Tag: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

The experimental music scene in Fort Worth, Texas is profiled.

Fort Worth has been growing an experimental music scene, bit by bit, for a decade or so. Herb Levy, a well-known “new music” promoter in Boston and Seattle, has been presenting experimental artists of international stature in classy settings like the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth since 2005. Last weekend, the Metrognome Collective reopened in a new space with the announced intention of providing a venue for experimental sounds. Fort Worth native Michael Chamy is creating some waves with the Zanzibar Snails, his noise/improv outfit, and his Mayrrh Records label. There’s even a house in Arlington that’s been putting on shows by local avant-gardistas.

Some of this music might ring a faint bell for listeners who’ve heard experimental musical influences in movie soundtracks and the work of ’60s rockers like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Frank Zappa or even Lou Reed‘s Metal Machine Music.

But experimental sounds in their undiluted form also resonate for a younger generation who came of age with the entire history of recorded music accessible at the click of a mouse. The twentysomething rock ‘n’ roll kids at the Chat Room Pub have been exposed to frontier-pushing innovators from ’70s-era Miles Davis to prolific Japanese noise artist Masami Akita (who performs under the Germanic moniker Merzbow). Their ears are wide open, and there’s more to hear all the time