Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right.
Air is a French music duo from Versailles, consisting of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. Their critically acclaimed debut album, Moon Safari, including the track "Sexy Boy", was an international success in 1998. Its follow-up, The Virgin Suicides, was the score to Sofia Coppola's first film of the same name. The band has since released the albums 10 000 Hz Legend, Talkie Walkie, Pocket Symphony, Love 2, Le voyage dans la lune and Music for Museum. The band is influenced by a wide variety of musical styles and artists.
Elliott Sharp is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, performer, author, and visual artist.
Wayne Horvitz is an American composer, keyboardist and record producer. He came to prominence in the Downtown scene of 1980s and '90s New York City, where he met his future wife, the singer, songwriter and pianist Robin Holcomb. He is noted for working with John Zorn's Naked City among others. Horvitz has since relocated to the Seattle, Washington area where he has several ongoing groups and has worked as an adjunct professor of composition at Cornish College of the Arts.
Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records, and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, Nonesuch has developed into a label that records critically acclaimed music from a wide range of genres. Robert Hurwitz was president of the company from 1984 to 2017.
Michael Shawn Crahan, more commonly known by his stage persona "Clown", is an American musician. He is the co-founder and one of the percussionists for heavy metal band Slipknot, in which he is designated #6. Crahan helped form Slipknot in 1995 alongside bassist Paul Gray and former vocalist Anders Colsefni. Crahan is the longest-serving and only remaining original member of Slipknot, and also has extensive involvement with Slipknot's media production and music videos. Outside Slipknot, Crahan had two side project bands called To My Surprise and Dirty Little Rabbits. Aside from his musical activity, he also directed the 2016 action thriller film Officer Downe.
Joshua Kit Clayton, better known by his stage name Kit Clayton, is a San Francisco-based electronic and digital musician and computer programmer. He is a developer at San Francisco software company Cycling '74, helping create the Max/MSP MIDI/audio programming environment. He is also a significant contributor to Jitter, the multi-dimensional data set processing and visualizing architecture for audio, video, and 3D graphics. Clayton uses Max, MSP, and Jitter extensively in his own abstract musical compositions, which have been described as including aspects of ambient computer music and glitch.
Ellen Fraatz, known professionally as Ellen Allien, is a German electronic musician, music producer, and the founder of BPitch Control music label. Her album Stadtkind was dedicated to the city of Berlin, and she cites the culture of reunified Berlin as one of the main inspirations for her music. She sings in both German and English. Her music is best described as a blend of IDM and techno music, which is dance-floor oriented and has noticeable experimental elements. She lives in Berlin and calls it the "best city in the world."
Mathis Mootz is a prolific German electronic musician and DJ. Mootz is best known as The Panacea, his drum and bass stage name and main musical project, and as m2, his dark ambient side project and alter-ego.
Skerik, is an American saxophonist from Seattle, Washington. Performing on the tenor and baritone saxophone, often with electronics and loops, he is a pioneer in a playing style that has been called saxophonics.
Murcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronic musician Fernando Corona. Corona was born in 1970 in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in Ensenada. He was for a time a member of the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective of electronic musicians under the Terrestre project name. In 2000, he returned to Tijuana. Since 2006, Corona has been living in Barcelona, Spain.
Andy Dixon is a Canadian artist and musician, who gained notoriety as a member of the North Vancouver punk rock band d.b.s. He founded the record label Ache Records, and later played in The Red Light Sting. Beginning in 2003, during the final months of The Red Light Sting, he began to cut up audio recordings he made himself and compose glitch/IDM music under the alias Secret Mommy, though he used The Epidemic for his first solo release.
Mille Plateaux is a German record label founded in 1994 by Achim Szepanski in Frankfurt, as a sublabel of Force Inc. Music Works. Its releases in the fields of minimal techno, glitch music and other experimental electronic music have a lasting influence.
Gerrard Varley is a British electronic musician and DJ, who was member of LFO during the 1990s and later released his solo works under the moniker G-Man.
Stephan Mathieu is a German mastering engineer and former musician. He currently lives in Bonn, Germany where he runs Schwebung Mastering, an independent studio for audio mastering and restoration.
Richard David James, known professionally as Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born British musician, composer and DJ. He is known for his idiosyncratic work in electronic styles such as techno, ambient, and jungle. Journalists from publications including Mixmag, The New York Times, NME, Fact,Clash and The Guardian have called James one of the most influential and important artists in contemporary electronic music.
Acme United Corporation is a supplier of cutting, measuring and safety products for the school, home, office, hardware and industrial markets. The company was organized as a partnership in 1867 and incorporated in 1873 under the laws of the State of Connecticut. It is publicly traded on the NYSE Mkt with symbol ACU.
Kenneth James Gibson is a musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter and a founding member of Bell Gardens, Furry Things, Eight Frozen Modules, and [a]pendics.shuffle.
Marko Ciciliani is a composer, audiovisual artist and performer.
Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of "Weird Al" Yankovic is a 15-album box set by American comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, released on November 24, 2017. Squeeze Box marks Yankovic's second box set since 1994's Permanent Record: Al in the Box.
