Starting tomorrow, February 4th, in New York City, and running through the 14th (Valentine's Day!) is the Unsound Festival, which brings together electronic musicians of all sorts across many different venues in the city. We're sponsoring the festival and will have a host of different Unsound related posts on the site through the coming week. The first, courtesy of Groupshow—Jan Jelinik, Andrew Pekler and Hanno Leichtmann—is a guide on how to perform for eight hours straight, something they will be doing this Saturday at Le Poisson Rouge. Their tips, and info on the performance, are after the jump. Below, check out a Groupshow MP3 for a taste.
Download: Groupshow, "Pet Hair Magnet"
Eight hours is the length of a standard work day and also the average duration of an LSD trip. Performing music for eight hours straight lies somewhere between the two, although is perhaps somewhat closer to the acid experience because neither includes a lunch break. The following tips have been copied from guides to productivity in the workplace as well as instructions on what to do in case of a psychedelic freakout. See if you can guess which tip comes from which source:
Offer praise and rewards. You may be surprised how far a simple "pat on the back" will go.
Set clear agendas in advance.
Make sure that you are around people that you trust.
Why re-invent the wheel? Minimize wasteful operational redundancies.
Take everything in stride.
Stay away from the water cooler.
Let the layers of the ego peel off.
Face the tough stuff head on.
It happens—now and again we all face a project headed to failure. Don't waste time on failing projects. Cancel them and move on.
Remember—it will end eventually and your not going to die no matter what you think.
Nap Time! A study done by NASA showed that a nap of just 26 minutes can boost performance by as much as 34 percent.
Saturday February 6th 2010
Warhol Program
Groupshow (Jan Jelinek, Andrew Pekler, Hanno Leichtmann)
with Andy Warhol’s Empire (USA debut)
@ Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012
Free / Starts 12.00 noon - 8.00 pm
A special FREE show featuring German electronic music trio Groupshow in an
eight-hour long live improvisation to Andy Warhol’s film “Empire."