The Only Way To Go Is Straight Through begins like a train grinding to a sparks-throwing stop — except it never stops. It just keeps throwing sparks, keeps getting louder, and brighter, and closer.

Longtime readers of SER, if such an animal even exists, knows that some of us like to indulge in noisy, nonsensical and just plain weird-assed music. Once in a while, we’ll encounter something from the margins that’s so beyond the pale it makes even hardened avantists like us do a double take and wonder, “what in the hell was that???”

Yoko Ono is set to celebrate her 80th birthday with a concert featuring her ever-evolving Plastic Ono Band on February, 17, 2013 in Germany.

Pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura take to Muku with designs on once again challenging the listener. The two have consistently done so throughout their impressive careers thus far, so it should come as no surprise

Yoko Ono, avant-garde artist, peace activist and wife of the Beatles’ John Lennon, remains one of the most misunderstood figures in rock.

For Yoko Ono, who came to fame in the U.S. for offbeat art installations and outsider events like bed-ins, there was a kindred spirit to be found in Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.

Yoko Ono has released “Early in the Morning,” a 14-minute collaboration with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, as a benefit single.

At times, jazz vocalist Maria Neckam’s music sounds like Joni Mitchell during her mid-70s jazz excursion but with a Annette Peacock stream-of-conscienceness flow and Bjork-like modern sensibility, delivered with pipes as pure as Suzanne Vega.

Dark, scary, beautiful, and intriguing. Comprised of one long song (74 minutes and no track breaks!), Delirium Cordia really required the listener to take it all in at once.

by S. Victor Aaron Avant garde specialist Albert Beger has long been known commodity in his native Israel but not so much in America, despite having recorded with William Parker and Hamid Drake on a couple of records. Beger seeks to change that with what he considers one of his best recordings to date, Peacemaker. As the word after his [...]