Mr. Bungle Albums

I figured as such, but still.... I wonder what the label was expecting.  

I view avant-garde music as, primarily, heavily dissonant/unmelodic/unstructuctured music. Therefore, genre bouncing is not avant-garde music. If each individual section is a perfect pastiche of a style, splicing them together with whiplash ADD doesn't make the whole piece more progressive than each genre section being a whole song an a whole album. If it makes you feel better, I feel the same way about Naked City's splicing, and I'm aware my annoyance with the whole concept is not widely shared. laplace is the only other person here (that I can remember) I've ever seen make a strong argument against it, but he hated music even more than I do so people didn't pay much attention to him. And not everything John Zorn does is avant-garde! Combining genres is progressive, but I consider that experimental music (which in my mind is a much broader term than avant-garde). I think the gap between our understanding of the words is probably the issue here.

 

What is not avant-garde about them is that each individual section is usually very melodic and structured. That doesn't mean you shouldn't like them, nor do I think every Mr. Bungle fan is inexperienced with avant-garde music, nor am I unimpressed by the fact that Mike Patton got it released on a major label (although Boredoms are on Warner Japan :P). My comment was primarily reflecting my annoyance that so many people refer to DV as the most experimental album of the '90s/all time etc. etc. Again, equal opportunity hater: I get similarly annoyed when many people talk about Trout Mask Replica.

 

Still my tastes have changed and I might listen to the debut as thats getitng alot of love round here 

 

A masterpiece of madness on tape.