Tune in for an interview between Ryan Skrabalak, host of WGXC's Belt of Venus, and Joshua Abrams of Natural Information Society (NIS) ahead of the group's upcoming performance as part of PS21's winter festival The Dark. NIS performs Perseverance Flow at the Crandell Theater in Chatham, NY this Thursday, February 19th at 8:30pm. If you can't make it in person, the performance will also be broadcast live on WGXC!

Natural Information Society (NIS) is a band led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams. The group’s music is grounded in Abrams’ hypnotic and interwoven writing. Performing with Lisa Alvarado’s free hanging paintings as mobile sets, NIS creates environments at once meditative and propulsive, which navigate forms that emphasize simultaneous differences, rhythm, and collective listening. NIS tours as a quartet with Abrams on guimbri, Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet. They will perform music from their recent album Perseverance Flow, which refracts the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub.

The Dark is a new annual festival from PS21 : Center for Contemporary Performance that celebrates and elevates the depths of winter. Taking place February 16–22, 2026, the festival will unfold at PS21 and across Columbia County—in theatres, restaurants, libraries, saunas, and outdoor public spaces. Featuring more than 60 international artists and over 80 performances, The Dark offers a packed week of world-class contemporary performance, installation, music, dance, and theatre—all exploring winter as a time of community and solitude, fire and ice, darkness and light. A major new attraction for the region, the festival positions Columbia County as a year-round cultural destination—not just a summer one. It is a light in the dark—and The Dark is the light.