Rock In Opposition

[Guybrush]

Yes yes, sorry about the Reddit-ready topic, but we need a RIO thread.

While I'm familiar with bands like Henry Cow and Univers Zero, I am but a dabbler. I am also curious to hear what favorites other dabblers or truer connoisseurs might be enjoying.

It's not the most RIO of RIO-related bands, but here's a bit of Samla Mammas Manna:

So what do you enjoy that's RIO or related?

[ᑕᐧᔐᔫᓂᑯᒑᔥ]

[Guybrush]

Thanks ᑕᐧᔐᔫᓂᑯᒑᔥ 🙂 I've never heard Stormy Six before.

This may be the popular pick, but I love this song, the last track from Henry Cow's Leg End.

[grindy]

RIO/AvantProg might be my favourite style of music. Here are some cool, somewhat lesser known artists:

Spoiler

Rational Diet

Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses

All Traps on Earth

Simon Steensland

Poil

Ahvak

Asceta

Boud Deun

Debile Menthol

Greco Bastian

Hamster Theatre

Les Projectionnistes

Nimal

October Equus

P.O.N.

Pochakaite Malko

Red Fiction

Rhun

Rouge Ciel

The Science Group

Yugen

[close]

[Guybrush]

Oh wow, @grindy . Getting through your post and listening to everything would take quite a while. Thanks for taking the effort and for sharing!

The only one I'm really familiar with is Debile Menthol. If I remember correctly, they're from Switzerland. Fun band!

[Guybrush]

Been listening a little bit to Aksak Maboul's latest album and there's a lot of soundscaping on it. Really, there was a lot of soundscaping on their early albums too, but I kinda liked their more song focused approach from Ex-Futur.

They still have a great sound, so this is one of the songs that caught my attention:

I was driving at night listening to music really loud and it weirdly fit that mood with the darkened highway and the lights going past.

Too bad it ends abruptly just when it seems to have gotten to its best part 🙂

[grindy]

Skeleton Crew used to be one of my favourite bands but I realized it's been ages since I listened to them.

Still absolutely fantastic. Certainly in the RIO vein but also kind of strange post-punk and with some folk elements.

After English guitarist Fred Frith's New York City band, Massacre disbanded in mid-1981, Frith and American cellist Tom Cora decided to form a quartet with ex-Massacre drummer Fred Maher and American guitarist Tim Schellenbaum [de].[5][6] But before their first performance, Maher and Schellenbaum both suffered collapsed lungs within two weeks of each other, leaving Frith and Cora with the choice of continuing on their own or abandoning the project.[7] They chose to continue, agreeing to play all the instruments themselves during live performances.[7] Frith played guitar, violin, keyboards, bass drum and hi-hat, while Cora played cello, bass guitar, homemade drums and other contraptions enabling him to play instruments with his feet.[1][8]

Performing like this was a challenge for them and made the resulting music unpredictable, but as an improvising duo, this pleased them. It gave rise to a rhythmic tension not present in a group with just one drummer.[8] Frith said in a 1983 interview, "rhythmically, it throws up ways of playing that one person behind the drums just wouldn't be able to do, just in terms of coordination."[9] He told DownBeat magazine in 1982: "It's all just on the edge of breaking down all the time, which is a quality that I've always liked. I don't like things to be too easy."[8] One critic wrote that Skeleton Crew's performances were like a slowly sinking ship that somehow manages to return to port.[5]

Edit: Been wanting to see a proper live video since my late teens and it turns out there is one!
Great to see them live and the quality is surprisingly decent.

Another edit: There's also part two! Awesome.

[Saulaac]

Yeah I definitely get those folk vibes with Univers Zero, especially when the strings and guitar are playing out together. This seems like a great bass-led prog folk album.
 

[grindy]

Really enjoyed this EP on my way home today. Intense zeuhlish instrumental AvantProg with prominent violin.
Pochakaite Malko - Doppelgänger