Studies in Avant-Rock & Noise

This second module of the two-semester Studies in
Experimental Pop course might be better titled
Studies in Experimental Rock. The focus shifts
away from the mainstream of the pop charts and
radio, towards the alternative and underground;
there is less focus on the dancefloor and more
emphasis on electric guitars as the starting point
for experimentation. Starting with the spirit of
drift and discovery that emerged from the late
Sixties psychedelic moment and developed in the
Seventies, we then look at Brian Eno career as
artist, producer and collaborator; the German
cosmic music scene of the 1970s and its turn
towards the electronic in the later part of the
decade; Japan's mutations of Western sounds across
several decades; how art school ideas filtered
into postpunk and No Wave music; late Eighties and
early '90s neo-psychedelic rock and the birth of
the blurry, texturally saturated aesthetic of
shoegaze; the controversial but fertile concept of
post-rock in the '90s and 2000s, which filtered
into the mainstream through Radiohead; industrial
music and its unexpected echoes in conceptual
queer electronic music of the 2010s; and various
developments in "post-indie" music of the 21st
Century, including hauntology, chillwave and
vaporwave.