Was into Fear Factory in high school. haha

checked FF's influences and bought a Godflesh album and that introduced me to heavy music.

checked Godflesh's influences and bought a Swans album (cop/young god) and the rest of my musical love is history.

I'd have to say probably Aphex Twin...

Diablo Swing Orchestra. Their debut album, Butcher's Ballroom, is an orgasm for my ears.

For me the answer is Tom Morello he is always experimenting and searching for new sounds

The thing that propably got me int avant-garde and experimental music was Callisto. This happened sometime in 2007. I wanted to check them out because they are originally from my hometown and they had just released their second album Noir. I fell in love with their post-metal stuff. From there I went to post-rock, ambient and all kinds of other different stuff and im loving it.

Danny Boyle's movie soundtracks.

Specially 28 Days Later, with Brian Eno and John Murphy's music.

First post here, hopefully it seems an apt way...

1. Metal
2. ****ty Carnival Metal
3. Mr.Bungle(Definitely NOT ****ty carnival metal)
5. Naked City/Zorn
6. The world of real music.

Since then I stopped liking most ****ty carnival metal.

Tedium of conventional musical structure. Tire of hearing the same guitar riffs, solos, drum beats, and age after age of music that seems to only progress in terms of technology while degenerating, and growing increasingly kitsch melodically. An industry of increasingly simplistic overly streamlined machine music. Taking the bourgeoisie strictness of Classical music without the educated methods.

Avant Garde is the freedom of the human spirit because it takes creativity to pull off, and theoretically a machine mind could not create it, or at least, if a machine mind does(many forms of avant-garde like Musique Concrete) it at least has the ingenuity of an intelligent programmer at it's front.

I suppose, the craving for invention, and the love for unconventional styles of music which my peers seemingly don't appreciate simply because they are afraid to stick their necks out.

I liked from when I was first exposed to it on public radio.

Ha! I answered this twice and happened to sound incredibly snobby and pretentious both times!

*self high five*

I have no idea what you're trying to say with your list so .. pretentious? yeah (i.e. your list works on the pretense that anybody has a fucking clue what you're talking about). But I don't think a snob would write either of those posts.
The second one even makes some legit points/criticisms. It's not pretentious or snobby.

First one was describing what bands I got into then got into then got into to navigate over to Avant-garde music. Phrasing it as "real" music as to indicate the mainstream stuff I was into before wasn't as authentic.

Second one was the same reason.

john zorn is my fav

after dj'ing for a while, mostly 60s garage and psych, i got seek of listening to songs

Brian Eno makes it easy to get into experimental music.

Not truly avant-garde... but early Soft Machine really helped me get to a point where I was willing to listen to avant-garde music

Mr. Bungle, Primus and Nuclear Rabbit

then

Frank Zappa

Miles Davis

John Zorn

I guess I came to it via two different routes: mostly the industrial/krautrock route but also the Bungle/Zorn route. I guess I've liked some sort of avant-garde/experimental-ish music for a pretty long time. Going back to my teens I listened to stuff like Pigface, Skinny Puppy, Swans, Foetus, Laibach and Mr. Bungle, which if not always 100% experimental, certainly all have their experimental moments. As I got a little older I started to explore the roots of a lot of those bands and also found myself getting more and more into jazz, which added a lot to me appreciation of the experimental and avant-garde. As time went on I found myself listening to more and more experimental music to the point where now it's one of the primary things I listen to.

El Ten Eleven was what got me into experimental. The drums really set the tone of each song. Also whatever filter they use with their guitars are pretty awesome. They were my gateway to experimental music for sure.

early ones would be The Art of Noise's In Visible Silence (primarily pop but has a few musique concrete pieces) and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Dazzle Ships (mostly musique concrete)

got a little deeper in with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 2 and Future Sound of London's Lifeforms (both ambient "found" sounds)

all came to a head with Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, I guess

Meshuggah are the only avant garde/experimental band I listen to.

Could Faith No More be considered avant garde/experimental too? If so I listen to them too.

Faith No More is more "nu-metal"

Mr. Bungle is "experimental", though

I got into fringe music through noise rock, oddly enough, albeit my first exposure to the idea of avant-garde music came with Mr. Bungle's s/t (which was one of my first albums). One day about 3 or 4 years ago I was looking up Terminal Cheesecake and Drunks With Guns and I happened upon this one blog where the owner waxed on about everything from noise to free jazz to tropicalia to modern composer and whatever else. His writing style really appealed to me, so I started to take a few recommendations, got hooked, and it basically snowballed from there...

I have difficulty pin-pointing exactly where I got 'into' really experimental music, but I think the gateway for me was Boris & Keiji Haino's 'Black: Implication Flooding'. I'd been into Boris for awhile, and then I heard that album, which lead me into seeking out more of Haino's work, which was really just a twisted spiral staircase of weird.

Though, I guess even earlier than that, now that I think about it, I got into Jandek. But I never really connected him to other artists like I did Haino.

Also somewhere along the lines someone recommended I listen to Navicon Torture Technologies. That created a monster, an event known in my life as 'The Noisening', in which I did nothing but listen to and download Merzbow, The Rita, CCCC, Crank Sturgeon, The Haters, et al, for about a year and a half.

My friends didn't like hanging out at my house much during that year and a half.

I dunno if this was a joke or not, but FNM =/= nu metal.
They were a gateway band for me.

they were at least the progenitors of nu-metal

they were the first to meld rap and metal and made it popular

There's always that arguement. Like people calling Iron Maiden power metal, or Venom black metal.
"Epic" is kinda nu-metalish, but that's about it. I just call them alternative or experimental.

Beefheart.

After "getting" him, everything was listenable.

Epic is a pop ballad...

Poster status:

Being tracked... will sadistically delete your random posts one by one while you pull your hair out wondering why you can't get to 15 posts...

Mr. Bungle had been in my midst all of my life, and even though it took me five or so years after REALLY listening to music at age 9 did I start to dive into Frank Zappa, Fantomas, etc. Zappa's Hot Rats led me to Captain Beefheart, Beefheart truly opened my eyes to experimentation. I then found Zorn, This Heat, Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey, Zu, Marc Ribot, etc. And thank god for that, or else I would be listening to Nickelback crap.

What got me into experimental music was listening to Pink Floyd's A momentary lapse of reason. I was 15, and I was traveling through the Swiss Alps - I felt so alive.

Once you find Zorn, there's no return.

I think philosophy got me into avant garde music. I've always been philosophical and my ideas led me to become interested in musical expression that was irrational and or pushing the boundaries. The idea of avant garde and experamental music for me represents man's ancient past and distant future.

Mine was the most cliche route going... The Velvet Underground & Nico. I was stood there, in HMV, torn between investing in Ikara Colt's Modern Apprentice and an album with a banana on the front. That was essentially all I had to base my decision on. I then decided I wasn't that keen on Ikara Colt any way.

A banana changed my life.

^^yup

i still am getting into a lot of "weird" music - mostly Jap-noise

I'm not sure I could claim to be into avant-garde or experimental. I certainly like to think I'm open to most styles of music. At this stage in my life though I think I'm pretty susceptible to stress and I can find a lot of experimental music rather disquieting or unsettling so I really need to be in the mood. I tend to follow musical tangents when I am inspired by a particular album or artist. If I'm following a particular artist I try to keep an open mind even when they take a direction I'm not so comfortable with.

Well this is probably going to sound lame, but Revolution 9 off the Beatles White Album.

It gave me this moment of realization that all the boundaries and limitations I thought music artists had were pretty much BS and that I should be more open minded. I don't really seek out experimental music but every once in a while I find stuff that really speaks to me. And it feels great.

That's not lame, in fact that's a pretty reasonable entry point as The Beatles are sometimes the very early bands for teenagers to get into, so it would be obvious that it's your first. It's also pretty ahead of its time in some ways, and while other big name bands like The Velvet Underground were doing some strange things at the same time, to hear it from a band like The Beatles, who were always pretty accessible, just shows the variance in music at that time that we don't always see today.