Favorite Avant-Garde Albums?

[Mascodagama]

^ Hi Udi, what do you recommend of Wolfgang Dauner? I only know him from UJ+RE, which is very nice but not avant...

[Udi Koomran]

[walt]

Harry Bertoia's Sonambient-any/all of 'em.
H.N.A.S.-Im Schatten Der Mohre

[Steve F.]

I'd make mention of his album John Somebody. I borrowed that from the library back in the late 80's, when it first came out. I remember being stunned by how he built melodic phrases based on the tape loops of the woman speaking. I've never heard anything else he's done, but I love that one album.

I saw him perform that piece at New Music America in DC in 1982; it was quite different from anything I had experienced before and made a big impression.

[Mister Triscuits]

^ Hi Udi, what do you recommend of Wolfgang Dauner?

Just bragging: two weeks ago I found a sealed original copy of Output, Dauner's only record for ECM and one of the earliest releases on the label, at a hole-in-the-wall record shop in Berkeley. Never been reissued, it's one of the handful of ECMs never to make it to CD. Cost me a pretty penny, but it was worth it to plug that hole in my collection.

[Steve F.]

Just bragging: two weeks ago I found a sealed original copy of Output, Dauner's only record for ECM and one of the earliest releases on the label, at a hole-in-the-wall record shop in Berkeley. Never been reissued, it's one of the handful of ECMs never to make it to CD. Cost me a pretty penny, but it was worth it to plug that hole in my collection.

Good album too!

[Polypet]

Harry was huge for me and I like / love them all, but The World Of Harry Partch is STILL my go to HP release.

Oh yeah, a major major discovery that one was. So brilliant, so original, so very special

[Polypet]

Leg End contains some improvs that are clearly not in the tonal center, along with many moments of using dissonance in harmonies and melodies, etc so that would be the reason I personally would classify it as possibly being avant-garde. Doesn't mean I'm right, but that's my thinking on this at least! Its a slippery slope, and its one of those moments that labeling certain music to fit within a certain box is always gonna be difficult if not downright impossible.

Another example: Sing to God has many very strange and dissonant moments, but it also has very beautiful diatonic moments, so should it be included here? I have no idea. Ives Concord Sonata is also very challenging, but is it really avant-garde? I've heard it so many times and know it so well that to me I don't really "hear" it as being particularly avant-garde, but I know that my wife and my mother-in-law would absolutely detest it, so I guess definitions of this type of music can also vary from person to person based on their taste, knowledge, tolerance, familiarity, etc etc

Ah - let's not forget that it's also hugely dependent on the when of the thing. Legend was quite avant and unusual when it came out. I remember loving it for that reason. Actually, i'd say Unrest was even more so. Or Faust or any of that lot. Definitely considered avant-garde as far as "rock music" was concerned. And still so in many ways. Of course, it also depends on the listener, how extreme or avant something is. I hear plenty i consider not all that avant that fries other brains. Rite of Spring was quite avant when it first came about - less so to some now but mainly due to the influence it had and how much that's become a norm. Plenty of people would still consider it out though.

As for new music people, composers and "avant-prog" or whatever, i can attest, as a new music composer and friend to many others, we certainly are aware of the "progressive rock music" (and even more so for the younger set who grew up with all of it). I'm quite impressed with the number of orchestral youngsters who are either fans of or in "weird rock" bands themselves. This is the source of so much great new avant-speckled jazz and art rock from bands like Knower, et al. These are folks who grew up on what we may have once considered unusual, progressive or otherwise "avant" rock and fusion music. It's in their DNA now.

Who knows how interested some are in "Prog" or whatever - Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, for instance (who i consider to often be fairly avant), is vocal about despising that stuff. Like Steve "my other car is in 17/16" Feigenbaum pointed out, it all depends on who you ask.

My favourite avant-garde album is Lumpy Gravy, btw. Pure bliss

[GuitarGeek]

They were very good, but he was best solo. THAT was pure, unadulterated Reichel.

I can only imagine. I listen to the records, and remain baffled by how he's making a lot of those sounds. I read the piece he did for Guitar Player (circa 1989, I believe), where he explained the 'fret-behind-the-bridge" guitar, but I'm still baffled by how he got a lot of the sounds I hear on the records where he uses those guitars.

One of my favorite classical albums ever is Ives Symphony No. 4 with Michael Tilson Thomas/Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Sony Classical).

If memory serves, Sony Classical put otu a set of, I believe, three CD's, that had all of the Ives symphonies (there's four, right?). I believe one disc had the first plus other pieces, one had the fourth, with the same deal of shorter pieces padding out the disc, and there was one that had the 2nd and 3rd.

[Zappathustra]

Very nice post Polypet

[trondis23]

Ives left an uncompleted symphony, The Universe Symphony, which has been completed based on his sketches by Johnny Reinhard. This symphony combines all of his most radical ideas, like spatialisation, microtonality, polyrhythms and polytonalities, etc. It's worth checking out. And then there is yet another symphony: A Concord Symphony. This is an orchestration of his Concord Sonata, made by Henry Brant. There are two recordings of this that I know of. One is a part of the Henry Brant Collection. The other is a multichannel recording on hybrid SACD that combines this with Aaron Copland's Organ Symphony.

And speaking of Henry Brant - he also deserves a mentioning in this thread. His works are highly influenced by Ives' ideas of spatial music, with the orchestra divided in several smaller groups that are distributed round the concert hall. His works are available in the Henry Brant Collection series. Ideally they should have been recorded in surround, but unfortunately they are only in stereo. But they are very good, nevertheless.

[Baribrotzer]

Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, for instance (who i consider to often be fairly avant), is vocal about despising that stuff.

My experience of them is that they sounded a fair bit like a more elaborate Talking Heads. And that his influences in general might be Eighties art-rock and post-punk, with African music and knowledge+skills from his formal training thrown in on top of that. All of which music was most emphatically NOT PROG, in spite of using some of the same musical techniques and sometimes having similar goals.

[Steve F.]

Like Steve "my other car is in 17/16" Feigenbaum pointed out, it all depends on who you ask.

I laughed so hard at this Joyce asked me what was up.....

[Progbear]

Thanks for mentioning Wha-ha-ha, one of the most fascinating and underrated groups from Japan. They remind me a little of the Belgian band Cos, but more radical, and with some truly groundbreaking experiments with synthesizers. I can’t make heads or tails of the “Radio Theatre” suite (serious language barrier) but in general, their music is most excellent.

[GuitarGeek]

Rite of Spring was quite avant when it first came about - less so to some now but mainly due to the influence it had and how much that's become a norm. Plenty of people would still consider it out though.

I still say Iggy presaged heavy metal with that one.

[Polypet]

My experience of them is that they sounded a fair bit like a more elaborate Talking Heads. And that his influences in general might be Eighties art-rock and post-punk, with African music and knowledge+skills from his formal training thrown in on top of that. All of which music was most emphatically NOT PROG, in spite of using some of the same musical techniques and sometimes having similar goals.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And, although i think he has absorbed other things, that set you mention covers his unique sound pretty well. I think his music is often very progressive and at times quite avant. Consequently, he often falls in my wheelhouse. BUT as you say, it's most certainly NOT prog. His personal attitude leaves me cold but he has written some cool things and has interesting ideas.

Your comment about his "knowledge/skills" is also right on. It's sort of thrown on top of those styles (some of which, in themselves, were influenced by and influencing the progressive music of the 80s/90s). Those styles influenced many people working in progressive or new musical realms (as you say, Talking Heads, et al).

[Polypet]

I still say Iggy presaged heavy metal with that one.

Iggy, yeah

[MJBrady]

You bunch of weirdos. Why are listening to all this noise!!
No mention of a local guy(Minnesota) Milo Fine who is a drummer/composer, and dabbles in many instruments, with a high degree of intrigue.




His dad was a reknowned percussion and drum instructor at the Univ of Minn. My friend Terry studied under them both, he went on to join The Teenage Boat People with Milo, as the drummer.

[MJBrady]

Milo's Free Jazz


Teenage Boatpeople


Anyway, learning of this music back in the early 80's opened some new windows of discovery, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, James Blood Ulmer, Cecil Taylor, Bill Laswell and Axiom records, Archie Shepp, Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society, Sun Ra, Nicky Skopelitis, etc.

It was really twisting my mind to say the least, I was an aspiring guitarist/bass player at that time, and hearing this dissonant sounding stuff being played with authority had it's own genius to it. It was seriously mind bending, but in a good way.

[Baribrotzer]

BUT as you say, it's most certainly NOT prog. His personal attitude leaves me cold but he has written some cool things and has interesting ideas.

Not just different musically from prog - which it was, of course, in spite of sometimes having a substantial amount of elements in common. But in making a big, reiterated, and outspoken point of being the real deal art-rock, descended from the Velvets, R&B, and garage-rock, and having nothing whatsoever to do with prog. You know, as in the Hip Rock Critics' stance in the Eighties culture war. And as in Longstreth taking exactly that same stance, even though nobody under 40 even remembers that particular culture war.

I was a bit too clever in making my actual point, and wound up being a bit too obscure.

[Polypet]

Not just different musically from prog - which it was, of course, in spite of sometimes having a substantial amount of elements in common. But in making a big, reiterated, and outspoken point of being the real deal art-rock, descended from the Velvets, R&B, and garage-rock, and having nothing whatsoever to do with prog. You know, as in the Hip Rock Critics' stance in the Eighties culture war. And as in Longstreth taking exactly that same stance, even though nobody under 40 even remembers that particular culture war.

Exactly so, yep

[ozric75]

Very interesting thread. Nice recommendations.

A few new finds...
Negativland ‎– Escape From Noise
Coil ‎– A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room
God - The Anatomy Of Addiction
David Shea – Prisoner
Empirical Sleeping Consort ‎– The Layers Of Awakening
Müller, O'Rourke – Weighting
Paul Schütze – Apart
Paul Schütze + Phantom City - Site Anubis
Gravity Kills - Gravity Kills

[ozric75]

More in the abstract & musique concrete field...

l'Itinéraire ‎– Espaces Électriques
Françoise Barrière ‎– Par Temps Calme Et Ensoleillé
James Dashow ‎– Archimedes - Mnemonics - Oro, Argento & Legno
Jean-Claude Risset ‎– Songes • Passages • Computer Suite From Little Boy • Sud
Michel Pascal ‎– Puzzle
Miguel Azguime ‎– Para Lá Dos Mares
Alvin Curran ‎– Crystal Psalms

[rcarlberg]

Françoise Barrière ‎– Par Temps Calme Et Ensoleillé

That reminds me: