The Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp, February 2025

By

Marc Masters

·
March 04, 2025

All kinds of experimental music can be found on Bandcamp: free jazz, avant-rock, dense noise, outer-limits electronics, deconstructed folk, abstract spoken word, and so much more. If an artist is trying something new with an established form or inventing a new one completely, there’s a good chance they’re doing it on Bandcamp. Each month, Marc Masters picks some of the best releases from across this wide, exploratory spectrum. February’s selection includes solo improvisations on cello and flute, dual guitar evocations of a pond, birdsong for imaginary fowl, and modular synth pleas for positivity in dark times.

Chuck Bettis
Revolutionary Optimism

The new solo album by longtime sound artist Chuck Bettis is an attempt to, in his words, “inspire as many questions as there are answers.” Bettis is serious about the album title, Revolutionary Optimism: Each track, created with modular synth, has a name that suggests we can still have hope in dark times, from “Power of Solidarity” to “Confidence Comes from Taking Action” to “Believing in Possibilities Beyond Yourself.” His defiant refusal to give in to doom is reflected in the energy and buoyancy of these nine tracks. All of them course forward with a rebellious joy, suggesting that change will come from eagerness and hope, not anger or nihilism.

Dorothy Carlos
Ear World

The debut album from cellist and vocalist Dorothy Carlos buzzes with hard cuts and dizzying turns. Carlos is especially fond of chopping up her sounds into glitchy repetitions that can at first sound like the play button got stuck, but quickly become hypnotic. During a three-track suite called “My Ideal Is Windy” (taken from a quadraphonic installation of the same name), her cello voice is sometimes identifiable, but more often the music flits and quivers like a hummingbird. You might expect based on these descriptions that Ear World is disorienting, but it’s also surprisingly soothing, with Carlos caressing her rat-a-tat sounds into calming drones.

Cast Off Form (Public Eyesore)
Strings

The two 25-minute pieces on Cast Off Form‘s new cassette Strings are based around acoustic guitar, though you might not know that from listening. This Omaha, Nebraska-based sound artist adds no-input mixing and modular synth to his guitar forays, turning strings into noise. Both tracks are dense and busy, with side A’s “strings one” starting in near-silence before launching into whirrs, whines, and crashes, while side B’s “strings two” is more crackly and disruptive, less a meditation than a disturbance, with crunchy sounds banging around. Both pieces are united by an intense focus that treats even the smallest sounds as something worth examining up close.

Laura Cocks
FATHM

As director and flutist in the ever-inventive New York outfit TAK Ensemble, Laura Cocks takes every moment as a chance to do something new. The same goes for her latest solo album, a collection of flute improvisations that never rest, filled with fiery breaths and urgent notes. Every track on FATHM feels like an auditory workout, both for Cocks and the listener. There are many examples of her relentlessness, but my favorite is “Illinois,” an absolute throat-burner of a track in which Cocks huffs, spits, and blows as if she’s been tasked with setting fires and putting them out at the same time.

Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper
Pond Life

As colleagues in the UK group Modern Nature, Tara Cunningham and Jack Cooper play measured music that never feels constrained. The same can be said of their first duo album together, Pond Life, which is even more minimal than the work of their other project. Across ten tracks named for various aspects of the album’s title (e.g. “Fern,” “Koi,” “Great Crested Newt”), the pair gradually pluck their strings, leaving lots of space in between each sonic motion. Everything always seems to be fading out of view; the mesmerizing pace evokes Loren Connors’ sparse abstractions. But the mood Cunningham and Cooper create, one of reverence and exploration, is all their own.

Jason Doell & Naomi McCarroll-Butler
FOUR FORMER MYRRH FORMERS FORMED HER HORN FOR MURMURS

On the superbly titled FOUR FORMER MYRRH FORMERS FORMED HER HORN FOR MURMURS, Canadian musician Naomi McCarroll-Butler plays ten instruments, ranging from conventional tools like sax and flute to more unusual ones: air organ, holy shimmer, street sweeper kalimba. Improvising in a just intonation system, she was recorded by collaborator Jason Doell, who fed samples into his self-designed software “sad(john).low.” The resulting pieces are unpredictable yet contemplative, mixing drones, hums, and rumbles into soundscapes that feel uncannily three-dimensional. Particularly compelling is the 20-minute closer “a hummming, thrumiiiing circle spunnn / Holy Shimmer,” which sounds like a ceremonial ritual stretched to encompass a day.

Bryce Hackford
Reflections in the Space of No Space

The latest release from Brooklyn-based sound artist Bryce Hackford is meant “to be tailored to your own personal ritual, and can be treated as such.” That sounds kind of vague, but dig into the two side-long tracks on Reflections in the Space of No Space and you’ll see what Hackford means. This is music that’s abstract enough to fit any mental state, yet it’s not just an amorphous cloud. During the ground-shaking rumble of “Changing Landscapes (Dim),” the air seems to disappear, while on “Temporary Structures,” Hackfod offers heavy bass tones evoking echoes in an abandoned industrial park. Far from noncommittal, Reflections in the Space of No Space sets its sights on the center of your mind and finds it quickly.

Olga Anna Markowska
ISKRA

ISKRA is the first solo album by Polish musician Olga Anna Markowska, but it feels more lived-in than most debuts. Drawing on recordings made between 2017 to 2022, Markowski crafts pieces with their own ecosystems, as if her sounds are elements of weather. She does it all with just zither, cello, and electronics. During “Fever Dream,” a cascade of cycling drone covers strings buried below, while tracks such as “Blue Sky” and “Borderland” use the higher end of the register to suggest wide horizons. Perhaps most transfixing is “Train Ride Home,” a zither-centered piece that glistens like a passing landscape.

Sarah Belle Reid and Vinny Goila
Accidental Ornithology

Eric Dolphy famously told a bemused interviewer in the early ’60s that he found inspiration for his playing in the songs of birds. “I don’t know if it’s valid,” he said. “But I enjoy it.” What Sarah Belle Reid and Vinny Goila do on Accidental Ornithology, “inspired by the unique calls and behaviors of imaginary birds,” is certainly valid, and also quite enjoyable. Tweeting at each other with pointed sounds and rattling improvisations, the pair pull out all the stops (they’re credited together with 11 instruments) to create joyful explorations of flapping wings and fluttering voices. It all courses with serious ideas, and the playing is patient and thoughtful. Take “Autumn Bog Fowl,” which sounds as much like the distant signals of an ancient city as a collection of natural noises.

Turmeric Acid y Bardo Todol
Sonopædia

Like a lot of the genre-bending releases on Spain-based tape label Strategic Tape Reserve, Sonopædia is not easy to classify. A collaboration between the group Turmeric Acid, which hails from both Scotland and Poland, and Argentina’s Bardo Todol, the album is billed as “a collection of audio-documentaries that transform encyclopedic topics into sonic experiences.” That seems a little tongue in cheek, but there is spoken word happening here (in Polish and Spanish) that could well form narratives. For me, Sonopædia is most entertaining as a mysterious mix of dislocated radio transmissions, not far from Negativland’s culture jamming with less music and more words. Perhaps it is ASMR for the back of your brain, the part that doesn’t need meaning to understand messages.