Basilica SoundScape Celebrates 10 Years

This year marks two milestones for Basilica Hudson: the 15th anniversary of the venue itself and the 10th anniversary of its signature music festival, Basilica SoundScape. The event will return to the waterfront location once again on September 19-20, bringing a stacked schedule of acts whose artistic accents are on the dark, the heavy, and creatively challenging side. 

“I met [Basilica Hudson co-owners] Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone at an event that I was putting on in New York,” recalls SoundScape cocurator Brandon Stosuy. “They’d taken over Basilica a few years before, and we struck on the idea of putting on a festival there. Tony really wanted heavy music [to be featured], which I was very much into as well. So in 2013 we did the first one, which was a little tense because we had a late start on organizing it. But we pulled it off, and it went really well. In the middle of it, a friend of mine turned to me and said, ‘You know, this could really become a thing.’ And it really has, even though of course we lost two years in there when we had to put it on hold because of Covid [hence the ‘10th-anniversary’ billing].”

“What’s long drawn people to Hudson is its combination of historic architecture and its being right on the river, the artery that led to the expansion of America and attracted the Hudson River School painters,” Auf der Maur says. “Being right here on the riverfront, Basilica embodies all those things. And it also embodies the story of the cultural economy that defines the region now; of fearless freaks like us taking over structures left behind after the manufacturing boom and bust and creating something new out of them.”

Using green renovations, the building now functions with a fossil fuel-free commitment and was recently upgraded with new airtight windows, a high-efficiency HVAC system, and other amenities, and has transitioned from being a warm-season-only venue to begin operating year-round; a newly secured partnership with the Bowery Presents, Sister Midnight, and Higher Ground booking agencies will bring a steady schedule of live performances to the space, including regular mid-week events.

With its mix of black metal, dark hip hop, ambient, minimalist experimental folk, “reconfigured ’90s dance music,” goth-wave electronica, punk, and other styles, Soundscape’s programming aesthetic is a perfect fit for the shadowy, cavernous environment of Basilica Hudson, an 1,8000-square-foot former foundry built in the 1880s.

This installment’s roster includes returning faves Deafheaven along with the intriguing first-timers Billy Woods, Fcukers, Vines, Ho99o9, Maria Sommerville, Soul Blind, Sloppy Jane, Sigrid Lauren and Katelyn Reece Farstad, Yatta, Tiny Vipers, Lucky Break, Nuxx, and Katzin. Assisting Stosuy, Stone, and Auf der Maur with the artist-selection process this year is guest curator David Castillo, the former booking agent of Brooklyn nightclub Saint Vitus.

“We try to base the running order on what we feel will work the best in terms of the musical flow, and sometimes it works out that the best-known band is the last one to play on a given night [Fcukers will close the evening on September 19; Deafheaven will finish out September 20),” explains Stosuy, a former Pitchfork staff writer turned cofounder and editor in chief of web journal The Creative Independent. “But the angle of SoundScape is non-hierarchical. We want to be different than festivals like Coachella, where the poster has a few big names at the top and, underneath those, all these other names in tiny print that are hard to even read. And we don’t have a situation where’s there’s competing stages and you have to try to tune out one band while they’re playing in order to hear the one you’re trying to watch.”

Despite its sonically slanted name and first-and-foremost focus on music, however, SoundScape encompasses more than its auditory offerings alone. Visual art, craft food and beverages, and zine sellers and other vendors are also part of the scene, as is night two’s “Readers in the Rafters” segment curated by author Jenn Pelly (NPR, Pitchfork).

“Our aim with SoundScape is for it to be a place of community,” says Stosuy. “For the people who attend to see that discovery is still possible, that they don’t have to rely on algorithms to get their music.”

Basilica SoundScape 2025 will take place at Basilica Hudson in Hudson on September 19 and 20. Tickets are $67.98 for each night or $113.30 for a full-weekend pass. See website for more information.

This article appears in September 2025.