Experimental is not a genre, but a way of approaching sound. It breaks the usual rules of composition, performance and recording. The main idea is not to follow standards, but to explore new forms and ways of sound. Such music often mixes opposite genres and breaks the usual structures. Such music is not oriented towards commercial success, but rather the opposite of mass trends

Here you can hear noises, sounds of factories, field recordings, objects from everyday life. Broken techniques and equipment are often used – old cassettes, tape recorders, guitar pedals with artifacts. Recording also takes place not in studios, but in the most unexpected places: abandoned buildings, tunnels, mines, natural spaces. Some musicians, like Prurient, use radio interference and distortions on purpose – everything that is considered as “marriage” in usual music becomes an artistic technique here.

The structure of such tracks is non-standard: there are no usual verses and choruses, there can be a lot of noises, monotony, unusual rhythms – often it all sounds hypnotic and addictive.

One of the most unusual and radical examples of this approach is Alvin Lucier – Music for Solo Performer (1965). Here the composer does not play anything with his hands at all – instead of his hands, the music is composed by his brain waves. Special sensors read the brain signals, amplify them and transmit them to acoustic objects, which begin to vibrate and sound.

Subgenres and related genres:

• Experimental Rock
• Experimental Pop
• Experimental Folk
• Experimental Rap
• Art Rock
• Avant-Garde
• Musique concrète
• Industrial
• Noise

Artists:

• Scott Walker
• Coil
• Throbbing Gristle
• Björk