NoWordsATL 4.0 Spring Edition: A celebration of instrumental music at The Garden Club on Saturday, May 10


This Saturday, May 10, NoWordsATL 4.0 takes over the Garden Club at Wild Heaven West End on Sat., May 10, from 3:30-11 p.m.

This day-long festival is a celebration of instrumental, ambient, and experimental sound exploration—sans words—delivered in an environment that thrives on thick ambiance and both visceral and cerebral responses to the music.

Catch sets from an eclectic mix of forward-thinking artists, unfolding in a space that invites immersive listening. Think synth meditations, modular abstractions, steel strings, and guitar loops stretched into infinity amid light installations and projections turning the room into an ever-shifting canvas where sound and light mingle in real time. 


The Harmonic Continuum is an afro-futurist, multi-instrumentalist foursome featuring Doc Calico, Billy Fields, Kenito Murray, and Kenny Web playing jazz, punk, psychedelic, and experimental rock.


Rasheeda Ali is a Grammy nominated flautist who recently stepped out from the shadow of performing alongside greats like Jeff Mills and Kebbi Williams expressing next level cosmic explorations of sound using flute, synth, and drum machines.

Shane Parish is a guitarist, composer, improviser, and leader of the avant-rock band Ahleuchatistas. He’s also ¼ of Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, and a renowned acoustic soloist. 

Melodic Monster, featuring Ben Garden, is a psychedelic rock band that blends theatrics and effects in an unforgettable live show.

Alexandria Smith is an improviser/multimedia artist, trumpeter, and a professor of music at Georgia Tech, who has performed residencies at the Stone NYC, had feature recitals on the Future of New Trumpet (FONT) Festival West, Dartmouth’s Vaughan Recital Series, the VI Semana Internacional de Improvisación in Ensenada, Baja California, and Tulane University.

Spacers blend Kraut Rock and African rhythms to psychedelic effect.

Jeffrey Bützer is a multi-instrumentalist who plays accordion, toy piano, guitar, electric piano, chord organs, glockenspiel, melodica, banjo, and other noise makers to create a cinematic world of sound.

The Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra is a collective of experimental artists who use classical instruments, movement, and sound in spontaneous improvised compositions. Featuring Majid Ariam, Al-Yasha Ilhaam Williams, Ben Shirley, Priscilla Smith, and an evolving cast of various other artists.

$15. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. Music starts at 3:30 p.m.

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Klimchak and Stuart Gerber bring ‘LeBeato Lounge: Water Wonderland’ to the McDonough Tunnel on Sunday, May 15

Stuart Gerber (left) and Klimchak. Photo courtesy Klimchak

Composer, percussionist, and longtime Atlanta sound sculptor Klimchak is bringing everything, including the kitchen sink, to the McDonough Tunnel on the Southside BeltLine on Sunday, May 15.

The performance, titled LeBeato Lounge: Water Wonderland, is part of the Art on the Atlanta BeltLine series, and will feature three water and percussion-based works performed live: “Waterphonics” and “Bowled Over,” both accompanied by GSU associate professor of percussion and founder of the new music ensemble Bent Frequency Stuart Gerber. A third piece, titled “When You Whistle, It’s Not Work,” will also be performed solely by Klimchak.

It will be an evening of deep listening and engaging rhythms, as both Klimchak and Gerber explore the vast and mysterious sonic qualities of the former train tunnel by way of various homemade percussion instruments, bows, electronic manipulations, bowls filled with various levels of water, and a working sink on a cart for a wet and wild journey into sound.

… And if you are a truly old school Atlanta music head, you’ll remember the tunnel from the freak-folk and noise shows that Matthew Proctor (Hubcap City, Pony Bones) organized there in the early aughts — when the BeltLine was a looming reality, the tunnel had train tracks running through it, and it was a fairly secluded location.

Free. Music starts at 3 p.m. 95 Milton Ave. SE (between Milton Ave. and the I-75 / I-85 underpass on the BeltLine).

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