Right off the bat, from its first outing in February 2010, Unsound Festival New York has established itself with fans and critics as essential New York culture. Unsound Festival New York embraces a range of genres from contemporary classical music to post-industrial sounds to black metal to new directions in bass.
The third round of Unsound Festival New York takes place in various venues around New York including ISSUE Project Room, among many others, from Wednesday, April 18th through Sunday, April 22nd.
Unsound Festival New York opens at ISSUE with a night of distinctive female experimental artists working with sound. LA resident Julia Holter and Norway’s Jenny Hval combine avant-garde structures with music at the edge of pop, working with explicit lyrics exploring sex and gender, and subverting expectations. Holter’s Tragedy and Hval’s Viscera were among 2011′s best albums. New York cellist Julia Kent, a collaborator of Rasputina and Anthony and the Johnsons, performs solo.
Other programs for the festival include Unsound LABs: concerts featuring collaborations between musicians of different kinds working together for the first time in a series of unique free performances. Curated to cross borders of both sound and geography, this year’s program pairs artists from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia with musicians from the U.S. This year’s LABs features: Zavoloka with Andrea Pensado, Hai Nguyen Dihn with Nondor Nevai, Kotra with Black Rain, Denis Kolokol/Tomek Choloniewski Duo with Nate Wooley, Maria Minerva with Mark Van Hoen, and Mark Mcquire with Bartosz Weber.
