Tardigrade Inferno - How Nightmares Die

 #Tardigrade Inferno #avant-garde metal #alternative metal #dark cabaret #dark circus music #Russian #animated music video

Coming from the musically rich city of St Petersburg, Russia is the extraordinarily zany and creative band Tardigrade Inferno which formed somewhere around 2016 and released one self-titled EP and has been somewhat quiet for a few years. The year 2019 has barely had time to warm up and the band finally unleash the very first debut full-length MASTERMIND which displays the band’s unique mix of alternative metal with dark cabaret circus music. Add in sprinklings of death metal, thrash and power metal and you have one of early 2019’s most promising new acts.
The word “Tardigrade” can refer to either a variety of slow-moving microscopic invertebrates or it can simply be an adjective that means slow-moving or slow in action. I have no friggin’ idea how this applies to this band since this is high energy metal and there is relatively little info about this band on the net as i can’t even find any sort of biography whatsoever, however i can say that this band has found a unique sound right off the bat. However if i had to compare Tardigrade Inferno to any other band it would definitely be Diablo Swing Orchestra as it has the same cartoonish feel and the singing style of lead vocalist Darya Pavlovich sounds a lot like both AnnLouice Lögdlund and Kristin Evegård of DSO.
Musically though, this band doesn’t break out the jazz instrumentation or even circus accordions but rather delivers a metal music heft piled on top of dark cabaret and circus melodies alongside the bouncy festive rhythms that are associated with the greatest show on Earth. The metal bombast is mostly carried out by the power chord slapping staccato style accompanied by circusy keyboard runs but different metal variations come into play however mostly in an alternative metal down-tuned power chord rampage. While Darya Pavlovich’s vocal range stays more in clean vocal cabaret mode, she occasionally screams in metal style reminding me of Arch Enemy for short stints but unfortunately not nearly enough! The circus bounces are always under the surface despite heavy metal thunder stomping fast numbers or slower subdued moments.
While i’m constantly reminded of Diablo Swing Orchestra, Tardigrade Inferno isn’t nearly as daring and out there and is rather restrained in comparison. While the music is definitely quirky and playful it doesn’t change the sound up nearly often enough although there are moments such as on the title track where death growls and guitar solos enter the picture, otherwise Darya is pretty much on cutesy Gwen Stefani mode and reminds me a bit of the 90s band No Doubt only with more metal bombast. While a band to look out for as the members become more comfortable with this stylistic fusion approach, this debut is a great start with elements of ska, gypsy swing and the dominant dark cabaret sounds keeping the album infectiously catchy and light-hearted without skimping on the metallic angst.  From: https://www.metalmusicarchives.com/artist/tardigrade-inferno

The Velvet Underground - I'm Waiting For The Man

 #The Velvet Underground #Lou Reed #John Cale #Nico #experimental rock #art rock #avant-garde #proto-punk #Andy Warhol

American rock band The Velvet Underground released "I'm Waiting for the Man" in 1967 on their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Like many of the band's other songs, "I'm Waiting for the Man" focuses on the dark underbelly of life in New York City. The track, written by singer Lou Reed, tells the story of a man in New York traveling to Harlem to meet his drug dealer, who is never referred to as anything other than "the man" in the song. He brings $26 uptown, where he stops at a brownstone at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, which is currently the home of a 4/5/6 subway station. ("Up to Lexington, 1-2-5"). The Velvet Underground were one of the first groups to openly write songs about drug use and its catastrophic consequences (heroin, in the case of "I'm Waiting for the Man"). The accounts often came from the personal experiences of the band members.  From: https://www.musicbanter.com/lyrics/Velvet-Underground-I-m-Waiting-for-the-Man.html

Bjork - Wanderlust

 #Bjork #art rock #avant-garde #experimental #electronica #alternative rock #glitch pop #psychedelia #trip-hop #neo-classical #singer-songwriter #ex-Sugarcubes #Icelandic #animated music video

Video production team Encyclopedia Pictura created the mind-boggling 3D video for Bjork's new single "Wanderlust".

Dazed Digital: What is Encyclopedia Pictura?
Isaiah Saxon: Right now Encyclopedia Pictura is Sean Hellfritsch and me, working together to make movies, often in collaboration with artists Daren Rabinovitch and Vanessa Waring. Soon it will be more people, working not just on movies, but on augmented reality applications and practical magic.

DD: How was it working with Bjork?
IS: Bjork is very tapped in. She assumed a position of support and generosity with us rather than a position of creative oversight. Her energy and focus were so strong that it pushed us to take this project on with a tremendous amount of mythological weight and tunnel vision enthusiasm.

DD: What's the basic concept of the video?
IS: Bjork is an archetypal nomad, shepherding giant yaks through the Mountains. She does hydromancy to decide whether to take them down a river or not. A second self, the Painbody Backpack, sprouts from her like a growth and then engages her in an action play which displays their relationship. The force which compelled Bjork to go down river begins to manifest itself in Bjork's head and in the physical world. This character, the Rivergod, is a transcendental attractor which pulls her into the future.

DD: How long did the video take to create? What was the hardest aspect?
IS: The video took nine months from concept art to us being pulled - kicking and screaming - from our computers. Sean had to become a 3D expert and build a 3D camera system and playback box and pioneer lots of DIY processes. For me the hardest aspect was trying to achieve an immersive, complete, and very specific aesthetic - because the only thing in the video that isn't hand crafted is bjork's face, hands, and feet. I used my own hands everyday but also worked with over 50 key artists to achieve the forms and textures of this world. We tried to lodge ideas into the forms and use the patterns and textures of these forms to transmit meaning to the viewer.

DD: What made you want to work with 3D in the age of YouTube?
IS: Well, firstly let me get out the news that 3D doesn't work on YouTube because of heavy color compression, which is what anaglyph 3D glasses rely on for decoding the 3D properly. A lot of people watch 3D on YouTube without knowing that they are actually looking at something that is way screwed up, or 'ghosted' in stereoscopic jargon. Secondly, why 3D? Because we see the ultimate transcendental function of art as "expanding the realms of direct experience." 3D allows a film to be more like direct experience and less detached and seperate from how we organically percieve. Right now technology is still trying to create better home viewing solutions (anaglyph sucks), but theatrically it’s already there. Because we are trying to touch people the best we can, we don't take into consideration the unfortunate current quality standards set by PooTube (or more accurately, the bandwidth limitations of today), but this will all be changing very soon.

From: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/296/1/creating-bjorks-wanderlust-video

Dir En Grey - Obscure

 #Dir En Grey #avant-garde metal #progressive metal #alternative metal #death metal #gothic metal #nu metal #metalcore #Japanese #visual kei #music video

Dir en Grey is the first Japanese metal band to break through in the West. Initially associated with visual kei (a Japanese musicians' movement that employed aesthetic tenets drawn from Western glam metal, including heavy make-up, elaborate hair styles, flamboyant costumes, and an androgynous look), they were arguably the most successful non-English speaking rock act since Rammstein. The band made its U.S. debut with 2007's The Marrow of a Bone, and played the festival circuit internationally as their sound began leaning on influences from goth rock and death metal to the theatrical metal of Korn and Slipknot. 2015's Arche - widely considered their masterpiece - added vanguard and technical death metal to the mix. In 2018 they revealed a more thrash-oriented sound with the controversial The Insulated World. They reappeared in 2022 with the decidedly more progressive Phalaris.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dir-en-grey-mn0000937315/biography

The term "visual kei" was derived from one of Japanese rock band X Japan's slogans, "Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock", seen on the cover of their second studio album Blue Blood (1989). This derivation is credited as being coined by Seiichi Hoshiko, the founding editor of Shoxx magazine, which was founded in 1990 as the first publication devoted to the subject. However, he explained in a 2018 interview with JRock News that visual kei was technically coined, or at least inspired by, X Japan's lead guitarist Hide. Hoshiko also said that at the time they were called 'Okeshou Kei' ("Makeup Style"), "but it simply felt... too cheap. Even though X Japan was a big band and people used the term 'Okeshou kei' to describe them, the term was still lacking substance. I didn't like the term at all! Because of this, I tried to remind all the writers to not use this term as 'They are not okeshou kei, they are visual-shock kei'. From there, it went from 'Visual-shock kei' to 'Visual-kei' to 'V-kei'. After we spread the word, fans naturally abbreviated it to 'V-kei'. The Japanese love to abbreviate everything as a matter of fact." Hoshiko considers visual kei a distinctive Japanese music genre and defined it "as the music itself along with all the visual aspects of it."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_kei 

Kuunatic - Tītián

 #Kuunatic #psychedelic rock #experimental rock #progressive rock #folk rock #noise rock #post-punk #avant-garde #Japanese #animated music video

Kuunatic is a thrilling Tokyo based tribal-psych trio bolstered by diverse global sonics and powerful female vocals. Drawing on the members’ different musical and cultural perspectives, their music explores ritual drumming, pulsing bass lines, atmospheric keyboard sounds and Japanese traditional instruments. Having previously released an EP (“Kuurandia” 2017) as well as a split 7” (with Taiwanese fuzz psych garage band Crocodelia), “Gate of Klüna” is Kuunatic’s much awaited debut album. Produced by Tim DeWit (Gang Gang Dance) the record reveals a mesmerizing sound world that transcends genres and hemispheres and succeeds in being both boldly experimental and wildly catchy. Kuunatic are Fumie Kikuchi on keys and vocals, Yuko Araki on drums and vocals and Shoko Yoshida on bass and vocals. The possibilities to project onto Kuunatic’s music are endless. This is because the band has created that rare thing: catchy music that is impossible to pigeonhole. The track ‘Lava Naksh’ is a form of renaissance dance; a pavane, maybe, albeit with Kraftwerk’s early organ sound. ‘Full Moon Spree’ could be a ritual version of The Fall’s ‘What You Need’. ‘Raven’s War’ is a dry-as-dust progressive soundtrack, it could be a lost cut from the Valley of the Dolls record. The transportative elements in all are key: certain beats and near-melismatic melody lines hark back to archaic processional and ritual music. In ‘Desert Empress Part II’ for example, a glowering bass line walks ponderously alongside the toms, framing and guiding the mood. Finishing matters off with what sounds like a backwards organ is also discombobulating. Such sonic sleights of hand are part of the Kuunatic playbook.  From: https://swampbooking.com/kuunatic/

Rïcïnn - Doris

 #Rïcïnn #Laure Le Prunenec #neoclassical darkwave #art pop #avant-garde metal #baroque pop #experimental #gothic rock #French #animated music video

Laure Le Prunenec returns with another avant-garde masterpiece on her solo project Rïcïnn's sophomore album Nereïd, mixing classical influences with folk, electronics, and gothic sounds. Laure Le Prunenec is well-known for her work, among all those who enjoy the more experimental and avant-garde end of dark music. Her operatic vocal delivery on Igorrr, Öxxö Xööx, and Corpo-Mente has rightfully earned her a strong fan following, but what often flies under the radar is her solo work under the moniker of Rïcïnn – a captivating project, whose debut Lïan in 2016 put Le Prunenec’s vocals front and center, while bringing together bits of all the previously mentioned projects, to form a colossal masterpiece unlike any other. Four years later, Rïcïnn returns, taking a broader yet nuanced approach with a sophomore full-length – Nereïd. What made Rïcïnn‘s debut stand apart from her other projects is that it showcased Le Prunenec in her most expressive form, free from any restraints on style. Yet Lïan was just the first step of expression for Le Prunenec, whereas Nereïd sees her break all the shackles and soar high. The multiple layering of the vocals is more refined, and the vocal delivery has an even wider variety.  From: https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/ricinn-nereid/

Diamanda Galas - Broken Gargoyles 1 - Mutilatus

 

 #Diamanda Galas #avant-garde #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz #spoken word #piano #a capella #no wave #bel canto #Schrei opera 

Diamanda Galás composes violently compassionate music about suffering. Her late-1980s Masque of the Red Death Trilogy focuses on AIDS, which killed her brother, Philip-Dimitri, in 1986, while other projects delve into the oppressive Greek Junta and the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Genocides. The 67-year-old goth icon performs less harrowing stuff, too - a hard-grooving 1994 collaboration with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, a bevy of brilliant takes on blues standards. Yet at her best, Galás sharpens her cutting sense of empathy, slices open difficult subject matter, and approaches it from inside: Her 1991 dirge for HIV’s most deadly era, Plague Mass, might be the heaviest live record ever made. Ultimately, Galás’ haunted ritual, like all of her releases, is a ceremony of tenderness.
A master of the early 19th century style of bel canto singing, Galás uses her operatic genius to explore tropes uncommon in experimental composition - especially the breakdown of tortured, diseased bodies. Shaped from spectral piano and electronics, her soundscapes batter, unsettle, rouse us. Her virtuosic voice, inspired by avant-garde saxophonists Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, spans an untold number of octaves. She screeches, wails, bleats, and slips between characters, usually vengeful, demonic figures skulking around like a bad conscience. Both performance artist and diva, Galás has a potent theatrical sense and a persona at once progressive and full of fire and brimstone. Echoing obsolete medical drawings that illustrate sickness as floating miasma or bodily humors to be drained, she rebukes ignorant societies while harnessing their wild imaginations.
Her latest record, Broken Gargoyles, highlights the chronic nature of our callousness toward the ill and injured. Inspired by the mistreatment of wounded World War I infantrymen, Galás unearths devastating source texts from a slightly earlier era: the verse of Georg Heym (1887-1912), son of an assistant in a yellow-fever clinic and an enfant terrible of German expressionist poetry. Before his death at 24, Heym wrote unflinchingly about sick patients, maimed soldiers, and other doomed souls he might have been exposed to through his father’s work. Setting four of Heym’s poems to pulsing, droning accompaniment, Galás traces a throughline of ostracized invalids across the past century-plus of public health catastrophes. Appropriately, she premiered some of this material at a medieval German leper sanctuary and began cobbling the album together during COVID lockdown. Broken Gargoyles targets governments’ botched coronavirus responses - implicitly, it sets sights on their homophobic sluggishness to protect gay men from monkeypox, too. The album may not shock the singer’s die-hard fans, but Broken Gargoyles is a moving, painful listen and an ideal access point for the uninitiated.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/diamanda-galas-broken-gargoyles/

Stolen Babies - Push Button

 #Stolen Babies #progressive metal #avant-garde metal #gothic rock #alternative metal #experimental rock #dance rock #performance rock

Stolen Babies are an American experimental rock band consisting of vocalist/accordionist Dominique Lenore Persi, bassist/guitarist Rani Sharone, and drummer Gil Sharone. Stolen Babies formed from a 12+ member high school performance troupe named The Fratellis; the band takes its name from one of the skits performed by the group during this period (written by Dominique Persi and her older brother, animator Raymond S. Persi). Stolen Babies released their first demo CD through their own label, No Comment Records.
Among the band's many musical influences are groups such as Oingo Boingo, Mr. Bungle, Cop Shoot Cop, and Fishbone (with whom Gil Sharone has performed). Stolen Babies are known for their unclassifiable odd rock and heavy, energetic performances. Except for the earliest demo, each album has featured artwork by indie comic artist Crab Scrambly.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Babies

Fifty Foot Hose - Cauldron

 #Fifty Foot Hose #underground rock #experimental rock #avant garde #noise rock #electronic #psychedelic rock #1960s

Fifty Foot Hose is an American underground rock band that formed in San Francisco in the late 1960s and reformed in the 1990s. They were one of the first bands to fuse rock and experimental music. Like a few other acts of the time, they consciously tried to combine the contemporary sounds of rock with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas. The original group comprised three core members: founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and vocalist Nancy Blossom, augmented by Kim Kimsey (drums) and Larry Evans (guitar).
Cork Marcheschi (born 1945) grew up in Burlingame, California. In his teens, he performed with the Ethix, who played R&B music in clubs around San Francisco and in Las Vegas, and released one experimental and wildly atonal single, "Bad Trip", in 1967, with the intention that the record could be played at any speed. Interested in the ideas of experimental composers like Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Terry Riley, and George Antheil, he constructed his own custom-made electronic instrument from a combination of elements like theremins, fuzzboxes, a cardboard tube, and a speaker from a World War II bomber.
David and Nancy Blossom brought both psychedelic and jazz influences to the band. Together, the trio recorded a demo which led to a deal with Limelight Records, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. They released one album, Cauldron, in December 1967. It contained eleven songs, including "Fantasy", "Red the Sign Post" and "God Bless the Child", a cover of a Billie Holiday number. It was an intriguing mix of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with fierce and advanced electronic sound effects. "I don't know if they are immature or premature", said critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The record sold few copies at the time, although the group had a small but intense following in San Francisco and also toured with other acts including Blue Cheer, Chuck Berry and Fairport Convention, when the band was augmented by Robert Goldbeck (bass). They broke up in late 1969, when most of its members joined the musical Hair, Nancy Blossom becoming the lead in the San Francisco production and later singing in Godspell.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Foot_Hose

The Velvet Underground - Heroin

 #The Velvet Underground #Lou Reed #John Cale #Nico #experimental rock #art rock #avant-garde #proto-punk #Andy Warhol #1960s

The Velvet Underground was easily one of the most important rock bands of all time pushing the boundaries of acceptable music. They were far beyond their time, taking rock music to a whole other level; they never went on to become part of the mainstream but were critical in the forming of other bands. Their legacy has continued to last after their short run as an active band shaping the works of Patti Smith, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, U2, R.E.M., Roxy Music, Sonic Youth and many others. They were more progressive than other rock bands during the era of flower power by writing about social taboos such as sexual deviancy in the song "Venus in furs" and drug addiction in the song "Heroin" and "White Light/White Heat". They also wrote about paranoia, social alienation, violence, hopelessness and urban demimonde in several other songs. Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, John Cale, and Lou Reed played their first show together in 1965. Just a few months after that, in a little Cafe in Greenwich Village in New York City the pop artist Andy Warhol saw them perform and took the group under his wing and they soon became the house band at his infamous studio the Factory. He made them the centerpiece for his "Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” a series of multimedia events that included screenings of Warhol's films and musical performances from the band, as well as dancing and other performances. Their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico (featuring the German singer/actress Nico) dwindled in record-label red tape for a year before finally being released in 1966. The album's tracks proved to be one of the most cutting edge of it’s time. The group and Warhol had a falling out after they performed in Boston without Nico and the rest of the Inevitable cast, who arrived later. They were then forced to take on Steve Sesnick as their manager and without Warhol's connections and publicity they soon faded away. Empty theaters and unsuccessful album launches plagued the rest of the Velvets career, yet their extreme versatility showed that they were a force to be reckoned with.  From: https://sites.google.com/site/mississippijohnhurtproject/home/the-velvet-underground  

Sonic Youth - 100%

 #Sonic Youth #noise rock #alternative rock #experimental rock #indie rock #post-punk #avant-garde #no-wave #1980s #1990s

Sonic Youth emerged from the experimental no-wave art and music scene in New York before evolving into a more conventional rock band and becoming a prominent member of the American noise rock scene. Sonic Youth have been praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do,” using a wide variety of unorthodox guitar tunings while preparing guitars with objects like drum sticks and screwdrivers to alter the instruments' timbre. The band was a pivotal influence on the alternative and indie rock movements. After gaining a large underground following and critical praise through releases with SST Records in the late 1980s, the band experienced mainstream success throughout the 1990s and 2000s after signing to major label DGC in 1990 and headlining the 1995 Lollapalooza festival. In 2011, following the separation and subsequent divorce of vocalist bassist Kim Gordon and vocalist guitarist Thurston Moore, the band played its final shows in Brazil.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Youth

100%: This is a mournful song with a creepy undercurrent, made sadder and more tender by the way the lyrics address a dead friend in the present tense. This present tense isn’t in denial — maybe there is the tiniest glimmer of denial in “I been waiting for you just to say the zaftig girl is mine” but beyond that the lyrics more consistently acknowledge that this charming friend who “[rocked] the girls” was “shot dead,” that they’re “blasting the underworld,” that they are undeniably and irrefutably dead. Instead, to me (a person very much prone to projecting) that present tense feels like a natural progression for a friendship that’s been suddenly impacted by tragedy. That tragedy is violent — a shooting — but there’s also a dark little predatory feeling throughout the song. Musically, it’s both driving and alluring. The song is the musical incarnation of a violent eighties horror in which some cool zombies pursue their victims. A stark contrast to the lyrics! But fitting when you consider how the song mourns these friends’ pursuit of girls, which isn’t necessarily predatory, but does feel decisively prowling. The most mournful lyrics are still aggressive. The lyrics consider revenge, and sure that is violent, but capturing pain by saying “I stick a knife in my head thinking about your eyes” is such a very specific, physical, disturbing manifestation of grief. Not dishonest at all! But rarely articulated.  From: https://medium.com/@pkeene27/capsule-reviewed-dirty-by-sonic-youth-a1986ef54850

Frank Zappa & The Mothers - Live at The Fillmore east June 1971

 

 #Frank Zappa #The Mothers of Invention #Flo & Eddie #psychedelic rock #experimental rock #blues rock #art rock #jazz fusion #avant-garde #musique concrete #proto-prog #comedy rock #absurdist #1971 #live recording

That’s right, you heard right, the secret word for tonight is “Mud Shark.” But for this bawdy tale from the not-so-briny shoals of Seattle, Washington alone, this is required listening. Of course, instrumental fans who hunger for something more filling from Fillmore will find it in tracks like “Lonesome Electric Turkey” and the evergreen “Peaches En Regalia.” This live record (one of the last from the Fillmore East if memory serves) is one of my favorites from the Flo & Eddie experiment, showcasing their unique stage presence on the dialogue-driven “Do You Like My New Car?” and cascading into a delirious version of The Turtles’ “Happy Together.” Unlike some of Frank Zappa’s live releases, Fillmore East retains the atmosphere of a live show from beginning to end, with a minimum of post-doctoring and a maximum of spontaneous energy (or as spontaneous as a band playing a tortuous track like “Little House I Used To Live In” can get). Among the other Zappa/Mothers albums out there, Fillmore East reminds me most of the 200 Motels soundtrack, where a similar mix of complicated instrumentals and humorous dialogue songs co-existed happily (although I understand that Uncle Meat tasted about the same too). As an oral history of rock stars and the groupies who love them, Fillmore East puts Professors Flo & Eddie at the podium, overshadowing the rest of the band much of the time. Ordinarily, their monkeyshines steal the spotlight from the erstwhile top banana (Frank) and his phenomenal fretwork. But Fillmore East finds a better balance than Just Another Band From L.A., for example, alternating between the profane and the musically profound in a way that satisfies both camps.  From: https://progrography.com/frank-zappa/mothers-fillmore-east-june-1971-1971/

The Mothers of Invention were an American band active from 1966 to 1969. Throughout, their output was primarily directed by composer and guitarist, Frank Zappa (1940–1993). Their albums combined a broad span of genres and utilised diverse instrumentation. Their lyrics were generally humorous, with frequent style-parodies of contemporary Pop music (with doo-wop love ballads endlessly lampooned), bountiful surreal imagery, cartoonish vocals and oblique, satirical protest songs. Their diversity and insincerity makes their classification difficult, but Zappa's increasingly ambitious and avant-garde compositions towards the end of the 1960s share many features of Free Jazz and 20th Century Classical music. The group's output, particularly Absolutely Free, also proved enormously influential on the then-nascent genre of progressive rock.
Zappa disbanded the original Mothers of Invention line-up in 1970 to create music under his own name, but shortly reformed an entirely new band sometimes known as "The Mothers." This new incarnation had a strong vaudeville style and were much bawdier than before, with new vocalists Flo & Eddie, previously of the Turtles, taking the lead. After Zappa was pushed offstage at the Rainbow Theatre in 1971, he broke up this second band and concentrated on a jazzier style with a short-lived big band called the Grand Wazoo, but returned with a third lineup of the Mothers in 1973. This reformed group retained musical similarities to the previous group and the chamber music of the late '60s Mothers, but with a tighter, funkier sound; George Duke's soulful vocals being perhaps the most memorable addition.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/The+Mothers+of+Invention/+wiki

Sophie - Faceshopping

 #Sophie #Sophie Xeon #avant-garde #experimental pop #hyperpop #electronic #avant-pop #dance-pop #bubblegum bass #avant-pop #music video

Sophie Xeon, stylized as Sophie, was an avante garde singer and producer behind some of the biggest names in pop music.  Before the artist’s unexpected death at 34 on Jan. 31, 2021, Sophie had pioneered the hyperpop subgenre - a radical blend of trance, electronic and hip hop music - and collaborated frequently with pop stars like Charli XCX. As a transgender artist, Sophie also inspired many LGBTQ+ listeners and queer musicians.
Sophie’s music is liberating in its absurdity and unconventionality. The sounds challenge the conventions of mainstream music, experimenting with auto-tune, vocal distortions and a complete abandonment of acoustic instruments. One of the most intriguing parts of Sophie’s music is how it simultaneously critiques and contributes to the pop industry. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Sophie noted that hyperpop strove not to make fun of pop music, but to push its boundaries and urge experimentation.
In the song “Faceshopping,” Sophie sings, “I’m real when I shop my face,” in a reference to Adobe Photoshop and the ability it provides to alter the way one is percieved. The dissonance that Sophie feels between the self that is physically presented and the self in Sophie’s mind can only be remedied by editing or surgery. Sophie validates body modification as a way of self-determination — an experience unique to the trans community and to those who experience gender dysphoria.
Sophie’s music is a peek into the future of pop. It’s deeply personal, openly critical and unabashedly fun. It uses machine-like sounds to reveal a true, human self. In a world where the digital and authentic are seen as antithetical, Sophie has shown us that real and synthetic can exist simultaneously, and we have the power to create our truest selves.  From: https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2021/02/li-sophie

OvO - You Living Lie

 #OvO #noise rock #sludge metal #industrial #extreme metal #experimental #avant garde #dark electronica #Italian

OvO is an Italian noise rock duo formed by Stefania Pedretti and Bruno Dorella in 2000 in Ravenna, Italy. The two initially planned for the band to be totally improvisation-based with an open lineup. After encouragement from members of their local music scene to become a band and tour, they decided to do so in order to play with Cock ESP, an extreme noise band from Minneapolis. Since, the pair have released eight full-length albums on a variety of international record labels. The origin of the band's name, OvO, stems from using a piece of the Italian word "nuovo", or new, which creates a palindrome. Decibel Magazine summarizes OvO's 2016 album, Creatura, as "making rhythmic, layered, sludgy noise" and a "David Lynch dance party.” Counting Swans and Diamanda Galás as their biggest influences, Pedretti and Dorella are known for primitive industrial sounds and Pedretti's theatrically dark vocals. The band is set up in minimalist fashion, with only two members, one of whom plays a half drum kit. Stereogum's Doug Moore described the band's sound as, "music – rhythmic noise, really – that simmers with a flat-affect malice, owing equal debts to extreme metal, noise rock, industrial music, and dark electronica," while Christian Eede of The Quietus recalled their music as being "punctuated by slamming, swampy drums, squalls of feedback and punchy guitar riffs, as well as Stefania Pedretti's no-holds-barred vocal."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OvO_(band)#cite_note-Decibel_Magazine-5

Nine Inch Nails - Broken

#Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #industrial #alternative rock #electronic rock #industrial rock #industrial metal #ambient #transgressive #banned music video

Nine Inch Nails’ Broken (also known as The Broken Movie) is a 1993 short film featuring four music videos from the Broken EP with wrap-around segments shot in the style of an amateur snuff film. The extremely graphic film was directed by Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and Hipgnosis design group fame. The NSFW video has never seen an official release (perhaps because no label would want to put their name on it?) and has to this day been a difficult piece to track down. The terrifying, violent, and unforgettable film was originally “leaked” by Trent Reznor himself via hand-dubbed VHS tapes in the ‘90s. The original tapes were given by Reznor to various friends with video dropouts at certain points so he could know who redistributed any copies that might surface. Reznor later implied in a comment on the Nine Inch Nails website that Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers was responsible for the most prominent leak of the original tape. In 2006 and 2013 the film was briefly “leaked” to the Internet, many believe by Reznor himself. In both cases, the film disappeared quickly. In the case of the 2013 “leak,” the entire video was made available for streaming on Vimeo via the Nine Inch Nails Tumblr account, but was removed by Vimeo almost immediately.  From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/broken_nine_inch_nails_infamous_unreleased_snuff_film_now_online_nsfw_watch

 

Bjork - I Miss You

 #Bjork #art rock #avant-garde #experimental #electronica #alternative rock #glitch pop #psychedelia #trip-hop #neo-classical #singer-songwriter #ex-Sugarcubes #Icelandic #1990s #animated music video #Spumco #John K

Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi has made his first music video for Icelandic beauty Björk, who is an equally outrageous and innovative artist. Illustrating the song "I Miss You," the video features John K's stupid yet loveable character Jimmy the Idiot Boy cavorting with a bubbly animated version of the singer. A variety of techniques are used, including traditional 2-D cel animation by Kricfalusi's own Spumco Productions and Colorkey Productions, 3-D computer animation supervised by Charlie Gibson at Rhythm & Hues, real-time motion-capture animation by House of Moves, plus blue screen mattes bringing in live-action into the mix. (The live-action sequences with Björk were shot in a Los Angeles studio in just one day.) Björk, a long-time fan of Kricfalusi's work, insisted that he do a video for her when they met at one of her concerts. She was so pleased when she first saw John's storyboard that she apparently proclaimed, "It's just like Christmas!" and did not ask for any changes. The video is becoming something of a novelty, since MTV edited the director's cut to remove an end sequence featuring the animated Jimmy and Björk dancing underneath what look like a cross between rubber nipples and condoms on top of her actual (live-action) chest. It is ironic that the network cut that sequence while keeping shots of Björk violently ripping up a chicken, and even Jimmy himself. But fret not, devoted fans; the director's cut can be seen in rotation on that other music channel, The Box, as well as on MTV's new alternative sister network M2. The video is also included in promotions of the new RealVideo technology, which enables full-motion video to be displayed over the Internet.  From: https://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.12/articles/jacksoncapsule1.12.html

Björk Guðmundsdóttir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1965. Technically she recorded her first album as an 11-year-old; she sings the Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill” in Icelandic. A decade or so later, she joined the Sugarcubes, Iceland’s premiere art-rock band. They sounded like Twilight Zone Roxette. The first and best Sugarcubes record, Life’s Too Good - it’s got “Motorcrash” on it - came out in 1988, the year they played Saturday Night Live. The Sugarcubes put out two more records and had a beguiling junk-drawer chemistry to them, but anytime Björk’s voice pulled into anything past second gear, it was obvious where she was headed - or, let’s say it was obvious that only she knew where she was headed. And thus, in 1993, did her real first solo album arrive. She called it Debut. In her first music video as a solo artist, for her first single, “Human Behavior,” she is eaten by a bear. Debut’s genre, if you gotta assign a genre to it, is Björk. Björk makes Björk music. There’s a needle to thread here though, as her star ascends in 1993, and as we gird ourselves for the decades of Björk excellence and flamboyance to come. A quick summary of the last 25, 30 years of Björk. The truly extraordinary run of mind-bending music videos. “Bachelorette” especially, shout-out Michel Gondry. The increasingly avant-garde album covers. Utopia especially. The titanic avant-pop influence of the albums themselves, Post and 1997’s Homeogenic especially. The Timbaland album. The beatboxing album. The phone-app album. The starring role in Dancer in the Dark. The Oscars swan dress. The coffee-table book. The other book. The other other book. Like 400 box sets and compilations and so forth. Lotta box sets. The MOMA exhibit nobody liked. The multimedia magical-realist universe that revolves around her. The needle to thread here, the challenge to accept here, is to marvel at the inimitable Björk-ness of Björk without infantilizing her or merely caricaturing her. There’s a tendency to reduce her to a woodland-fairy-type late-night-comedy routine. Remember when Winona Ryder did a Björk impression on Saturday Night Live, in a Celebrity Jeopardy! skit, in 2002? That’s the exact moment the ’90s truly ended, just FYI.  From: https://www.theringer.com/2021/4/21/22395193/bjork-hyperballad-post-history

Diamanda Galas - Wild Women With Steak Knives

 #Diamanda Galas #avant-garde #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz #five octave range #spoken word #piano #a capella #extreme vocals

“Wild Women with Steak-Knives,” from the tragedy-grotesque Eyes Without Blood by Diamanda Galas, is “a cold examination of unrepentant monomania, the devoration instinct, for which the naive notion of filial mercy will only cock a vestigial grin.”

Wild Women with Steak-Knives (The Homicidal Love Song for Solo Scream)

I want you to get down on your knees
And I want you to ask me:
What is my name
What is my name
What is my name
What is my name
What is my
What is
Your name

I have been looking for a killer
And I'm not talking about meatballs
I am talking about steak
Steak
Steak
Yes...killer

I commend myself to a death of no importance
To the amputation of all seeking hands
Pulling, grasping, with the might of nations
Of sirens, in a never ending bloody-bliss
To the death of mere savagery
And the birth of pearly, white terror

Wild women with veins slashed and wombs spread
Singing songs of the death instinct
In voices yet unheard
Praising nothing but the promise of death on earth
Laughing seas of grinning red, red eyes
All washed ashore and devoured
By hard and unseeing spiders

I commend myself to a death beyond all hope of
Redemption
Beyond the desire for forgetfulness
Beyond the desire to feel all things at every moment
But to never forget
To kill for the sake of killing
And with a pure and most happy heart
Extoll and redeem disease

She was hanging...
And her...
And I asked you: well, well
And ask you: well, well
What would you do
Angel in the house tonight

Atlas Volt - Dreamweaver of the Dreamscape

 #Atlas Volt #avant-garde #alternative rock #progressive rock #indie rock #post-metal #art rock #eclectic #surrealism #animated music video #stop motion #Jan Svankmajer 

Philippe Longchamps and Adam Hansen-Chambers met in Malmo, Sweden in 2012. After discovering that they shared a similar taste in music, as well as shared political and philosophical ideas, they started working together on a music project named Atlas Volt. Both Adam and Philippe already had music they were working on individually, so they exchanged ideas with each other and while capitalizing on their new creative chemistry, they collaborated to make what was to become their first release: Atlas Volt’s debut EP “Eventualities.” The EP featured 5 tracks ranging from indie pop and prog rock, to post-metal and alternative rock. The very fact that Atlas Volt exists is a real “tour de force” since Adam and Philippe rarely meet in person. Adam lived in Sweden for four years before moving back to England in 2012, while Philippe still lives and works as a teacher in Sweden, since he moved there from Canada in 2002. Adam and Philippe meet on special occasions in Malmo or London in order to write, record and produce their songs. Because of the distance separating them, they complete everything else by sharing audio files over the Internet. Furthermore, Adam and Philippe completed their latest record while working full-time and completing studies in their respective countries. Atlas Volt is proud to be a virtual band.  From: https://atlasvolt.com/about-us

Diamanda Galas - Skotoseme

 #Diamanda Galas #John Paul Jones #avant-garde #avant-metal #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz 

I have unscientifically determined that not enough people know about this (I mentioned it to someone I assumed would own a copy and she said “Whaaaaat?”), so off we go: in 1994, Mute records released The Sporting Life, a fantastic collaboration between Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and the amazing avant-garde/operatic vocalist Diamanda Galas. The result was an album too underground for the casual Zeppelin-head, for whom lyrics like “Husband/With this knife/I do you adore” were probably a bit much (plus that crowd was occupied with drooling over Page & Plant around then anyway), yet tamer and more straightforwardly rock than Gala’s fans were used to. But goddamn if the thing doesn’t smoke—and the booklet photos of Jones and Galas cavorting in a convertible with a pretty intimidating knife are good fun, too. Per AllMusic’s Ned Raggett:
Having explored sheer extremity throughout her fascinating range of solo efforts, Galas takes a turn to the slightly more accessible with her collaboration with Jones on The Sporting Life. Her vocal approach is still something which will freak out the unfamiliar listener, so anyone expecting some VH1-friendly switchover needs to think again. Keyboards are once again her other main instrument of choice, with both Hammond organ and piano used. Meanwhile, the Led Zeppelin bassist and arranger handles production as well as guitar and bass, while one Pete Thomas — apparently the Attractions’ drummer on an interesting side effort indeed — handles percussion. While it’s inaccurate to say the results are Galas fronting Led Zeppelin, Thomas does put in some heavy pounding with a hint of John Bonham’s massive stomp.
The album is noteworthy for reasons beyond its unexpected combination of principals. Jones’ playing on the album really doesn’t recall Zeppelin all that much. It actually sounds as though he’d been taking some cues from the Jesus Lizard’s bassist David Sims, and it definitely plays like a product of its time as opposed to a ‘70s throwback, which isn’t too much of a surprise — I’d always sensed that Jones was a more musically adventurous Zep than Jimmy Page, who himself was hardly a slouch in that department. Check out the opening track, “Skótoseme” (the title is Greek for “kill me”). That rawness and sparse instrumentation continues with “Do You Take This Man,” from which the above “Husband/With this knife” lyric is quoted. It’s pretty much all like that, really. Next is a version of the old Percy Sledge tune “Dark End of the Street,” rendered just with drums, organ, and Galas’ bottomlessly expressive voice. Galas and Jones spoke with Bomb magazine’s Michael Albo about the choice to keep the instrumentation minimal:

DG But, I had heard Led Zeppelin for years not necessarily knowing who it was. You know what I mean, one of those things like, (gasp) “How riveting, I like that, I could sing with that.” Especially if you’re talking about Jones-Bonham, the power rhythm section. John Paul Jones is legendary. I’d been creating tapes and working very, very remotely with musicians. Usually it would go into a tape thing and then it would turn into some concerts. So when we talked, we talked about doing live performances together from the beginning, which was a little different for me. You’ve got voice, hammond organ, drums, amp, that’s it. The power trio.

MA So from the very beginning it was a very solid, spare arrangement, not too studio.

DG It couldn’t have been; not the way John Paul plays, not the way I play. What do we need all that for? It would just get in the way. It would just be like having another bitch on stage. I mean why?

MA There are no lead guitars in this album

JJ The only guitar on this is the lap steel on the song “Last Man Down”. There’s no regular guitar anywhere else on the record.

MA Which I think is absolutely incredible. You know, when I was becoming a cognizant music listener, I didn’t know Led Zeppelin’s work as much as I knew John Paul Jones’s as a producer/arranger; and Diamanda, you were releasing your work as I became interested in the “avant-garde.” So I am interested in how your audiences, the fans of Led Zep and those of Diamanda, are going to merge. What sparks will come out of this?

JJ Well, it’s not as if Zeppelin was exactly a rock band. We were a blues band base and there were a lot of excursions and journeys into unusual areas. So anybody familiar with that shouldn’t be surprised by anything we do. With this record, there’s still definitely the energy that is found in the best of rock and roll, and there’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been heard before. Nobody else is doing anything like this.

From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/led_zeppelins_john_paul_jones_diamanda_galas

Having explored sheer extremity throughout her fascinating range of solo efforts, Diamond Galas takes a turn to the slightly more accessible in her collaboration with John Paul Jones on The Sporting Life. Her vocal approach is still something which will freak out the unfamiliar listener, so anyone expecting some VH1-friendly switchover needs to think again. Keyboards are once again her other main instrument of choice, with both Hammond organ and piano used. Meanwhile, the Led Zeppelin bassist and arranger handles production as well as guitar and bass, while one Pete Thomas, the Attractions' drummer, handles percussion. While it's inaccurate to say the results are Galas fronting Led Zeppelin, Thomas does put in some heavy pounding with a hint of John Bonham's massive stomp. Hints of gently majestic arrangements here and there help draw a connection further. On the flip side, Thomas and Jones' rhythms often have a crisp urban funk touch at points, sounding more no-wave than heavy metal.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-sporting-life-mw0000117925

Nine Inch Nails - Closer

 #Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #industrial #avant-garde #alternative rock #electronic rock #dark industrial #ambient #industrial metal #1990s #music video

“Closer" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released as the second single on their second studio album, The Downward Spiral (1994). It is considered Nine Inch Nails' signature song and remains one of their most popular hits. The music video was directed by Mark Romanek and first aired on May 12, 1994, having been filmed in April of that year. Set in what appears to be a 19th-century mad scientist's laboratory, the video's imagery involves religion, sexuality, animal cruelty, politics, and terror, including: a heart connected to some sort of device, the beat of the heart corresponding to the beat of the song; a nude, bald woman with a crucifix mask; a monkey, scared, panicked, tied to a cross; a severed pig's head spinning on some type of machine; a diagram of the vulva/vagina; and Reznor wearing various fetish gear, such as an S&M mask, ball gag, and long leather gloves while swinging in shackles. Several times, Reznor, wearing leather pants, floats and rotates through the air, suspended by invisible wires. There are also scenes of Reznor being blown back by a wind machine while wearing aviator goggles.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)