proto-punk

some kid shoved his headphones in my ear and all i heard was a drone and it sounded a tad weird. it was velvet underground -venus in furs and it got me into avant garde. i started to search the internet for more and now i like to explore sonic sounds =3

dazamaru

Jazz was always in our home, from Bird to Coltrane...so I was a jazzer early on. One day on a local underground .college station, I accidentally taped Frank Zappa"s St.Alphonso Pancake Breakfast. It was the most fun in music I had in a while. The metric twists and turns in the song was just so different than listening to Count Basie and such. I absolutely wore that cassette out.

Buying Zappa's music and reading Zappa interviews, I discovered Eric Dolphy and Monk. Then Stravinsky. Then on to Messiaen. Then Sun Ra's Myth Science Orchestra. Then Stockhausen. Then Hindemith. Then on to Aaron Copeland.

Today, I listen to everything. Mos Def, Q-tip (hip hop)....Laraaji, Harold Budd, Steve Roach (ambient)....Henry Cow, Univers Zero, 5uu's, Unexpected, U-Totem (avant-rock)...The Delphonics, The Temptations (Motown).....Indian and Arabic music,,,,and the aforementioned classical music.

It's good to see others with expanded ears beyond the normal pre-packaged pop music. Im scrolling thru pages here to pick up on some artists I might have missed.

Psy-Fi

For me it was probably Edgard Varese. A friend of mine put "Poem Electronique" on his turntable one day and said "listen to this." It sounded so strange and funny to me, I'd never heard anything quite like it.

My mind has been slightly warped ever since.

But in a good way!

masterpeewee

For me their was this creepy old guy who lived downstairs from me. He was a good friend of my mom and was renting out the place from us, i called him sergeant ****head. At the time I liked what everyone else liked at school, until he gave me a copy of Massive Attack's Protection, which is still one of my favorite cd's. After that it went in this order portishead, tricky, Verdi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Mad Professor, Kode 9, burial, Captain Beefheart, African Head Charge, Howard Shore, Miles Davis, and so on. I manly get my music nowadays from either the sergeant still or The Wire. Everyone i know at school thinks i have a weird taste in music and as for experimental stuff I just find what i can on the internet or in the Wire.

Antonio

Butthole Surfers. 9 hours and 15 albums later, i'd found my home.

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NumberNineDream

Mostly Zappa, 60s psych and many headaches.

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Schizotypic

Well, I actually came to MB listening to basically mainstream stuff and looking to expand in the most violent and explosive manner possible. I think the most experimental band I listened to at the time was The Mars Volta, but still can't get through any full album aside from Frances The Mute. To be fair I haven't spun it in over half a year so I wouldn't know what I think of it now.

I kept going, and the first stuff I found hard to get into was Animal Collective, AIR, Tears For Fears, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc. Somehow after I went through a small stage with those bands I moved to PJ Harvey, that was a leap I think. From There Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits. It was around here I found The VU, which after I spun it enough to love got me much more accepting of distortion.

From this point on there were tons of good bands. I think some leaps were Ornette Coleman, Otis Redding, Slint, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, The Moody Blues, John Cale, A Tribe Called Quest. Anyway, in this sense MB has done wonders for me even though I'm not really into avant - garde. I like Blonde Redhead, The Book Of Knots, a little Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, The Bad Plus. It's not a bad a start I think but I have a long way to go on my journey.

D.J. Canned Yams

of Montreal essentially introduced me to the more 'avant-garde' scene of music.

James

zappa for me after him I tried to find more and here I am.

dankrsta

Sonic Youth opened for me the whole world of this experimental and avantgarde side of music. The first album I've listened to was "Evol". I had never heard anything like that before and it remained my favourite SY album. But when I got to "Confusion Is Sex" is when I started searching for that kind of weird, twisted and above all creative music. Eventually I discovered Swans "Holy Money" and "Filth". Whoa, nothing had prepared me for that. I was hooked. I found out about Einsturzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle and then about kraut-rock.

On the other side, I was listening to My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 and that kind of prepared me for post-rock. It was in the late 90's and there were a few radio shows that aired what was a fairly new 'genre' for me, called post-rock. It was at the same time I was discovering kraut-rock, so naturally I was in the phase of some minimal, repetitive and hypnotic music.