I just felt like bumping this thread up as it relates to my thread "Is The Avant-Garde Dead?"; I'd like to see if more examples of contemporary Avant-Garde music can be mentioned...

Lightning Bolt, Mind Flayer, Anarchestra

Pierre Batien, Flying Lutenbachers, Daniel Carter

Wonderful band. A reviewer described them as: "Imagine all the best aspects of Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, the Ruins, Slayer, and Ornette Coleman all thrown into a blender together. Then imagine them on speed."

That may or may not be true, depending on your prespetive on the music.

Another band related to LB is another duo called: Hella.

I've never been very fond of LB, myself...they seem like a poor rendition of Ruins to me...

...however, I adore Hella...their three major releases are all top notch! Their drummer is outstanding!

You mean Pierre Bastien? He does some *really* great stuff! I love his work.


As for "pushing boundries" I don't think that such things as time and key signatures have much to do with pushing boundries these days. People were already doing that back in Debussy's time... (early 20th Century) so none of that is really all that "new" ...

Before pushing boundries I think composers need to think about composing "good" music... whatever they believe that is.. something someone might (gasp) actually enjoy LISTENING to. I get the impression that some people think first about pushing boundries and then (if at all) about composing something "musical." The problem with this is that they may have a fascinating concept that doesn't really translate into something all that "listenable."

For example, this is how I feel about Karlheinz Stockhausen's music. I love to read about his explanations of his ideas. The problem is that is as far as it goes. I listen to his stuff and it has nowhere near the impact on me that it did when I was reading about it as an idea. Contrast Stockhausen with somebody like Gyorgy Ligeti. In writing his "Requiem" he talks about using good contrapuntal technique (albiet micro-polyphonically) sounding like pretty standard stuff compositionally... not really seeming to make much effort in pushing boundries in any obvious way ...with weird notation, soloists swinging from the rafters, flying in helicopters etc. and yet the end result is something utterly fantastic and fresh sounding! (And Stanley Kubrik also thought so, because he used some of the Requiem in 2001.) Conclusion: Ligeti's music really "sings" for me. Stockhausen is more of a theorist for me and Ligeti is *the composer.* I would say that Ligeti probably thinks about the music first and THEN if it takes some kind of boundry-pushing technique or notation, whatever, to REALIZE that ... then he does it but not at the expense of the music still sounding great.

-- drsquid

Squidquote follows:
Beavis, like, free your mind, or something.

drsquid, I couldn't agree with you more about Stockhausen. I get bored of listening to his shit and leave it alone for a year or two, then I read something he's written and think I must be missing something and listen to it all over again, and get bored again. Theory is wonderful, but it's only theory. I think it can help you out of a box while you're composing, but I don't think it's enough to make music with. Ligeti seems like he listens to what he's doing instead of thinking about it (using theory to extend his concepts into time, but not to generate them in the first place).
I also suspect that Stockhausen tends to intimidate his performers (not necessarily intending to, but from his "genius" persona and the rigorousness of his own mind). The seventies music (which I'm most familiar with) always sounds tentative and/or constipated as if the players are a little afraid they don't completely get the point. Having come to "new music" from jazz and hearing how cecil taylor, sun ra, etc. drove and inspired their collaborators to discover their own excellence, Stockhausen's approach seems to me to be limiting them somehow. I don't get the feeling anyone has much fun, or maybe they don't consider that important.
I always here some sort of joyfulness in Ligeti, even when he's being scary.

Stockhausen bores the pants off me too, mainly because he shies away from any sort of repetition. I love loops & repetition because they impart an almost Psychedelic quality to tracks which use them well. Fatboy Slim's 'Rockerfeller Skank' or 'dont forget your teeth' prime examples of this sort of experimentalism in a highly popular format.

I adore Pan Sonic by the way (originally Panasonic; took the manufacturing giants years to threaten them to change their name!), one of my favourites. I saw them and MASONNA (another favourite of mine) in concert together in 1999 on Valentine's Day. And boy did I fall in love...

negativland

Let me go with ... urm ... Otomo Yoshihide