Experimental Rock

Experimental rock (or avant-garde rock) is a type of music based on rock which experiments with the basic elements of the genre, and/or which pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique.

Performers may also attempt to individualise their music with unconventional time signatures, instrumental tunings, compositional styles, lyrical techniques, elements of other musical genres, singing styles, instrumental effects or custom-made experimental musical instruments.

The mid to late 1960s was an era of explosive growth and experimentation in rock music. Bands drew influences from free jazz artists such as John Coltrane and Sun Ra, as well as avant-garde composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Velvet Underground fused elements of minimalism and avante-garde music with standard rock song structures. The sounds of Indian music and Arabic music were also widely admired and adapted. Popular and successful bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were able to incorporate outside and foreign influences into their songs without sacrificing their broad fan-base.

As the 1990s passed, non-instrumental forms of indie rock also became increasingly experimental. Some of the innovators in this area were bands associated with the Elephant 6 and Jewelled Antler collectives, such as Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire, Josephine Foster and the Supposed, Le Butcherettes (a duo that experiments with raw meat and symbolisms), Neutral Milk Hotel and The Olivia Tremor Control.

The British band Radiohead, who had become popular in the 1990s with their alternative rock, began making more avant-garde style music at the turn of the millennium, with the album “Kid A”, and then in 2001 with its sister album “Amnesiac”. These albums took influence from Eeectronica, Krautrock and at times jazz and classical music to create a radical shift in direction for the group.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Experimental rock".