Fishtank Ensemble

Alamaailman Vasarat ("The Hammers of the Underworld") is an avant-garde Finnish instrumental band formed in Helsinki in 1997 as a side project of members of the prog group Hoyry-kone. Guitar-less by design, they build a dark, cinematic sound from distorted cellos, pump organ, brass and saxophones over primal drumming, welding klezmer, Balkan and European folk to jazz and metal into what they dubbed "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-music." Led by multi-reedist Jarno Sarkula, the band released a run of acclaimed albums from Vasaraasia (2000) through Valta (2012) before going quiet after 2014; Sarkula died in 2020.

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Charming Hostess is an American experimental ensemble that grew out of the avant-rock scene of Oakland, California in the mid-1990s, led by singer, composer and bassist Jewlia Eisenberg. Blending Balkan and Jewish vocal traditions with funk, punk and doo-wop, the group described its own genre as "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly." Their debut "Eat" (Vaccination, 1998) was a rock big band featuring members of Idiot Flesh/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, while later releases such as "Trilectic" (Tzadik, 2002) and "Sarajevo Blues" (Tzadik, 2004) recast the project largely as a women's vocal trio.

SNAILFORCE! is the genre-hopping instrumental project of Greg Eldridge and Adam Stacey, based in Portland, Oregon, blending metal, Balkan, prog and other styles into what the band calls a "musical slime project." Adam Stacey is also known for recording with Estradasphere, Atomic Ape, Secret Chiefs 3, High Castle Teleorkestra and Igorrr. The band's debut, the two-track EP "Greg and Adam's Wilderness Adventure," was released on May 24, 2024, mixed and mastered by Justin Phelps at The Hallowed Halls, with a rotating cast of guest players on strings, horns, shamisen and more.

Tin Hat Trio (later just Tin Hat) is an acoustic chamber ensemble formed in San Francisco in 1997 by violinist Carla Kihlstedt, accordionist/pianist Rob Burger, and guitarist Mark Orton, weaving jazz, Eastern European folk, bluegrass, and neoclassical music into what they call freewheeling chamber music. It earns a place in this atlas as the antipode of Kihlstedt's heavier work: it is where she goes when she leaves metal entirely, trading Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's avant-doom for delicate, composed acoustic filigree. Guests across their albums include Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, and Mike Patton.

Gates of Paris is a French symphonic/opera power metal side-project of Kerion guitarist Remch Carrairou and Chris Barberi, releasing a self-titled concept album in 2018 — a theatrical cabaret-revue journey through Parisian history blending power metal with jazz, swing, flamenco, cancan, gypsy music, and classical citations from Bizet and Berlioz.

Atomic Ape is a Los Angeles-based experimental ensemble led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jason Schimmel (Estradasphere, Secret Chiefs 3), formed out of his earlier project Orange Tulip Conspiracy. Their sole album, Swarm (Mimicry Recordings, 2014), took over four years to record and fuses surf-rock, avant-rock, Balkan and jazz idioms into cinematic, odd-metered instrumentals. The record drew on a large cast of collaborators, including Secret Chiefs 3 leader Trey Spruance, violist Eyvind Kang and members of Estradasphere. The band later changed its name to Red Fiction.

Red Fiction is the renamed continuation of Jason Schimmel's Atomic Ape, releasing Visions of the Void (2020) on John Zorn's Tzadik label. The instrumental group threads metal, klezmer and Eastern European folk through math-rock structures and noir/spaghetti-western color, scored for an unusual ensemble including bouzouki, sitar, saxes and accordion.

Nucleus Torn was a Swiss avant-folk/progressive-metal project founded in 1997 by multi-instrumentalist Fredy Schnyder, expanding into a chamber-metal ensemble with cello, violin, flute, and an array of folk instruments (hammered dulcimer, bouzouki, oud, bagpipes). Signed to Prophecy Productions from 2006, the band moved between folk-rock, 1970s progressive-rock homage, and extreme metal across a decade-plus discography, including a conceptual Nihil/Knell/Andromeda Awaiting trilogy. Active until 2015, the later lineup included Eluveitie's Anna Murphy.

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Frore 5 Four is an instrumental avant-garde/progressive metal project from Canada, releasing a run of Bandcamp albums built around unusually prominent accordion. Reviewers describe the sound as 'stomping accordion polka weirdness juxtaposed to neoclassical harmonies' — vocal-free, structurally unpredictable, tonally caught between creepy and jovial.

2 Foot Yard was a San Francisco/Oakland-based chamber-rock trio led by violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, alongside cellist-vocalist Marika Hughes and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (drums, guitar). Functioning as a songwriting collective, the group blended chamber-music intimacy with rock and avant-pop, occupying "the fertile cracks between art song and pop song." It grew out of a solo album Kihlstedt released on Tzadik and released two records: the self-titled "2 Foot Yard" (Tzadik, 2003) and "Borrowed Arms" (self-released, 2008).