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.
The Flaming Lips' King's Mouth couples spacey cinematic passages with driving rhythms to create a sombre and thoughtful musical whole.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke's third solo album ANIMA offers relatively peppy music to accompany his unsurprisingly bleak lyrical worldview, but it all works rather wonderfully.
Their fuzzed-out sonic signature might not be for everyone, but for adventurous listeners, Red Kite specialize in a fusion of music blending the complexity of Ornette Coleman with the heaviness of Black Sabbath.
Pere Ubu's The Long Goodbye is an amazing achievement that accomplishes its mission of encapsulating a 45-year career with wit and aplomb.
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.
Warren Defever was crafting drones is his home in his pre-teens. This first of three His Name Is Alive archival releases compiles those recordings.
Like their namesake, Black Midi are a restless, unstoppable force that push their members and listeners to their limits in Schlagenheim.
Jambinai's ONDA finds cross-cultural influences from traditional Korean music, post-rock, and atmospheric metal, but their ethos is certainly more complex than a fusion or hybrid project.
Psychedelic rockers Teeth of the Sea lead a fantastic show in support of their latest full-length, Wraith. Alongside them Slow Knife and Trianglecuts fill out the bill in wonderful fashion.
Deerhunter's Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? and Cryptograms are antithetical twins -- shattered mirror images, whose fragments echo each other and reflect Deerhunter's beginnings of and return to inspired experimentation.
The Flaming Lips' King's Mouth is full of bold musical cues, weird science fiction themes… and Mick Jones.
Sparked by Caravaggio's Boy with Basket of Fruit, Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart sees the title of their latest work, Girl with Basket of Fruit, as a comment on feminist politics and the precarious role of women in the world.
Two ex-Fugazi members are joined by guitarist Anthony Pirog as the Messthetics, and they produce a hellish improvisational etude at their Manchester show.
Returning after the very strong Forget, the experimental band Xiu Xiu returns with their new album, revisiting their more chaotic and unpredictable self in order to further their sound.
Borderless Australian band Tangents combines their mesmerizing New Bodies track "Lake George" with warping aerial footage of its namesake location.
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