But we still get stuff posted like:-

Suggest you put the quotes back in the context of what I said - and what I said back in the context of the discussion - instead of trying to score points for folkish smuggery - a very different thing to musical snobbery, especially as (and I quote) the heart & soul of the thing (Harry Cox - Harry Smith - Sproatly Smith) is every bit as dynamic & energising & inspirational & unmelodiously filthy as hip-hop. Ta!

*

Avant-garde music has little to no melody or rhythm but is pure art.


Worth mentioning here is late Daphne Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003), the unsung & unlikely mother of UK electronica (& more besides) who's work teetered on the brink of experimentalism owing to its very nature but remained nevertheless rooted in more (dare I say) traditional idioms both classical & popular whilst anticipating a lot of future developments. Her 'Oramics Machine' typifies both the brilliance & eccentricity of her genius, and her music is never less than as perfectly charming as she was - both are the very epitome of Englishness. Lots of clips on YouTube - including the famous 'Snow 1963' film in which she had a hand (certainly you'll find the soundtrack on most Oram collections) as well as the truly stunning 'Four Aspects', the quaintly spooky 'Dr Faustus Suite' and the unsettlingly brilliant 'Bird of Parallax' which weaves electronic sounds & rhythms with orchestral samples and field recordings long before anyone even dreamt of the term 'psychedelic'. Certainly I doubt Ms Oram touched anything stronger than a tawny port in her life.

A brief overview of her work & significance: Daphne Oram, the unsung pioneer of techno

Also on YouTube is a Radio 4 documentary on Daphne Oram entitled 'We Have Also Sound Houses' - a quote taken from here:

We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it: and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

Francis Bacon, from New Atlantis, 1637.

The Tradition of musical vision & experimentalism is indeed an old & venerable one!