A short-lived female-fronted band from London that sounds a bit like Lora Logic’s lyrical post-punk, complete with funky bass, sax-paranoia, percussive strangeness and multi-layered vocals.
Haniwa-Chan were clearly pioneers of the silly jap-pop 90s style, though they are operating with such delicacy in adding strange sounds in the pauses between instruments, that their album is equally a real adventure to follow.
Art-school all-girl post-punk from a 1980 Philadelphia act who released one EP and one video.
Heiner Goebells is a very important figure of German underground music. His early projects touched on minimal-synth and post-punk, but since he has become a professor of theatre and arts and one of the country's leading stage composers. His minimal synth retakes on Brecht from the mid-80s are priceless.
Considering his background (member of the Damned) and his multi-instrumental skills, it is rather strange Henry Badowski remained an obscure dandy-like figure of the UK art-punk scene and his solo work is almost unknown.
A real unsung hero of DIY music, Hermann Kopp recorded a couple of LPs, combining electronic minimalism, sounds of violin and surreal words. Also a member of Keine Ahnung.
Hermine Demoriane is a French singer who started in/out of the experimental new-wave scene, recording for the brilliant Crammed Discs. Her credentials are very impressive having collaborated with Throbbing Gristle and Derek Jarman, having acted in a John Maybury film, while she is also a tightrope walker!
A side-project of members of the anarchic avant-punk Furious Pig project. Het sounds both playful/surprising/spontaneous and incredibly musically complex. Their only album is a true avantgarde masterpiece filled with creative angst.
Wonderful but extremely short-lived obscurity from Germany, Hirnheimer released only one 7" single - with the titles only in Braille!
Two of the most important figures of German experimental music come together for a single project: to re-score Paul Hindemith’s “Wir Bauen Eine Stadt” for electronic sounds and the result is one of the most underrated masterpieces of the early 80s. Priceless!
One of the lesser known and celebrated of German subscenes of the early 80s is the Bremen industrial/minimal-synth scene, from which this cut originates. Minimal synth / spoken-angst excellence.
Norwegian/Polish Holy Toy is a bizarre dark but equally dada sonic mix of minimal wave and experimental sounds. Something like a wittier Coil perhaps.
Ohio's Home and Garden were formed from members of Pere Ubu, who were relatively known as a post-punk band, so it still remains bizarre that they quickly faded to obscurity (the Wire magazine posed the question at a presentation they did in 2006)
A very interesting avant-pop band from Belgium, which received quite some attention in European indie circles (even had an NME cover!), although the band is now largely overlooked outside of Belgium.
Messthetics at their very best: an attempt for concrete song-writing, but an equal attempt for formal deconstruction, all together with a nice garage-sounding production.
When it comes to noisy and childish in equal doses noone does it better than the japanese and Hovlakin must be amongst the earliest examples of frantic baby grind madness.
Short-lived experimental early-industrial project from Australia, led by Ollie Olson. Sounds like an impossible Birthday Party and Stockhausen collaboration.
Angry but also surreal avant-punk from Sheffield. Strange vox, sound cut-ups, straight beats, mixed with a funky sound mould to something not to everyone's taste for sure, but definitely worth trying.
Minimal dark synth meets situational spoken word at Alain Neffe's (Bene Gesseit) Human Flesh project. For fans of Bene Gesserit and so on, just procced!
The Prophets were a non-existing (hypothetical!) band formed by electronic music pioneer Bernard Szajner. Their sound is one of the most exciting in the minimal synth era, consisting of micro-electronics that do not sound dated even within an IDM setting and an adventurous use of spoken text.
