Clutching tight the Austin scene’s outré luminaries like electronics artist Rick Reed and percussionists Nick Hennies and Chris Cogburn – the latter two best known for innovating what it means to be a “drummer” in a performance setting – No Idea joins these locals with other far-flung artists reaching into the unknown.

Performers this year are culled from Berlin (Andrea Neumann), Boston (Greg Kelley), and New Orleans (Bhob Rainey), and will include a diverse group of New Yorkers, including dancer Maggie Bennett, electronics artist Bryan Eubanks, and Gill Arnò, who works with media including “amplified slide projectors.”

The festival this year actually takes place in three leaps between Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, but Eastside hangout the Broken Neck is the first venue landing. Having begun Monday, Jan. 30, and running through Saturday, Feb. 4, Cogburn and Bennett have designed a piece called “Individual Artistic Practice as Curatorial Conversation,” a free open-process work that will envelop many of the visiting and local No Idea acts.

Friday and Saturday domino four individual music sets each from almost a dozen musicians, the latter augmented by a workshop, Unusual Ear: Making Music With Improvised, Acoustic and Electronic Sounds, 2-4pm at the 29th Street Ballroom. Find the full schedule here.

Patience is a virtue when experiencing performances that slowly unspool at a pace often unknown even to the makers, but the expectation that anything can emerge from the stage – be it a sound, idea, or movement – makes this type of improvisational/experimental bounty worth your time.

And as if to closer align itself with the convention-dashing tradition of punk and other extreme music, the setting for this year’s No Idea Festival isn’t the wonderful Salvage Vanguard Theater, but rather converted warehouse space the Broken Neck, a venue better known for its raucous late-night performances, graffiti, and a general unbridled dinginess that will offset the academic whiff high-profile experimental music often exhales. – Adam Schragin

Friday, 7pm: Los Pinkys, Smiley y la Fuerza Musical, Bene Medina, Oscar Hernandez, Los Aguilares. Saturday, 7pm: Chano Cadena, the Return of Rene Joslin, Joe Gonzales, Ruben Rivera, and a farewell performance by Jesse y Beto Duran y Los Aguilillas. Sunday, noon: Los Texas Wranglers, Conjunto Romo, Conjunto Calidad, Thoze Guyz, Boni Mauricio.

$25 for a three-day pass here. – Raoul Hernandez