Experimental pop

Experimental pop
Stylistic origins	Pop music experimental music electronic music
Cultural origins	1950s, United States and United Kingdom
Other topics
Art pop experimental rock experimental jazz progressive pop avant-garde pop

Experimental pop describes pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into novel areas.

Characteristics

Author Bill Martin states that while the term "experimental pop" may sound "seemingly oxymoronic", it is possible to identify three criteria for characterizing its music:

• It is rooted in existing popular forms
• It experiments with or stretches the use of these popular forms
• It attempts to draw the audience of those forms toward these new developments, in the manner of the avant-garde

Other authors have identified some tendencies among artists: they may incorporate experimental techniques such as musique concrète, aleatoric music, or eclecticism into pop contexts. Often, the compositional process involves the use of electronic production effects to manipulate sounds and arrangements. Experimental pop settings combines sound-based work and note-based work, though not always simultaneously.

History

Origins (1950s–60s)

Bill Martin wrote that experimental pop developed at roughly the same time as experimental jazz, and that it emerged as "a new kind of avant-garde" made possible by the historical and material circumstances of its time. According to author Mark Brend, I Hear a New World (1960) by English record producer Joe Meek predates better-known experimental pop by several years, whereas musicologist Leigh Landy names the American composer Frank Zappa as one of the first experimental pop musicians.

Musician David Grubbs writes that many younger musicians "moved out of [John] Cage's shadow by taking to a different extreme and embracing the practice of making studio recordings of works along the fringes of popular music". Grubbs says that some of the most prominent avant-garde musicians who formed rock bands in the mid 1960s was Welsh musician John Cale (later of the Velvet Underground) and American musician Joseph Byrd, who would both go on to create albums of experimental pop music. However, a "gulf" would still exist between experimental composers and "out-there" pop musicians, partly due to the role of the recording studio, as composer Robert Ashley is quoted in 1966: "We can't be popular musicians, where the fairly exciting things happen. ... The one thing I like about popular music is that they record it. They record it, record it, record it, record it! The astute producer cuts out the magic from the different tapes (laughter) and puts them in a certain order and gets a whole piece. It's very beautiful, because it's really aural magic. ... We have to invent social situations to allow that magic to happen."

Brian Wilson in the studio, 1976

Music historian Lorenzo Candalaria described American rock band the Beach Boys as "one of the most experimental and innovative groups of the 1960s." Co-founder and leader Brian Wilson wrote and produced songs for the group that ranged from massive hits to obscure experimental pop compositions. Their 1966 single "Good Vibrations", also produced and co-written by Wilson, topped record charts internationally, subsequently proliferating a wave of pop experimentation with its rush of riff changes, echo chamber effects, and intricate harmonies. It was followed by Smiley Smile (1967) an album of stripped-down recordings. In 2003, Stylus Magazine wrote that the album: "embrace[d] the listener with a drugged out sincerity; a feat never accomplished by the more pretentious and heavy-handed psychedelia of that era. It is for this reason Smiley Smile flows so well with the more experimental pop of today".

In the view of artist Duggie Fields, the Syd Barret-led incarnation of Pink Floyd exemplified experimental pop. The group found their initial success playing at the UFO Club in London, an underground venue whose objective was to provide an outlet for experimental pop groups. According to The New York Times, Barrett and his subsequent solo albums "became a touchstone for experimental pop musicians". By the late 1960s, highly experimental pop music, or sounds that expanded the idea of the typical popular song, was welcomed by young audiences, which cultural essayist Gerald Lyn Early credits to bands like Cream, Traffic, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and "of course", the Beatles. Drummer John Densmore believed that the Doors were on the cutting-edge of experimental pop music until he listened to the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which he wrote "seemed to have done it all". Martin wrote that, along with the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967), the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper "opened a space" for experimental pop which would be filled by Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, and the Who's Tommy (1968). Prior to Sgt. Pepper, Gary Usher and Curt Boettcher were Los Angeles-based songwriters and producers who were interested in classical music and the avant-garde. Later cited as fixtures of sunshine pop, they worked together to create an album, Present Tense (1968). It was credited to Sagittarius, a studio group named an "experimental pop band" by The A.V. Club's Noel Murray.

1970s–80s

Kraftwerk perform in Zurich in 1976

Author Pascal Bussy wrote that German krautrock groups such as Can and Kraftwerk successfully bridged the gap between experimental and pop music in the 1970s, while according to The New York Times, Kraftwerk refined an "experimental pop sensibility" on albums such as Radio-Activity (1976) and Trans-Europe Express (1977).

Brian Eno performing in 2012

The 1970s work of musician Brian Eno is cited by Leigh Landy as an archetypal example of a pop musician who "applied developments from the experimental sector while creating their own experimental pop sector." Following his departure from Roxy Music in 1973, Eno began releasing a series of solo albums where he simultaneously developed his ambient, pop, and electronic styles. In the belief of pop musician Scott Miller, they were the era's "most successful" experimental pop music, explaining that the key to his success "appears to have been making a science out of decision points (see 'Oblique Strategies') rather than being willfully weird or different at the usual unexamined decision points"

Joshua Pickard of the publication Nooga profiled Eno's album Before and After Science (1977) as a record of "experimental pop lucidity ... the culmination of sound that Eno had been working on since the release of Here Come the Warm Jets in 1973." Members of Roxy Music, Free, Fairport Convention, Can and Cluster feature on the record as session musicians, in addition to Phil Collins, who performs drums on one track. Collins' own debut solo single "In the Air Tonight" (1981) has been described by Gary Mills of The Quietus as being "at the vanguard of experimental pop" when it was released. He called it "a rock oddity classic" which was influenced by "the unconventional studio predilections of Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel".

Laurie Anderson, 1980s

The New York Times' Will Hermes names Laurie Anderson an experimental pop pioneer whose signature song "O Superman" (1981) was a "left-field new wave hit" that "conflated maternal succor with the psychology of the modern corporate state using electronically processed verse." Writing for The Guardian, Jason Cowley described British singer-songwriter Kate Bush as "an artist superbly articulate in the language of experimental pop music". Paste Magazine credited My Bloody Valentine's 1988 album Isn't Anything with showcasing an experimental pop aesthetic, which drew on "harsh, swirling guitar tones and beautifully dissonant distortion," that would eventually develop into the genre known as shoegazing.

1990s–2000s

Icelandic singer Björk, who began her solo career in the 1990s, has been called "the queen of experimental pop." In a review of the Animal Collective album Strawberry Jam (2007), Evan L. Hanlon wrote that "'experimental pop' is a pretty specious term, but when dealing with a band like Animal Collective ... it’s necessary ... [they are] one of the only bands that takes [Brian] Wilson’s influence to heart and then expands on it, pushing the conventions of pop music to their outer limits."

List of artists

• Laurie Anderson
• Animal Collective
• Björk
• Van Dyke Parks
• Panda Bear
• Pink Floyd (under Syd Barrett)
• Sagittarius
• Sleigh Bells
• Brian Wilson
• Frank Zappa