Avant-prog binge 2022

[Mascodagama]

Do they even understand that 'avant-garde' denotes something other than 'avant-garde-rock'?

And I even own and enjoy most of those on the list, except for Lennon's Lions - which I owned but basically amounts to pure rubbish and shouldn't figure on any list if it doesn't concern cornflakes in the toilet bowl. It's not creative, not radical or daring, not "colourful", not even the slightest bit transgressive.

Where the hell is Nico's Marble Index, given the obvious pretext of styrlistic criteria at play?

Shit. Starsailor is excellent but neither the best nor the most culturally-consequent Buckley-record. Is this post-modern hipster parade attempting to survive both pandemic and woke onslaught?

Even if "avant-garde rock albums" is assumed to be the scope it's something of a joke list.

If you were picking a Buckley item - and would you really as one of the ten greatest avant-rock albums ever? - you'd surely pick Lorca?

Two Yoko Ono efforts, how about none? Not hard to think of other Japanese artists who were far more credibly of the avant-garde so far as music is concerned.

IDK in what sense Eno's Another Green World is supposed to be avant-garde. None the wiser about that for reading the piece, unless "avant-garde" actually means "slightly out of the mainstream for a rock record".

Can's Tago Mago - one of the three Krautrock albums owned by everyone who owns exactly three Krautrock albums.

Nothing from France, Belgium, Italy. Nothing from the Rock In Opposition movement.

Björk is in this list, but Captain fucking Beefheart isn't. Nothing against Björk or Medulla at all, but really?

I dunno if hipsterism is at work here so much as "Hey! I own at least ten albums that are a bit odd, I bet there's a magazine piece in this!".

[Steve F.]

Can's Tago Mago - one of the three Krautrock albums owned by everyone who owns exactly three Krautrock albums.

That line actually made me laugh out loud

[Zappathustra]

I've been enjoying this record immensely the last few weeks:
Gabriel Zucker - Leftover beats from the edge of time



https://gabrielzucker.bandcamp.com/a...-edges-of-time

I dunno it it is really 'avant-prog'. It is certainly hard to classify. Somewhere in between big band Jazz and modern classical with some rock and even pop thrown in. Extremely rewarding to delve in.

my favourite album - by a mile - from 2021 and an outright masterpiece in all the senses of the word.

[Mister Triscuits]

And I even own and enjoy most of those on the list, except for Lennon's Lions - which I owned but basically amounts to pure rubbish and shouldn't figure on any list if it doesn't concern cornflakes in the toilet bowl. It's not creative, not radical or daring, not "colourful", not even the slightest bit transgressive.

I think Life with the Lions is pretty decent. At least it's better than Two Virgins. I regard Lennon's "Revolution 9" as one of the finest pieces of musique concrète ever made, so it's so disappointing that TV ended up sounding like exactly what it was, half an hour's worth of somebody dicking around with a tape recorder.

[thedunno]

my favourite album - by a mile - from 2021 and an outright masterpiece in all the senses of the word.

Yeah, I think it was your recommendation in the 'best of 2021' thread that lead me there.

[Mascodagama]

That article was amazing. I 100% believe every word. Thank you for posting it.

Most of what I know about Koby Israelite comes from reading that piece, but based on it I kinda love him. I have a feeling that there aren't many people in the small world of funny music who would have the balls to go into print about being screamed at by John Zorn and having their album ruined by Bill Laswell, but Koby has got those balls!

[NogbadTheBad]

unless "avant-garde" actually means "slightly out of the mainstream for a rock record".

This.

[NogbadTheBad]

I've been enjoying this record immensely the last few weeks:
Gabriel Zucker - Leftover beats from the edge of time



https://gabrielzucker.bandcamp.com/a...-edges-of-time

I dunno it it is really 'avant-prog'. It is certainly hard to classify. Somewhere in between big band Jazz and modern classical with some rock and even pop thrown in. Extremely rewarding to delve in.

It's been on the edge of my To Buy list every since checking it out based on your reco.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Even if "avant-garde rock albums" is assumed to be the scope it's something of a joke list.

If you were picking a Buckley item - and would you really as one of the ten greatest avant-rock albums ever? - you'd surely pick Lorca?

Nothing from the Rock In Opposition movement.

Have to say that I always admired Tim Buckley's far-out experimental efforts on both Lorca and Starsailor, but in terms of his standing as idiosyncratic singer-songwriter artist they both fall short of Happy Sad and Blue Afternoon. And he was already plenty radical on those!

As for the list lacking anything from the Rock In Opposition-movement, now that's simply staggeringly shocking. I recall the nodhead with the giant wannabe-afro behind the counter at the Virgin Megastore on Piccadilly when I asked him for some 'Japanoise' in the summer of 1999 and he kept complaining that "[...] those nippons always tend to fall back on so-called pre-arranged and vulgar pomp things", before he sold me two fine but eventually quite dull CDs by Fushitsusha (w. Keiji Haino). He kept referring to The Wire, you know, in which composed or arranged music at the time was heathenly vinegar and musicians preferably shouldn't deal with presupposed conceptions of the moment at all. Since Paul de Man wouldn't have cared for it.

The ignorance towards the most advanced rock music ever made (as in Rock-In-Opposition), whether from "prog" fora or the hipster Wire-community's incessant morale of moment impulse and "improv", remains not as much a mystery as a revealing asset of self-reliant confirmation-aesthetics. Both improvisational "avant-rock" and self-professed "prog-rock" tend to halt on the challenge of technical transgression onto their domain.

This being said, I'm a fan of Another Green World. It's a cozy-cocktail arty poproxzucker.

I like it better than Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet, although if the latter had been equipped with a 'tron-like emulator-effect and a bit longer songs and some fantasy-cover artwork and a snippet input by MacGyver on mullet percussion it would definitely qualify as pure prog, at least if Geoff Downes endorsed the results.

[JKL2000]

NP: Univers Zero - Ceux Du Dehors

[Steve F.]

Have to say that I always admired Tim Buckley's far-out experimental efforts on both Lorca and Starsailor, but in terms of his standing as idiosyncratic singer-songwriter artist they both fall short of Happy Sad and Blue Afternoon. And he was already plenty radical on those!.

Lorca’s my personal favorite, and also a few of the live things from that period.

[Steve F.]

NP: Univers Zero - Ceux Du Dehors

Well worth a NP!! I still NP it reasonably often.

[NogbadTheBad]

Same here

[Steve F.]

Same here

Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick! Or a bit hand!

[chalkpie]

I play the vinyl "reverb special" version a lot as well

[TCC]

Same here

+2 !
Love Univers Zero and luckily, I could see them at Baja Prog 2007!



1 Partch's X-Ray - Presage (00:01)
2 Xenantaya (16:21)
3 Before The Heat (29:47)
4 Warrior (34:32)
5 Another Variation On Mellotronic Theme (49:00)
6 Dense (53:55)
7 Dense-Finale (La mort de Sophocle) (01:05:30)
8 Kermesse atomique (01:09:30)
9 Band intros (01:15:46)
10 The Funeral Plain (01:17:18)
11 Feu Final - Toujours Plus A L'est (01:40:03)

Daniel Denis - Drums
Michael Berckmans - Bassoon, Oboe
Eric Plantain - Bass
Andy Kirk - Piano, Keyboards
Kurt Bude - clarinet, Sax
Martin Lauwers - Violin

[TCC]

"Leftover Beats From The Edges Of Time by Gabriel Zucker"

Yeah, I think it was your recommendation in the 'best of 2021' thread that lead me there.

The same here and I'm all over it !.
Tankx Zappa!

[JKL2000]

NP: Begnagrad - s/t (Hey Steve, you get a name check in the Thank You's on this one! Of course, that's not a rare occurrence.)

[Steve F.]

^^^^^^^^^

I was probably the first non European business to push that band. Hence the thank you, for which I am happy and grateful.

[thedunno]

NP: Begnagrad - s/t (Hey Steve, you get a name check in the Thank You's on this one! Of course, that's not a rare occurrence.)

I just found out this is now at 'name your price' at bandcamp. Have to get this. For my wife because she is Slovene. She will love it. She has to.


https://begnagrad.bandcamp.com/album...emastered-2003

[Udi Koomran]

NP: Begnagrad - s/t (Hey Steve, you get a name check in the Thank You's on this one! Of course, that's not a rare occurrence.)

Classic album
Love it
Bought in 84 at the recommended records shop

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ The Begnagrad record (the first; they had others, right? I haven't heard them) is a complete treasure. So well visioned, conceived and performed, such an amazingly entertaining and exhilarated listen and one of those where you can always discover new things on each round. I also think it's one of the best introductory examples of "chamber-rock" to the uninitiated, together with UZero's Ceux, Flairck's Engel and possibly Domestic Wildlife by Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU).

It's genuine Paradise Beach/Hotel top-10 stough.

[chalkpie]

Classic album
Love it
Bought in 84 at the recommended records shop

Me too. Not a frequent flyer but always a great spin.

[Steve F.]

^ The Begnagrad record (the first; they had others, right? I haven't heard them)

There was a previously recorded record (which IS on the BC site as well) that was not released until after the first one. It's good. It isn't AS good. (and someone remind me how to embed BC on PE - thank you)

[NogbadTheBad]

Get the whole embed code from bandcamp then just select the code after album=

[ BC ] 3121683503 [ /BC ]