Improvised and Experimental music

[marvin100]

I'm new here (been wet shaving for a couple years but just stumbled across this place).

Improvised and experimental music are pretty important parts of my life. I see a lot of love for classic rock here, and some newer hip rock/indie stuff, but is anybody here interested in or knowledgeable about some, shall we say, further "outside" music?

(when this great Willie Nelson record finishes I'm going to put on some Cosmos [Sachiko M. and Ami Yoshida]...)

 

[SmoovD]

Welcome Marvin.

You can get some love here for improvised music- just listening to some Sonny Sharrock this morning on the way to work. Zorn is great (it may not be improvised but Masada is a great group). Also listen to E. Sharp. Maybe a little Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and O. Coleman, too.

Who do you like/recommend?

 

[Confuzius]

I saw Holy **** a few years back, opening for Wolf Parade and it was probably the closest I can put to improvised and experimental music. Very wild, electronic, yet not quite at the same time, real drums and base, pluse everything else including the kitchen sink thrown in.

The surrealest thing was watching the guy "scratch" with what looked like 8 or 16mm analog tape, just ripping it through a tape head of some sort. I never got around to getting the album, I think it might suffer a bit without the visual experience, but I might pick it up now after remembering what a unique experience it was to see them.

 

[bluepunk18]

Perhaps something like Einstürzende Neubauten? Or is that too weird? I've listened to it a few times with friends. Nothing says experimental to me like breaking glass and using hammers and such as instruments. And welcome to the B&B, just in case nobody has thrown that out there.

 

[strat1117]

Hey Marvin --

I love all kinds of music, especially improvised and jazz. Everything from Coltrane to Grateful Dead to Brand X to Screaming Headless Torsos.

You are among friends.

Enjoy!

 

[marvin100]

Cool, guys. Not a lot of overlap with the areas that interest me most (I hate Zorn & 80's downtown NYC scene stuff, hate jamband stuff, lost interest in almost all jazz years ago), but cool to see some people on here stretching out a little.

I've been listening to the new Ami Yoshida / Toshimaru Nakamura duo a lot lately. Really harrowing, but also patient and emotionally deep, unlike anything else around right now afaik. I'm also a big fan of the composer Morton Feldman.

 

[Chuckaluck]

check out these way out there bands: Aids Wolf, The Hospitals, Animal Collective, Hair Police to name a few. PM me if you would like more reccomendations/info.

 

[marvin100]

That stuff's all pretty "inside," imo (and Animal Collective is basically a pop band--a creative one, to be sure), but I've heard a few Hair Police things that I liked.

 

[The Nid Hog]

Some of my friends are into onkyo, but I haven't checked it out yet--thanks for the reminder. Welcome to B&B!

 

[marvin100]

Well, the musicians in question tend to consider onkyo "dead," and many have moved on to either composed music or improvised music of an even more extremely reductionist nature (Taku Sugimoto makes records these days that feature 5-10 minute silences separated by, in many cases, a single note!).

There are tons of great records from the Tokyo crew, though, if you want some recs!

 

[wundergussy]

Although I don't have a huge love for improv per se, I do listen to quite a lot of out-type music. Recently most of it has been in the black metal/doom realm, like Portal, Black Boned Angel, KTL, Whitehorse, Nortt, Nordvarger, Moss, etc. (am also digging more straight-ahead black metal as well). In the other direction, I have been into electronic drone stuff, a la touch records (Fennesz, phil Niblock, Oren Ambarchi) and more noise/drone stuff, especially from the raster-noton label. As far as straight ahead noise, Kevin Drumm is always good!

(Suppose I should hype a local boy while I am at it, and give props to Daniel Menche from Portland)

 

[marvin100]

Kevin Drumm's earlier improv stuff (the second s/t on perdition plastics, the duos with tetreault, dorner, sugimoto) is also awesome, but yeah, I love Sheer Hellish Miasma.

I never got into Menche--haven't heard his records, just live. Recs?

If you like that touch stuff you might like erstwhile, too? Pita did a disc with Marcus Schmickler (they're touring behind it now I think) that's pretty harsh/droney/loud as hell. That's not an area I prefer (I always think of drones as "safe" or "easy," for some reason), but there's some overlap.

 

[wundergussy]

My favorite Menche record is Deluge and Sunder, but it is more drone-heavy than some of his other stuff. He did a big series of drum-based noise records that are pretty good. He also put out a record with Kevin Drumm last year.

 

[scottish steve]

"outside" music?

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Check out "Amassed" by Spring Heel Jack, That's about as outside as you can get I think.