All kinds of experimental music can be found on Bandcamp: free jazz, avant-rock, dense noise, outer-limits electronics, deconstructed folk, abstract spoken word, and so much more. If an artist is trying something new with an established form or inventing a new one completely, there’s a good chance they’re doing it on Bandcamp. Each month, Marc Masters picks some of the best releases from across this wide, exploratory spectrum. February’s selection includes field recordings shot through with noise, compositions based on irrational numbers, and violin improvisations in an abandoned water tank.
Rhys Chatham & Z’EV
Rhys Chatham & Z’EV
Vinyl LP
Rhys Chatham and Z’ev (aka Stefan Joel Weisser) are two of the most important figures in modern avant-garde music, the former pioneering rock minimalism with his guitar orchestras, while the latter invented a percussion-based performance style that expanded sonic boundaries. Sadly, Z’ev passed away in 2017 at age 66, but a few years before he teamed with Chatham on a collaboration now seeing release on Entrefer Editions. Chatham plays trumpets, flutes, and guitar, while Z’ev uses an electronic drum kit. The two side-long pieces they constructed are beautiful contrasts: side A is a maelstrom of layered notes and noises, looped in ways that are dizzying yet energizing, while side B is a meditative drone so hypnotic it’s almost lethal.
Chad Clark &Weasel Walter
Incantation Sublimation
Compact Disc (CD)
Guitarist Chad Clark and drummer Weasel Walter barely knew each other when they entered a studio last October to record Incantation Sublimation (Clark had just recently cold-called Walter asking him to collaborate.) But you can’t tell from the results. Through 12 tracks of high-level improvisation, the pair respond to each other with lightning speed, as if this is just part of a conversation they’ve been having for years. In fact, they did play for long stretches together during the recording, but rather than release them as is, Clark chose what he felt were the strongest sections. His judgment proved wise. Incantation Sublimation never ebbs, keeping both players and the listener on the edge of their seats.
Leo Okagawa
Send and Return
Cassette
“We don’t need to make sounds unnecessarily at every moment,” Tokyo-based artist Leo Okagawa said recently. “We should capture the atmosphere of the space…and think carefully about the timing to make necessary sounds.” You can hear the fruits of that approach on Send and Return, which presents two solo pieces Okagawa performed at two Tokyo venues in July of 2023. The first track, “Center,” begins quite judiciously, offering small noises and static in patient intervals, before coagulating into a more continuous but unpredictable stream. “Nanhari,” on the other hand, opens as a wall of noise, but eventually Okagawa turns minimal, doling out sounds in ways that create both tension and release.
Chris Pitsiokos
Irrational Rhythms and Shifting Poles
Vinyl
Experimentation is Chris Pitsiokos’s modus operandi. All of the releases by this Germany-based musician, who primarily plays saxophone, show a willingness to try something new. On Irrational Rhythms and Shifting Poles, he pursues what he calls an “evolving project” of spatial audio involving four channels, irrational numbers, and more. “Nebula” is a barrage of staccato sax notes that eventually melts into cacophony, then shifts to high-pitched whirr; “Air” is a minimalist abstraction that seems to be made solely of breath; and “172” shifts through long, sine wave-style tones to create atmosphere. It all feels like a sonic laboratory in the best sense, but it’s not clinical; many moods course through Pitsiokis’s journeys.
Shit & Shine
JOY OF JOYS
Vinyl LP
The discography of Shit & Shine is tough to sum up. The Texas-based project centered around Craig Clouse straddles noise, rock, dance, electronica, and more, always with an eye towards finding something new. JOY OF JOYS doesn’t dip into all those styles, but it might be Clouse’s most experimental work so far. Comprising 15 tracks, each between one and three minutes in length, Joy of Joys might come off at first as a series of sketches, small ideas in search of a larger theme. But dig deeper into these sound poems—the rattling gulps of “Joy 2,” the springy rhythm of “Joy 5,” the ghost tones of “Joy 7”—and you’ll find a lot going on, as structures reveal themselves and intentions become clearer. Despite the lack of voice or words, Joy of Joys feels personal, like private messages from Clouse sent straight to your subconscious.
Leslee Smucker
Breathing Landscape
Vinyl LP
The 10 solo violin pieces on Leslee Smuckers’s Breathing Landscape feel cavernous, her sounds reflecting and expanding inside a massive closed space. That space happens to be an empty water tank in northwest Colorado, where Smuckers and her instrument created what she calls a “sauna of sound.” It would’ve been easy to let the tank “play” these songs, but Smucker does a lot more than just marvel at the echoes. Utilizing the entire audio spectrum, as well as incorporating her own voice, she turns the tank into a kind of sonic kaleidoscope, generating sonic colors that mix into each other. The result on Breathing Landscape is a musical world that’s easy to get lost in.
The Starless Oracle
Seastones
The second album by Brad Rose under his Starless Oracle moniker evokes a healing meditation. Bells ring, synths oscillate, and drones echo with immediate calm, as if Rose is a therapist helping the listener shed anxiety. In “Where Do We Go Now?” a loop of metal chiming generates clouds of solace, while during “Apricity” similar reverberant sounds approach even more gradually, fully decaying before another arrives. But Seastones isn’t some innocuous soundtrack you barely notice in a crystal shop. There are all kinds of undercurrents running through Rose’s soundscapes. Take “One Last Look Beyond the Rift,” a dense, grinding mass that certainly feels like staring into some kind of abyss.
Taku Sugimoto
Since 2016
Vinyl LP
The title of Japanese guitarist Taku Sugimoto’s latest album is literal: this is a selection of his favorite work that he’s done since 2016. Each of the nine tracks features his sparse one-note plucks accompanied by the mournful vocals of Minami Saeki and the patient accents of soprano saxophonist Christian Kobi. Although most of Since 2016 has an improvised feel, melodies do gently emerge, but everything is played so calmly and unhurriedly that the listening experience is less about remembering specific progressions than being immersed in a slow-motion musical trickle. For me, the entire album feels like one long piece, with Sugimoto’s guitar approach gradually sinking in like water absorbed by a sponge.
Jiyoung Wi
Accept All Cookies
Vinyl LP,
The first full-length album from Korean-born, Netherlands-based sound artist Jiyoung Wi is both concrete and ephemeral, as if the music might disappear if you reached out to touch it. Using field recordings and a Korg MS-20 synth, she creates odd narratives filled with words and sounds that are recognizable yet puzzling. Take “S*fe Word,” in which a male and female voice discuss the concept of safe words, laughing nervously over echoing tones. It’s hard to tell if they’re really having this conversation or pretending to. That’s followed by “Swipe Left,” which starts with a confused voice (“Seriously, what the hell is going on?”) that’s quickly chopped up and consumed by drilling noise. The rest of Accept All Cookies maintains that tantalizing quality, floating between cognition and confusion, between plain meaning and dense mystery.
Zhou Pei / Charles LaReau
digital rain
Compact Disc (CD)
Digital Rain is both a split release and a collaboration. Of the four intense, enveloping tracks here, two are by Zhou Pei, two by Charles LaReau, and the finale includes both artists. The contrast between their approaches (both use electronics and field recordings) is readily apparent. Pei’s two solo tracks fall squarely in the category of harsh noise, with confrontational sounds attacking the stereo space. LaReau is more of a minimalist, keeping things distant and echoey, but his pieces are similarly dense in the way they occupy your ears. Things lean a little more toward LaReau’s side on the final collaborative track, but both artists pour a ton of sounds and ideas into the piece, which loops, spurts, and shuffles its way into existence.
