Unsound Festival New York - alternative music festival in Manhattan and Brooklyn

Issue Project Room, David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, First Unitarian Church, Cameo Gallery, BAMcinematek, The Wick, Experimental Intermedit.
Unsound Festival New York, fearless, bold and adventurous, is a Stateside edition of the annual premiere alternative music festival Unsound Festival in Krakow, Poland (now in its twelfth year). After taking 2013 off to launch successful editions of Unsound in Adelaide, Australia and London, UK, Spring 2014 sees its return with a fourth New York edition running from Wednesday April 2nd through Sunday April 6th at venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Unsound Festival New York retains the principles of the eponymous Krakow edition, bringing together diverse sounds that do not usually share the same bill. From new classical music to underground club explorations, from the experimental to the purely sensory, the fantastic musical experience that is Unsound Festival New York aims to both challenge the ears and expand the mind.

The artists featured this year will be Oren Ambarchi (Australia), Wilhelm Bras (Poland), Suzanne Ciani (USA), copeland (Estonia), Demdike Stare (UK), DeepChord (USA), Michael England (UK), Evol (Spain), Huerco S (USA), Ital & Halal (USA), Kapital (Poland), Piotr Kurek (Poland), Le Petit Garçon (Norway), Leisure Muffin (USA), Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway), Ben Manely (USA), Sean Meehan (USA), Miles (UK), Neotantrik (UK), Phill Niblock (USA), Pietnastka (Poland), Robert Piotrowicz (Poland), Porter Ricks (Germany), James Rushford (Australia), string players from Sinfonietta Cracovia (Poland), Hakon Stene (Norway), Stara Rzeka (Poland), Joe Talia (Australia), Vladislav Delay (Finland), Ben Vida (USA), Andy Votel (UK) and Hubert Zemler (Poland).

Appearing this year are classical musicians from Krakow's tremendous Sinfonietta Cracovia, performing on two separate bills with Demdike Stare and Oren Ambarchi. The multi-talented percussionist Hubert Zemler will present a solo performance combining new music, world music and improvisation. Sound artist Wilhelm Bras will show off his epic abstract analog house structures in an underground club setting. Duo Pietnastka will present their unique, densely-woven sound-tapestries. Piotr Kurek will perform a live score for the 1958 Janusz Majewski surrealist short "Rondo." Acclaimed producer Stara Rzeka will overturn expectations with his surprisingly forward-looking take on sound that blurs the outer perimeters of black metal, noise and ambient music. Polish experimental label Bocian Records will showcase a refreshing roster with avant-garde Polish duo Kaptial, who will bring together the two disparate musical worlds of electro-acoustic music and extreme psychedelic guitar. And Modular synth / noise specialist Robert Piotrowicz will perform in a special duet with the much-admired and acclaimed master Norwegian free-jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love.

The festival will feature electronic music titans from other parts of the globe also, among them Norway's Le Petit Garçon and Hakon Stene, Australia based noise / experimental duo of James Rushford & Joe Talia, German dub techno duo Porter Ricks (Thomas Köner / Andy Mellwig), Finland's Vladislav Delay, American percussionists Sean Meehan and Ben Manely, as well as some homegrown Brooklyn / New Jersey based talents - Ital & Halal and Leisure Muffin.

This year's commissions and special projects will feature "Concealed" by the dark "occult" Manchester UK duo Demdike Stare. They will play a specially composed live soundtrack to visuals created by filmmaker Michael England, whose videos explore urban decay, bleak English landscapes and the Japanese dance tradition Butoh. Andy Votel's "Kleksploitation (an homage to Pan Kleks)" will take a much-loved trilogy of Polish films for children from the 1980s as its starting point, sampling the images, music and sound from the originals and subverting them to coax their darker side to the surface, creating something wholly original, unsettling and strangely humorous. Votel will also collaborate with legendary American electronic music innovator Suzanne Ciani. Hailed a "Synthesizer Queen" by the Los Angeles Times, Ciani has played a pivotal role in the development of electronic music in the USA. One the most prolific sound artists and electronic musicians in New York today, Ben Vida, will explore sub bass in "Damaged Particulates (undersong edition)," a piece making use of bass frequencies throughout the space and transferring low frequencies directly to spectators' bodies via tactile bass seat-backs called SubPac. Other projects include Mutual Dreaming with an innovative dub-inspired club night at Cameo in Brooklyn, featuring a long-awaited live solo set from the unpredictable Estonian Copeland, and a lighting installation from Brooklyn DIY LED master Nitemind

www.unsound.pl/en