Strategies Against Architecture - The Avant Garde/Experimental Album Club
 

Welcome to the The Avant Garde/Experimental Album Club! Since this part of the forum has been slow, this might be a good way to revive it. I'm happy there are already people interested, but anyone can join at any time. The idea is similar to other clubs here especially to tore's The Prog & Fusion Album Club. I like the idea of every chosen album having its own thread. That means we are going to suggest albums for listening in this thread and then we're going to vote for one. When suggesting an album it would be nice to include some album art along with a name, year (it's not necessary, but I like it) and a bit of info (or at least a link to allmusic, rate your music or something similar). That way we will know what we vote for.

The next question would be: What makes some album avant-garde or experimental? Let's just say, any composer, musician or a band that you would write about in this part of the forum count. We're not going to be strict about tagging. This way, we have a very broad field to choose from, everything from so called high art avant-garde music to experimental genres of popular music. It just has to go out of comfort, established zone and be off-center.

For the first round, we can start suggesting albums these two days. Then, I'll add poll here and we'll vote over weekend. We will have a week for listening to chosen album. Plenty of time for it to sink in. After that I'll open the discussion thread. And then we can do this weekly. If that's all right with you, I can later edit these rules to be more readable.

Let's begin! :)

This week listening:

Discussion Threads:

Great idea.

I'm going to suggest this

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l9...nH/94312-2.jpg
Phew - S/T

I've mentioned this a couple of times in the past and I'm mentioning it again because it's such a great album. Phew is the alias of a Japanese performance artist and former lead singer of Japanese no wave band Aunt Sally Hiromi Moritani. This is her debut album from 1981 which saw her teaming up with Holger Czukay & Jaki Liebezeit of Can & also with legendary Krautrock producer Conny Plank.
Well worth a listen.

Urban, that's an excellent suggestion I picked up from one of your posts. Great album :thumb:


My suggestion:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

Glenn Branca - The Ascension (1981)

The second album by (I'm sure you know him) Branca, avant-garde composer famous for his guitar symphonies, crazy tunings, droning sounds etc. He was heavily involved in New York No Wave scene in the second part of the 70s and had an enormous influence on later New York no wave/noise bands like Sonic Youth and Swans (members of these bands played in his guitar choirs).

I will check out both those and suggest one of my own when I'm back at my desktop.
And I really love the Cage quote you opened with.

Another one is Arthur Russel's album Another Thought. It was released in 1994, and is considered to be one of his best album. When Russel was slowly dying of AIDs, he decided to lean a bit on artistic sign (for what I know, he had previously had a very "poppy" sound to his music, but I'm not entirely sure). He uses a cello and often adds a bit of distortion to it to give it an interesting feel. If you listen to how he plays, it is very strange and definitely has an avant-garde sound with atypical pauses and note sequences. Although, his voice is very "folky" to me when he sings. Anyways, I wouldn't consider it the greatest avant-garde/experimental album ever recorded, but I do think it deserves a bit of merit.

http://brainwashed.com/brain/images/...er_thought.jpg

my suggestion......


Flux Information Sciences - Private/Public

Flux Information Sciences challenges the listener....with creative chaotic artistic terrorism by combining the 'no wave' sound with assaults of bombastic noise.....they are however as playful as they are menacing...this album was released on Michael Gira's Young God Records who said [they are]"Life-threatening and entertaining"....the rumor according to the Young Gods press release is that this album was recorded in front of a live audience of people who were forced to be naked and blindfolded....

edit....figured i'd add the press release

http://younggodrecords.com/Releases/Detail.asp?C=300

I guess my nomination would be...

http://static.boomkat.com/images/103147/333.jpg

Alva Noto—Transform (2001)
Alva Noto is one of several stage names for German musician and visual artist Carsten Nicolai. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good description of his music, so I'll defer to that: Nicolai transforms sound by looping oscillators and tone generators. He does not use sequencers, but edits his work to give his compositions rhythmic structures. Clicks and glitches are not used as ornamental additions to the compositions but make up the essential rhythmic and harmonic elements of the work. He frequently samples electronic information transmission sounds such as fax tones, modem sounds and telephone pops and clicks are sampled and organised.

hmmmmm....this is going to be fun :)

Definitely! Flux Information Sciences sounds really interesting. :)