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 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.

And the most extreme?
Well, Liturgy is playing. So there’s some serious black metal for you. SSPS is playing, which is one of the dudes from Excepter. His sets are pretty amazing. Just a dude wearing sunglasses, some synths, maybe a drum machine, then lots of preacher-style howling and freaking out. It’s pretty out there.

Were you always a curator?
Yeah, in a sense. I lived in Florida and in the early 90s I was really into DIY hardcore and I booked shows and stuff. That world kind of died in 1998, and then there was this period of time when it felt like all my friends kind of scattered. Eventually I realized that there were lots of people much like myself—ex-hardcore dudes who were just hanging out alone at home making noise records, which lead me to go pretty deep into that world. I moved to NYC in 2003 and basically just dove right in. Bands like Lightning Bolt were kind of peaking right then and New York felt super exciting. Everything had that same DIY spirit that I had been missing. The music that I make on my own would fall into the noise rock category, but I definitely listen to all kinds of stuff. I just came to realize that there was so much interesting stuff happening that was basically being ignored, which lead me to start curating things myself and booking shows.

Your record label, Pendu Sound Recordings, also puts out records by Sasha Grey. How did that happen?
I happened to be a fan and I heard that she was making music, so I thought I’d write her and tell her that I ran a record label. I didn’t expect her to write back, and then when she did I didn’t actually believe it was her at first. She’s great. Incredibly down-to-earth and nice. She was basically a goth kid in high school and was super into Throbbing Gristle and Coil, stuff like that. You can tell when you listen to the music she makes.

What were you like in high school?
Me? I mostly listened to really bad music. I didn’t really discover good music until 1990, which is when I really got into Sonic Youth. I kind of worked backwards from there. You know, I had skater friends and I was exposed to all of the obvious things—Black Flag, Operation Ivy, whatever. It was Ft. Meyers, Florida. I didn’t have access to very much cool stuff. That’s what really got me started wanting to curate things. Our town sucked, so I’d try and bring bands from Tampa to play.

Why is Tampa so notoriously gothy?
Because it’s so sunny. The goth thing is the ultimate rejection of that. I was the same way—I wore black, I hated the place, the people, the humidity, the sunshine. You just take one step outside and you immediately feel disgusting. If you’re not the kind of person who wants to lay out on the beach every day, it’s pretty miserable. Tampa is even worse because it’s so industrial and bleak there. It makes sense that death metal would flourish there. Everything was…very dark. I moved to New York and became a much more sunny person. I’m much happier now.

Explain your obsession with the “ecstatic experience.” That pops up a lot on your website.
To me, the ecstatic experience is like the be-all-end-all. Whether it be writing, poetry, movies, music, whatever—I’m trying to facilitate that experience and create an environment where people can experience that. I want people to have more than just an average, OK time. I want them to have their minds blown. It’s a good thing to aspire to, right?

Right.

T. COLE RACHEL