“Tony Conrad is one the great American artists of our time, yet to the world at large he remains criminally under appreciated.  Since the early 1960s, Conrad’s films and compositions have been the stuff of legend for artists and musicians everywhere. His vast, interdisciplinary repertoire has single-handedly created and influenced major film and compositional movements.” (Description taken from the promotions for the documentary Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present.)

Far from a typical music festival, Basilica SoundScape features live concert performances, conceptual sound performances, author readings, installations, collaborations, curated local vendors and artisans, on-site activities and more, creating an immersive, innovative weekend of art, music, and culture. Basilica SoundScape 2016 will feature a lineup of some to the most innovative and genre-pushing musicians, visual artists, and writers working today, with unique collaborations across disciplines.  Past talent includes Richard Hell, Gamelan Dharma Swara, Tim Hecker, Swans, Matthew Barney, Gang Gang Dance, Liturgy, Julianna Barwick, Dan Colen, Sterling Ruby, HEALTH, Perfume Genius, Pharmakon, Guardian Alien, Deafheaven, Jenny Hval, and The Haxan Cloak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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