Avant-prog

Avant-garde progressive rock (also called avant-prog and experimental prog) is a style that appeared in the late 1960s as the extension of two separate prog rock sub-styles. A host of groups and artists mainly from the USA, but also from Europe and Japan, started to write mostly short instrumental pieces that focused on complexity and stripped down instrumentation, while avoiding the pomposity and stage props of the big progressive rock acts. Some groups (Thinking Plague and the Motor Totemist Guild, for instance) kept working with long durations and rich instrumentation but also forayed into free improvisation, sound collage, and other avant-garde techniques.^[1]

Frank Zappa's work with the Mothers of Invention could arguably be considered the earliest example of avant-prog. The genre rose to prominence through Henry Cow and the Rock in Opposition movement, involving bands such as Univers Zero and Samla Mammas Manna. Avant-prog never gained any real mainstream recognition, but the genre has remained active and popular as an underground phenomenon.^[2]

References

Avant-garde movements Visual art Abstract expressionism Art Nouveau Conceptual art Cubism Proto-Cubism Cubo-Futurism De Stijl Devětsil Divisionism Ego-Futurism Fauvism Impressionism Neo-Impressionism Post-Impressionism Color Field Lyrical Abstraction Incoherents Minimalism Mail art Neue Slowenische Kunst Nonconformism Pop art Rayonism Suprematism Vorticism Nouveau réalisme Music Aleatoric music Ars subtilior Atonal music Avant-garde jazz Avant-garde metal Drone music Electroacoustic music Electronic music Experimental rock Free jazz Futurism (music) Industrial music Krautrock Microtonal music Minimal music Musique concrète New Complexity No wave Noise music Post-rock Progressive rock Rock in Opposition Second Viennese School Serialism Spectral music Stochastic music Textural music Totalism Twelve-tone technique Literature and poetry Acmeist poetry Angry Penguins Asemic writing Cyberpunk Experimental literature Flarf poetry Hungry generation Imaginism Language poets Neoteric Oberiu Oulipo Ultraísmo Visual poetry Nouveau roman Cinema and theatre Cinéma pur Dogme 95 Drop Art Epic theatre Remodernist film Theatre of the Absurd Theatre of Cruelty General Bauhaus Dada Expressionism Fluxus Futurism Lettrism Modernism Minimalism Postminimalism Neo-minimalism Neo-Dada Neoism Postmodernism Late modernism Primitivism Russian Futurism Russian symbolism Situationist International Social realism Socialist realism Surrealism Symbolism Book