For the first time since 2009, the legendary No Fun Fest returns to New York with a three-day fest titled No Fun New Perspectives, focusing on improvised music and featuring a dream-like lineup of avant-garde musicians from different generations, with every presentation during the festival a world premiere that will push experimental music to new and unknown places.
No Fun Fest was celebrated as a pivotal event in Experimental Music and Noise during its original run in New York City from 2004 to 2009, and a second edition in Sweden in 2009.
Carlos Giffoni (electronics), Lee Ranaldo (guitar), and Raven Chacon
Keith Fullerton Whitman (electronics) and Chris Goudreau (electronics)
C. Spencer Yeh (violin and voice), Brandon Lopez (standup bass), and Sean Meehan (percussion)
Marcia Bassett (electronics), Chuck Bettis (electronics), Christopher Reid Martin (guitar and electronics), and Gabie Strong (guitar and electronics)
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Carlos Giffoni is the person behind No Fun, which included a festival that ran in NYC in different venues from 2004 to 2009, multiple collaborations with other festivals around the world, and the No Fun Productions label. Carlos is a Venezuelan musician who lived in the US from 1996 to 2025 and currently resides in Valencia, Spain. With recent releases on Ideologic Organ and Room40. As well as recent residencies at GRM in Paris and EMS in Stockholm. He has collaborated with an impressive list of experimental musicians, and his work has been featured in multiple fashion campaigns and films.
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a performer of “Live” Electronic Music based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; his work is governed by the outcome of ongoing experiments with Generative & Algorithmic frameworks in both the Analog & Digital Domains, blurring the lines between improvisation & composition while openly embracing an agnostic & (often) contrarian approach to setting & genre.
Hamden, Connecticut-based Chris Goudreau is an artist exploring extremities of texture, flow, and the tactility of sound. Better known for his cut-up electronics project SICKNESS, Goudreau utilizes modular synthesizers, found sounds, and tape manipulation to maximize dynamic contrast and play. Since 1993, he has run the label Ninth Circle Music. In the last decade Chris has creatively moved into creating electro-acoustic works for modular under his own name.
C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for interdisciplinary activities as an artist, improviser, and composer, and for his music project Burning Star Core. Since 2020, Yeh has performed for The Kitchen NYC, Experimental Intermedia NYC, The Renaissance Society with ESS Chicago, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, Casa del Lago UNAM MX with Jacob Wick and Bonnie Jones, Jazz em Agosto Lisbon PT with Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, Blank Forms with Raven Chacon and Che Chen, and both solo and with Luke Stewart/Leila Bordreuil’s Feedback Ensemble for Roulette NYC. He presented new video works and performances for both ISSUE Project Room NYC, and the Bemis Center Omaha NE. Yeh also exhibited with Anthology Film Archives, Loong Mah NYC, Bánh Mì Verlag online, 5th Floor/Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and participated in Nick Klein’s “Bring the Flowers to the Theatre” at Sara’s NYC. In 2021 he organized a karaoke event for Creative Time and Rashid Johnson’s “Red Stage” NYC project, and started a key music duo with Kwami Winfield that has performed at many venues and events including ISSUE Project Room and Ende Tymes Festival. In 2019, Yeh received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.
Brandon Lopez (Born 1988 in Passaic NJ) is a composer and contrabassist working in the field of far left musics, with a primary focus in improvisation. Since his recent move to New York City, he’s become one of the most in demand players of his generation. He’s had the pleasure of playing across the American and European continents. He’s performed with the world’s luminary improvisors and musical thinkers in squats and decorated concert halls. He’s the 2018 Artist in Residence at Issue Project Room and the 2018 Van Lier Fellow at Roulette Intermediary. His third album as a soloist, Quoniam Facta Sum Vilis can be found on the Astral Spirits label.
Drummer Sean Meehan began performing during the late 1980s at the Amica Bunker series for improvised music, located at the Anarchist’s Switchboard and later ABC No Rio in New York City. His work has been presented at some of the most prestigious venues for new music including the Instal Festival (Glasgow), The Whitney Museum’s Biennial (New York), Lincoln Center (New York), and Goethe-Institut (Hanoi), but he primarily performs at small, informal spaces and artist-run festivals. For nearly twenty years he and Tamio Shiraishi presented their summer concert series, always in different interstitial locations throughout New York City. Three of these concerts have been documented on LP on the Fusetron and GD Stereo labels. Meehan’s most recent project was a highly abridged audiobook of Hermann von Helmholtz’s seminal text from 1863, On the Sensations of Tone, and Magazine (Sacred Realism, 2022), a piece for solo cowbell. Meehan was a 2020 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Marcia Bassett is a NYC-based musician and artist known for her innovative and unconventional approach to music. Her work explores areas of sound collage, improvisation, and audio-visual environments. Working with electronics, guitar, and voice, Bassett creates otherworldly narratives that are equal parts trance and critique. She is the founder of Yew Recordings. She is also known for her solo work as Zaïmph, a project she initiated in 2005. She first made an impact with the Philadelphia outfit Un in the 1990s, releasing on Siltbreeze Records, before forming the experimental drone group Double Leopards. Recent collaborative releases include recordings with Samara Lubelski, Margarida Garcia, Manuel Mota, Sergej Vutuc, Bob Bellerue and Chuck Bettis.
Chuck Bettis was raised in the fertile harDCore soil, nourished within Baltimore’s enigmatic avant garde gatherings, and currently blossoming in New York’s experimental realms. His unique blend of electronics and throat has led him into various collaborations with great musicians from around the globe.
Christopher Reid Martin is a Mexican American multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona, Spain, by way of Los Angeles. Originally from Orange County, California, he began recording under the name Shelter Death in 2004, working with manipulated radio frequencies and broken amplifiers to release multiple CDRs and tapes on Via Injection, Irrational Tenttent, and A.C.T.I.O.N. His current project, Rotary ECT, explores experimental electronic music with recent albums on The Tapeworm and Anòmia. His practice spans immersive self-generating audiovisual installations and live performances that combine acoustic instrumentation with experimental electronics.
Martin has exhibited in galleries and performed at festivals and events including Desert Daze, Touch Records’ 40th Anniversary, and Transdisciplina. He has collaborated with artists such as Bailouts, CGRSM, Id Meridian, and Gate (with Michael Morley), in addition to his solo work under Shelter Death, Rotary ECT, and his own name. Formerly a board member of Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles, he currently works with Cycling ’74 on the digital sound and video processing tools Max and RNBO, and is cofounder and curator of Cathode Cinema.
Gabie Strong is an interdisciplinary artist working in a post-studio practice, exploring spatial constructions of drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. She works with images and sounds to explore related adjacencies that shape the present. Strong teaches undergraduate and graduate level art, including foundations, photography, new genres, radio broadcasting, and sound art, with an emphasis on embodied placemaking and critical community art strategies. Strong additionally works as a community arts organizer creating accessible spaces for community radio broadcasts, festivals and exhibitions.
She has collaborated with artists and collectives including Sameer Farooq, Pamela Jorden, strom |morts, Drøne, Pauline Lay, Michael Morley (Gate, The Dead C., The Never Quartet), Christopher Reid Martin (Shelter Death, Rotary ECT,), John Pearson, Joe Potts/LAFMS, Joseph Hammer, Anna Homler, Jorge Martin, Liz Harris/Nivhek, Ted Byrnes, Raquel Gutiérrez, Tom Watson, Jared Stanley and Matthew Hebert, Save Music in Chinatown, dublab and SASSAS.
For the first time since 2009, the legendary No Fun Fest returns to New York with a three-day fest titled No Fun New Perspectives, focusing on improvised music and featuring a dream-like lineup of avant-garde musicians from different generations, with every presentation during the festival a world premiere that will push experimental music to new and unknown places.
No Fun Fest was celebrated as a pivotal event in Experimental Music and Noise during its original run in New York City from 2004 to 2009, and a second edition in Sweden in 2009.
Carlos Giffoni (electronics), Lee Ranaldo (guitar), and Raven Chacon
Keith Fullerton Whitman (electronics) and Chris Goudreau (electronics)
C. Spencer Yeh (violin and voice), Brandon Lopez (standup bass), and Sean Meehan (percussion)
Marcia Bassett (electronics), Chuck Bettis (electronics), Christopher Reid Martin (guitar and electronics), and Gabie Strong (guitar and electronics)
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Carlos Giffoni is the person behind No Fun, which included a festival that ran in NYC in different venues from 2004 to 2009, multiple collaborations with other festivals around the world, and the No Fun Productions label. Carlos is a Venezuelan musician who lived in the US from 1996 to 2025 and currently resides in Valencia, Spain. With recent releases on Ideologic Organ and Room40. As well as recent residencies at GRM in Paris and EMS in Stockholm. He has collaborated with an impressive list of experimental musicians, and his work has been featured in multiple fashion campaigns and films.
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a performer of “Live” Electronic Music based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; his work is governed by the outcome of ongoing experiments with Generative & Algorithmic frameworks in both the Analog & Digital Domains, blurring the lines between improvisation & composition while openly embracing an agnostic & (often) contrarian approach to setting & genre.
Hamden, Connecticut-based Chris Goudreau is an artist exploring extremities of texture, flow, and the tactility of sound. Better known for his cut-up electronics project SICKNESS, Goudreau utilizes modular synthesizers, found sounds, and tape manipulation to maximize dynamic contrast and play. Since 1993, he has run the label Ninth Circle Music. In the last decade Chris has creatively moved into creating electro-acoustic works for modular under his own name.
C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for interdisciplinary activities as an artist, improviser, and composer, and for his music project Burning Star Core. Since 2020, Yeh has performed for The Kitchen NYC, Experimental Intermedia NYC, The Renaissance Society with ESS Chicago, the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project, Casa del Lago UNAM MX with Jacob Wick and Bonnie Jones, Jazz em Agosto Lisbon PT with Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, Blank Forms with Raven Chacon and Che Chen, and both solo and with Luke Stewart/Leila Bordreuil’s Feedback Ensemble for Roulette NYC. He presented new video works and performances for both ISSUE Project Room NYC, and the Bemis Center Omaha NE. Yeh also exhibited with Anthology Film Archives, Loong Mah NYC, Bánh Mì Verlag online, 5th Floor/Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and participated in Nick Klein’s “Bring the Flowers to the Theatre” at Sara’s NYC. In 2021 he organized a karaoke event for Creative Time and Rashid Johnson’s “Red Stage” NYC project, and started a key music duo with Kwami Winfield that has performed at many venues and events including ISSUE Project Room and Ende Tymes Festival. In 2019, Yeh received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.
Brandon Lopez (Born 1988 in Passaic NJ) is a composer and contrabassist working in the field of far left musics, with a primary focus in improvisation. Since his recent move to New York City, he’s become one of the most in demand players of his generation. He’s had the pleasure of playing across the American and European continents. He’s performed with the world’s luminary improvisors and musical thinkers in squats and decorated concert halls. He’s the 2018 Artist in Residence at Issue Project Room and the 2018 Van Lier Fellow at Roulette Intermediary. His third album as a soloist, Quoniam Facta Sum Vilis can be found on the Astral Spirits label.
Drummer Sean Meehan began performing during the late 1980s at the Amica Bunker series for improvised music, located at the Anarchist’s Switchboard and later ABC No Rio in New York City. His work has been presented at some of the most prestigious venues for new music including the Instal Festival (Glasgow), The Whitney Museum’s Biennial (New York), Lincoln Center (New York), and Goethe-Institut (Hanoi), but he primarily performs at small, informal spaces and artist-run festivals. For nearly twenty years he and Tamio Shiraishi presented their summer concert series, always in different interstitial locations throughout New York City. Three of these concerts have been documented on LP on the Fusetron and GD Stereo labels. Meehan’s most recent project was a highly abridged audiobook of Hermann von Helmholtz’s seminal text from 1863, On the Sensations of Tone, and Magazine (Sacred Realism, 2022), a piece for solo cowbell. Meehan was a 2020 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Marcia Bassett is a NYC-based musician and artist known for her innovative and unconventional approach to music. Her work explores areas of sound collage, improvisation, and audio-visual environments. Working with electronics, guitar, and voice, Bassett creates otherworldly narratives that are equal parts trance and critique. She is the founder of Yew Recordings. She is also known for her solo work as Zaïmph, a project she initiated in 2005. She first made an impact with the Philadelphia outfit Un in the 1990s, releasing on Siltbreeze Records, before forming the experimental drone group Double Leopards. Recent collaborative releases include recordings with Samara Lubelski, Margarida Garcia, Manuel Mota, Sergej Vutuc, Bob Bellerue and Chuck Bettis.
Chuck Bettis was raised in the fertile harDCore soil, nourished within Baltimore’s enigmatic avant garde gatherings, and currently blossoming in New York’s experimental realms. His unique blend of electronics and throat has led him into various collaborations with great musicians from around the globe.
Christopher Reid Martin is a Mexican American multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona, Spain, by way of Los Angeles. Originally from Orange County, California, he began recording under the name Shelter Death in 2004, working with manipulated radio frequencies and broken amplifiers to release multiple CDRs and tapes on Via Injection, Irrational Tenttent, and A.C.T.I.O.N. His current project, Rotary ECT, explores experimental electronic music with recent albums on The Tapeworm and Anòmia. His practice spans immersive self-generating audiovisual installations and live performances that combine acoustic instrumentation with experimental electronics.
Martin has exhibited in galleries and performed at festivals and events including Desert Daze, Touch Records’ 40th Anniversary, and Transdisciplina. He has collaborated with artists such as Bailouts, CGRSM, Id Meridian, and Gate (with Michael Morley), in addition to his solo work under Shelter Death, Rotary ECT, and his own name. Formerly a board member of Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles, he currently works with Cycling ’74 on the digital sound and video processing tools Max and RNBO, and is cofounder and curator of Cathode Cinema.
Gabie Strong is an interdisciplinary artist working in a post-studio practice, exploring spatial constructions of drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. She works with images and sounds to explore related adjacencies that shape the present. Strong teaches undergraduate and graduate level art, including foundations, photography, new genres, radio broadcasting, and sound art, with an emphasis on embodied placemaking and critical community art strategies. Strong additionally works as a community arts organizer creating accessible spaces for community radio broadcasts, festivals and exhibitions.
She has collaborated with artists and collectives including Sameer Farooq, Pamela Jorden, strom |morts, Drøne, Pauline Lay, Michael Morley (Gate, The Dead C., The Never Quartet), Christopher Reid Martin (Shelter Death, Rotary ECT,), John Pearson, Joe Potts/LAFMS, Joseph Hammer, Anna Homler, Jorge Martin, Liz Harris/Nivhek, Ted Byrnes, Raquel Gutiérrez, Tom Watson, Jared Stanley and Matthew Hebert, Save Music in Chinatown, dublab and SASSAS.
