Avant-garde

Theremin virtuosa Carolina Eyck and avant-garde vocalist Theo Bleckmann were at their inventive best in separate sets at (le) poisson rouge in NYC.

Matteo Liberatore uses unconventional tools and methods to pluck a variety of jolts and scratches, arpeggio sequences, and melodic and chordal motifs from that most common of instruments, the acoustic guitar.

'Landfall' by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet is extraordinary and one of the most brilliant albums I've heard in a long time.

The tones of dark gravity on 'Greetings From Mars' completely bypass the normal auditory apparatus. You listen but you also experience the music on a primal and visceral level, like a punch in the solar plexus. This is pure, dominant noise rock, consuming, taut with foreboding, and engaging.

In 'Pissing Stars,' Efrim Manuel Menuck creates a protest album that is as focused as it is obscured by his own compulsion for noise.

LIberatore's sound and performance is abstract and dissonant.

This is collective improvisation at its finest, where each musician is free to express thoughts without encumbrance or restriction.

Two new albums feature opposite extremes of jazz vocalizing.

'Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)' is delightfully weird, addictive and promises that its parent record 'Humanz' will be yet another post-modern masterpiece―and head-scratcher―like the four albums that preceded it.

Garth Brooks was Friday's keynote speaker at SXSW Music Festival 2017, which included performances by Snail Mail, Maggie Rogers, and Spoon.