New York’s Latest: United Sounds NYC Festival Lands In Brooklyn’s Red Hook

Shay Vishawadia and Dipesh Sinha started the year with the realization that neither wanted to work for someone else. They wanted control of their own fate, and after having worked together for around 15 years beforehand, they knew they could easily collaborate. Once the decision to start their own company was made, the two knew they wanted to hit the ground running, and they did so by launching a music festival in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood with help from their friend Diane Perini, who was tasked with booking the show.

The inaugural United Sounds NYC takes place at Pioneer Works Oct. 25-26 and features performances from Blonde Redhead, The Dismemberment Plan, Sunflower Bean, Les Savy Fav, Model/Actriz, Man Man, Monobloc, Peel Dream Magazine and more.

Previously, Vishawadia spent 25 years at Original Five Media, with Sinha’s experience including roles at Steve Madden Music and VaultWorks. Pereni had been the festival producer and talent buyer for the former Coney Island fest, Siren Music Festival, from 2001 to 2011, and dreamed of producing a similar event in the NYC metropolitan area since. Following her time at Siren, she worked with Noise Pop Industries, producing shows in the San Francisco Bay Area, but still, she wanted to bring that magic to her city.

“In the beginning of the year, Dipesh and I started talking and figured there were a few gaps in the New York calendar for cool events,” Vishawadia tells Pollstar. “With Diane Perini’s experience and expertise, it just made sense to try to reinvigorate some of
the things that we can plug into. Me and Diane had been talking for years about working together in some capacity or another. And, because I’ve been working with Dipesh for such a long time, it just made sense to bring him on board on this project.”

To step outside of the box, Vishawadia and Sinha wanted to head to a more unique destination in the city. Pioneer Works doesn’t often do music events, and the two felt bringing their festival to the location would also benefit the community in a new way. The festival is also meant to serve as a neighborhood takeover, bringing people out to Red Hook with the hope that they’ll also check out the local bars and see what the neighborhood has to offer.

“Red Hook is an amazing spot that is underserved to a certain degree with cool live music,” Vishawadia says. “It has such a great feel to it that made sense to make our center point, and we built around that.”

United Sounds NYC organizers shared that the biggest challenge they’ve faced was the lack of time. The entire festival was put together within eight months, including the website, venue, staff, bands and everything in between.

“There’s a lot of moving components starting a new company regardless of being on a time crunch,” Sinha says. “But we felt strongly that we had to do something this year. It’s a new company; we wanted to plant our flag. We wanted to show people that we’re capable of pulling off a pretty amazing event in a short space of time, hence, we pulled the trigger. I think the only real big problem we had with this particular event was the time factor. But, we’re circumventing a lot of those issues. We’re being stubborn, head down, let’s do this thing.”

The team feels that, in recent years, electronic music has managed to throw some stand-out events in the market and has taken over a large portion of the music festivals happening throughout the city. They realized that indie music, and festivals promoting that genre, have been a bit lackluster, leaving space for them to create their own event.

“There are amazing festivals that have been around forever,” Perini says. “And there’s been a lot of new, great electronic festivals that have popped up. They’re killing it on that stuff. I think trying to find a niche that hasn’t been played out was the goal. Bringing back an indie rock festival kind of thing. We’re not reinventing the wheel here, but we’re trying to set ourselves apart. … it’s been timing, low ticket price, a good lineup. We want to have a festival that’s just all about the artists and fans.”

To combat the competition in New York City (which has hundreds of shows throughout the city on a weekly basis), United Sounds Festival stands out by being affordable. Passes for the festival remain reasonably priced, with one-day tickets running at $56.65 and two-day tickets priced at $84.98.

“It was one of those decisions we thought about; we just want this to be a reasonable price,” Diane Perini says. “This is an introduction to New York and this annual festival. We just want to get people out there, and we wanted to make sure that we had a low ticket price. Ticket prices are high, but costs are high. We just wanted to get out there and make it reasonably priced. Come hang out with us and come back next year. It was one of those decisions we made early on.”

Tickets for United Sounds NYC are still available for purchase, with two-day and single-day options.