Since 2003, the Unsound Festival has been about bringing the disparate impulses inherent in electronic music under one roof — a music event urging you to scratch your chin one minute and dance your ass off the next. Presenting itself like a film festival but booked like a forward-thinking summertime weekender, Unsound has consistently showcased brilliant and challenging new sounds without ripping them from their underground trappings. Any music festival as likely to feature Sunn 0))) as Zomby is sure to pique my interest, but by nature of it happening in Krakow, Poland, its ridiculously open bookings stood quite a bit out of my reach. New York City — its population overeducated, overstimulated, and relatively accepting of high-end dance music thanks in no small part to Beyond Booking’s forward-thinking Bunker parties — always seemed like the perfect candidate for something like Unsound, and for a week in February 2010, my fair city got it. And not even a knock-off, either! The Unsound Festival New York brought a truly impressive and deliciously diverse line-up of electronic musicians — asking you to ponder, get down, or do both at once — to underground venues across Manhattan and Brooklyn. And I was lucky enough to trudge through New York’s famous February weather to witness the festival on Little White Earbuds’s behalf. (Very big ups are due to Gamall Awad of Backspin Promotions for making this possible.)
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LWE’s Movement 09 Round Up
For many electronic music fans in America’s Midwest, the most anticipated event of each year is Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival, and for good reason. In spite of the reverence DJs and producer express for the region as the birthplace of house and techno, the Midwest is often passed over by DJs and producers whose U.S. tours reach no farther than New York and Los Angeles or San Francisco. While the reasons for this are too complex to tackle here, suffice it to say many Midwesterners — and those who travel from far and wide — relish the one time DJs and musicians annually descend upon Detroit en masse. It’s also a chance for Detroit’s homegrown talent to strut their stuff for larger audiences who seldom make it to the Motor City.