Amhakara:

Started by John Zorn (saxophone) of many, many things, most notably Naked City, Mick Harris (drums) of Scorn, Napalm Death, and Bill Laswell (electric bass) of Praxis, Material, Tabla Beat Science, in 1991, PainKiller is an extreme mix of free jazz, hardcore, dub, and noise.

Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia:

Tortured Souls:

Their style can be described as a mix of avant-garde jazz and grindcore; later albums also incorporated elements of ambient and dub.  The band has also had several musicians make guest appearances both live and in the studio, including Yamatsuka Eye, Buckethead, Mike Patton, Makigami Koichi, Justin Broadrick and G. C. Green of Godflesh, and Keiji Haino of Fushitsusha.

John Zorn established in 1995 the record label called Tzadik Records, wich is a not-for-profit, cooperative record label with a variety of artists with diverse musical backgrounds, including, but not limited to free improvisation, jazz, noise, klezmer, rock  and experimental composition.

Links: Mick Harris page, Wikipedia, MySpace, LastFM,

Part II

Part III

From the album The Resistance

Estradasphere is a band of multi-instrumentalists from an unlikely variety of musical backgrounds. Timb Harris (violin/trumpet), Jason Schimmel (guitar/banjo/keyboards/vocals), Tim Smolens (upright and electric bass/vocals), Kevin Kmetz (Tsugaru Shamisen/guitar/keyboards), Adam Stacey accordion/keyboards/clavinet), and Lee Smith (drums/percussion) were trained in disciplines ranging from classical and jazz to metal. This diverse instrumental and stylistic palette enables them to execute a vast array of orchestrations and even forge entirely new genres such as “Bulgarian Surf,” “Romanian Gypsy-Metal,” and “Spaghetti Eastern.”

Estradasphere’s latest album, Palace of Mirrors, marks their first release on New York-based The End Records, home to many of rock and metal’s most eclectic bands. The album’s cinematic music and production connotes a narrative that cuts across time, space, and genre. Estradasphere concerts feature the six accomplished musicians and an innovative visual team. Their live show is an extension of the surreal sci-fi storyline alluded to in the music. In each performance, as the themes of the music associate with the enigmatic video and live-camera projections, a dynamic film is created in which the members of Estradasphere are both the characters and the soundtrack orchestra.

More great videos after the jump

Speck

Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu

(Original)

Klezmer Metal you say? Sure, why not!

Smuggled Mutation

More info:
www.estradasphere.com

http://www.myspace.com/estradasphere

Scott Joplin was an American musician and composer of ragtime music. He remains the best-known ragtime figure and is regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb.

When Joplin was learning the piano, serious musical circles condemned ragtime because of its association with the vulgar and inane songs “cranked out by the tune-smiths of Tin Pan Alley.” As a composer Joplin refined ragtime, elevating it above the low and unrefined form played by the “wandering honky tonk pianists… playing mere dance music” of popular imagination. This new art form, the Classic rag, combined Afro-American folk music’s sycopation and nineteenth-century European romanticism, with its harmonic schemes and its march-like tempos.  In the words of one critic,”Ragtime was basically… an Afro-American version of the polka, or its analog, the Sousa-style march.

In the late 1880s Joplin played pre-ragtime ‘jig-piano’ in various red-light districts throughout the mid-South.

In 1893 Joplin made his way to Chicago to perform at the World’s Fair, although not as an official performer. By 1897 ragtime had become a national craze in American cities, and was described by the Dispatch News as “a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city bred people.”

Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri in 1894 and began working as a pianist in the Maple Leaf Club and the Black 400, social clubs for “respectable [black] gentlemen”. He gained a reputation as a well-respected piano player, and began composing songs and teaching music. One of his earliest works in 1896 was The Great Crush Collision March, a “special… early essay in ragtime”, written after a staged train crash in McLennan County, Texas, at which Joplin may have been present.

In 1899, Joplin married Belle, the sister-in-law of collaborator Scott Hayden and sold what would soon become one of his most famous pieces, Maple Leaf Rag, to John Stark & Son, a Sedalia music publisher. It was an immediate success and was ragtime’s first hit, in addition to being the first great instrumental music hit in America.

Maple Leaf Rag:

Jazz Piano:

Joplin collaborated with Scott Hayden in the composition of four rags. It was in St. Louis that Joplin produced some of his best-known works, including The Entertainer, March Majestic, and the short theatrical work The Ragtime Dance.

In 1907 Scott Joplin moved to New York City, which he believed was the best place to find a producer for a new opera. In 1907 Scott Joplin moved to New York City, which he believed was the best place to find a producer for a new opera (Treemonisha). Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin himself never referred to it as such, it is still sometimes incorrectly referred to as a “ragtime opera”. The music of Treemonisha includes an overture and prelude, along with various recitatives, choruses, small ensemble pieces, a ballet, and a few arias.

Overture from Treemonisha:

Prelude from Treemonisha:

Joplin and his fellow ragtime composers rejuvenated American popular music, fostering an appreciation for African American music among European Americans by creating exhilarating and liberating dance tunes, changing American musical taste. “Its syncopation and rhythmic drive gave it a vitality and freshness attractive to young urban audiences indifferent to Victorian proprieties… Joplin’s ragtime expressed the intensity and energy of a modern urban America.

Links: Wikipedia, MySpace, LastFM, Official page.

From the album Maškaradă of famous Romanian Gypsy musicians Taraf de Haïdouks.

In the early 20th century, many composers drew their inspiration from national folklore, often borrowing from Roma musicians to create their own vision of an exotic and largely imaginary Orient. Things have now been turned around, as one of the world’s leading Gypsy bands have taken hold of classical pieces by Bartok, Khachaturian, Albeniz & more, and have “re-gypsyfied” them, giving them an exhilarating make-over. Starting out in a concert hall, Maskarada takes us through various stages which inevitably lead back to the type of repertoire for which the Taraf de Haïdouks are known and loved.

MySpace, LastFM, Facebook, Wikipedia.

J.S. Bach:

New born:

Nothing going:

Ronald:

Dead fish:

Black Powder:

MySpace, LastFM, Official page.

Mira and Laurent -- a fashion model from Finland and soundtrack musician from France. Austere, minimal music made with voice and acoustic guitars and other very sparse orchestrations.

Mi and L’au met in Paris a few years back. Mi is Finnish and was working as a model to make ends meet and L’au (who’s French) was working in the music industry (soundtracks). They fell deeply and immediately in love, and after a short period of moving from apartment to apartment in Paris, they gave everything up and decided to move in a small cabin in woods in Finland, so they could be alone together in peace and spend their time discovering each other and their music. (last.fm).

Ten Kingdoms

Transparent

Dancing and smiling

MySpace

Airships

Four harts

Metal Berry

Snakes & Tea

Nighttime and morning with Anthony Hagerty

Desert Cathedral

Pale Dog

Disparu

Myspace

Pitchfork review for the Desert Doughnuts album

The real tuesday weld is one of those bands that, if you were in highschool again, you would carve its name on the table, graffiti your favourite tune on the wall and faint when seeing the lead man on stage, on TV.

A little bit of drama, cabaret and reverie….

The day before you came (Abba Cover)

The show must go on

Terminally ambivalent over you

Cloud Cuckooland

More videos on the Real Tuesday Weld Youtube Channel.  Maybe you are more fortunate than me, and your country is allowed to see all videos…If you are, please be sure to check Waltz for one 

The band has a very interesting biography, which starts like this:

This is a story of dreams mixed with reality.

I grew up in an old fashioned house where Thirties British dance band music was played (along with a dash of easy listening). I was very reserved -- I played the recorder, piano and trumpet and I read mythology. I developed a prediliction for hallucinogens and became a cross dresser. I was a student at the Royal College of Art in London, dabbled a little with music but started to meditate and decided to become a Buddhist monk. I spent four months in the Spanish mountains abstaining from drink, drugs and debauchery on the path to enlightenment. I came down. I really came down. I collapsed into a psychic heap, split with my paramour and entered into a shadow world. I began to study Jung and James Hillman and to pay attention to my dreams. I visited a shaman and had a series of very strange experiences in London and in the Cambrian mountains in West Wales.

 One night I had a very strong dream in which the British crooner Al Bowlly appeared to me in Piccadilly circus. I took it as an omen that I needed to become a musician. The next night I dreamt of the actress Tuesday Weld

You can listen to a bunch of their great music on imeem: here

Download for free their latest album The End of the World on Six Degrees
Website
Youtube channel
Wikipedia
Myspace

Sainkho Namtchylak is an experimental singer, born in 1957 in a secluded village in the south of Tuva, an autonomous Russian state bordering Mongolia. She has an exceptional voice, spanning seven octaves and proficient in overtone singing; her music enmeshes avant-jazz, electronica, modern composition and Tuvan influences.

Lonely soul:

Inuit Wedding:

Excerpt from documantary “Sainkho -- a voice on the edge -- a journey of extremes”:

Order to survive:

Midnight blue:

Ritual Virtuality:

Kaar Deerge:

Old melodie:

Let The Sunshine:

Live performance from Lithuanian National Philarmonics, Vilnius:

TV russian show:

Performances:

Concert at “Yi du tang” in Shenzhen:

Links: Official page, MySpace, LastFM, Wikipedia.