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Consider too that the average ILF user has listened to a lot more music than maybe even the average music listener; it's possible that our bar for what constitutes "experimental" is pretty high.

For example, Sunn O))) is definitely quite experimental. It's normal to us. But to the vast majority of music listeners it's hard to get a handle on what Sunn is doing. Sunn is, legitimately, pretty experimental. Only a few bands had gone into drone doom territory like that before them, and a few of them involved O'Malley and Anderson, anyway...

I think objectively, Death Grips is pretty experimental, in the sense that they're genre-mashing in a way that hasn't often been done before. Or maybe I'm out of the loop...? It's possible. Can you think of any hip-hop/electronic/metal/punk bands? I suppose you could say a lot of nü-metal bands, but that's pretty different. They're definitely influential. Consensus is that Yeezus was just rehashing DG territory.

Can you think of a band that sounds like DG, that existed before DG, is what I'm trying to say.

I guess if mashup culture (Girl Talk, Caps & Jones, etc.), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and any number of backpacker hip-hop records hadn't created a cultural climate receptive to genre-mashing, DG couldn't really exist? Or couldn't as popular as they are, anyway.

Hyper Crush, LMFAO on the fun side (maybe not metal so much, but if they were angry, I guess it would be) and those guys both kinda suck even though they make me laugh. Kidding a bit.

I've also heard a few local acts like death grips too. Can't remember them for the life of me, but they were usually for fun/side projects.

Lots of techno guys will do stuff like that live, though in a dj remix way and without a live drummer...but it is essentially there. I mean, sure it is a slightly different delivery, but it is very similar concept to what people have been doing forever in the house, hiphop, punk, and electronic scenes. Hell, I've heard Kavinsky do stuff like that live and it was fun.

There are so many great bands out there that apply similar concepts to different applications saying one is more experiemental than the other just seems kinda lame. Just because my band tried to play punk/indie rock/lame dance jams with a SID station, juno, live hip-hop drums, and a ring mod guitar...do I think anything we did was experimental? nah...it was just what we had and what we could do....Devo did it already...haha

Plotkin did a lot of blending. The Acid House scene did some cool stuff too. Cabaret Voltaire, Foetus...etc. The Clash even (they sucked at it sometimes). B.A.D.

Just because we have access to more sounds at a lower cost shouldn't instantly separate influences and experiementation from what came before. Just because something sounds new, doesn't mean that the roots aren't everywhere.

Of course no one sounds exactly like them, that's what makes them a band and not a cover band. I'm not an expert on Death grips at all. Just going by the limited things I have heard.

[youtube][/youtube]

Yeah you're totally right, Galvar. Sunn are only experimental if you don't know LaMonte Young, et al. So, if you don't know your history, sure, they're "experimental". I heard of this new band, Sleep, I'm sure they'll blow you away. THEY HAVE A 63 MINUTE SONG ABOUT WEED, BRO.

Same song second verse via Death Grips. I'm not interested in the way the plebs experience them, and using that lens to look at music is fucking stupid, IMO.

I just think we throw the word experimental around a lot to give validity to someone's work. I think some people don't consider art art unless there is a level of edginess and newness which couldn't be futher from the truth. Sure, every new creation can be a fresh take, but it doesn't have to throw away conventions to be successful. Part of what creates understanding of a work is the history of the techniques, why things work the way they do, and acknowlegement of the past. So in the scheme of music, it isn't experimental...it, like most things, is another take on what has made music music forever.

Sunn O))) is part of a long chain too. Boredoms, Noise, Power Electronics, Movie Soundtracks, Sabbath, krautrock, prog rock, metal...all in there...just a focus or expansion on ideas. It doesn't discredit them at all. It actually makes works more lively and real when they aren't considered to be inside of a vaccuum.

I think part of what you have referenced is the level of experience and knowledge of an individual which would make something experiemental based upon the audience's access to the works preceeding and influencing a work. It may be new territory for the audience, but that is not experimental. The audience doesn't have to have that knowledge to enjoy or understand a work, but to consider the work wholly "experiemental" because there is no known reference for the audience is a big assumption for a critic.

Now experimentation goes in to every part of every thing everyone does every day. I have to touch my hand to the pot on the stove to see if it is hot. If it is, I have to find something that works well to hold the pot. But that experimentation doesn't make my cooking experimental as a work.

That's all I mean.

Haha, D.o.S. beat me to a better reference and a more concise answer haha!

lordgalvar wrote:Now experimentation goes in to every part of every thing everyone does every day. I have to touch my hand to the pot on the stove to see if it is hot. If it is, I have to find something that works well to hold the pot. But that experimentation doesn't make my cooking experimental as a work.

That's all I mean.

Nailed it.

And I love Sunn/that's not a slight on them at all, they're just a good example for this discussion. Like, I had a kid tell me he'd "never heard music like [the record Phanta and I put out] before" -- but that doesn't make it experimental, it just means that he doesn't know the history/what he's talking about (in a good way, he's a good kid: the same kid, actually, who was the teenager/Slayer fan I had in mind when I made the comparison originally).

Oh, I totally agree. Sunn is a great example of influences. And we have all done that mental jump where something just opens up a new door. That's why we all favorite bands haha! (and some don't make any sense...)

When I first heard Crass in the sixth grade, that stuff was scary and so different from Screeching Weasel, Johnny Rivers, and Primus that I had been listening to at the time. haha. It may have taken me years to learn about criticism and to have the knowledge to know where Crass came from, but it really is a blast tracing things around and learning more. Sure they had a somewhat experimental approach for their circle/scene, but the work was an intrepetation/implementation of a lot of things before it...and I think that is awesome but not experimental. Doesn't detract from my love one bit.

Exactly. Whereas I think that a band like Napalm Death or Sunn (to use examples from within metal) are avant-garde, rather than experimental: in that they were taking everything that was happening to a logical end -- the difference between the two being that Sunn's newness was in the traditional metal instrumentation applied to a sort of Brian Eno songcraft, whereas ND were pushing the limits of what had been done in an existing form. Even at the time, they were both working within fairly established parameters (whether the listener knows it or not).

Trying to avoid the typical Lejaren Hiller/John Cage refernce points to illustrate the differences, but I'd say Cabaret Voltaire/TG/the usual bands Galvar and I always seem to wind up referencing here are good examples of something that is/was actually 'experimental'.

TL;DR: Experimental =/= "doesn't sound like the mainstream iteration of a [genre]."

casecandy wrote: Can you think of a band that sounds like DG, that existed before DG, is what I'm trying to say.

The most popular answer to this question is B L A C K I E. Some have gone so far to say Death Grips ripped him off.

This is a really good thread guys

Lordgalvar, I love when you said Crass SCARED you. I loved when I was a kid and I heard Nine Inch Nails for the first time. When you're fourteen "Big Man With A Gun" or "Reptile" is world-obliterating. And of course eventually it's not scary at all. It's music you have nostalgia for and memories of, it's comforting, even.

I think in a lot of ways, my experience with music is chasing that "SCARY" dragon. Lately the only thing that's been doing it for me is, erm, experimental doom and black metal, Indian, Thou, Gnaw Their Tongues, and of course anything Josh Scogin, especially The Chariot, because all that shit scares me, walking home at night through the woods, it's got a palpable demonic or at least transcendently violent quality. In five years, all of that will be comforting and nostalgic and I'll need something more fucked up LOL

Already I'm seeing the album art for Gnaw Their Tongues' Collected Atrocities and laughing at it. I hate when I start to focus on the human element in music. I need music that sounds like it was made by demons, not humans

Except Josh Scogin I guess, he's scared me for a decade now. Inspiringly heavy dude.

What music scares you? In that vital, new way?

No Spill Blood is pretty scary. In a good way. This album has been on constant rotation for me since it came out a couple months ago.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcLmRpp6ez8[/youtube]

Mini-documentary
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ag0zlUoFM[/youtube]

What scared me about Crass was hearing "Shaved Women" and "Nagasaki Nightmare" repeated as I tried to fall asleep. Then waking up another time with that weird poem about a dude reflecting on his manhood at 4am...as a sixth grader (used to listen to cassettes on auto repeat in bed because I couldn't play them out loud because of the "F" word...).

Wasn't much beyond that. Well "Sentiment White Feathers" and "Reality Asylum" are kinda freaky sometimes...

but yea, off topic. so yea, gotta check out new things someday.

I've never listened to death grips purely because of the way people talk about them on the internet.

For me, it has been all about the new Ghost album. I know they aren't taken too seriously but they really speak to me. I've got a thing for the 60's/70's Satanism aesthetic, Blue Oyster Cult, and pop music, so Ghost have always felt "right" to me. I was afraid that after Infestessium they would try to top "Ghuleh" with another over top rock opera type song, but "Meliora" doesn't have anything on that scale. Instead, the songs are more accessible, tighter, and sound more like you could have played them on 70's rock radio. The theme of the album was a world without God, so there's very little of the Satanic symbolism their previous releases were wrapped in. So good.