Experimental / Avant Garde. All genre's.

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John

John

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I enjoy Experimental / Avant Garde music. These forms of music are certainly in the ear of the beholder. Some forms have melody but others are very free form and do not have melody in the excepted sense and therefore are difficult styles to understand and consequently except by the vast majority of music listeners. I have no issue with that.
So contributions are sought so as to expand my knowledge and hopefully others as well. All genres welcome.

Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Book Of Ghosts. First released in 1981 with a CD reissue in 2006 this was a first in that it took "found sounds", for example the recordings of say a preacher, a talk show host, an Arab singer and so on, and mixed these over and under ambient and electronic sounds as well as conventional musical instruments. The CD booklet has extensive notes that explain what Eno and Byrne tried to achieve. The wiki site is good as well.

What to me is amazing is that this was recorded via anologue and at times sounds digital. Bear in mind that this was a radical album at the time and caused debate as to the ethics of Eno and Byrne useing these so called "found Sounds". Today we do not bat an eyelid.

Track 2 Mea Culpa has an unknown politician voicing his mistake and can be seen here on youtube.
[youtube]8QLXTsviMxk&feature=related[/youtube]

Track 5 The Jezebel Spirit has the voice of an exorcist. The tune itself is rather funky. Again on youtube
[youtube]YkGAltttzFc&feature=related[/youtube]

Here is also the web site where two tracks are available for free download and the multi tracks of those available for remix.
 
Experimental and/or Avante Garde rock/metal is my favourite music genre these days, along with Doom of course. There is so much quality out there that probably most people, even on this board have never heard. Some of the best, that i know of anyway:

The 3rd and The Mortal
Maudlin of The Well
Peccatum
Kayo Dot
Ihriel (Star of Ash)
Virgin Black
Riverside
Dolorian
Forest of Shadows
Rosetta
Khoma

All this stuff is the type of music that makes me wonder why on Earth people buy the garbage that is in the charts. Pop music...

John do you like the work of Cliff Martinez, who has done the scores for most of Steven Soderbergh's films? The Solaris and Traffic soundtracks are some of the best ambient music i've heard. I guess i throw ambient in with Avant Garde and experimental music.
 

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Schism said:
John do you like the work of Cliff Martinez, who has done the scores for most of Steven Soderbergh's films? The Solaris and Traffic soundtracks are some of the best ambient music i've heard. I guess i throw ambient in with Avant Garde and experimental music.
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No but I have just checked him out and I am interested. Thanks.

Is ambient nowadays avant garde and/or experimental? I suspect that lots is not though I am open for persuasion otherwise. There are new styles that have appeared in recent times like the darker style of Inade, who I mentioned earlier, but even then there are those that will argue that this style owes a lot to ambient pioneer Brian Eno and even Tangerine Dream. These styles are also indebted to the minimalist movement of 60's and beyond Classical music. I will post more when I get a chance:thumbsu:.
 
Steve Reich is one of the most important musicians and composers of the 20th century but is very much unknown to music listeners at large. I first heard him, but did not know it, in 1978. The Doors An American Prayer was released that year and radio 4ZZZ in Brisbane played the entire album and I duly left a tape in and recorded it. I left the tape running and played it back the next day. After The Doors played out a piece of repetitive but oddly compelling sound played for the next 10 minutes or so. After it had finished I did not and could not understand who the announcer was referring to. It took me until last year to finally discover that it was a piece called Come Out For Tape by US minimalist composer Steve Reich. I have posted the only youtube film I can find on this and it has a contemporary dance that unfortunately distracts. The funny thing for me is the comment on youtube
The problem this sort of contemporary composition is that its getting very close to ambient electronica.. whereas the likes of Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin etc actually do a much better job of things. Even if the sounds sometimes aren't so organic. Listen to Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada, or Aphex Twin's Windowlicker, and then try and find some phasing impressive!
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That is all very well but this must have been so radical at the time that few understood the implications when considering the rise of various electronic music genres 20 odd years later in the 80 to the 90's when for example Trance, which owes this a massive debt, reached its peak.

Quoting allmusic "Come Out used as its sole musical material a segment of an interview with Daniel Hamm, a youth who had been taken into custody during the Harlem riots of 1964. As Hamm describes in the unaltered exposition at the beginning of Reich's piece, he and several other young men were detained at the Harlem 28th precinct and subjected to severe beatings at the hands of the police officers. Afterwards, the police took some of the boys to have their injuries treated, but only those that were bleeding visibly. As Hamm explains, in a hauntingly detached voice, "I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them." Reich then took the last five words of the excerpt and loops them, so that the words become ingrained in the listener's ears and the musical contours of the speech begin to emerge. Once the loop is established, Reich introduces his characteristic phasing technique. The tape loop is delivered over two channels, which begin in sync with each other, but very gradually fall out of phase. The effect is an intriguing continuum of sound-speech: at first, when the slower loop falls only slightly behind the faster one, the result is simply a reverb that gives the impression of a single voice in an echoing space. As the loops further separate, however, the reverberating voice distinguishes itself from the other, creating a kind of two-voice canon. Reich then continues the process by expanding the phasing texture into four-channel polyphony and finally, eight." Reich had used this technique the year prior on another track called It's Gonna Rain that can also be seen on Youtube. With "Come Out" I believe that he perfected this technique and many artistes have admitted a debt to him.

I am not going to pretend that many here will find this listenable but be that as it may if you do get through it you will find a tonal change that become a rhythm. Steve Reich had several contemporaries in the minimalism field who are worth investigating. This to me is what Avant Garde is all about.

[youtube]JCZe6eL9gDE[/youtube]
 
Contra Mundum said:
Phillip Glass: Monsters of Grace
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Phillip Glass is one of the greats. I do not have this one though. allmusic give this a very strong write up and they state "The album should be of interest to any fans of minimalism, and the depth and subtlety of "Like This" are powerful enough to make the composer's most skeptical critics reevaluate their prejudices." Is this new territory for Glass or a continuation of his previous work?
 
From the band that brought you Avant Hard...

[youtube]ahDaLDTnPyk[/youtube]

Aphex Twin

[youtube]7hkLAutNo48[/youtube]

KC

[youtube]tZbOdgevxDE[/youtube]
 

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mr_cellotape said:
Umm, the subject of the thread was 'avant-garde', not 'random generic electronica'. That King Crimson track is closer to the mark, though.
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Aphex Twin "random generic electronica"? If you say so. Maybe it wasnt the best track to display his more avant garde style, but please show some respect!

The title of the thread "avant garde. All genere's" so King Crimson represents the more experimental side of prog rock while Add N to X and AFX represents the electronic side of things. Maybe they dont conform to your idea of avant garde, but then you probably are unfamilar with their work
 
John said:
Phillip Glass is one of the greats. I do not have this one though. allmusic give this a very strong write up and they state "The album should be of interest to any fans of minimalism, and the depth and subtlety of "Like This" are powerful enough to make the composer's most skeptical critics reevaluate their prejudices." Is this new territory for Glass or a continuation of his previous work?
Click to expand...

If you are after minimalism go for Arvo Part - it is different to his usual insane fuguing though - its a classic
 
mr_cellotape said:
Umm, the subject of the thread was 'avant-garde', not 'random generic electronica'. That King Crimson track is closer to the mark, though.
Click to expand...

EnglishWarrior said:
Aphex Twin "random generic electronica"? If you say so. Maybe it wasnt the best track to display his more avant garde style, but please show some respect!

The title of the thread "avant garde. All genere's" so King Crimson represents the more experimental side of prog rock while Add N to X and AFX represents the electronic side of things. Maybe they dont conform to your idea of avant garde, but then you probably are unfamilar with their work
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As I said in the OP Avant Garde / Experimental stuff is certainly in the ear of the beholder. FWIW my take on the 3 clips posted.

I had never heard of Add N to (X) prior to that clip being posted. I like the tune a lot. Do I personally consider it Avant Garde? Probably not but after reading about them they are highly regarded as experimental. They play with vintage Synth technology and I guess that is unusual in this day and age of digital technology. I will be checking them out some more.

Aphex Twin is for mine certainly experimental on certain recordings. The tune posted is off a compilation album called Chosen Lords that I don't mind. I do prefer Selected Ambient Works and Richard D James album with the Richard album specifically having extremely fast beats that was a surprising change on first listening. There may have been other electronic artistes prior to this with that rapid BPM but I don't know of them.

King Crimson. Ahh yes. I suspect that mr_cellotape and I could talk all day as to the brilliance of Robert Fripp. I love this song. It is brilliant but I do not consider it avant garde nor experimental. Prog yes. The song itself I think is influenced by Talking Heads somewhat. If I was going to suggest a KC album as avant garde or experimental I would suggest In The Court but even then I am reluctant to. As I said before though it is all in the ears of the beholder.
 
The Velvet Underground & Nico.
200px-Velvet_Underground_and_Nico.jpg


What to say about this ground breaking recording? A younger generation may find it tame in comparison to some of the music that they listen to today but on release in 1967 this was the height of rock avant-garde. Why? There are a few reasons. At the time rock and pop were dominated in the mainstream, even though some would argue that they were not mainstream, by The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors, Dylan, Cream to but name a few. They all had developed unique and refreshing sounds that were sharp and clean in musicianship and/or song writing and had a vitality that also reflected the times. VU's initial release was somewhat different. It had limited production sensibilities and the lyrical content of the songs were about subjects that white boys and girls did not discuss. For example I’m Waiting For The Man was about buying Heroin, Venus In Furs was about sado masochism and Heroin, about the addiction to
this infamous drug. Though songs about drugs had been recorded by the more mainstream the lyrics tended to be poetical where as VU lyrics actually came out and told it how it was. The music itself was also avant-garde. John Cale had been very much involved in the minimalist movement and was a trained classical composer who had taken a keen interest in rock. His influence via the viola drone of some of the songs, Venus In Furs for example, was a radical departure from rock and pop songs of the time. The flailing viola and guitar thrash of Heroin is to this day still a heady mix. European Son is a 7 minute jam that is melange of sounds that bands like Sonic Youth for example must have been influenced by. Was this Industrial in its infancy? A comment that wiki attributes to Brian Eno is that while only a few thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record upon its release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band. And inspire they did and many lover of contemporary music can be thankful.
[youtube]1UpFGoJHwLI&feature=related[/youtube]


 
John said:
The Velvet Underground & Nico.
200px-Velvet_Underground_and_Nico.jpg


What to say about this ground breaking recording? A younger generation may find it tame in comparison to some of the music that they listen to today but on release in 1967 this was the height of rock avant-garde. Why? There are a few reasons. At the time rock and pop were dominated in the mainstream, even though some would argue that they were not mainstream, by The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors, Dylan, Cream to but name a few. They all had developed unique and refreshing sounds that were sharp and clean in musicianship and/or song writing and had a vitality that also reflected the times. VU's initial release was somewhat different. It had limited production sensibilities and the lyrical content of the songs were about subjects that white boys and girls did not discuss. For example I’m Waiting For The Man was about buying Heroin, Venus In Furs was about sado masochism and Heroin, about the addiction to
this infamous drug. Though songs about drugs had been recorded by the more mainstream the lyrics tended to be poetical where as VU lyrics actually came out and told it how it was. The music itself was also avant-garde. John Cale had been very much involved in the minimalist movement and was a trained classical composer who had taken a keen interest in rock. His influence via the viola drone of some of the songs, Venus In Furs for example, was a radical departure from rock and pop songs of the time. The flailing viola and guitar thrash of Heroin is to this day still a heady mix. European Son is a 7 minute jam that is melange of sounds that bands like Sonic Youth for example must have been influenced by. Was this Industrial in its infancy? A comment that wiki attributes to Brian Eno is that while only a few thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record upon its release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band. And inspire they did and many lover of contemporary music can be thankful.
[youtube]1UpFGoJHwLI&feature=related[/youtube]
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Great selection if not a little obvious considering they practically. invented the genre.
Props to the Boards of Canada and Aphex twin references, good choices.
 
DEVO at Kent State University in 1971

The guy in the monkey mask is Mark Mothersbaugh

[YOUTUBE]3_M9ZMo5TiU[/YOUTUBE]
 
La Di Da said:
Great selection if not a little obvious considering they practically. invented the genre.
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Agree that VU are obvious but to me lots of it is;).

La Di Da said:
Props to the Boards of Canada and Aphex twin references, good choices.
Click to expand...

Not too sure what you mean. Are you referring to the quote that I used from the Steve Reich youtube clip? To see that quote you will have to go an look on youtube directly. I am actually inferring that the individual who made that quote has totally missed the point. Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada, among many, owe Steve Reich for the brilliant work that he produced using analogue tape loops in 1966. I might add that Reich was not the only one doing this style of looping in the 60's. IMO he just took it to an amazing new level with Come Out.
 
Miles Davis was a jazz icon who released many albums. From his first in 1949, Birth Of the Cool to his death in 1991, many of his releases were considered masterpieces of jazz innovation. Possibly the most famous is 1969's Bitches Brew.
d626280oeeo.jpg


It place in avant-garde history is nonpareil in that it spawned a new genre. To quote allmusic "Thought by many to be the most revolutionary album in jazz history, having virtually created the genre known as jazz-rock fusion (for better or worse) and being the jazz album to most influence rock and funk musicians, Bitches Brew is, by its very nature, mercurial." I first heard this album in the late 70's. A mate of my dad's who was a jazz buff played it to me. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. I am not too sure that I particularly liked it initially. It seemed to start in the middle and end there and I could always imagine the players being high and just jamming for the sake of it. But after a while it made sense. I find now that it is an album that requires headphones to get all the tempo changes and the sudden emerging instruments such as the guitar and keyboards that appear behind Miles Davis leading Trumpet. The title track goes for over 25 minutes. Here is a shorter live version via the ever reliable youtube

[youtube]xczGCvAAorY&feature=related[/youtube]
 
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