The Disco Biscuits coined “Trance-Fusion” the night Aron Magner plugged a JP8000 synthesizer into his rig for the first time (Halloween 1997) and the room stopped being a rock show and became something harder to name. Nearly 30 years later, on Sunday, October 11, that sound lands at Middle Ages Music Hall in Syracuse, a room that holds 400 people. For a band that built its own festival in Camp Bisco, a show at this scale is about as close as it gets.
About the Show
Jon Gutwillig, Marc Brownstein, Aron Magner, and Allen Aucoin have been building the Disco Biscuits catalog since 1995, when four University of Pennsylvania students started folding synthesizers into jam-band improv and eventually just made up a genre to describe it. Trance-Fusion draws from rock, techno, jazz, soul, blues, and classical music, and live it plays out through extended improvisations, complex segues, and a practice fans call “inverting” songs, where the band starts at the ending and works its way back around. The ticket page describes the band as “a force of transformation and invention” using “emerging technologies to help them create music that is 100% human.” That paradox is pretty much the whole point.
Nine studio albums document the journey. Two rock operas, Hot Air Balloon (1998) and Chemical Warfare Brigade (2000), mark one era; Revolution in Motion, the 2024 space opera, represents the current one. The band’s official site frames the whole mission in five words: “ONE CHANCE TO SAVE THE WORLD.”
The Biscuits went quieter through much of the 2010s before returning to full touring in 2019-2020 with the declaration that “Setbreak is over.” This fall they’re running 16 dates across the Northeast and Midwest: two nights at the Tropicana Showroom in Atlantic City, two nights in Buffalo on Oct. 9 and 10, then Syracuse on Oct. 11 before the tour swings into New England. The year closes with a “Cirque de Bisceaux” New Year’s Eve run in Portland, Oregon. No support act is listed for the Syracuse date.
Venue & Logistics
Middle Ages Music Hall is at 120 Wilkinson Street in Syracuse, serving the central New York concert calendar. The show is 18-plus; bring valid ID. Standing room only, with limited seating available in the back of the room. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets are $40 (plus $6.31 in fees; $46.31 total), with a limit of 10 per person. Buy tickets