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The 10 Best Experimental Albums of 2015

Music of all kinds are tending toward a consciously experimental direction. Maybe we’re finally getting through to them.

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Music

Elysia Crampton Creates an Unsettlingly Immersive Experience with ​'Ocorara 2010'

On Ocorara 2010, producer Elysia Crampton blends deeply meditative drones with "misreadings" of Latinx poets such as Jaime Saenz and Juan Roman Jimenez

Music

Jim White and Marisa Anderson's 'The Quickening' Takes an Experimental Journey

Avant-garde drummer Jim White and folk guitarist Marisa Anderson get together without rehearsing to see what happens on The Quickening.

Music

'Underground London' Dazzles with Its Scope and Anti-Establishment Music

Cherry Red issues a gargantuan collection of anti-establishment music associated with the 1960s London counterculture, a movement which challenged the norms and conventions of mainstream society by drinking from the well of psychedelia, free jazz, Beat poetry, musique concrete, electronics, and minimalism.

Music

Markus Floats Creates a Warm Space That Never Dallies in One Place for Long

Third Album reflects experimental electronic artist Markus Floats' belief that music isn't just something one does. It's a life one leads, so each release is an excerpted component of an ongoing and all-encompassing journey.

Music

Novelty and Identity: An Interview With Colin Stetson

Colin Stetson discusses his process for scoring film and artistic satisfaction it gives him. "I get to invent a new array of solutions with novelty and identity. I hope the music has not existed in the particular guise and aesthetic before that."

Music

Dumama and Kechou Explore Folk, Dub and Free Jazz on the Splendid 'Buffering Juju'

Folklore, dub, and free jazz unite in Dumama and Kechou's new concept album, Buffering Juju. The duo confront the past and the present, taking on not only legacies of pain, but legacies of thriving through it.

Music

The 10 Best Experimental "Albums" of 2010

It's not that more experimental-type music was made in 2010. It's just that more of it was getting heard.

Music

VickiKristinaBarcelona Celebrate Tom Waits on "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" (premiere)

VickiKristinaBarcelona celebrate the singular world of Tom Waits their upcoming debut, Pawn Shop Radio. Hear "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" ahead of tomorrow's single release.

Music

Experimental Rock's Trees Speak Summon Kosmische Sensations on 'Ohms'

On their inspiring second album, Ohms, Arizona avant-garde collective Trees Speak invoke the best of expansive electronica through motorik repetitions across a sprawling masterwork.

Music

Nick Storring's 'My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell' Is Beautiful, Haunting, and Otherworldly

Canadian composer Nick Storring's latest album, My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell, is mysterious, multilayered, and unforgettable.

Music

Horse Lords Create a Loud, Disciplined Roar on 'The Common Task'

Experimental rock's Horse Lords release their first album in four years, and it's meticulous and complex, but also undeniably joyous and celebratory.

Music

Jazz Meets World Music on Jon Hassell and Farafina's 'Flash of the Spirit'

Originally released at the end of the 1980s to a bemused audience, will Jon Hassell and Farafina's Flash of the Spirit fare any better in the new millennium?

Music

Yann Tiersen's 'Portrait' Is a Fresh Interpretation of Past Glories

Amelie composer Yann Tiersen teams up with a coterie of collaborators on Portrait to revisit works from a 25-year career, with poignant and reinvigorating results.

Music

Rebecca Foon Gets Honest and Raw with the Gorgeous 'Waxing Moon'

Canadian cellist and activist Rebecca Foon channels her emotions into music that honors a planet in peril on Waxing Moon.

Music

Throbbing Gristle Sounded Only Half Alive on 'Part Two: The Endless Not'

The promised new album emerged in 2007 mashing together an EP's worth of new Throbbing Gristle, four outtakes from the band members' solo work, and two songs hanging around since their reformation in 2004.

Music

Wolff Parkinson White's 'Favours' Is an Arresting Combo of Vocals and Electronics

As Wolff Parkinson White, German jazz drummer Jochen Rueckert has crafted a baker's dozen of off-kilter tracks featuring various vocalists on his latest electronic music project.

Music

Throbbing Gristle's 2004 EP 'TG Now' Offered Hope for the Future (album review)

The demon stepchild shadowing punk's footsteps in the 1970s, Throbbing Gristle, returned in this new century making the case that they had something new to say with TG Now.

Music

Mute's Throbbing Gristle Reissue Campaign Enters the Reformation Years

In the latest component of a comprehensive reissue series, three limited-edition releases from the 2004-2007 iteration of Throbbing Gristle are back in print. We begin with Live December 2004: A Souvenir of Camber Sands.

Music

Colin Stetson Goes to the Movies with Loud, Garish 'Color Out of Space'

Adventurous multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson scores the new horror film from director Richard Stanley, Color Out of Space, and it's a noisy, deeply enjoyable headphone trip.

Music

Coil's 'Stolen & Contaminated Songs' Is a Document of a Different Time

Coil's undeniable sonic invention can't quite mask an almost quaint self-seriousness on their 1992 album, Stolen & Contaminated Songs, which was recently re-released.

Music

The 15 Best Experimental Albums of 2019

In an age when the personal is political feels as necessary as ever, we identify most with experimenters who transcend the throwing-shit-at-a-wall, banging-on-pots-and-cans approach. These artists occupy the earthly just as much as they occupy the mechanical and the celestial.

Music

Richard Dawson and the Multitudes Contained in Brexit Britain

Richard Dawson's 2020 is a coruscating state-of-the-nation piece as Britain faces up to its muddled identity at the end of a tumultuous decade.

Music

New 7" Single From Experimental Outfit JOBS Celebrates the Intersection of Music and Visual Art

With Similar Canvas, Brooklyn-based experimental quartet JOBS works closely with visual artist Sam King to create a striking single that feeds off another art form.

Music

The Velvet Underground's 'Grey Album' and the Delineation of a Decade

The Velvet Underground's 1969 self-titled release, known as the "Grey Album", blazes boldly 50 years later, and retains the same sonic relevance as a Laura Nyro or Nick Drake record: artworks utterly of their moment, that sound like they could have been made yesterday.

Music

Going Off the Rails But Knowing Where to Land: ESSi and the Art of Noise Rock

After more than three years together, Brooklyn duo ESSi finally released their first full-length album. PopMatters caught up with them before a show to discuss their effects-laden punk sound, New York's vibrant DIY music scene, and how Craigslist saved them more than once.

Music

Bent Knee's 'You Know What They Mean' Is Another Successful Experiment in Boundary Smashing

Boston art rockers, Bent Knee turn a corner with perhaps their most accomplished album yet in You Know What They Mean.

Music

Negativland Tell the Tale of "Certain Men" (premiere)

Your favorite sound collage maestros Negativland return with a meditation on greed that could have been written in the 1980s or the 1790s.

Music

Jenny Hval's 'The Practice of Love' Is Brainy, Conceptual, and Hugely Entertaining

Jenny Hval's The Practice of Love is a playful, conceptual pop record that makes sorting through its heady themes as fun as listening to it.

Music

The Jamie Saft Quartet Revives '60s/'70s Spiritual Jazz on 'Hidden Corners'

Producer and pianist Jamie Saft convenes a band designed to create a current take on the "spiritual jazz" of the 1960s and 1970s, and the result is Hidden Corners.

Music

Sonic Youth Founder Thurston Moore Asks Why a Song Can't Be an Hour Long

Thurston Moore talks about the three instrumental pieces spanning nearly three hours that make up the Spirit Counsel box set, the people who inspired them, and the fact that he doesn't really consider himself a "guitar guy".

Music

No Wave Veterans Disturbed Furniture Deliver Recently Unearthed Live Set From 1981 (premiere + interview)

Part of New York City's vibrant art and music scene in the early 1980s, Disturbed Furniture still kick with the shock of the new in 2019. Vocalist Alexa Hunter looks back at walking among the Hells Angels and the city's art elite.

Music

The Dust Blows Forward: 'Trout Mask Replica' at 50

In 1969, the deeply strange musician known as Captain Beefheart released an album that is still ahead of its time a half-century later. PopMatters spoke with musicians and writers about this landmark work of art and why it continues to fascinate.

Music

'O Meadowlark' and the Raw Acoustic Catharsis of Joseph Allred

Tennessee-born, Boston-based guitarist Joseph Allred releases his third album of primitive, off-kilter acoustic guitar and banjo music.

Music

Fountain of Time: An Interview with Bill MacKay

Chicago songwriter and guitarist Bill MacKay reflects on his softly powerful recent experimental rock work, and a life spent in thrall to the innate poetry in people and places.

Music

San Diego's Those Darn Gnomes Up the Weirdness Game With "Birds" (premiere)

Can slime mold be a muse? Can you cross more streams than this collective? All those answers and more are shrouded in mystery on new track from Those Darn Gnomes. Maximum weirdness.

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