(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Nous, an experimental music project exploring ritual and spontaneity within music, will have its public performance debut at Basilica Hudson on Saturday, February 1, 2014, at 8pm. The performance follows a weeklong residency at Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, and precedes the project’s New York City debut at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday, February 2, 2014, at 8pm.

These shows follow five-days of recording sessions from January 26-30, 2014 with producer and engineer Kevin McMahon (Swans, Titus Andronicus, Real Estate) at Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, New York, during which the participants will seek inspiration through various musical approaches, both ancient and immediate, as they explore a wide spectrum of improvisational possibilities.

The impulse for the Nous project came after Christopher Bono finished his latest full-length orchestral work, Bardo, to be released in 2014. After spending two years working on the score and the studio recording of Bardo, Bono was driven to experience and investigate new and completely different approaches to musical creation.

Nous aims “to build communal musical relationships that collectively work to find new ways of creating art.” Each installment will center around a different focal concept, and the project will feature a fluctuating group of artists. As Bono explains, “Nous aspires to bypass the lower level thought patterns of the egotistical mind and encourages the connection of those involved to reach a higher level of consciousness, providing a creative space where intuitive, unexpected, and unexplained results can occur.”

Nous features multi-instrumentalists Christopher Bono (keyboards/ electronics/ percussion/ vocals), Greg Fox (drums/ percussion/ electronics), Thor Harris (drums/ percussion), Shahzad Ismaily (electronics/ guitar/ bass) and Grey McMurray (guitar), with special guests cellist Clarice Jensen, violinist/violist Caleb Burhans, violinist Laura Lutzke, flutist Alex Sopp, cellist/ vocalist Imago, plus Laraaji & Arji (Zither, ambient sounds) and three dancers directed by Akil Davis from Loud Sol Productions.

Though most of the artists know each other, they have never played together as a group and so the style of music that will result is difficult to predict. However, the influences for the project are drawn from elements of Post-Rock, Minimalism, Indeterminacy, World, Kraut-Rock, Psychedelic/Experimental Rock, Neo-Shamanism, Noise, Ambient, Drone, Folk Chant, and Free Jazz. Within the widely varied careers of the various musicians, there is at least one connection to each of these genres.