Favorite Avant-garde/Experimental Guitarist(s)
 

I haven't found a thread on this yet, so I thought I might as well start one up. We can all probably name a few... like Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Derek Bailey, etc. Anyways, feel free to start up a conversation. :yeah:

I'm a massive fan of Frith albeit he's not a particularly technical guitarist. Massacre is fantastic, and a showcase of how skilled, and inventive, he can be.

At the moment, I'm partial to Masayuki Takayanagi. He meshes well in improvisational madness. He transitions from just providing a drone for the others to play on top of to actually going crazy himself so easily.

As is typical, John Fahey as he is my favorite guitarist of all-time. Don't really care if only parts of his discography border on the experimental.



Lee Ranaldo in his hey-day is quite unbeatable, too.

Also, Sir Richard Bishop. Excellent mesh of Latin influence and modern classical, and who knows what else. His raga tracks are also unbeatable.



Might think of more later.

edit: OH, and Wata from Boris. Good lord can the woman play. The guys from Les Rallizes Denudes also need their props, anybody even mildly interested in noise/drone rock needs to hear a release of theirs ASAP.

Fahey's great. He really dived deep down into the blues both in research and in the actual playing of the guitar. I consider him up there with some of the greatest guitarists who ever lived.

Both of those are excellent.

A lot of my top choices are already up here. Here's another: Keith Rowe

Isn't Buckethead automatically reigning champ?

He gets shot down in best guitarist (in general) discussions all the time for being ... too off the wall, too experimental.

Buckethead is my answer. And I would love a thorough conversation about this topic. But in my opinion, it's hands down, easily... the Buck.

Well, you could say that, but we're not really setting up a best guitarist discussion. We're just talking about what our favorite avant-garde/experimental ones are. Buckethead's good though. I know many people who knock him almost immediately when they see how he dresses which is just asinine.

Karel Jandek

I know.

I understand you.

I wasn't setting up a best guitarist ever discussion in your thread, I was entering my opinion that Buckethead is very avant-garde/experimental and I hold him as best of the type.

What I was noting was that he doesn't fare as well in general best guitarist ever discussions against more conventional players, for he is too complex and ... avant-garde. So this is his bread and butter right here...

And if you would like, I could post some examples of how he is the best, in the avant-garde/experimental context at least... I just didn't want to spam a bunch of Buck videos right off the bat...

I'll get some up in a bit, then.

But off the top of my head (top of my bookmarks), here's an example (NSFW):



Yes, I find that very soothing. Not the graphic torture imagery, but the music, mind you. The graphic torture imagery is just kind of :crazy: but nothing we desensitized humans can't handle, eh?