Todd Pendu: Basically I realized that I had enough bands to put on a showcase and at the time Von Haze had been in the UK for a while and I found they were going to be coming back to New York for the first time in a year and a half or so for CMJ. When I realized that they were coming back and that I had Starred, plus I had recently taken on this new band called Tempers as well, so I was like wait a minute I think I can actually do a showcase. I had already talked to the venue Saint Vitus about keeping a Thursday open because I had ideas for a couple things but I wasn’t sure what it was going to be and since I had that date open I asked if we could just do a Pendu Sound Recordings showcase and they were like yeah let’s do it. I invited Lauren Dillard to dj because her and I have worked together since 2009 doing parties and stuff and she’s a big supporter so I just had the whole crew; all the people that are just part of Pendu so we put it on.Black Marble played as well, how’d that come about?
They are just good friends. We chatted about working together so we have some ideas for the future but for the showcase they wrote and said hey we’d really like jump on that so I kind of made it Pendu Sound Recordings with friends! I’m a huge supporter of those guys, I put on their second and third shows ever and they played my CMJ showcase with Impose magazine last year as well so it just made sense to have them again.So I guess for those who aren’t familiar with you, Pendu is more than just a label, You have a bunch of other things going on. Can you tell me a little bit about your other ventures outside the label?
I consider Pendu more of a lifestyle brand in the sense that it covers everything that you do in your daily life. It’s about music, what you wear and basically how you live. It captures a certain feeling or vibe, whatever you want to call it. I have Pendu NYC, which puts on shows and parties, I also did Pendu Disco for a long time. It’s kind of like this outreach where it’s not about genre, it’s more about people who are in a certain kind of energy. The best way I would describe it is anything that feels like it’s going to the next level is what I’m interested in, it doesn’t matter what kind of music it is. If it’s electronic music or pop music or noise, whatever it is as long as what their doing is reaching out and pushing boundaries and trying to do something really exciting, I’m interested. I feel like the through line is always about what I call the Ekstatic which is like music that gives you this certain type of rush or feel.Read the rest over at NOISEY.