Experimental & Avant-garde on Music Theory Print

Acousmatic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

According to certain historical accounts, the origin of the term acousmatic can be traced back to Pythagoras; the philosopher is believed to have tutored his students from behind a screen so as not to let his presence distract them from the content of his lectures. Under these conditions, the listener focuses on the sounds being produced to heighten the sense of hearing. In 1955, Jérôme Peignot and Pierre Schaeffer were the first to use the term acousmatique to define the listening experience of musique concrète. It is said to be derived from akousmatikoi, the outer circle of Pythagoras’ disciples who only heard their teacher speaking from behind a veil. In a similar way, one hears acousmatic music from behind the ‘veil’ of loudspeakers, without seeing the source of the sound.

Aleatoric music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early precedents#

Compositions that could be considered a precedent for aleatory composition date back to at least the late 15th century, with the genre of the catholicon, exemplified by the Missa cuiusvis toni of Johannes Ockeghem. A later genre was the Musikalisches Würfelspiel or musical dice game, popular in the late 18th and early 19th century. (Such dice games are attributed to Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.) These games consisted of a sequence of musical measures, for which each measure had several possible versions and a procedure for selecting the precise sequence based on the throwing of a number of dice. The French artist Marcel Duchamp composed two pieces between 1913 and 1915 based on chance operations. One of these, Erratum Musical, written with Duchamp’s sisters Yvonne and Magdeleine for three voices, was first performed at the Manifestation of Dada on 27 March 1920, and was eventually published in 1934. Two of his contemporaries, Francis Picabia and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, also experimented with chance composition, these works being performed at a Festival Dada staged at the Salle Gaveau concert hall, Paris, on 26 May 1920. American composer John Cage’s Music of Changes (1951) was “the first composition to be largely determined by random procedures”, though his indeterminacy is of a different order from Meyer-Eppler’s concept. Cage later asked Duchamp: “How is it that you used chance operations when I was just being born?”

Algorave

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Description#

Algoraves can include a range of styles, including a complex form of minimal techno, and the movement has been described as a meeting point of hacker philosophy, geek culture, and clubbing. Although live coding is commonplace, any algorithmic music is welcome which is “wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals”, which is a corruption of the definition of rave music (“wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”) in the UK’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Although algorave musicians have been compared with DJs, they are in fact live musicians or improvisers, creating music live, usually by writing or modifying code, rather than mixing recorded music. At an algorave the computer musician may not be the main point of focus for the audience and instead attention may be centered on a screen that displays live coding, that is the process of writing source code, so the audience can not just dance or listen to the music generated by the source code but also to see the process of programming.

Avant-garde jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1950s#

While some avant-garde jazz concepts were originally developed in the late 1940s (such as the collective free improvisation on Lennie Tristano’s 1949 works of “Intuition” and “Digression”), the advent of avant-garde jazz (synonymous with free jazz at the time) is usually considered to be sometime in the mid- to late 1950s. As a genre, avant-garde jazz was founded among a group of improvisors who rejected the conventions of bebop and post bop in an effort to blur the division between the written and the spontaneous aspects of these genres. In addition to continuing the tradition of experimentation within jazz (a phenomenon evidenced by the development of earlier offshoots of bebop, such as cool jazz, modal jazz, and hard bop), jazz artists would also begin incorporating modernist ideas, such as atonality and serialism. With the release of The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, saxophonist Ornette Coleman paved the way for free (and avant-garde) jazz.

Avant-garde metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

“Avant-garde metal” is interchangeable with “experimental metal” and “avant-metal”, Avant-garde metal is related to progressive metal, but avant-garde metal often has more experimentation, while progressive metal usually has a tighter focus on traditional metal instrumentation and higher levels of technical complexity. Avant-garde metal also uses unusual sounds, breaks conventions, and often includes new elements. The lyrics and visual presentation of the genre are eclectic as well. The Canadian group Voivod also influenced future bands in the genre, pioneering technique such as robotic vocal effects, unusual time signatures, and fractured, dissonant, unorthodox guitar sounds.

Avant-garde music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Distinctions#

The biggest distinction between avant-garde and experimental music was how it relates to tradition. Other distinctions include subject matter, as well as having a superficial idea to avoid diving into serious subjects. Even though avant-garde and experimental music have many distinctions, experimental music and avant-garde music also have similarities due to experimental music being referred to as the “contemporary avant-garde” which is in relation to the electronic style of music being the forefront of many compositions in the 1960s and 1970s. In a historical sense, some musicologists use the term “avant-garde music” for the radical compositions that succeeded the death of Anton Webern in 1945, but others disagree. For example, Ryan Minor writes that this period began with the work of Richard Wagner, whereas Edward Lowinsky cites Josquin des Prez. The term may also be used to refer to any post-1945 tendency of modernist music not definable as experimental music, though sometimes including a type of experimental music characterized by the rejection of tonality. a piece which instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during its entire duration. The piece has been described as “not a musical ‘work’ in the normal sense, only an occasion for a Zen-like meditation”. Although some modernist music is also avant-garde, a distinction can be made between the two categories. According to scholar Larry Sitsky, because the purpose of avant-garde music is necessarily political, social, and cultural critique, so that it challenges social and artistic values by provoking or goading audiences, composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, George Antheil, and Claude Debussy may reasonably be considered to have been avant-gardists in their early works (which were understood as provocative, whether or not the composers intended them that way), but Sitsky does not consider the label appropriate for their later music. A prominent feature of avant-garde music is to break through various rules and regulations of traditional culture, in order to transcend established creative principles and appreciation habits. Avant-garde music pursues novelty in musical form and style, insisting that art is above everything else; thus, it creates a transcendental and mysterious sound world. Hint, metaphor, symbol, association, imagery, synesthesia and perception are widely used in avant-garde music techniques to excavate the mystery of human heart and the flow of consciousness, so that many seemingly unrelated but essentially very important events interweave into multi-level structures and forms.

Avant-pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

“Avant-pop” has been used to label music which balances experimental or avant-garde approaches with stylistic elements from popular music, and which probes mainstream conventions of structure or form. Music writer Sean Albiez describes “avant-pop” as identifying idiosyncratic artists working in “a liminal space between contemporary classical music and the many popular music genres that developed in the second half of the twentieth century.” The Tribeca New Music Festival defines “avant-pop” as “music that draws its energy from both popular music and classical forms.” The term has elsewhere been used by literary critic Larry McCaffery to describe “the most radical, subversive literary talents of the postmodern new wave.”

Danger music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In performance#

As with many forms of concept music and performance art, the lines drawn between tapestries such as “music”, “art”, “theater”, and “social protest” are not always clear or apparent. Danger music consequently has some things in common with the performance art of artists such as Mark Pauline and Chris Burden. For instance, some extreme examples of danger music direct performers to use sounds so loud that they will deafen the participants, or ask performers to throw anti-personnel bombs into the audience. Japanese musician Yamantaka Eye’s noise project Hanatarash was notable for its dangerous live shows, the most famous instance being when the Japanese artist drove an excavator through the venue at the back of the stage. There were also reports of audience members being required to fill out waivers before shows to prevent the band or the venue being sued in case of any harm caused to them. Punk metal band G.I.S.M., another Japanese act, reportedly featured violent live shows in regards to the band’s frontman, Sakevi, who would perform a variety of dangerous stunts including running toward the crowd with a chainsaw, attacking front rows with a lit flamethrower, throwing fireworks at the crowd or fighting random concertgoers. Other pieces involve more symbolic forms of “danger”, such as Nam June Paik’s “Danger Music for Dick Higgins,” which directs the performer to “creep into the vagina of a living whale.”

Dark ambient

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Dark ambient often consists of evolving dissonant harmonies of drones and resonances, low frequency rumbles and machine noises, sometimes supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices and other found sounds, often processed to the point where the original sample cannot be recognized. However, while the theme in the music tends to be “dark” in nature, some artists create more organic soundscapes. The Symphonies of the Planets series, a collection of works by Brain/Mind Research inspired by audible-frequency plasma waves recorded by the Voyager uncrewed space probes, can also be considered an organic manifestation of dark ambient.

Deconstructed club

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The style was born in New York dance parties named GHE20G0TH1K, which started in 2009. Each member of the collective came from a different background, but they incorporated those differences into the mix, hybridizing a melange of Jersey club, Baltimore, footwork, grime, and ballroom music, as well as elements of house and techno. The style that defined the deconstructed club movement was directly shaped by the possibilities of CDJs, and DJ sets, in turn, have inspired producers to imitate this chaotic experimentation in their own music, creating feedback that continued to re-imagine the expectations of the dance-floor music. The MP3s used by DJs on GHE20G0TH1K had a crunchy, cruddy texture while being played on a big sound system, which came to define their aesthetic. The term itself started circulating in the mid-2010s and was used as an umbrella term to describe a disparate, international genus of producers pushing the limits or boundaries of club music and tapping into the avant-garde. The Jam City album Classical Curves (2012) was an inspiration on the deconstructed club scene. UK musician Sophie was credited with producing pioneering work in deconstructed club and bubblegum bass music during the 2010s, influencing mainstream artists such as Charli XCX.

Downtown music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono, one of the early Fluxus artists, opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street, in a part of Lower Manhattan later named Tribeca, to be used as a performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield. Prior to this, most classical music performances in New York City occurred “uptown” around the areas that the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center and Columbia University would soon occupy. Ono’s gesture led to a new performance tradition of informal performances in nontraditional venues such as lofts and converted industrial spaces, involving music much more experimental than that of the more conventional modern classical series Uptown. Spaces in Manhattan that supported Downtown music from the 1960s on include the Judson Memorial Church, The Kitchen, Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation, La Monte Youngs Mela Foundation, Dia Art Foundation, Harvestworks, Roulette, the Knitting Factory, ABC No Rio, Dance Theater Workshop, Tonic, the Gas Station, Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine, the Paula Cooper Gallery, and others. Brooklyn Academy of Music has also shown a predilection for composers from the Downtown scene.

Drone metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Typically, the electric guitar is performed with a large amount of reverb or audio feedback while vocals may or may not be present. Songs often lack beat or rhythm in the traditional sense and are typically very long. The experience of a drone metal performance has been compared by novelist John Wray in The New York Times to listening to an Indian raga in the middle of an earthquake. Wray also states, “It’s hard to imagine any music being heavier or, for that matter, very much slower.” A pioneer band of drone metal called Sunn O))) has indicated a kinship with sound sculpture. Jan Tumlir indicates a “sustained infra-sound rumble of sub-bass—so-called brown noise”.

Drone music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Forerunners#

In 1949, Nouveau Réalisme artist Yves Klein wrote The Monotone Symphony (formally The Monotone-Silence Symphony, conceived 1947–1948), a 40-minute orchestral piece that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained chord (followed by a 20-minute silence) —showcasing how the sound of one drone could make music.

Origins#

Composer La Monte Young is a pioneering figure in drone music. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as “the sound of the wind blowing”, the “60 cycle per second drone of step-down transformers on telephone poles”, the tanpura drone and the alap of Indian classical music, “certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21”, and Japanese gagaku “which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho”. Young started writing music incorporating sustained tones in 1957 with the middle section of For Brass, The group released nothing during their lifetime (although Young and Zazeela issued a collaborative LP in 1969, and in 1970 Young contributed one side of a flexi disc accompanying an issue of Aspen magazine ). The concerts themselves were influential on their own upon the art world including Karlheinz Stockhausen (whose Stimmung bears their influence most strikingly) and the drone-based minimalist works of dozens of other composers many of whom made parallel innovations including Young classmate Pauline Oliveros, or Éliane Radigue, Charlemagne Palestine, Yoshi Wada, Phill Niblock and many others. In 2000, La Monte Young wrote: " About the style of music that I originated, I believe that the sustained tone branch of minimalism, also known as ‘drone music’, is a fertile area for exploration."

Electro-industrial

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

After the EBM (electronic body music) movement faded in the early 1990s, electro-industrial increasingly attained popularity in the international club scene. In contrast to the straight EBM style, electro-industrial groups use harsher beats and raspy, distorted, or digitized vocals. In contrast to industrial rock, electro-industrial groups mostly avoided guitars, other than Skinny Puppy, who used electric guitar elements since the mid-’80s in songs like “Testure” or “Dig It”, and Numb on songs like “God Is Dead”. While EBM has a minimal structure and clean production, electro-industrial tends to have a grittier, complex and layered sound with a more experimental approach. Electro-industrial was anticipated by 1980s groups such as SPK, Die Form, Test Dept, Borghesia, Klinik, Cabaret Voltaire, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Numb, Prominent electro-industrial groups of the 1990s include Mentallo and the Fixer, Nine Inch Nails, Yeht Mae, Velvet Acid Christ, and Pulse Legion (U.S.); Numb and Decoded Feedback (Canada); X Marks the Pedwalk, Plastic Noise Experience, Wumpscut, Haujobb, Forma Tadre, KMFDM, Putrefy Factor 7, and Abortive Gasp (Germany); Leæther Strip (Denmark); and early Hocico, Cenobita, and Amduscia (Mexico). Since the mid-1990s, some electro-industrial groups added guitars and became associated with industrial metal; other groups, e. g. Skinny Puppy, Download, Gridlock, and Haujobb, have incorporated elements of experimental electronic music styles like drum and bass, IDM, glitch, and other electronica genres.

Electroacoustic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tape music#

Tape music is an integral part of musique concrète, which uses the tape recorder as its central musical source. The music can utilise pre-recorded sound fragments and the creation of loops, which can be altered and manipulated through techniques such as editing and playback speed manipulation. The work of Halim El-Dabh is perhaps the earliest example of tape (or, in this case, wire recording) music. El-Dabh’s The Expression of Zaar, first presented in Cairo, Egypt, in 1944, was an early work using musique concrète–like techniques similar to those developed in Paris during the same period. El-Dabh would later become more famous for his work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where in 1959 he composed the influential piece Leiyla and the Poet. Composer John Cage’s assembly of the Williams Mix serves as an example of the rigors of tape music. First, Cage created a 192-page score. Over the course of a year, 600 sounds were assembled and recorded. Cut tape segments for each occurrence of each sound were accumulated on the score. Then the cut segments were spliced to one of eight tapes, work finished on January 16, 1953. The premiere performance (realization) of the 4'15" work was given on March 21, 1953, at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Electronic body music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The term electronic body music was first used by Ralf Hütter of the German electronic band Kraftwerk in an interview with British music newspaper Sounds in November 1977. In June 1978 Hütter reused the phrase in an interview with WKSU radio (Kent, Ohio) to explain the more physical character of the Kraftwerk album The Man-Machine. Although the term originated in the late 1970s, it was not until the 1980s when it reappeared and started to come into popular use. In 1981, DAF from Germany employed the term “Körpermusik” (body music) to describe their danceable electronic punk sound. The term “electronic body music” was later used by Belgian band Front 242 in 1984 to describe the music of their EP of that year titled No Comment ; in the documentary Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records, Jean-Luc De Meyer explained that the band tried to have a more distinct, aggressive stage presence as opposed to what they perceived as the “stiff” electronic acts who stood still behind their keyboards: “We’re doing electronic music, but it’s also talking to the body.”

Experimental pop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Author Bill Martin states that while the term “experimental pop” may sound “seemingly oxymoronic”, it is possible to identify three criteria for characterizing its music: *It is rooted in existing popular forms *It experiments with or stretches the use of these popular forms *It attempts to draw the audience of those forms toward these new developments, in the manner of the avant-garde Some tendencies among artists include the incorporation of experimental techniques such as musique concrète, aleatoric music, or eclecticism into pop contexts. Often, the compositional process involves the use of electronic production effects to manipulate sounds and arrangements. According to musicologist Leigh Landy, experimental pop settings combine sound-based work and note-based work, though not always simultaneously. Composer Nico Muhly described the world of experimental pop as “celebrations of sonic juxtapositions”.

Experimental rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

Experimental rock was originally referred to as “avant-garde rock and roll” by music publications throughout the mid- to late 1960s. The earliest known use of the term was in 1966, in an issue of Sing Out!, which labelled New York City band the Fugs an “avant-garde rock and roll group”. That same year, Record Research also used the term “avant-garde rock” in an issue describing the musical catalog of radio station WPMU, while the following year Canadian publication Take One used the phrase to describe California’s the Mothers of Invention and the Gas Company, as well as New York’s the Velvet Underground. By the late 1960s and 1970s, several music publications published articles using the term as well as “experimental rock”. Additionally, some experimental rock acts would be referred to as “art rock”.

Free jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Free jazz was a reaction to the convolution of bop. Conductor and jazz writer Loren Schoenberg wrote that free jazz “gave up on functional harmony altogether, relying instead on a far ranging, stream-of-consciousness approach to melodic variation”. The style was largely inspired by the work of jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Some jazz musicians resist any attempt at classification. One difficulty is that most jazz has an element of improvisation. Many musicians draw on free jazz concepts and idioms, and free jazz was never entirely distinct from other genres, but free jazz does have some unique characteristics. Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane used harsh overblowing or other extended techniques to elicit unconventional sounds from their instruments. Like other forms of jazz it places an aesthetic premium on expressing the “voice” or “sound” of the musician, as opposed to the classical tradition in which the performer is seen more as expressing the thoughts of the composer. Earlier jazz styles typically were built on a framework of song forms, such as twelve-bar blues or the 32-bar AABA popular song form with chord changes. In free jazz, however, the dependence on a fixed and pre-established form is often eliminated, and the role of improvisation is correspondingly increased. Other forms of jazz use regular meters and pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz retains pulsation and sometimes swings but without regular meter. Frequent accelerando and ritardando give an impression of rhythm that moves like a wave. Previous jazz forms used harmonic structures, usually cycles of diatonic chords. When improvisation occurred, it was founded on the notes in the chords. Free jazz almost by definition is free of such structures, but also by definition (it is, after all, “jazz” as much as it is “free”) it retains much of the language of earlier jazz playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrases in this music. Guitarist Marc Ribot commented that Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler “although they were freeing up certain strictures of bebop, were in fact each developing new structures of composition.” Some forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material. Other compositional structures are employed, some detailed and complex. Rejection of the bop aesthetic was combined with a fascination with earlier styles of jazz, such as dixieland with its collective improvisation, as well as African music. Interest in ethnic music resulted in the use of instruments from around the world, such as Ed Blackwell’s West African talking drum, and Leon Thomas’s interpretation of pygmy yodeling. Ideas and inspiration were found in the music of John Cage, Musica Elettronica Viva, and the Fluxus movement. Many critics, particularly at the music’s inception, suspected that abandonment of familiar elements of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians. By 1974, such views were more marginal, and the music had built a body of critical writing. Many critics have drawn connections between the term “free jazz” and the American social setting during the late 1950s and 1960s, especially the emerging social tensions of racial integration and the civil rights movement. Many argue those recent phenomena such as the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the emergence of the Freedom Riders in 1961, the 1963 Freedom Summer of activist-supported black voter registration, and the free alternative black Freedom Schools demonstrate the political implications of the word “free” in context of free jazz. Thus many consider free jazz to be not only a rejection of certain musical credos and ideas, but a musical reaction to the oppression and experience of black Americans.

Futurism (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pratella’s Manifesto of Futurist Musicians#

The musician Francesco Balilla Pratella joined the movement in 1910 and wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1910), the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music (1911) and The Destruction of Quadrature (Distruzione della quadratura), (1912). In The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, Pratella appealed to the young, as had Marinetti, because only they could understand what he had to say. He boasted of the prize that he had won for his musical Futurist work, La Sina d’Vargöun, and the success of its first performance at the Teatro Comunale at Bologna in December 1909, which placed him in a position to judge the musical scene. According to Pratella, Italian music was inferior to music abroad. He praised the “sublime genius” of Wagner and saw some value in the work of Richard Strauss, Debussy, Elgar, Mussorgsky, Glazunov and Sibelius. By contrast, the Italian symphony was dominated by opera in an “absurd and anti-musical form”. The conservatories encouraged backwardness and mediocrity. The publishers perpetuated mediocrity and the domination of music by the “rickety and vulgar” operas of Puccini and Umberto Giordano. The only Italian Pratella could praise was his teacher Pietro Mascagni, because he had rebelled against the publishers and attempted innovation in opera, but even Mascagni was too traditional for Pratella’s tastes. In the face of this mediocrity and conservatism, Pratella unfurled “the red flag of Futurism, calling to its flaming symbol such young composers as have hearts to love and fight, minds to conceive, and brows free of cowardice”. His musical programme was: *for the young to keep away from conservatories and to study independently; *the founding of a musical review, to be independent of academics and critics; *abstention from any competition that was not completely open; *liberation from the past and from “well-made” music; *for the domination of singers to end, so that they became like any other member of the orchestra; *for opera composers to write their own librettos, which were to be in free verse; *to end all period settings, ballads, “nauseating Neapolitan songs and sacred music”; and *to promote new work in preference to old.

Glitch (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Precursors#

The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced to the early 20th century with Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto L’arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises) published in 1913, which became the basis of noise music. He constructed mechanical noise generators, which he named intonarumori, and wrote multiple compositions to be played by them, including Risveglio di una città (Awakening of a City) and Convegno di automobili e aeroplani (Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes). In 1914, a riot broke out at one of his performances in Milan, Italy. Christian Marclay began in 1979 to use mutilated vinyl records to create sound collages, while Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance of 1985. The 1992 album It Was a Dark and Stormy Night by Nicolas Collins included a composition featuring a string quartet playing alongside the stuttering sound of skipping CDs. Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima’s electronic soundtrack for the 1994 video game Streets of Rage 3 used automatically randomized sequences to generate “unexpected and odd” experimental sounds.

Harsh noise

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Harsh noise is an extreme subgenre of noise music characterized by its rejection of music theory and traditional song structure, with little or no conventional melody, rhythm, or harmony. Artists typically employ effects pedals, synthesizers, manipulated recordings, or custom-built electronics to generate distortion and feedback, resulting in compositions of dense static, electronic screeches, and abrasive sonic bursts. Performances often incorporate improvisation, and the style is frequently described as inaccessible and lacking commercial appeal. Harsh noise is primarily associated with underground music, with regional scenes emerging internationally in Japan, England, Canada, Indonesia and America.

Hyperpop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Hyperpop artists embody an exaggerated, eclectic, and self-referential approach to pop music and typically employ elements such as brash synth melodies, Auto-Tuned “earworm” vocals, and excessive compression and distortion, as well as surrealist or nostalgic references to 2000s Internet culture and the Web 2.0 era. Common features include vocals that are heavily processed; metallic, melodic percussion sounds; pitch-shifted synths; catchy choruses; short song lengths; and “shiny, cutesy aesthetics” juxtaposed with angst-ridden or ironic lyricism. According to Vice journalist Eli Enis, hyperpop is not so much about following music rules, but “a shared ethos of transcending genre altogether, while still operating within the context of pop”. The movement is often associated with the LGBTQ+ community, drawing primary influences from queer culture. The microgenre’s emphasis on vocal modulation has allowed artists to experiment with gender presentation and androgyny in their voices, Joe Vitagliano, writing for American Songwriter, said hyperpop is an “exciting, bombastic, and iconoclastic genre – if it can even be called a ‘genre and has “saw synths, auto-tuned vocals, glitch-inspired percussion and a distinctive late-capitalism-dystopia vibe”. According to Kieran Press-Reynolds writing for Pitchfork, artists in this style mix the avant-garde and pop music, often balancing between being addictively fun and a bit too much. He added that in 2024, hyperpop had become a “Frankensteinian macro-genre”. The Atlantic said the genre “swirls together and speeds up Top 40 tricks of present and past: a Janet Jackson drum slam here, a Depeche Mode synth squeal there, the overblown pep of novelty jingles throughout,” but also said “the genre’s zest for punk’s brattiness, hip-hop’s boastfulness, and metal’s noise”. According to Rolling Stone magazine, collectives such as Novagang and Helix Tears “feature artists of variously different styles and sounds, but find community with each other in their shared rejection of stylistic limits.”

Indeterminacy (music)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

Describing indeterminacy, composer John Cage said: “My intention is to let things be themselves.” Cage initially defined indeterminacy as “the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways”. Bryan Simms thus conflates indeterminacy with what Cage called chance composition when he claims that “Any part of a musical work is indeterminate if it is chosen by chance, or if its performance is not precisely specified. The former case is called ‘indeterminacy of composition’; the latter is called ‘indeterminacy of performance’.”

Industrial hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1980s#

The origins of industrial hip hop are in the work of Mark Stewart, Bill Laswell, and Adrian Sherwood. In 1985, former The Pop Group singer Mark Stewart released As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, an application of the cut-up style of industrial music, with the house band of Sugar Hill Records (Doug Wimbish, Keith LeBlanc, and Skip McDonald). In 1986, The Beatnigs were formed in San Francisco. As a collaboration between Michael Franti, Rono Tse and Kevin Carnes, The Beatnigs combined hardcore punk, industrial and hip hop influences, described as “a kind of avant-garde industrial jazz poets collective”. The band’s stage performance included the use of power tools such as a rotary saw on a metal bar to create industrial noise and pyrotechnics. In the late 1980s, Laswell’s Material project began to take increasing influence from hip hop. Adrian Sherwood was a major figure in British dub, as well as working with industrial groups such as Cabaret Voltaire, Einstürzende Neubauten, Ministry, KMFDM, and Nine Inch Nails. Tackhead, a collaboration between Sherwood and the Sugar Hill band, picked up where Mark Stewart left off. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Consolidated from San Francisco, MC 900 Ft. Jesus from Texas and Meat Beat Manifesto from the UK are also early representatives of the style. The industrial group 23 Skidoo, Miles Davis’s album On the Corner, and the Nine Inch Nails single “Down in It” are also important precedents for the style.

Industrial metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early innovators#

Though electric guitars had been used by industrial artists since the early days of the genre, archetypal industrial groups such as Throbbing Gristle displayed a strong anti-rock stance. British post-punk band Killing Joke pioneered the crossing over between styles and was an influence on major acts associated with industrial metal such as Ministry, Godflesh, and Nine Inch Nails. Another pioneer industrial rock group, Big Black, also impacted some later groups. By the late 1980s industrial and heavy metal began to fuse into a common genre, with Godflesh’s self-titled EP and Ministry’s The Land of Rape and Honey at the forefront. Godflesh was founded by former Napalm Death guitarist Justin Broadrick. Drawing from a wide array of influences—power electronics forefathers Whitehouse, noise rock band Swans, ambient music creator Brian Eno Faith No More, and Fear Factory. Ministry emerged from the scene surrounding Wax Trax! Records, a Chicago indie label dedicated to industrial music. Ministry’s initial foray into guitar rock happened during a recording session of The Land of Rape and Honey on Southern Studios, in London. The band’s frontman, the Cuban-born Al Jourgensen, explained this transition: Jourgensen seemed particularly fond of thrash metal. After the release of Land, he recruited guitarist Mike Scaccia from Texas thrashers Rigor Mortis. On one occasion, Jourgensen told the press that Sepultura was his favorite band. He also expressed the desire to produce a Metallica album. Jourgensen’s interest in dance-oriented electronic music did not entirely fade, however; he also formed the side-project Revolting Cocks, a more electronic body music-inflected collaboration with Richard23 of Front 242. German band KMFDM was another seminal industrial metal group. Although not a metal fan, KMFDM leader Sascha Konietzko’s “infatuation with ripping off metal licks” stemmed from his experiments with E-mu’s Emax sampler in late 1986. He told Guitar World that, A Swiss trio, The Young Gods, brushed with the style on their second album, L’Eau Rouge (1989). Prior to its release, singer Franz Treichler declared: Canadian thrash metal band Malhavoc became one of the earlier acts of the genre when they began to mix extreme metal with industrial music in the late 1980s. Pigface, formed by Martin Atkins and including Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin, emerged as an industrial metal collective of sorts, participating with many figures from the noise rock and industrial worlds. Nine Inch Nails, the “one-man-band” formed by Trent Reznor, brought the genre to mainstream audiences with albums such as the Grammy-winning Broken and the best-selling The Downward Spiral, accompanied by their groundbreaking performance at Woodstock ‘94. The rivethead subculture also developed at this time, along with the so-called “coldwave” subgenre, which encompassed Chemlab, 16 Volt, and Acumen Nation. Some electro-industrial groups adopted industrial metal techniques in this period, including Skinny Puppy (on their Rabies, co-produced by Jourgensen), and Front Line Assembly. British band Pitchshifter, formed in 1989 by brothers Jon and Mark Clayden, also started as an industrial metal band. The band later included elements of drum and bass. Frontman JS mentions:

Industrial rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Industrial rock is defined by the merging of rock music with influences lifted from industrial music, electronic, and avant-garde music. Industrial rock bands are characterized by harsh, abrasive sounds, blending distorted, aggressive guitar riffs with electronic textures and experimental production techniques. Exemplified by artists who signed to industrial focused independent record label Wax Trax! Records, while some industrial rock artists later overlapped with industrial metal.

Forerunners#

Cromagnon’s 1969 record Orgasm has been credited with foreshadowing the industrial rock sound, with AllMusic describing it as sounding “like it could be a Ministry … recording from 1989”. Pitchfork labelled the opening track “Caledonia” as a “pre-industrial stomp”. During the 1970s, industrial music emerged through the early works of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, NON, SPK and Z’EV. SAlongside, New York City band Suicide, formed in 1970, by Alan Vega and Martin Rev, whose 1977 debut album has been credited with providing “the blueprints for … industrial rock”. Furthermore, Iggy Pop who released his debut solo album The Idiot, produced by David Bowie, in 1977, was later retroactively recognized as a forerunner to industrial rock, particularly the closing track, “Mass Production’, which contains numerous “proto-industrial noises” created using tape loops, which Hugo Wilcken described as “early industrial electronica.” Ian Curtis of Joy Division, cited the album as an inspiration, and later influenced the work of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who’d cover their song “Dead Souls”. Other influences on industrial rock include Einstürzende Neubauten, Alien Sex Fiend, and Come.

Industrial techno

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The origins of industrial techno date back to the early 1980s with the work of Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, then a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. According to Fact and Louder Than War, Sakamoto’s solo album B-2 Unit (1980) anticipated the sounds of industrial techno. Some of the earliest musical projects in the genre include the band Final Cut, formed by Jeff Mills and Anthony Srock in Detroit during the late 1980s. Their 1989 debut industrial-techno album Deep into the Cut was described by The Wire as “a significant moment in the convergence of the classic industrial aesthetic and the emerging sound of Detroit techno”. Forward Strategy Group, Jeff Mills, Regis, Dominick Fernow and Mike Banks. Perc Trax record label has been credited with the revival of the genre in the UK, with artists such as Perc, Truss, Happa and Ansome. Some revival artists have subsequently been criticized for making the new music in the genre that “sounds old, that it’s overly indebted to a sound invented and thoroughly exhausted in the ’90s”, but despite this, innovation derived from the post-dubstep and garage scene have been highlighted. As a result, it has gained a significant fanbase from the post-dubstep audience.

Intelligent dance music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Intelligent techno and electronica#

The origins of IDM date back to the early 1980s with the work of Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). In 1980, YMO member Ryuichi Sakamoto’s solo album B-2 Unit anticipated the sounds of IDM. According to NME, “the entire album eschewed traditional song structures for atmosphere and tone, anticipating the rebellious wave of 1990s IDM” a “full decade beforehand.” According to Vice, the B-2 Unit track “E-3A” offered “a hint of the decade to come with its IDM-leaning cut-up complexities.” YMO’s 1981 album BGM was also a foundation for IDM. According to Analog Planet, the BGM track “Ballet” has an IDM-like electronic soundscape that combines “electronic drums, persistent hi-hats, and sustained synths” with a “melancholic emptiness.” In the late 1980s, ensuing from acid house and early rave party scenes, UK-based groups such as the Orb and the KLF produced ambient house, a genre that fused the pulses of house music, particularly acid house, with ambient music and sample-based soundscapes. By the early 1990s, the increasingly distinct music associated with dance music-oriented experimentation had gained prominence with releases on a variety of mostly UK-based record labels, including Warp (1989), Black Dog Productions (1989), R&S Records (1989), Carl Craig’s Planet E, Rising High Records (1991), Richard James’s Rephlex Records (1991), Kirk Degiorgio’s Applied Rhythmic Technology (1991), Eevo Lute Muzique (1991), General Production Recordings (1989), Soma Quality Recordings (1991), Peacefrog Records (1991), and Metamorphic Recordings (1992). In 1992, Warp released Artificial Intelligence, the first album in the Artificial Intelligence series. Subtitled “electronic listening music from Warp”, the record was a collection of tracks from artists such as Autechre, B12, Black Dog Productions, Aphex Twin and the Orb, under various aliases. This would help establish the ambient techno sound of the early 1990s. Steve Beckett, co-owner of Warp, has said the electronic music that the label was releasing then was targeting a post-club, home-listening audience. Following the success of the Artificial Intelligence series, “intelligent techno” became the favoured term, although ambient—without a qualifying house or techno suffix, but still referring to a hybrid form—was a common synonym. “armchair techno”, and “electronica”, but all were attempts to describe an emerging offshoot of electronic dance music that was being enjoyed by the “sedentary and stay at home”. At the same time, the UK market was saturated with increasingly frenetic breakbeat and sample-laden hardcore techno records that quickly became formulaic. Rave had become a “dirty word”, so as an alternative, it was common for London nightclubs to advertise that they were playing “intelligent” or “pure” techno, appealing to a “discerning” crowd that considered the hardcore sound to be too commercial.

Japanoise

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

On May 8, 1960, six young Japanese musicians, including Takehisa Kosugi and Yasunao Tone, formed the Group Ongaku with two tape recordings of noise music: Automatism and Object. These recordings made use of a mixture of traditional musical instruments along with a vacuum cleaner, a radio, an oil drum, a doll, and a set of dishes. Moreover, the speed of the tape recording was manipulated, further distorting the sounds being recorded. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Merzbow took Lou Reed’s album Metal Machine Music as a point of departure and further abstracted the noise aesthetic by freeing the sound from guitar based feedback alone, a development that is thought to have heralded noise music as a genre. According to Paul Hegarty (2007), “In many ways it only makes sense to talk of noise music since the advent of various types of noise produced in Japanese music, and in terms of quantity this is really to do with the 1990s onwards … . With the vast growth of Japanese noise, finally, noise music becomes a genre”.

Live electronic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early electronic instruments#

Early electronic instruments intended for live performance, such as Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium (1897) and instruments developed between the two world wars, such as the Theremin (1919), Spharophon (1924), ondes Martenot (1928), and the Trautonium (1929), may be cited as antecedents, but were intended simply as new means of sound production, and did nothing to change the nature of musical composition or performance. Many early compositions included these electronic instruments, though the instruments were typically used as substitutes for standard classical instruments. An example includes composer Joseph Schillinger, who in 1929 composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra, which premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist. Percy Grainger, used ensembles of four or six theremins (in preference to a string quartet) for his two earliest experimental Free Music compositions (1935–37) because of the instrument’s complete ‘gliding’ freedom of pitch.( The ondes Martenot was also used as a featured instrument in the 1930s, and composer Olivier Messiaen used it in the Fête des belles eaux for six ondes, written for the 1937 International World’s Fair in Paris. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) was among the earliest compositions to include an innovative use of live electronic material; it featured two variable-speed phonograph turntables and sine-tone recordings. Cage’s interest in live electronics continued through the 1940s and 1950s, providing inspiration for the formation of a number of live-electronic groups in America who came to regard themselves as the pioneers of a new art form. The earliest use of live electronics together with acoustic instruments is in all likelihood Daphne Oram’s Still Point (1948), a work for turntable, double orchestra and five microphones. The work was unperformed until 2016.

Lo-fi music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Evolution of the term and its scope#

Lo-fi is the opposite of high fidelity, or “hi-fi”. and ran during a thirty-minute prime time evening slot every Friday. In the fall 1986 issue of the WFMU magazine LCD, the program was described as “home recordings produced on inexpensive equipment. Technical primitivism coupled with brilliance.” A third definition was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2008: “unpolished, amateurish, or technologically unsophisticated, esp. as a deliberate aesthetic choice.” In 2017, About.coms Anthony Carew argued that the term “lo-fi” had been commonly misused as a synonym for “warm” or “punchy” when it should be reserved for music that “sounds like it’s recorded onto a broken answering-machine”.

Martial industrial

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Laibach were one of the first bands to incorporate military marches in their industrial music and display politically provocative aesthetics. Front 242 was also known for adding a futuristic military influence to their music too. Boyd Rice and Douglas P., the noise and neofolk pioneers, respectively, adopted such attitude at several occasions to its extreme. Allerseelen, either through ritual hymns or alchemical folklore followed in the same vein. Similarly militant but less provocative and more esoteric were the heroic choral outputs of ACTUS. Les Joyaux de la Princesse developed the genre further, offering a particularly mesmerizing style of dark ambient intermingled with historical samples, speeches and interbellum chansons. The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud / Der Blutharsch enriched this tradition, adding darkwave medieval melodies to the mix. Finally, In Slaughter Natives and Puissance expanded the genre towards orchestral and neoclassical paths, respectively.

Musique concrète

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Beginnings#

In 1928, music critic André Cœuroy wrote in his book, Panorama of Contemporary Music, that “perhaps the time is not far off when a composer will be able to represent through recording, music specifically composed for the gramophone”. In the same period, the American composer Henry Cowell, in referring to the projects of Nikolai Lopatnikoff, believed that “there was a wide field open for the composition of music for phonographic discs”. This sentiment was echoed further in 1930 by Igor Stravinsky, when he stated in the revue that “there will be a greater interest in creating music in a way that will be peculiar to the gramophone record”. The following year, in 1931, Boris de Schloezer also expressed the opinion that one could write for the gramophone or for the wireless just as one can for the piano or the violin. Shortly after, German art theorist Rudolf Arnheim discussed the effects of microphonic recording in an essay entitled “Radio”, published in 1936. In it the idea of a creative role for the recording medium was introduced and Arnheim stated that: “The rediscovery of the musicality of sound in noise and in language, and the reunification of music, noise and language in order to obtain a unity of material: that is one of the chief artistic tasks of radio”. Possible antecedents to musique concrète have been noted; Walter Ruttmann’s film (Weekend) (1930), a work of “blind cinema” without visuals, introduced recordings of environmental sound, to represent the urban soundscape of Berlin, two decades before musique concrète was formalised. Ruttmann’s soundtrack has been retrospectively called musique concrète. According to Seth Kim-Cohen, the piece was the first to “organise ‘concrete’ sounds into a formal, artistic composition.” Composer Irwin Bazelon referred to a sound collage in the film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), during the first transformation scene, as “pre-musique concrète”. Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome (; 1924) calls for a phonograph recording of birdsong to be played during the third movement.

Neue Deutsche Härte

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

describes a crossover style that is influenced by Neue Deutsche Welle, alternative metal and groove metal combining it with elements from electro-industrial and techno. The lyrics are generally in German. NDH uses the basic setup of instruments for metal: electric guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals, along with keyboard, synthesizers, samples and sometimes additional percussion. Emphasis is on a demonstration of predominance, by over-pronouncing certain syllables and sounds (such as the uvular or alveolar trill). The vocals are dominantly presenting in deep, male and clean voice. Some bands use screaming and death growls, which is also common, being heard in certain songs by Oomph!, Rammstein, Joachim Witt, Megaherz and Eisbrecher. NDH imagery is often strongly masculine and militaristic. Guitars are tuned low, usually to drop D or drop C, and are generally heavily distorted. The NDH style has crossed borders and its popularity has grown in recent years to such an extent that there are already bands outside Germany, such as the Spanish band Bloody Kitchen, who do not use German in their songs as usual and their lyrics are also entirely in Spanish.

New beat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

New beat originated in Belgium in 1987, and was popular in several music clubs across Western Europe. Sometimes described as “new wave disco beat” the genre has been characterized as a blend of new wave, hi-NRG, ), and acid house. In addition to A Split-Second, new beat was also heavily influenced by other EBM acts such as Front 242, Signal Aout 42 and the Neon Judgement, as well as new wave acts such as Fad Gadget, Gary Numan, New Order, Boytronic New beat artists and bands include Lords of Acid and Technotronic, while Belgian hardcore techno bands that emerged from the hard beat and skizzo subgenres include T99, Praga Khan, Cubic 22, and the Immortals.

Noise rock

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The term “noise rock” is a portmanteau of “noise” and “rock” music. The earliest known use of the term was on April 25, 1970, in an issue of Record World by writer John Kornblum, who used the phrase “psychedelic-noise-rock”. On July 22, 1972, writer Nat Freedland published an article in Billboard magazine which outlined the influence of Germany’s krautrock scene on English rock bands. He concluded by asking, “Is America the next step for teutonic noise rock?”

Noisecore

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Noisecore is characterized by a rejection of conventional song structures such as verse and choruses, embodying a lo-fi aesthetic, accompanied by extremely fast and erratic drumming, often dominated by blast beats, alongside heavily distorted guitars, which incorporate feedback and noise.

History#

Noisecore emerged in the mid-1980s as a fringe development of the hardcore and early thrashcore scenes. Pioneers of noisecore include bands such as Meat Shits, who introduced growling and blast beats to the genre, Deche-Charge, and Seven Minutes of Nausea, who released Does Abstinence Kills in 1986 and later a split with Seth Putnam’s Anal Cunt in 1989. Subsequently, Anal Cunt and Fear of God later pioneered, noisegrind, a more grindcore-oriented noisecore derivative genre.

Nu metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Terminology and origins#

Nu metal is a subgenre of alternative metal. Sometimes stylized as nü-metal, the genre has also been dubbed aggro-metal or simply aggro. MTV states that the early nu metal group Korn “arrived in 1993 into the burgeoning alternative metal scene, which would morph into nü-metal the way college rock became alternative rock.” Nu metal merges elements of heavy metal music with elements of other music genres such as hip-hop, grunge, funk, and alternative rock according to Blabbermouth.net. Some nu metal bands, such as Static-X and Dope, made nu metal music with elements of industrial metal. In contrast with other heavy metal subgenres, nu metal tends to use the same structure of verses, choruses, and bridges as those in pop music.

Phase music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins#

In 1965, influenced by Terry Riley’s use of tape looping and delay, the American composer Steve Reich started experimenting with looping techniques and accidentally discovered the potential of gradual phase shifting as a compositional resource. In discussing the technicalities of what has been termed a “phase shifting process” Reich has stated that it is related to infinite canon or rounds in medieval music. The difference between phase music and traditional rounds, where two or more identical melodies are played with one starting after the other, is that the melodic phrases are generally short repeating patterns with the imitation being variable instead of fixed.

Plunderphonics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Early examples#

Although the term plunderphonics tends to be applied only to music made since Oswald coined it in the 1980s, there are several examples of earlier music made along similar lines. Notably, Dickie Goodman and Bill Buchanan’s 1956 single “The Flying Saucer”, features Goodman as a radio reporter covering an alien invasion interspersed with samples from various contemporary records. According to Chris Cutler, “It wasn’t until 1961 that an unequivocal exposition of plunderphonic techniques arrived in James Tenney’s celebrated Collage No. 1 (‘Blue Suede’), a manipulation of Elvis Presley’s hit record ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. The gauntlet was down; Tenney had picked up a ’non art’, lowbrow work and turned it into ‘art’; not as with scored music by writing variations on a popular air, but simply by subjecting a gramophone record to various physical and electrical procedures.” According to Oswald, “the difference with ‘Blue Suede’ is how it audaciously used a very recognizable existing recording of another musical work. This blatant appropriation pioneered the discovery, for myself and many others, of an ocean of sampling and plunderphonics in following decades.” The Residents’ “Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life” consists of excerpts from Beatles records. Various club DJs in the 1970s re-edited the recordings they played, and although this often consisted of nothing more than extending the record by adding a chorus or two, this too could be considered a form of plunderphonics. Some classical composers have performed a kind of plunderphonia on written, rather than recorded, music. The composer Lukas Foss composed his Baroque Variations in 1967, whose three movements involved the performance of a Baroque work which provided the framework (sometimes inaudibly) for a fresh composition. Perhaps the best-known example is the third movement of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, in which multiple quotations from the music of other composers are superimposed on a complete performance of the second movement from Mahler’s second symphony. Alfred Schnittke and Mauricio Kagel have also made extensive use of earlier composers’ works. Earlier composers who often plundered the music of others include Charles Ives (who often quoted folk songs and hymns in his works) and Ferruccio Busoni (a movement from his 1909 piano suite An die Jugend includes a prelude and a fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach played simultaneously). During the ’90s Oswald composed many such scores for classical musicians which he classified with the term Rascali Klepitoire. In France, Jean-Jacques Birgé has been working on “radiophonies” since 1974 (for his film “La Nuit du Phoque”), capturing radio and editing the samples in real-time with the pause button of a radio-cassette. His group Un Drame Musical Instantané recorded “Crimes parfaits” on LP “A travail égal salaire égal” in 1981, explaining the whole process in the piece itself and calling it “social soundscape”. He applied the same technique to TV in 1986 on the “Qui vive?” CD and published on the 1998 CD “Machiavel” with Antoine Schmitt, an interactive video scratch using 111 very small loops from his own past LPs.

Post-metal

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Predecessors#

The groundwork for post-metal was laid in the 1980s and early 1990s by various artists (mostly in the US) combining heavy metal and punk rock sounds with an “avant-garde sensibility”, such as the Melvins (particularly on 1991’s Bullhead), The Flying Luttenbachers, Justin Broadrick of Napalm Death and Godflesh, Many of these artists emerged from hardcore punk and post-punk circles but their combination of sonic violence with experimentation and eclecticism made them difficult to categorize under any one genre.

Post-no wave

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Shortly after the recording of No New York in 1978, no wave, as an avant-garde movement and music scene, started disintegrating. The Gynecologists disbanded in 1978, Mars followed between 1978/1979, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks in 1979, Theoretical Girls in 1981, James Chance and the Contortions in 1981 and DNA in 1982. Several key artists then focused on non-musical projects or delved into more accessible rock genres. Lydia Lunch went on a solo career as a post-punk act, Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca developed totalism in electric guitar ensembles, Arto Lindsay embarked on free improvisation and avant-garde jazz collaborations; others, such as Ut, The Lounge Lizards and Mofungo, continued playing until the 1990s, but far removed from their no wave roots. During this period, posthumous studio recordings and VV.AA. compilations from the scene were published for the first time, contributing to its underground popularity. While new generations of musicians outside the scene and from all around the world had been influenced by no-wave music, played with former scenesters —for instance, members from Sonic Youth and Swans played in Chatham’s and Branca’s ensembles— or claimed to be its successors. Thus, no longer a scene or a movement, a post-no wave came into existence. Although other expressions have been used to describe this kind of music (second wave of no wave

Post-noise

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology and characteristics#

In August 2009, writer David Keenan coined the term “hypnagogic pop” in the article Childhood’s End in issue 306 of the British music magazine The Wire. Keenan also noted the commonalities between hypnagogic pop and noise music, stating that “Like Noise before it, Hypnagogic pop fetishises the outmoded media of its infancy, releasing albums on cassette, celebrating the video era and obsessing over the reality-scrambling potential of photocopied art.” In 2009, musician Daniel Lopatin described post-noise as a move away from “macho” noise music. Hypnagogic pop has been cited as growing out of post-noise music. On September 28, 2009, writer Emilie Friedlander would post an article on hypnagogic pop stating, “I commend Keenan a hundred times over for putting into words something that was on the tip of many a critical tongue over the past year but that no one had the guts articulate as something so sweeping as a cultural movement: the rise of a lo-fi post-noise psychedelia that moves past noise’s rejection of consonance and sort of unconscious adherence to the 20th century high modernist ideal of autonomous art (art that engages in discourse with contemporary culture precisely by refusing such a discourse, though noise typically refuses a discourse with academic constructs of this kind as well)”. In Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure (2013), author Eldritch Priest describes “lo-fi post-noise psychedelia” as “often drone-heavy and noise-inclined, this music is characterized by a logic of deformation that aims to disfigure without obliterating samples, timbres, and impressions noticeably culled from a musical past that never was.” Priest refers to what writer David Keenan labelled “wasteland 1980s cultural signifiers” to describe how “Indulgence in these warped signifiers is what gives the music its spectral identity.” Additionally, Priest stated that the style blends “outmoded media’s high noise to signal ratio with an affected anti-virtuosity”, and elaborated “Rather than sampling 1980s pop culture with contemporary technology, one can hear composers recycling the tropes of experimental art music from the 1950s and 1970s, tropes that Michael Nyman compiled and categorized as ‘indeterminacy,’ ‘process,’ ’ephemerality,’ and the ’non-identity’ of a work. But we can also hear the debt to conceptual art and free jazz that helped evolve experimental music in the 1970s into sound art, something that Hauntology and Hypnagogic Pop don’t exhibit owing to the rock and dance background of their practitioners.” In Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music (2016), author Stephen Graham defines post-noise as a wide subgenre of noise music which breaks apart noise music’s orthodoxies, “inserting newer influences and references from popular culture alongside dyschronic affects … and subliminal modalities.” It can even add “some commercial appeal.” alongside German progressive electronic and kosmische musik artists such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis and Edgar Froese. In 2010, The Guardian published an article by music critic Simon Reynolds where he stated “post-noise microscenes like glo-fi” were maintaining “the tape trade tradition, releasing music in small-run editions as low as 30 copies and wrapping them in surreal photocopy-collage artwork”.

Power electronics (music genre)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology and characteristics#

The name of the genre was coined by William Bennett of Whitehouse as part of the sleeve notes to their 1982 album Psychopathia Sexualis. Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine produced a compilation compact cassette tape called Power Electronics in 1986 that was curated by Joseph Nechvatal. Power electronics is generally atonal and, like most noise music, features a lack of conventional melody or rhythm. To match its sonic excess, it often includes thematic and visual content that might be considered extreme, whether in lyrics, artwork, or live performance. The genre sometimes involves screamed, distorted vocals, alongside the use of analogue synthesizers, and static screeches of feedback. It has been known to invite visceral reactions from both listeners and critics. Power electronics is related to the early Industrial Records scene, but later releases had more in common with noise music.

Power noise

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

1990s#

Power noise takes inspiration from Spanish industrial act Esplendor Geométrico, active since 1980, and other artists such as Le Syndicat, active since 1982. The Belgian group Dive also anticipated the style in the early ’90s along with a number of releases on the harder or harsher end of the techno spectrum such as several early vinyl EP releases by Aphex Twin. The term “power noise” was coined by Raoul Roucka of Noisex in 1997, with the track “United (Power Noise Movement)”. The genre was exposed to the U.S. industrial scene by the electro-industrial act Wumpscut, who signed Noisex to the label Mental Ulcer Forges. The first power noise artists were mostly German. In addition to Noisex, these included Asche, Morgenstern, P·A·L, Synapscape, and Feindflug. The Belgians Axiome, Hypnoskull, Imminent, Ah Cama-Sotz, Sonar, and This Morn’ Omina, also developed the genre. Black Lung, an Australian, and Orphx, Canadians, were also active in the style at this time. Japanoise musicians, such as Merzbow, Aube, and Contagious Orgasm, have also made use of prominent rhythms.

Protein music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Theory#

The idea that genes and music exhibit similarities was noted even earlier than the scientific publications in the area by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter even proposes that meaning is constructed in protein and in music. The ideas that supports the possibility of creating harmonic musics using this method are: * The repetition process governs both the musical composition and the DNA sequence construction. * The conformations and energetics of the protein secondary and tertiary structures at the atomic level. See also for full compositions made using this concept. * Pink noise (the correlation structure “1/f spectra”) have been found in both musical signals and DNA sequences. * Models with duplication and mutation operations, such as the “expansion-modification model” are able to generate sequences with 1/f spectra. * When DNA sequences are converted to music, it sounds musical. * Human Genome Project has revealed similar genetic themes not only between species, but also between proteins. Musical renditions of DNA and proteins is not only a music composition method, but also a technique for studying genetic sequences. Music is a way of representing sequential relationships in a type of informational string to which the human ear is keenly attuned. The analytic and educational potential of using music to represent genetic patterns has been recognized from secondary school to university level.

Rock in Opposition

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Henry Cow spent most of their last five years touring mainland Europe. There they encountered many innovative groups who were virtually unknown outside their own countries. What Henry Cow had in common with these groups was that record companies were not interested in their music. Henry Cow’s contract with Virgin Records was cancelled when Virgin realised the band were not profitable. In early 1978, Nick Hobbs, Henry Cow’s manager at the time, decided to expose some of these European groups to British audiences and invited them to tour the United Kingdom with Henry Cow under the banner “Rock in Opposition”. With the help of a £1000 grant from the British Arts Council, Hobbs organised a Rock in Opposition festival in London with the slogan: “The music the record companies don’t want you to hear”. The event took place on 12 March 1978 at the New London Theatre with the following groups performing: :*Henry Cow (England) :*Stormy Six (Italy) :*Samla Mammas Manna (Sweden) :*Univers Zero (Belgium) :*Etron Fou Leloublan (France) The tour of the UK never materialised, but the festival did generate “a lot of press around the world”, and this prompted the five bands to discuss future plans. While “Rock in Opposition” was never intended to be a formal organisation, they met at Sunrise Studio in Kirchberg, Switzerland in December 1978 to reconstitute the movement as a collective. By this time Henry Cow no longer existed as a group, but as RIO’s prime mover its former members still actively participated. RIO’s primary aim was to represent and promote its members. It was decided that membership should remain closed and small, although new members would be welcome provided they (i) adhered to “musical excellence” (as evaluated by the collective); (ii) worked actively “outside the music business”; and (iii) had a “social commitment to Rock”. Using these criteria, three new members were elected: :*Art Zoyd (France) :*Art Bears (England, made up of former Henry Cow members) :*Aksak Maboul (Belgium) A second RIO festival, organised by Stormy Six, took place between 26 April and 1 May 1979 at al Teatro dell’Elfo in Milan, Italy where all seven groups performed, the original four (minus Henry Cow) plus the three new groups. During the festival, the RIO members met formally again to discuss the way forward. However, despite some constructive discussion, disagreements arose between the groups regarding RIO’s role and matters were left unresolved. Two further RIO festivals took place in Sweden and Belgium, but no new meetings, and by the end of 1979, RIO as an organisation had “quietly slipped away”.

Sonorism

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Sonorism is rooted in the nationalistic movement of the 1920s called “Polish colourism”, whose best-known exponent is Karol Szymanowski. Sonorism as such was developed in the 1950s and 1960s as a means of gaining freedom from strict serialism, particularly by Krzysztof Penderecki, but also in a number of compositions by Grażyna Bacewicz, Henryk Górecki, Kazimierz Serocki, Wojciech Kilar, Witold Szalonek, Witold Rudziński, Zbigniew Bujarski, Zbigniew Penherski, and Zygmunt Krauze, amongst others (; ).

Sound art

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin of term#

According to Bernhard Gál’s research, the first published use of the term was found in Something Else Press on the cover of their 1974 Yearbook. The first use as the title of an exhibition at a major museum was 1979’s Sound Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), featuring Maggi Payne, Connie Beckley, and Julia Heyward. The curator, Barbara London defined sound art as, “more closely allied to art than to music, and are usually presented in the museum, gallery, or alternative space.” Commenting on an exhibition called Sound/Art at the SculptureCenter in New York City in 1984 art historian Don Goddard noted: “It may be that sound art adheres to curator Hellermann’s perception that ‘hearing is another form of seeing,’ that sound has meaning only when its connection with an image is understood…The conjunction of sound and image insists on the engagement of the viewer, forcing participation in real space and concrete, responsive thought, rather than illusionary space and thought.”

Sound collage

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The origin of sound collage can be traced back to the works of Biber’s programmatic sonata Battalia (1673) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1789), and certain passages in Mahler symphonies as collage, but the first fully developed collages occur in a few works by Charles Ives, whose piece Central Park in the Dark (1906) creates the feeling of a walk in the city by layering several distinct melodies and quotations on top of each other. Earlier traditional forms and procedures such as the quodlibet, medley, potpourri, and centonization differ from collage in that the various elements in them are made to fit smoothly together, whereas in a collage clashes of key, timbre, texture, meter, tempo, or other discrepancies are important in helping to preserve the individuality of the constituent elements and to convey the impression of a heterogeneous assemblage. What made their technique true collage, however, was the juxtaposition of quotations and unrelated melodies, either by layering them or by moving between them in quick succession. A first documented instance of sound collage created as electronic music is Wochenende (in English, Weekend), a collage of words, music and sounds created by film-maker and media artist Walter Ruttmann in 1928. Later, in 1948, Pierre Schaeffer used the techniques of sound collage to create the first piece of musique concrète, Étude aux chemins de fer, which was assembled from recordings of trains. Schaeffer created this piece by recording sounds of trains onto several vinyl records, some of which had lock grooves allowing them to play in a continuous loop. He then set up multiple turntables in his studio, allowing him to trigger and mix together the various train sounds as needed. According to music theorist Cristina Losada, the third movement of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia is often considered “the prototype of a musical collage.” In an essay written in 1937, John Cage expressed an interest in using extra-musical sound materials and came to distinguish between found sounds, which he called noise, and musical sounds, examples of which included: rain, static between radio channels, and “a truck at fifty miles per hour”. Cage began in 1939 to create a series of found sounds works that explored his stated aims, the first being Imaginary Landscape #1 for instruments including two variable speed turntables with frequency recordings. Important modern sound collage pieces were created by Pierre Schaeffer and the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. In 1950s and early-1960s Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Michel Philippot, and Arthur Honegger all worked with sound collage. Examples are Étude I (1951) and Étude II (1951) by Boulez, Timbres-durées (1952) by Messiaen, Étude aux mille collants (1952) by Stockhausen, Le microphone bien tempéré (1952) and La voile d’Orphée (1953) by Henry, Étude I (1953) by Philippot, Étude (1953) by Barraqué, the mixed pieces Toute la lyre (1951) and Orphée 53 (1953) by Schaeffer/Henry, and the film score Masquerage (1952) by Schaeffer and Astrologie (1953) by Henry. In 1954 Varèse and Honegger created Déserts and La rivière endormie". John Cage created his influential collage piece Williams Mix in 1952. More recently, George Rochberg used collage in Contra Mortem et Tempus and Symphony No. 3. In the 1980s Minóy made many palimpsest-like multi-tracked soundscape compositions that used sound collage.

Turntablism

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Precursors#

The use of the turntable as a musical instrument has its roots dating back to the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s when musique concrète composers did experiments with audio equipment. Experimental composers (such as John Cage, Halim El-Dabh, and Pierre Schaeffer) used them to sample and create music that was entirely produced by the turntable. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) is composed for two variable speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano and cymbal. Edgard Varèse experimented with turntables even earlier in 1930, though he never formally produced any works using them. Though this school of thought and practice is not directly linked to the 1970s–2010 definition of turntablism within hip hop and DJ culture, it has had an influence on modern experimental sonic/artists such as Christian Marclay, Janek Schaefer, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck, and Maria Chavez. Turntablism as it is known today, however, did not surface until the advent of hip hop in the 1970s. Examples of turntable effects can also be found on popular records produced in the 1960s and 1970s. This was most prominent in Jamaican dub music of the 1960s, among deejays in the Jamaican sound system culture. Dub music introduced the techniques of mixing and scratching vinyl, which Jamaican immigrants introduced to American hip hop culture in the early 1970s. Beyond dub music, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1968 self-titled debut album features a backspin effect in the song “Walk on the Water”.

Vaporwave

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Vaporwave is a hyper-specific subgenre, or “microgenre”, that is both a form of electronic music and an art style; however, it is sometimes suggested to be primarily a visual medium. The genre is defined largely by its surrounding subculture, with its music inextricable from its visual accoutrements. Academic Laura Glitsos writes, “In this way, vaporwave defies traditional music conventions that typically privilege the music over the visual form.” Musically, vaporwave reconfigures dance music from the 1980s and early 1990s The name derives from “vaporware”, a term for commercial software that is announced but never released. It builds upon the satirical tendencies of chillwave and hypnagogic pop, while also being associated with an ambiguous or ironic take on consumer capitalism and technoculture. incorporates 1990s Web design and imagery, glitch art, and cyberpunk tropes, and 3D-rendered objects. VHS degradation is another common effect seen in vaporwave art. Generally, artists limit the chronology of their source material between Japan’s economic flourishing in the 1980s and the September 11 attacks or dot-com bubble burst of 2001 (some albums, including Floral Shoppe, depict the intact Twin Towers on their covers).

Wave music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Musical qualities and influences#

Wave conveys feelings and qualities of melancholy similarly to witch house and emo rap, dreaminess, sci-fi akin to grime, drill, vaporwave, cloud rap, video game music and sound design, ambient, house, techno, and jungle.

Production style#

A genre of bass music, while using a filtered Reese style bass timbre. The percussion features trap-style drums with fast hi-hats, with other elements like snare and pan-hits further processed using reverb. The percussive styles used can vary owing to the music’s broad range of influences and producers’ willingness to experiment. The beats per minute typically varies between 120 and 140, but wave DJ sets may range from 100 to 200. Vocals used are generally chopped samples, with the pitch decreased and increased in conjunction with reverb and delay.

Witch house

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Witch house is characterized by the use of hip-hop drum machines, noise atmospherics, creepy samples, dark synthpop-influenced lead melodies, dense reverb, and heavily altered, distorted, and sometimes pitched down & reverse vocals, which are either rapped or sung. Influences range from electronic-based genres like ambient house and synth-pop, to alternative music genres such as shoegaze, industrial, ethereal wave, and gothic rock. Alongside, the Houston hip hop scene, particularly rapper and producer DJ Screw, whose pioneering sampling technique known as “chopped and screwed” is regarded as a foundational influence. Witch house’s sonic and aesthetic features are often grisly, nihilistic, and dystopic in nature.