Artists that mix electronic experimentalism with more traditional "rock"

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I'm looking along the lines of Xiu Xiu and Bjork here. Suggestions?

― Allen Cole, Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:44 (twenty years ago)

how is bjork trad rock?

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:46 (twenty years ago)

Many bands do this badly. The Super Furry Animals and Radiohead are the two most glaring examples that spring immediately to mind, but there are about 10,000 more.

― Steve Gertz (sgertz), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

silver apples.

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

to clarify: SFA and RH do it WELL, even though many others do it badly.

― Steve Gertz (sgertz), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:50 (twenty years ago)

SEVERED HEADS SEVERED HEADS SEVERED HEADS SEVERED HEADS SEVERED HEADS

ALSO, YOUNG GODS

both of these artits go, i feel, from electronic ->rock/pop, as opposed to starting rock/pop and incorporating electronic elements (like radiohead)

― jake b. (cerybut), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:51 (twenty years ago)

New Order keep their rock elements in terms of some guitars and Peter Hook's trademark bass. But they also add a lot of electronic elements. Dunno whether I'd call them "experimental" though.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

most of my favorite bands, especially if "electronic" doesnt necessarily mean "digital":

pere ubu
hawkwind
boredoms
pink floyd
oneida
faust
can
neu!
unrest
animal collective
black dice
public image limited
brian goddamn eno
roxy music

― peter smith (plsmith), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 23:55 (twenty years ago)

There's also the whole Buffalo Daughter/Cornelius/Kahimi/Takako group. Does "Spin Spider Spin" count as a rock song? It does to me, at least.

― django (django), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

Define "experimentalism."

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:14 (twenty years ago)

Define "traditional rock."

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:14 (twenty years ago)

laddio bolocko
starfuckers
einsturzende neubauten (early)
ubzub
caroliner
deerhoof
brise glace
flying saucer attack
popul vuh
m. gottsching
ash ra tempel
comets on fire (live)
nurse with wound (on the more 'psych' guitar oriented records)
cornelius

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:17 (twenty years ago)

i'm thinking trad rock involves beards but i could be wrong

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:18 (twenty years ago)

I mean isn't the breakdown in "My Generation" experimentalism? And yet isn't it now the most traditional of rock traditions?

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:21 (twenty years ago)

Morr Music people in general - The Go Find, Lali Puna, The Notwist, Styrofoam.

And also me.

― A / F#m / Bm / D (Lynskey), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:24 (twenty years ago)

nick nicely

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:26 (twenty years ago)

To me this is what was exciting and portable about "post-rock" as a notion- it seemed to me to mean that people would write songs, play them with acoustic instruments, record them digitally, and then go nuts chopping and editing them, isolating particular instruments at unusual places, putting things "in dub", heavily distorting quiet sounds, making "loud" parts superquiet and estranged, and generally *experimenting* with song structure in new ways made possible by digital multi-track recording. I really love it when people can rock out, but then after having done that, the results of their rocking out get subjected to a radically transformative overhaul. I wish more people would do that, but the problem is that unless the person doing the chopping is just as talented and creative as the people supplying the material getting chopped, it can all disappear into a bunch of quantized loops that lack the swing and nuance and dynamics of unmediated rock performance. The first few Pluramon records were like a best case scenario because you had Jaki Liebezeit drumming and you had Marcus Schmickler editing it all- so both sides of the equation were super talented and it's no wonder that the results were so exceptional. By comparison, the widespread return of the rhetoric of the organic (band as organism, live untouched unedited field recording of band jamming in the woods as signifier of their precious childlike purity etc.) seems to me to be regressive and aesthetically conservative and boring.

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:29 (twenty years ago)

If "experimental" doesn't mean digital, Lumpy Gravy wins.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:30 (twenty years ago)

midwest product!

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

Jason Forrest, Cabaret Voltaire, Jacques Berrocal, Bauhaus, Gong, Franco Battiato. I don't know, I'll have to repeat what others said and point out that it's a pretty broad and vague category.

if you like Bjork you might like Brigitte Fontaine though I can't say she "rocks."

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:32 (twenty years ago)

better just buy tilt.

― peter smith (plsmith), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:35 (twenty years ago)

Also the last John Cale one

― A / F#m / Bm / D (Lynskey), Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:36 (twenty years ago)

ZZ Top

― xhuxk, Thursday, 28 April 2005 00:43 (twenty years ago)

going by what drew said, disco motherfuckin inferno

― jake b. (cerybut), Thursday, 28 April 2005 01:18 (twenty years ago)

ZZ Top

CE OTM

― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Thursday, 28 April 2005 01:37 (twenty years ago)

liars - they were wrong so we drowned

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 28 April 2005 01:56 (twenty years ago)

not much of that album sounds especially "trad rock" (to me anyway), but there is electronic experimantalism and they're sort of coming from a rock background. i think.

― sleep (sleep), Thursday, 28 April 2005 01:59 (twenty years ago)

(Most of) the Morr catalog seconded. Also Hood, especially the latest album, and Cold House and its accompanying EPs. I've been digging the Mobius Band EP on Ghostly, too, though I can't say whether their earlier stuff is worth tracking down.

― Telephonething, Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:07 (twenty years ago)

Inspired by a concurrent thread, Japan : Japan: "Ghosts" C/D?

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:24 (twenty years ago)

What's a good example (track or album) of ZZ Top doing this?

― Sundar (sundar), Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:25 (twenty years ago)

ELO

― django (django), Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:43 (twenty years ago)

The high llamas

― django (django), Thursday, 28 April 2005 02:44 (twenty years ago)

xpost...To start, pretty much all of Eliminator, which is bluesy boogie rock decked out with the very modernest (circa 1984 or whenever) of synths, sequencers, and syn-drums, which I would say they manage to make rock far more effectively than most who tried similar things.

Not exactly along the lines of Xiu Xiu, but really, in what bizarre, awful universe would we be living in which that could be considered a bad thing?

― Zack Richardson (teenagequiet), Thursday, 28 April 2005 04:26 (twenty years ago)

Well, as I am starting to realise in my dotage, if you don't blow your own trumpet, no-one else will, so...

http://www.myspace.com/cherry2000

― moley, Thursday, 28 April 2005 07:23 (twenty years ago)

was gonna mention the mobius band, who i see have already been brought up - much like most hood stuff, my interest isn't really sustained over the length of an entire track, but they seem relevant.

― jermaine (jnoble), Thursday, 28 April 2005 07:33 (twenty years ago)

Prince.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 28 April 2005 07:41 (twenty years ago)

im gonna have to second "disco motherfuckin' inferno" they rule! EP reissues NOW!

― jmeister (jmeister), Thursday, 28 April 2005 07:44 (twenty years ago)

Supercar (JPN), although they recently broke up.

― J-rock (Julien Sandiford), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:26 (twenty years ago)

sigue sigue sputnik.

~ducks~

― mark e (mark e), Thursday, 28 April 2005 08:52 (twenty years ago)

No need to duck sir. They're great, they've always been great.

― moley, Thursday, 28 April 2005 10:21 (twenty years ago)

Marianas (sorta hood/notwist/fridge esque)

― super sleuth, Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:24 (twenty years ago)

Six Finger Satillite

― earlnash, Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

Oh, and obviously, the three bands mentioned in tandem above (Hood, Notwist, Fridge) I think would all qualify.

Some other bands doing some stuff in this realm I think include Tortoise (duh), Patrick Wolf, Jaga Jazzist, Camping (who put out an almost criminally-overlooked album last year), and even to some extent Animal Collective and Jackie O Motherfucker.

Ooooh. Also, the last two (Le) Fly Pan Am albums have shredded!

― super sleuth, Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:30 (twenty years ago)

Spooky tooth w/pierre henry?

http://www.discogs.com/release/166535

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:31 (twenty years ago)

Rovo
Boredoms

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 28 April 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

Van Halen

― Savin All My Love 4 u (Savin 4ll my (heart) 4u), Friday, 29 April 2005 04:15 (twenty years ago)

Gastr del Sol totally have this best of both worlds thing nailed.
(so do Jay Z and R. Kelly when they're together but that's another thread)

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Friday, 29 April 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)

ratatat

― ken taylrr (ken taylrr), Friday, 29 April 2005 05:49 (twenty years ago)

Fripp and Eno.

― nickn (nickn), Friday, 29 April 2005 06:10 (twenty years ago)

Also Jerry Garcia's first (I think) solo LP had a lot of free-form stuff on it. And the LP he did with someone (can't remember who) under the name Seastones was pretty much all experimental.

― nickn (nickn), Friday, 29 April 2005 06:13 (twenty years ago)

> pretty much all of Eliminator, which is bluesy boogie rock decked out with the very modernest (circa 1984 or whenever) of synths, sequencers, and syn-drums, which I would say they manage to make rock far more effectively than most who tried similar things.<

Yeah, but *El Loco* and select parts of *Deguello* and *Mescalero* are a lot weirder; *Eliminator* was sort of a poppification of stuff ZZ did on those. *El Loco* is their most avant-garde album, probably.....but on other hand, yeah, *Eliminator* probably has the *most* synths on it. They were apparently (according to a top ten they did in I think Rolling Stone back then) big fans of stuff like "Planet Rock" (or maybe Jonzun Crew?) and Zapp at the time.

― xhuxk, Friday, 29 April 2005 11:21 (twenty years ago)

(Well, *Eliminator* not a poppification of *Mescalero,* obv, since that one only came out a couple years ago -- and it's great, by the way. But you catch my drift.)

― xhuxk, Friday, 29 April 2005 11:22 (twenty years ago)

popul vuh

But when they're being electronic they're not being rock and when they're being rock they're not being electronic.

Suicide, obviously but also Metal Urbain.

― Pradaismus (Dada), Friday, 29 April 2005 11:28 (twenty years ago)

... and Cabaret Voltaire!

― Pradaismus (Dada), Friday, 29 April 2005 11:31 (twenty years ago)

Polysics
Plus-Tech Squeeze Box
Alec Empire
Violent Onsen Geisha
OOIOO
Broken Social Scene (?)

Supercar broke up? Darnnnnn.

― BARMS, Friday, 29 April 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

Most so-called 'post rock' would fit into this category. Cul de Sac are a particularly good example.

― Ogmor Roundtrouser (Ogmor Roundtrouser), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:02 (twenty years ago)

The Faint are my current fave for rock-messed-up-with-digital-beats-and-editing.

Also, if anyone knows an good online article that discusses ZZ Top's use of synths, I'd be eternally grateful. I loved them as a kid, and I'm just rediscovering.

― Tantrum The Cat (Tantrum The Cat), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:41 (twenty years ago)

Yea, the Faint is sooooooo "experimental". Wanker.

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 29 April 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

Fugazi

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 29 April 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

The Rachel's / Matmos collab

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 29 April 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

Donna Summer

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Friday, 29 April 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

Thanks for recommending El Loco, xhuxk. I really enjoy most of it (although most of it's not really what I would normally think of as "electronic experimentalism"). Those extended dual guitar jams over motorik vamps are cool, sometimes pretty. They have a nice sustained tone, particularly on "Leila". I might check out some of those other records.

― Sundar (sundar), Saturday, 30 April 2005 05:25 (twenty years ago)

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