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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - GO TO THE NEW YORK EYE AND EAR FESTIVAL

Todd Pendu has really long, perfectly straight hair that looks really, really soft—like, it would be nice to run your fingers through it, but not even in a sexual way. It just looks nice like that. He also looks like he's about 20 years old, which is totally unfair because he's actually 34 years old. Looks aside, Pendu is incredibly nice, undeniably chatty, and obviously has a lot of energy to burn. He's the human responsible for booking, organizing, scheduling, and overseeing the

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NY Eye & Ear Festival

—a four-day, three-venue, two-borough weirdathon that starts tonight and offers what many view as the only legit glimpse into the bubbling cauldron of NYC's true underground music scene. The festival also includes a huge record fair and Women of NYCinema film screening. In addition to curating lots of freaky happenings and wonderful music, Pendu also runs the

Pendu Organization

—an entity that cultivates collaboration in all of the arts as well as "Dynamic Ecstatic Transcendentalism." Dude is ambitious.

Vice: I thought I was relatively in the know when it came to Brooklyn bands, but you manage to find all this amazing shit that I've never heard of before. How do you find all of these bands?
Todd Pendu: You know, I just try to make it my mission to know what's going on. Plus, I've been in New York long enough to be pretty integrated into a community of artists and musicians, and friends are always turning me on to new stuff. I don't like the idea of booking genre specific things. I just like to find bands who are really maximizing their potential. I like having a lot of different things on the same bill. Rather than book five noise bands, why not just one or two and choose the best ones? I want to book bands that I feel like people should know about. Plus, it's important to mix well-known bands with bands that no one knows yet. I want people to leave the festival with the feeling that they have discovered something and having hopefully experienced some form of music that they might not have normally sought out on their own. That's what makes you a true curator and not just a person who books shows to try and make money.
I'm certainly not making any money. You've booked approximately a gazillion bands for this upcoming festival. Which ones are you hoppin' excited to see?
Hmm. Martial Canterel for one. I think he's a genius and not getting the kind of press he should be. He's a one-man band, basically. He plays all these analog synths with no pre-programming or anything. Amazing. Oh, and Begushkin. He just finished touring with Will Oldham. He mixes folk music with psychedelia and incredibly surreal idea. He just writes really amazing songs.

Right.

T. COLE RACHEL