I looking for unique bands playing instrumental/avant-garde/experimental.

Bands like...

The Deserts of Traun
Behold the Arctopus...
Psyopus
!T.O.O.H.!
Dysrhythmia

Something interesting...

__________________

you might like Astrosoniq (www.astrosoniq.com). Dutch space, psychedelic, rock band. pretty awesome

__________________

Zombi
Red Sparowes
Porcupine Tree

Tarantula Hawk
Infidel? / Castro!
Byla

__________________

Please give a description of bands you recommend because I have heard Porcupine Tree, and though they are quite good, not at all what I am requesting to get out of this thread.

Other bands that might help you in recommendations...

Stinking Lizaveta
Trephine
Orthrelm
Daughters (just not as hardcore, boring, or stupid)

Please use common sense and stay away from more mainstream bands with proggy tendencies (i.e. Opeth, Porcupine Tree)


EDIT: Haha, I have heard Infidel/castro and they make my head hurt, Colin is a bastard.

Cunty, do you have AIM? I'd really liek to get my hands on some Tarantula Hawk from what I've heard so far.

__________________

Just click the links. They have samples.

__________________

Fuck, I wasn't talking to you I was talking to belphskdgbsk or whatever his name is.

AIM!?

__________________

UNEXPECT. dude.....you cannot..... It's crazy. Ask BassBehemoth. Each song has death vocals, a bassist who stands out as much as the cryptopsy bassist, a violinist who gets A LOT of attention, female vocals, piano......... I can't even take it all in. Their latest album is called "In A Flesh Aquarium"

__________________

Time of Orchids...there are vocals but it is still right up your alley. Ima just go ahead and mention Mr. Bungle. They are super fuckin eclectic and Mike Patton kicks major cunt.

__________________

My AIM is Nig3ll3giN, I'd appreciate if you could send me Time of Orchids as Demonoid has failed me.

__________________

The Axis Of Perdition: Take the sounds of Silent Hill, add some black metal, add some jazz and various noises and mash them together.This will prepare the listener to take a personal tour through a haunted metal hospital. It's crazy ass shit. Really fucking scary.

Portal: If Death Metal is the soundtrack to a slasher film or zombie flick then Portal is the soundtrack to those German Expressionist Silent Films of the 20's like Friz Lang's Metropolis. Amazing.

I realize my descriptions are vauge but I don't want to ruin the listening experience.

__________________

Dead: Haven't seen your name on here in a long time!

Anyways, I'll second the comment on Unexpect. They are wild! Check em out http://myspace.com/unexpect

__________________

Long time no see!

All of Ulvers latest stuff -
Themes From William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Full-length, 1998 [4 reviews, average 80%]
Metamorphosis EP, 1999 [3 reviews, average 78%]
Perdition City Full-length, 2000 [3 reviews, average 78%]
Silence Teaches You How to Sing EP, 2001 [2 reviews, average 45%]
Silencing the Singing EP, 2001
Teachings in Silence Best of/Compilation, 2002 [1 review, 88%]
Lyckantropen Themes Full-length, 2002 [2 reviews, average 80%]
1993-2003: 1st Decade In The Machines Best of/Compilation, 2003 [3 reviews, average 43%]
A Quick Fix of Melancholy EP, 2003 [3 reviews, average 85%]
Svidd Neger Full-length, 2003 [3 reviews, average 88%]
Blood Inside Full-length, 2005 [6 reviews, average 68%]

Thats all fucking insane crazy experimental electro industrial black avant garde ambient shit man. Hard to describe.

Also check out TODAY IS THE DAY. Their album, Sadness Will Prevail, is a 2 disc long epic, each disc over 70 minutes, of experimental/industrial/grind type shit which is all about emotions and deception, betrayal, etc. Very nice.

And I couldn't possibly go a thread without mentioning December Wolves right? Their final album, Blasterpiece Theatre, was filled with black/death industrial noise filled to the brim with samples and crazy effects, truly a sonic experience, I still clim that this record has the greatest production job around.

The older Ulver sucks donkey ass.

__________________

No, it doesn't, you just think it does.

Pelican?

__________________

Great album!

I was gonna say Pelican, but they really aren't experimental, just instrumental doom. Same for for teh band Mare.

To DEAD: I don't have AIM, sorry. It fucks up my computer. Try Soulseek to find some Tarantula Hawk, I got one of their cds from there (you can find them all, but I bout the others).

__________________

Oh yeah, Kevin Drumm (link?) is also awesome.

He does a lot of noise stuff, but also has random experimental stuff as well. I saw him open for Sunn and Boris in Chicago and it was one of the loudest/bassiest things ever.

__________________

Botch maybe? They're one of DEP's main influences. They're earlier material isn't as "out there" as We Are The Romans, but the latter might be worth a spin.

What about The Locust? I personally haven't heard anything by them but I frequently hear and read of them being lumped in with the avant garde set.

__________________

I say you just heck out the ORIGINAL avant garde. All the Classical dudes like Cage and Stockhausen and Boulez. Although these guys were composers. Cage's 'Sonatas and Interludes For Prepared Piano' and Boulez' Piano Sonatas are my favourite. These guys were some of the greatest thinkers on music and there is much more to learned from them than just about anyone else in musical history.

__________________

I've been dying to find avant garde composers but didn't know where to look and figured it would be a pointless asking here, haha, thanks so much for some names!

Slightly off-topic, can you recommend me any atonal classical composers? A friend got a book on theory behind atonal music and I've been intrigued ever since, especially since there was never really a solid 'formula' from atonal usic till the 1970's.

__________________

Arnold Schoenberg
Béla Bartók
Luigi Russolo
Edgard Varèse
Igor Stravinsky
Aaron Copland

To name a few.

__________________

LOTS of great 20th Century experimentalists. Also worth mentioning: George Crumb, John Cage, Lanksy and Edgard Varèse (pioneer with electronics), and György Ligeti.

Bands:
Mr. Bungle
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Kayo Dot
The Books
Ulver
Behold...The Arctopus!
Fantômas
Any John Zorn project (Naked City, Masada)
KUKL
And don't forget some classics: King Crimson, Pink Floyd



Aside from Schoenberg and some Bartok, I really don't think Stravinksy and Copland had much (or anything) to do with atonal music. From what I've heard and studied I'd say that atonality hasn't anything to do with them, but there could be something out there. I'm not really familiar with Luigi Russolo and Edgard Varèse, but I don't remember them being associated with atonality - though Varèse is still and interesting guy to check out. Schoenberg would be a major source for atonal stuff.

__________________

Cage, Boulez, and Stockhausen aren't the 'ORIGINAL avant-garde,' but actually a few generations later (they weren't born until well after the 'original avant-garde' was first writing and theorizing).

Add Webern and Berg to the major atonal mix, with Debussy as a significant predecessor. Everybody Cunty Shunt named, plus Boulez and Cage (though he's technically an aleatoric composer for much of the stuff that would coincide with an interest in atonal composition), is associated with atonality in some way or at some time (Stravinsky began playing with tonality after Schoenberg's death). Hanns Eisler might be of some interest as well if you choose the right period. Atonal music, incidentally, was systematically practiced starting with Schoenberg according to various formulas (most famously dodecaphonics), and the only real change to come with the 70s was that 'classical' music largely abandoned atonal composition and it was absorbed into various other schools.

Of course, there's a lot of jazz in the 'free' vein that's atonal and interesting.

Stravinksy started late in his career (also "The Rite Of Spring) and Copland dabbled a little. Russolo and Varèse influenced noise (Russolo with his little machines[forgot their name] and Varèse with the "liberation of sound").

PST is dead on with Webern and Berg (forgot about them) because they studied with Schoenberg, but are often left in the dust because of him. Plus Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun ballet experimented with the whole-note scale and odd time sigs.

Also add Krzysztof Penderecki due to him pretty much inventing horror movie scores without knowing it.

__________________

Man what a great thread.
Cannot agree with Darko more about King Crimson though...

Speaking of prog, check out Tangerine Dream's early stuff [Phaedra, Richochet, Rubycon or Stratosfear]... also check out Faust - IV [avant garde prog.]

Word to Infinity on 'December Wolves' as well!

I have to mention Devil Doll... if anyone has never heard them I suggest you d/l 'Sacrilegium', 'Eliogabalus' or 'Mr. Doctor' by them, because it's just some of the greatest weird music I ever heard. It's from the late 80's to mid 90's... big influence on ALOT of bands, like Dimmu for instance. Just amazing. It's funny too because their main writer loves Bernard Hermann, who hopefully needs no introduction...

Avant Garde DM:
Trepalium
Demilich
Atrocity - [Longing For Death]
Gorod - Leading Vision


Some black/death metal related avant-garde stuff:
Blut Aus Nord [everything after the first album... sounds like your brain ripping apart]
Angizia
Helhiem [Norway] - Fenris EP [Bathory meets Ved Buens Ende...]
Sigh [Hail Horror Hail and everything after it.]
Sirrah
Maudlin Of The Well
Fleurety
Septic Flesh
Peccatum
...In The Woods
Strommoussheld
Ved Buens Ende
Virus [Norway]
Squidfarm Disaster
Neurobox - Above The Stars
O.L.D. - Lo Flux Tube [James Plotkin's older band]
Carnival In Coal
Demimonde - Mutant Star
The Sprawlcosm - Cybionic Black Art [most whacked out album I ever heard.]
Ephel Duath [though I like 'Rephormula' the best.]
Unexpect - Utopia [my favorite by them.]
Void [UK] - Posthuman [same members as Virus and Ved Buens Ende.]
Bogus Blimp [signed to Garm from Ulver's label JESTER RECORDS]
newer Dodheimsgard
Thou Shalt Suffer - Somnium [just a whacked out classical ambient thing, not DM like the first one...]
Love History
Rakoth [Jabberworks or Tiny Deaths... Tiny Deaths is weirder though.]

The new Amok [Norway] album 'Necrospiritual Deathcore' is awesome too, it's like avant-garde black/death with an old school feel and they go totally insane by the end of the album.

Master's Hammer - pretty much the forerunners of avant-garde wierder extreme metal... in fact, they got too weird for their own good...

more doomier weird stuff:
Estoeric
Silent Stream Of Godless Elegy
Void Of Silence - Towards The Dusk
Zaraza

Avant-garde but on the goth/electronica/ambient side:
Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out [truly fucking amazing, first song sucks though, this is like King Crimson doing goth-rock.]
Coil
Diamanda Galas
Sopor Aeternus (And The Ensemble Of Shadows) - Todeswunsch
Star Of Ash - Iter.Viator
Sui Generis Umbra

Now none of these I know are 'pure' avant garde with some exceptions, but there ya go.
...and Ulver has always ruled.

__________________

Wow, I'm impressed at this great response, thanks a lot.

Now, how about modern composers in general? Recommendation?

__________________

Some people have named some of the most important modern composers in this thread already, and this era of classical music doesn't interest me very much... but you have to check out Charles Ives - this was the dude who dug the sound of two marching bands playing totally different things passing by eachother at the same time... I went to a performance of his piece 'The Unanswered Question' at my community college I used to go to like 5 years ago, and it was terrifying, as in the music literally scared the shit out of me.

__________________

'The Unanswered Question' will fuck with you. Ives is great.

I'd honestly say that the best way to check out avant-garde composers of whatever generation is just to check out the ones already mentioned and follow on the ones you like most - without trying you'll encounter most of the people we know and many of the ones we half-remember; you can stumble across all sorts of assorted shit hypertextually.

Takemitsu was quite good. He did flute sonatas. Although I find I get bored very easily if a sonata has anything other than piano.

I get how Boulez et al weren't the first, but they were the first who truly stepped away from the systematic approaches of both tonality and dodecaphonics.
Schoenberg and Webern were of the Second Viennese School as so-called, whereas Stockhausen and Cage were of that Darmstadt school. I would have loved to walk past all the practice rooms of that place. What an experience...

They are all part of the same movement really anyway, so let's stop arguing. I was simply thinking of who comes to mind when I think of the 20th Century.

Try myspace for all the modern composers. They are all there as far as I can see, and although each profile has only four pieces, the guys who made the pages have selected well. The John Cage one is really good. It has this incredible piece called Bacchanale on it. I'm currently trying to learn it on guitar, screw all the Paganini and Bach all the shredders learn. I'm doing Cage.

__________________

Porcupine Tree is mainstream? Wow, I guess I don't watch enough TRL.

I went to a Madison Symphony last year and some of the students performed it. It was one of the greatest things I've ever heard live.

__________________

Wow, sounds like I need to hear that. Sycophant: Some of that sounds good.

__________________

Boulez didn't step away from dodecaphonics, he incorporated that type of systematization into every aspect of his music - what the hell else do you think serialism is? Boulez, Cage, and Stockhausen are nothing but 'systematic' in their approach to music; all three rely entirely on the idea that there is a system. All three don't represent a major break from the people who came immediately before them (as you just said); they, like most mid-century modernists, expand logically on the ideas developed around the time of World War 1.

Don't come in here with little half-assed, non-explanatory parses of whatever you read after seeing my objections to try to make it seem as though you didn't actually say 'first avant-garde;' we're not idiots, and even if we were, what you said's still on the page.

I totally forgot about "East/West Blast Test." It's not all instrumental (like 7 of 27 songs have vocals on the first cd), but they are hands down the most technical band ever because it was done by tape trading.

__________________

Kong. 'nuff said

Bile
Zaraza

__________________