Three concerts I saw, out of more than a dozen Unsound events, rewarded a certain mode of perception.
Unsound's events span bass-centric dance music, loopy psychedelia, heavy metal and murky improvisational noise, with options like multimedia technology, live instruments and even, now and then, song structures.
Ital at Unsound 2012's Bunker event in NYC.
Events like Unsound draw as much from the warehouse techno tradition as they do from the legacy of cultish noise music gatherings like NYC's now-defunct No Fun Fest and the touring International Noise Conference.
March 15 , 20131.49am GMT Hi, it's Caspar again here, fresh as a daisy after a night spent seeing Solaris at the Town Hall and then suffering a full-on aural and physical assault at the Queen's Theatre, both events courtesy of Unsound.
The wide range of offerings in Mr. Schulz's inaugural New York event shows how far Unsound has developed from its start as a relatively modest electronic-music festival.
Unsound originated in Poland and has events in Australia, New York, and Krakow.
Its success, with the help of funding from the Goethe Institute, and the Polish Cultural Institute of New York propelled Unsound further forward, although Schulz says the event itself only worked because the setting was right.
Given that the strategy contestants use to win the competition involves not eating the pub's food or drinking its beers, hosting this yearly event might seem like an unsound business decision on the part of the Bottle.
"We showed it's possible to hold an event here," said Mike Nelson of the Unsound Surf Shop in Long Beach, whose competition has run since 1999.
