A taste of 1970s avant-garde San Francisco lives on at Audium, an art space tucked behind a faded redwood paneled facade on Bush Street where veteran composer Stan Shaff has been presenting sound performance pieces for the past thirty years. Step into the lobby and the faint bubbling noise of running water seeps, not from a fountain, but from speakers hidden behind white floor-to-ceiling acoustic tiles covering the walls.

Shaff's wife runs the ticket booth and with a warm grandmotherly welcome waves visitors into the gallery area. Hipsters and middle-aged bohemians take in the faintly dusty sculptures by 70s artist Seymour Locks and drink decaf in Styrofoam cups from a vintage Hamilton Beach coffeepot. I climb a mod exposed stone staircase covered in a once vivid but now muted orange carpet and duck into the restrooms where disembodied seagulls swirl and cry.

At 8:30 prompt, Stan Shaff steps wizard-like through the black curtains that drape the hexagonal doorway leading to the theater. He looks like a college professor in khaki slacks and corduroy blazer. His snow-white hair frames a broad handsome face. He speeds through an introductory speech well-worn by time and repetition, but occasionally pulls up at the end of a sentence, slows down, and floods the room with genuine warmth. "It's about dreams and memory," he explains, before sending the sold-out crowd of 49 people down a dark hallway into the dimly lit theater. Acoustic tiles create a low domed ceiling and the audience sits in concentric circles of molded white plastic chairs with red cushions. Pod-like speakers in varying sizes hang from long black wires. It is very 2001 Space Odyssey.

"As tempting as it might be, please don't lie down on the floor during the piece," Shaff warns. And I begin to understand his request as the lights go down slowly, leaving us enveloped in total darkness. The air begins to fill with sounds both natural and electronic--the whistle of a passing train fades into the gentle warbling of a Moog synthesizer and I can't resist any longer—I close my eyes and let the noise wash over me.

The next hour is filled with nothing but sound: water whooshing down the drain, church bells, snippets of conversation, birds, electronic swells and rattles. The brass and rumble of a parade drops out of different speakers, fragmenting, sounding near and then far, in one spot and then another. At one point, the roar of a passing train emanating from speakers in the floor is so real it shakes the theater. Shaff conducts, modulating the stream of sound, making it rise and fall and then trail off into silence. Your ears become so acutely tuned that you'd swear you could even hear the silence.

The technology that Shaff uses is wonderfully dated and so far from cutting edge that it's refreshing. Listen to him click buttons and turn knobs as he sits DJ-like in his booth above the theater floor. Go to your local IMAX theatre if you want the latest in Surround Sound. At Audium, it's 1970 all over again.

Audium, A Theatre of Sound-Sculptured Space
1616 Bush Street at Franklin
San Francisco
(415) 771-1616
Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 p.m.