24-HOUR DRONE takes place in Basilica Hudson’s 6,000 sq. ft. Main Hall with the performers situated in the center of the room and attendees on the floor around them. Each performance blends into the other to create twenty-four hours of unbroken, uninterrupted sound (no applause between acts). Attendees are free to come and go over the twenty-four hours, but those who make the commitment to this long-duration work will be rewarded with the intangible feeling of meditative contentment, pure bliss, and communal collaboration.

Basilica Hudson is a unique industrial factory setting with limited space. Attendees are encouraged to bring a camping pad/yoga mat and pillows/cushions/sleeping bags/blankets. Please be respectful and limit the gear that you bring in order to maximize space and comfort for all DRONERs.

PLEASE NOTE:

– Space for endurance lounging/listening is limited and will be on a first-come-first served basis.

– Bring ONE mat per person, not more.

– No motorized/inflating air mattresses.

– No chairs.

– No coolers.

– No dogs, no pets.

– We recommend warm and comfortable clothes, bottles for refill at Basilica’s water fountain, and endurance-enhancing snacks.

To mark our first 24-HOUR DRONE in four years, we will be wading deeper into the durational and site-specific element of drone, presenting artists committed to playing either three-hour or one-hour sets. Because we will be featuring a smaller and tighter roster of artists (most who are close to confirmed, to be announced shortly), we will not be having an open call.

Due to our current (and very exciting!) renovation of Basilica’s West Wing, we are pushing 24-HOUR DRONE back one month to the last weekend of May (also Memorial Day weekend), Saturday May 27 – Sunday May 28. In an amazing turn of droney synchronicity, this will also allow DRONE to coincide with our friends Weird Canada’s Drone Day, an annual celebration of drone, community, and experimental sounds celebrated by communities and droners around the world. It will also, hopefully, be a lot warmer in our big factory!

Also of note: our friends at Drone not Drones in Minneapolis are finally back as well with their first event since 2020, on Fri Jan 20 – Sat Jan 21.  Check them out!

24-HOUR DRONE, like its autumnal counterpart Basilica Soundscape, is at the heart of Basilica’s mission to present cutting-edge art and music in our riverfront factory. But these wildly imaginative programs are also expensive to produce. Much has changed since we last presented these events on such a large scale, and we need to adapt to rising costs, from production, marketing, hospitality, staff needs, and more than ever, the need to pay artists fairly. As a nonprofit, we remain deeply committed to the long-term sustainability of these programs, and to paying working artists.

When you purchase a ticket to 24-HOUR DRONE, you get to experience 15 acts over the course of 24 hours. That’s about $6.50 per performance, compared to the average cost of attending a ~3 hour concert. We hope you’ll consider joining us for a this moment in time. 

If you’d like to make an additional donation outside of your ticket purchase, your support will help to ensure that 24-HOUR DRONE is in the black this year.

“Drone” is an expansive term, meaning any sound made with sustained tones. The use of drone dates back to humankind’s earliest music, and is found in cultures the world over. Drone is also a key element in many musical genres from the 20th century and today, including free jazz, electroacoustic, noise, ambient, and other forays into the experimental and avantgarde. 

The leading voices in the most exciting drone-based music today are many BIPOC, women and queer folx drawing from these disparate traditions, or using alternative lenses to investigate otherwise mainstream traditions. We are also lucky that so many incredible music and sound artists live and work in the Hudson Valley. Hence, the 24-HOUR DRONE artist lineup is a reflection of that diversity, as well as our local community – from as many musical and sound disciplines as possible, utilizing a variety of instrumentation.

Le Guess Who? is a Celebration of Sound in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Across four days Le Guess Who? takes over the entire city center of Utrecht, with over 150 artists performing in pop venues, theaters, churches, warehouses, and clubs. U? is the participative and freely accessible day program of Le Guess Who?, created for and with the city of Utrecht. COSMOS is our hybrid platform, which translates the festival’s mission to an online environment.

Throughout the years, Le Guess Who? has grown to become a leading international festival, known for its unparalleled presentation of genre-challenging music. In 2022, visitors from 50 different countries travelled to Utrecht in November to attend the festival. https://leguesswho.com/

Sarah Van Buren (SVB) is an artist, educator, sound maker, dee jay and raver based in Stottville, NY who works with music, sound and collaborative performance to investigate buried histories, communal ritual and collective resonance. She started a DJ school in 2019 which evolved into the Hudson Valley-based DJ collective Community Rave Network, and is co-founder of the NYC-based video art/party/performance collective CHERYL. She is an occasional guest DJ on WFMU’s Radio Row program, and a former programmer at WGXC, Wave Farm’s community radio station. She is co-curator of Basilica Hudson’s 24-HOUR DRONE music + sound festival since its inception in 2015, and is certified in Deep Listening® by The Center for Deep Listening at RPI.

Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Wave Farm Radio encompasses many radio streams available at wavefarm.org/listen and the Wave Farm Radio App, including WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears, a full-power, non-commercial, listener-supported station in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley operating out of studios in Hudson and the Wave Farm Study Center in Acra.  https://wavefarm.org/

The idea for 24-HOUR DRONE was sparked years ago during a late-night New Years Eve conversation in Hudson, New York between Basilica Hudson co-founders Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone and their Dutch houseguest, Le Guess Who? music festival organizer Bob van Heur. On that cold winter night, they gazed at the 1880s industrial factory from their balcony, and it called to them: “24 hours of sound please!” The drone dream was the eventual owners’ first impression of and first intention with the building, where they begin their art and community programs in 2010. In 2014 the dream was realized, and 24-HOUR DRONE was born.

The first 24-HOUR DRONE was held in tandem with the Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, Netherlands in November of 2014, and featured William Basinski, Stephen O’Malley, Emptyset, Tim Hecker, Steve Hauschildt, Raime, Dirk Serries, Julianna Barwick, Carla Bozulich and John Eichenseer, and more.
24-HOUR DRONE arrived stateside the following April and opened Basilica Hudson’s 2015 season.

Artists to have performed at Basilica’s 24-HOUR DRONE include Prurient, SUUNS, Veena Chandra, Roddy Bottum, Lee Ranaldo, Brian Chase & Yonatan Gat, Big | Brave, Jessica Moss, Bobby Previte, Patrick Higgins, Arone Dyer, Greg Fox, Lea Bertucci, Randy Gibson and more.