Gastr Del Sol - The Serpentine Similar (1993)

Extremely experimental in scope; an avant-garde folk project that meets a glossier post-rock aesthetic head-on, a winding snake of guitar arpeggio noodling and piano scales run up and down your spine.
Gastr del Sol - The Serpentine Similar (1993; Teenbeat Records)

Silver Apples - Silver Apples (1968)

New York City's Silver Apples were way ahead of their time. I've said this about a ton of bands (especially here in print) but these guys were doing what Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Cluster were doing five years later and they were considered groundbreaking. Think about that.

They only released two albums before calling it quits; and here is their 1968 self-titled debut- heralded as an electronic breakthrough, with lead Apple Simeon Coxe's hand-built oscillating synthesizer (the eponymously named Simeon, with its 9 oscillators and 86 knobs) as the main instrument and Danny Taylor's polyrhythmic, tight-as-a-tick drumming, the Silver Apples created some of the most interesting electronic-based experimental psychedelic pop music at the same time The Beatles were making The White Album and The Velvet Underground were making their third record. Think about that.

Think about a lot of things, but think mostly about clicking the link under the album cover...

Silver Apples - Silver Apples (1968; Kapp Records)

Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää (2005)

Take two brothers (Lauri & Olli Ainala); insert them into a born-again Christian commune in the Finnish town of Savonlinna with a bunch of instruments and recording equipment, add generous portions of lo-fi ambient psych-folk and dream pop and that's basically Paavoharju in the most reductive of ways. They're so much more than all of that, they defy any genre pigeonholing by employing an extensive use of electronics (to add a perfect balance between acoustic guitars and ethereal-sounding vocals) it's much easier to just call it "experimental".

Yhä Hämärää loosely translated means "still murky"; as all the song titles revolve around a similar theme (or a poem of sorts): "forever to the world / light oozing through everything / moon consoles concern / depth / gust / air flows / morning sun feels / pure white / I traveled far / it is still murky / black street..."

Yes, I ran all the song titles through Google Translate.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite releases of the last ten years; a real hidden gem full of murky, dense, layered atmospheric folktronica jams from the land of reindeer and cheesy symphonic death metal. Enjoy!

Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää (2005; Fonal Records)

Les Yper-Sound - Too Fortiche (1967)

Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier set out to create music for a choreographer friend of theirs (Maurice Béjart) for an experimental ballet performance called Messe pour le temps présent in 1967. The most famous track from these recording sessions produced the song Psyché Rock- which we'd all hear eventually, being used as the title theme song from the TV show Futurama. Les Yper-Sound would also grace the name of a Stereolab track from their Emperor Tomato Ketchup album, so they're no stranger to pop culture references.

What makes this so interesting is the sound effects that Henry added to Colombier's composition- Henry had worked extensively with musique concrète, pioneering the genre in the late 1940's and early 50's with Pierre Schaffer in his Club d'Essai studio at the ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française), producing musique concrète "noises" as well as some of the first electronic sounds to be used in films and TV shows.

Upon first listen, the songs on Too Fortiche sound extremely dated, but realizing that the space-age sounds were made on such primitive equipment it sounds wonderfully experimental and... groovy.

Les Yper-Sound - Too Fortiche (1967; Fontana Records)
-link opens to YouTube-

Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album (1988)

Minutemen bassist Mike Watt was still reeling after D. Boon's death; it took Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's Sonic Youth parody side-project Ciccone Youth to pull him out of depression and get him on his musical feet again. It would take the skewering of some Madonna songs (the Watt-sung Burnin' Up and Into the Groovey) as well as a Robert Palmer cover (an "as tongue-in-cheek as possible" rendition of his mega-hit Addicted to Love, recorded in a karaoke booth). It's a tragic reminder of how truly awful some of the music from the 80's was.

Where Sonic Youth was a serious creative outlet for Moore (here on The Whitey Album he dubs himself The Royal Tuff Titty), Gordon (Fly Fly Away), Lee Ranaldo (The Sigh) and Steve Shelley (SS Beat Control); Ciccone Youth shows them exploring "new" territory- pseudonyms, hip-hop beats (samplers & beat-boxes), parody, spoken-word, comedy and electronica. I picked this record up a few years ago when they re-issued it on the Goofin' label- and legend has it that Madonna was totally okay with them doing this (she remembered da Yoof from her NYC days, ain't that a trip?) 

If your personality veers more to the serious side and you're a fan of SY's "noise is my beautiful self-discovery" vibe, leave this alone. If you wanna laugh along with the joke (because we're all in on it if we survived the 80s), by all means check this out this now.

Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album (1988; Blast First Records)

Six Organs of Admittance - Dark Noontide (2002)

Ben Chasny is the one-man band behind Six Organs of Admittance, a project he started in 1997 up in the tiny Humboldt County enclave of Arcata on Northern California's Lost Coast. People travel to the Lost Coast for solitude . and you can hear it in his droning textures and folky blend of psychedelia; although the chords are mostly minor (it is folk after all) it still has a warmth to it to counter the contemplative vibe. It's the thinking man's drone folk.

I read somewhere that this album was Chasny's attempt at setting Dreamtime to music, if you're unfamiliar with Dreamtime it's the Aboriginal myth of Creation and how all people exist eternally in the Dreaming, and upon being born we are more or less custodians of our little part of the world, learning the customs and traditions of our place. Hence, the "six organs of admittance" is thought to be how our spirits enter our mother's womb to inhabit our fetuses.

Check out this blissful and chaotic record immediately!

Six Organs of Admittance - Dark Noontide (2002; Holy Mountain Records)

The United States of America - The United States of America (1968)

A psych rock album with no guitar? Upon first listen I didn't believe this record was made in '68; outside of the production quality there's really nothing that ties it to the decade (except the spirit of the times, maybe). With its arty pretension, courtesy of Joseph Byrd's musical expertise and virtuosity (by 1967 he already had a vast knowledge of both electronic instruments and musique concrète) and singer Dorothy Moskowitz's icy cold vocal delivery, it literally sounds like it belongs in the early oeuvre of Stereolab.

So how'd they get away with creating a rock record with no guitar? Easy- heavy use of the violin (courtesy Gordon Marron), sublime bass lines from Rand Forbes and Byrd's work with the organ, calliope and electric harpsichord. Throw in Craig Woodson's electronic drums and here's an excellent psychedelic-meets-art pop/rock record that for some reason has been lost to the sands of time.

This is the 2004 version from Sundazed; re-mastered and with bonus tracks...

The United States of America - The United States of America (1968; Columbia Records)

Wire - The Classic Years

Wire is another insanely under-rated band, probably because people have never been able to peg them into a genre neatly; like that tired cliché "a square peg into a round hole" sort of thing. If you trace the arc of their career trajectory you'll see them going from the original London punk scene to jagged edged post-punk to synth-pop new wave to flirting with electronica, all the while staying firmly rooted in their experimental tendencies and never losing that do-it-yourself punk attitude.

This is why Wire is such an awesome band, they never had to stay the same from one album to the next, as evidenced in their first three, or "classic albums". Enjoy!

Pink Flag (1977; Harvest Records)

Chairs Missing (1978; Harvest Records)

154 (1979; Harvest Records)

AMM - AMMMusic (1967)

I don't know if this was the first free-improv piece of music ever recorded, but it's definitely one of the most unlistenable. This is for you experimental noise freaks out there (I'm one of you... Or are you one of me?)

I've only been able to sit through this whole record a handful of times, it's not something you want to listen to except for the experience of listening; it begs the question "do the noises we make have consequences?"

One of the most angular and abstract experimental albums ever recorded, it's essentially two long tracks of feedback from broken instruments acting as a confrontational noise/sound collage...

AMM - AMMMusic (1967; Elektra Records)
-link opens to YouTube playlist-

The Legendary Pink Dots - The Maria Dimension (1991)

The Legendary Pink Dots are an experimental psychedelic freak-out band; this album is what you wanna listen to right after you paste a ten-strip to your forehead under your bandanna in 95-degree heat at some god-forsaken hippie festival in upstate New York in late August and you want things to get really weird.

These guys moved from London to Amsterdam in the mid-'80s, way before it was the cool thing to do. I'm just saying...

The Legendary Pink Dots - The Maria Dimension (1991; Play It Again Sam)

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air (1969)

Experimental minimal electronic progressive drone music?

Fucking sign me up.

And while you're at it, sign up The Who (for the inspiration Pete Townsend got to do the intro to Baba O'Riley), better sign up Rick Wakeman too.

Keith Emerson, you hear this shit? I know you did, stop hiding behind that monstrosity of an organ.

Tangerine Dream, you're on this list. Ja, ja sind sie hier eingeschaltet. 

Steve Reich, where'd you get the idea for your "pulses" and all that stuff on Music For 18 Musicians?

Philip Glass- you're so on the list (you're probably the only one to admit it...)

These are all the people that directly benefited from Terry Riley's work. Now you can benefit from it, too. Click the link below the album cover...

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air (1969; Columbia Records)

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991)

Talk Talk was at first a new wavey synth dance band in the early '80s and morphed into pretentious art-rockers into the '90s, a move that appears (to the label heads at EMI) to be career suicide. I think it's one of the greatest stories of modern music: band makes Duran Duran-esque club tunes, band gets big record deal, band says "fuck off" to synthesizers and '80s excess, band makes three successive records the way they want to make them (1986's The Colour Of Spring, 1988's Spirit of Eden and this album in '91), band loses fans, record deal, etc. Yet band escapes from the industry somewhat unscathed, with suitcase full of money and unflappable creative license to make one of the landmark albums in the post-rock genre. 

I still haven't figured out what post-rock means, but I think this is it. It's actually closer to jazz than anything else. Laughing Stock, if anything- was one of the albums that metaphorically killed the '80s by smashing all barriers associated with what can be considered pop by deconstructing it by its constituent parts and re-assembling it into this sprawling and massive masterpiece.

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (1991; Polydor Records)

Frank Zappa - Lumpy Gravy (1968)

Who better to post on April Fool's Day?

Frank Zappa is the king. I've pledged my undying allegiance to his genius ever since I was a young man, which, come to think of it- is exactly why he still appeals to me; the scatological humor, the whole anti-establishment vibe, his politically incorrectness, his supreme guitar work...

Lumpy Gravy was Zappa's first album without The Mothers moniker, and it's a pastiche of conversations with his band (inside a piano), found sounds, tape loops, splices, etc. A freaky piece of experimental sound collages with occasional jazz rock sprinkled about. Not for the faint of heart, and not for you serious indie rock types.

Frank Zappa - Lumpy Gravy (1968; Verve Records)

Moondog - Moondog (1956)

Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin) was a blind street musician (that preferred to compose his scores in braille) and made various field recordings (mostly of New York City at street level) interspersed with tribal drumming (that sounds like it was made on drum machines, which at the time weren't invented yet- it's just maracas and clave here) and actual melodies as well, with pianos, animal noises, ocean waves, etc. (see: Musique concrète).

Moondog was way ahead of his time...

Moondog - Moondog (1956; Prestige Records)

The Residents - Not Available (1978)

Hey, you wanna hear an album that was never supposed to be released?

Apparently that's the story behind this record- recorded in 1974 but held for release until '78 (they released it when they all "forgot" about it, story goes) it's halfway between unlistenable and annoying; but mostly it's hilarious. It's a concept album, it's a prog nightmare, it has elements of musique concrete, it's got some weird electronic shit- basically it's way ahead of its time. I love this album so damn much I hunted down a copy on vinyl and paid whatever was asked. That's what you do when you've been brainwashed.

I wish I could tell you more about The Residents, but that's really all anyone has ever known about them. You'll just have to listen...

The Residents - Not Available (1978; Ralph Records)