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,

Track List

1. Povarovo – J.S Bach
2. Teargas & Plateglass – Plague Burial
3. Leila – Mettle
4. Amon Tobin – Chomp Samba
5. Moondog – Why Spend the Dark Night With You
6. Al Chem – No Hopper
7. Instituto Mexicano del Sonido – Tristeza Hawaiana
8. King Midas Sound – Cool Out
9. Wangtone – Bi Ma Wen
10. Einstuerzende Neubauten – Weil Weil Weil
11. Moondog – Bird’s Lament
12. Django Reinhardt – Minor Swing
13. Sibot – Expect Everyone
14. Rukus Roboticus – Everlasting Ghettoblasting Gobstopper

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

Chaos Royale sounds like “a truck carrying a dancehall soundsystem crashing into a death metal gig, in a nitroglycerine factory”. Luke Chaos, UK born and Tokyo based music producer, remixer and vocalist, combine Hardcore Hip-Hop, Dubstep, Death metal, Avant-Garde classical, Reggae, Noise and all kinds of heavy sounds into a new style of music.

Anna SuperNova:

Haters (Floor Destroyer mix):

Alice Underwater:

Intra:

Links: MySpace, LastFM, Twitter, Official page.

Klaus Nomi was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona. Nomi was known for his bizarrely theatrical live performances, heavy make-up, unusual costumes, and a highly stylized signature hairdo which flaunted a receding hairline. His songs were equally unusual, ranging from synthesizer-laden interpretations of classical music opera to covers of 60s pop standards

MySpace, LastFM, Facebook, Wikipedia, Official page.

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

Wireless Fantasy (1960)

Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990) who emigrated to the USA from Russia in 1930 (born in Manchuria), was one of the pioneers of “tape music”, created the first electronic music in 1951 with his teacher Otto Luening. In october 1952, a live concert of electronic music by Luening and Ussachevsky at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art was broadcasted live, and caused a sensation. It included Ussachevsky’s Sonic Contours (1952), which electronically modifies the sound of a piano.

Ussachevsky was one of the most significant pioneers in the compositon of electronic music, and one of its most potent forces. He produced the first works of “tape music,” a uniquely American synthesis of the French musique-concrète and the German pure electronic schools. He co-founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959 and directed its course for the next twenty years as the leading electronic music studio in the United States. This release couples two of his most powerful and innovative scores: Suite from No Exit (1962), from the film of Sartre’s play No Exit directed by Orson Welles, and the soundtrack for the avant-garde film, Line of Apogee (1967).

Other legendary works that Ussachevsky composed in this period were A Poem In Cycles And Bells (1954) for tape and orchestra (one of the earliest electro-acoustic pieces), which was based on Otto Luening’s Fantasy In Space (1952) and his own A Poem In Cycles And Bells, and Piece for Tape Recorder (1956) for tape. In 1959, Luening and Ussachevsky founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC), the first studio for electronic music in the USA, which featured the synthesizer “Mark II”. Creation Prologue (1961), Conflict (1971) and Creation Epilogue (1971), three parts of the multi-movement large-scale Creation, were scored for choirs and electronics, but his choral music was rather inferior. On the other hand, Conflict was his main composition of the 1970s.

Two Images for a Computer Piece with an Interlude (1969)

Links: Official page, LastFM, Wikipedia.

Born on May 23 1939, Michel Colombier began his formal musical education at the age of six. His father taught him piano, harmony, counterpoint and conducting. By eleven he started to improvise and at fourteen he discovered jazz and performed with small combos and big bands for which he wrote daring jazz arrangements. In the meantime, his father continued his education by adding the study of church organ and Gregorian chant. During his stint in the French Army he continued composing, arranging and playing the widest range of music from chamber orchestra to jazz band.

At the age of 22, he spent one year with French avant-garde composer Michel Magne and was hired as Musical Director of ‘Barclay Records.’ His first assignment was to arrange Charles Aznavour’s first album in English, produced by Quincy Jones, for release in the United States.

A few years later, he revolutionized the advertising world, introducing sounds and concepts never used before. Some of his jingles are still played today.

He entered the world of dance (in collaboration with Pierre Henry) for Maurice Béjart’s, “Messe pour le temps present.” This work was recently remixed under the title “Metamorphose” by the “Who’s Who” of DJ’s headed by William Orbit, Coldcut, Funki Porcini and Fat Boy Slim.

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Prologue/ Psyché Rock

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Jéricho Jerk

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Psyché Rock (Fatboy Slim Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Prologue (Chris The French Kiss Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Psyché Rock (William Orbit Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Jericho Jerk (St. Germain Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Teen Tonic (Dimitri From Paris Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Too Fortiche (Tek 9 Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Psyché Rock (Choped Up Coldcut Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Too Fortiche (The Mighty Bop Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Jericho Jerk (Funki Porcini Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Too Fortiche (Chateau Flight Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Psyché Rock (Psyched Out Coldcut Remix)

Pierre Henry &  Michel Colombier -- Psyché Rock (Ken Abyss Remix)

Colombier went on to co-write for many years with the legendary Serge Gainsbourg. He collaborated with some of the most prestigious artists in his native France including Charles Aznavour, Brigitte Fontaine, Jean-Luc Ponty, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, and Stephane Grappelli.

Links:  Official page, MySpace, LastFm, Wikipedia.

White Space was created as a variation on the theme of Creation. The work uses the Creation story of Adam as a guide (“formed man from the dust of the ground”). A human head appears as animated ‘dust’ as it emerges from and descends into a chalky white pool. While the non-narrative short film can viewed as the original “man” being created by God, there are also references to science-fiction and the head takes on a ghostly ethereal quality…like an alien being from another planet. Influences of David Lynch as well as the repetitious music of minimalist composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich can also be seen. In addition to directing the video, Jym Davis also appears in the work.

As i already described Philip Glass in the previous post, he is a four-time Academy Award-nominated American classical music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public. Glass’s music is frequently described as minimalist, though he has distanced himself from that description, calling himself a composer of “music with repetitive structures”.

Links: Philip Glass page, Steve Reich page, Jim Davis page, Philip Glass on MySpace, Steve Reich on MySpace, Jim Davis on MySpace, Philip Glass on LastFM, Steve Reich on LastFM, Philip Glass on Wikipedia, Steve Reich on Wikipedia.

Aphex Twin -- Icct Hedral (Philip Glass Orchestration)

Icct Hedral is the Aphex Twin / Philip Glass adaptation of the track lcct Hedral, which originally appears on Aphex Twin’s “I Care Because You Do” album.

Almost everybody know that Richard David James (born 1971), better known as Aphex Twin, is an electronic music artist who has been described as “the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music”.

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi, also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living’, and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way. The film won the “Francis Ford Coppola Presents” endorsement at the 1982 New York Film Festival, and Coppola is now credited as an executive producer. In an interview, Godfrey Reggio says “…Coppola would like to do everything possible to make this available to the public, so he put his name on it”

Links:
- Icct Hedral (Philip Glass Orchestration) on LastFM
- Aphex Twin on MySpace
- Aphex Twin on LastFM
- Aphex Twin on Wikipedia
- Philip Glass page
- Philip Glass on MySpace
- Philip Glass on LastFM
- Philip Glass on Wikipedia
- Koyaanisqatsi page
- Koyaanisqatsi on IMDB
- Koyaanisqatsi on Wikipedia

Watch also this short clip about Philip Glass: