Noise Guitar Music Magazine: experimental avant garde music

Showing posts with label experimental avant garde music. Show all posts

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Screamin' Jay Hawkins was arguably the first shock rocker. After the success of his 1957 hit "I Put a Spell on You", Hawkins began to perform a recurring stunt at many of his live shows; he would emerge from a coffin, sing into a skull-shaped microphone and set off smoke bombs.

Another artist who performed similar stunts was the British singer-songwriter Screaming Lord Sutch. The 1960s brought several proto-shock rock artists. In the UK, The Who often destroyed their instruments, The Move did the same to television sets, and Arthur Brown wore vivid makeup and a flaming headpiece. In the US, Jimi Hendrix set his guitar alight at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, while Detroit musician Iggy Pop's violent, erratic onstage persona drew widespread recognition, as Pop would often throw his body about the stage, frequently injuring his band members.

Alice Cooper performing live at Wacken Open Air in August 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With a career spanning the mid-1960s to recent years, American band leader Alice Cooper refined shock rock, with expensive, upscale illusionary, graphic stunts, such as feigning decapitation with the use of elaborate special effects. In the early 1970s, Cooper's unique blend of heavy metal and the folk blues, complete with sardonic and inevitably controversial lyrics, proved a powerful inspiration for many future genre artists such as KISS of the mid 1970s; W.A.S.P., Gwar, and King Diamond of the 1980s; and Marilyn Manson of the 1990s. Cooper is credited for inventing true shock rock, as well as trademarking shock rock.

Manson and Alice Cooper. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the 1980s in Richmond, Virginia, Gwar formed as a collaboration of artists and musicians. The band members make their own lavish monster costumes, which they claim are inspired by many of the creatures from H. P. Lovecraft's literary multiverse, the Cthulhu Mythos.

Gwar frequently incorporates extravagant theatrics into their shows, such as mock jousts and pretending to murder each other. Gwar condemned Eldon Hoke, the vocalist of the Mentors, during their appearance on The Jerry Springer Show, because Hoke advocated rape during his interview. In the 1990s and 2000s, Marilyn Manson became perhaps the most notable and well known act in shock rock, being dubbed by the media as one of the most controversial and shocking musicians in music history. Manson's stage antics, such as burning the American flag and ripping pages out of the bible, have been the focus of protests throughout his career.Manson argues that his visual and vocal styles and unique interpretations of familiar songs contribute to his public appeal.

Notable acts

Experimental Rock or Avant-garde Rock

A type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the avant garde genre, or which pushes the boundaries of common music composition and performance technique. Some of the more common techniques in experimental music include:

Extended techniques: Any of a number of methods of performing with voice or a musical instrument that are unique, innovative, and sometimes regarded as improper.

"Prepared" instruments—ordinary instruments modified in their tuning or sound-producing characteristics. For example, guitar strings can have a weight attached at a certain point, changing their harmonic characteristics (Keith Rowe is one musician to have experimented with such prepared guitar techniques). Cage's prepared piano was one of the first such instruments. A different form is not hanging objects on the strings, but divide the string in two with a third bridge and play the inverse side, causing resonating bell-like harmonic tones at the pick-up side.
Unconventional guitar playing techniques—for example, strings on a piano can be manipulated directly instead of being played the orthodox, keyboard-based way (an innovation of Henry Cowell's known as "string piano"), a dozen or more piano keys may be depressed simultaneously with the forearm to produce a tone cluster (another technique popularized by Cowell), or the tuning pegs on a guitar can be rotated while a note sounds (called a "tuner glissando").
Extended vocal techniques—any vocalized sounds that are not normally utiliized in classical or popular music, such as moaning, howling, vocal fry, overtone singing, screaming, death growls, or making a clicking noise. Artists such as Cathy Berberian, Roy Hart, Meredith Monk, Michael Vetter, and Björk. Berio's Sequenza III for female voice (1965) and Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) utilize many of these techniques, along with other rock artists.

Incorporation of instruments, tunings, rhythms or scales from non-Western music traditions.
Use of sound noise sources other than conventional music instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
Playing with deliberate disregard for the ordinary musical controls (pitch, duration, volume).
Use of graphic notation, non-conventional written/graphic 'instructions' actively interpreted by the performer(s). This practice continued through composers/artists such as La Monte Young, George Brecht, George Crumb, Annea Lockwood, Yoko Ono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.
Creating experimental musical instruments for enhancing the timbre of compositions and exploring new techniques or possibilities. Artists such as Harry Partch, Luigi Russolo, Bradford Reed, Iner Souster, Neptune, Hans Reichel.