The word ‘avant-garde’ may be applied to the whole trend in art and architecture. There are avant-garde representatives and their masterpieces in painting, music, sculpture and architecture. Some people admire this style, the others just don’t understand the aesthetic value of it. For example, it is not an easy task to explain what avant-garde in music is, however, there are some key points to understanding.

Avant-garde music is the product of the experiments of artists who refuse to submit the rules of commercial and commonly-accepted music at the cost of estranging a number of potential listeners. It prefers art over capital and recognition, and speaks mainly to the intellect. Usually avant-garde artists are persons whose activity stands outside the conventional way of thinking. Their music challenges the commercial rules of basic record labels, TV and radio channels. As a result they frequently end up creating in the clandestine. Read more…

Back on home turf for a month-long residency to mark their 20th year, “punk cabaret” trio The Tiger Lillies are as fragrant as ever - just don’t put them in a vase.

Because a Lillies gig is a stroll on the seamy side, down crack alleys and cul-de-smacks where life’s unfortunates come terrible croppers. It’s Threepenny Opera territory - hookers, freaks and ne’er-do-wells - and no sin is left unturned: the Lillies’ overdriven oompah songs, but one facet of their repertoire, could soundtrack George Grosz’s caricatures of 1920s Berlin.

Backed by longtime foils Adrian Stout on contrabass, theremin and bowed saw, and Adrian Huge on a grab bag of percussion, frontman Martyn Jacques, wearing bowler hat and greasepaint (the Fat Controller via Baron Samedi), gives shape to listing sea shanties, sly ballads and wind-up tangos - hymns to death and deviancy all - with gusto, accordion, and a keening falsetto that is the band’s hallmark.

By turns hectoring and tender, if at times suggestive of Dame Edna Everage gargling with cellophane, Jacques’s voice merits a wider audience. Read more…