Your fave "avantgardish" Progressive Rock albums?

 

Those are 4 albums I thought about when originally posting on this subject.

I would say this is what you have inferred, rather than what you've learnt, and I would (once again) caution you in your inferences, as you do often seem to come to conclusions that were not intended by the original posters. Not to say I am right, or that you are wrong, but I have seen little to nothing that suggests that people do not listen to some music they find "challenging" so much that they either don't find much challenging, and/or what you might call "avantgardish" they don't find challenging at all. I think you would do well to disregard the notion of what is (or is not) challenging, as it really does not have much to do with what is (or is not) "avantgardish".

Whether something is challenging has a lot to do with when someone encounters it. I have no doubt that a lot of the music I listen to these days, and don't find challenging at all, I would have found "particularly challenging" - perhaps even challenging enough that I might have given up - had I listened to it when I were younger, and had heard little that was outside the mainstream and conventional comfort zone. Nor have I have ever shirked from challenging music. But what challenged me when I was younger were sounds and styles like hip hop, ambient, industrial, funk, soul, and extreme metal - all styles somewhat adjacent to, or even part of, the mainstream. The avant garde (or "avantgardish") was not even in my sight - or perhaps, rather, my hearing.

Remove the idea of challenging, and I think more people might be willing to discuss the "avantgardish" music they listen to. Although it will still be difficult for many, I suspect, simply because as a descriptor "avantgardish" seems even almost devoid of meaning or definition. While I appreciate this is because you would like to know what our own definitions are, it is hard to fit definitions to a made up word from someone else. 

Devil Doll are devilishly good, if you like that kind of thing. They make Dead Can Dance sound positively mainstream by comparison.

If you don't like Devil Doll's last spine-tingling album (my favourite) then it's best to avoid all of them, or they might give you nightmares. 

Oh yeah, without doubt. I hope it didn’t seem I was disagreeing with you, because it was quite the contrary. Because I don’t care about genre, then I’m not bothered at all, if I enjoy (the mostpart of) a scene. And the importance of the scene (over genre) can be seen by Fontaines DC’s decision to relocate to London, so as to be closer to the scene they want to part of. (Will they change their name to Fontaines LDN, I ask facetiously? 😜) I freely admit that if they had not done so, I might not have paid attention to them. I had heard of them, but never heard anything from them. But knowing they were now included in the SE post punk scene, I checked out their Glastonbury set on BBC iPlayer, and was pretty much an instant convert.

True, but the interaction and common musicians don’t necessarily mean the scene is completely of one sound or style. I mean Dan Carey has been involved with just about every album in the SE post punk scene (I tend to use that rather than just London, since Brighton is pretty much as important, and these two centres have a scene that is quite separate and different from the SW post punk scene), but he’s a member of Wet Leg, playing on their album, and as part of their live band.

In that respect, the Seattle Scene, Boston Scene, and yes, Finnish neo-Kraut scene do have the same degree of interaction and common musicians - but again, not necessarily simply one sound or style. I would never deny there might have been a scene, but to attempt to place all that occurs in that scene under one genre simply does not always work.

Wishlisted it on bandcamp for future listening. Sometimes those groupings work, the current London post-punk and afrobeat beat jazz scenes are certainly groups of bands interacting. Similarly the Lyon Avant scene has a massive amount of bands with common musicians.