High Castle Teleorkestra

Don Salsa was an experimental avant-prog/avant-metal band formed in 1993 while its members were in high school in the South Bay region of Los Angeles, active until 1997. The band recorded a single album, 'Koolaide Moustache in Jonestown,' released May 21, 1997, recorded over nearly three years in a warehouse on a primitive digital multi-track recorder, with an opening track exceeding 30 minutes. Core members Tim Smolens and Jason Schimmel went on to form Estradasphere, and Schimmel later became a founding member of Atomic Ape and an active member of Secret Chiefs 3.

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Diablo Swing Orchestra is a Swedish avant-garde metal band formed in Stockholm in 2003, built around a genre-hopping fusion of swing, symphonic and progressive metal, jazz, and classical orchestration. Their theatrical sound pairs operatic and rock vocals with a horn section and cello, threaded through crunching riffs — an aesthetic they trace to a tongue-in-cheek mythology about a 16th-century "Diablo Swing" music guild. Across five studio albums from The Butcher's Ballroom (2006) to Swagger & Stroll Down the Rabbit Hole (2021), they have remained one of the more distinctive one-of-a-kind acts in avant-garde metal.

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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.

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.

Empalot were a French experimental band formed in the Landes in 1998 by Gojira's Joe and Mario Duplantier with friends from Joe's high-school thrash band. Self-described as "terroir metal," they welded alternative metal, jazz fusion, funk rock and avant-garde noise to burlesque, self-deprecating theatre, with members costumed as axes, clouds and flowers on stage. Conceived as the festive antithesis of Gojira, the group toured France between 1999 and 2004 and released a single studio album, Tous aux Cèpes (2002), before going on hiatus. The Duplantier brothers performed under the aliases Vensceslas Podoldo and Daniel Pestous.

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Orange Tulip Conspiracy is Estradasphere guitarist Jason Schimmel's own instrumental bandleader project, formed in 2008. Its self-titled debut (Web of Mimicry) moves through prog fusion, 1950s-style jazz, Romani melody and 1960s Italian film-score homage, with Secret Chiefs 3's Trey Spruance and members of Estradasphere guesting.

Cyrax are a Milan progressive metal band formed in 2012 around Marco Cantoni, whose sound has grown steadily more eclectic across three albums (Reflections 2013, Pictures 2015, Experiences 2020, plus 2021 EP Metamorphosis and 2023's Novo Deus). Bandcamp tags the catalog Electronic/Jazz/Metal/Progressive Metal/Progressive Rock/Folk, and RateYourMusic double-tags 2020's Experiences as Progressive Metal and Avant-Garde Metal; reviewers describe it mixing 'celtic, death metal, thrash, jazz fusion, rock prog, bluegrass and Stravinski influences,' with choir passages, ukulele, ambient electronics/soundscape (courtesy of drummer Lorenzo Beltrami), and carnival-style interludes with flutes sitting alongside death-metal growls.

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Secret Chiefs 3 is guitarist-composer Trey Spruance's genre-dissolving ensemble, formed in the mid-1990s out of Mr. Bungle and expanded into a rotating cast of virtuosos. Its music braids surf rock, Persian and neo-Pythagorean modal systems, Indian raga, film-score exotica, electronics and death metal, and since 2007 has been presented through 'satellite bands' (UR, Ishraqiyun, Traditionalists, Holy Vehm, Electromagnetic Azoth and others), each embodying a different facet of Spruance's mystical and musical preoccupations. Spruance also runs the Web of Mimicry label that anchors much of this extended universe.

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Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by guitarist and composer Fred Frith (Henry Cow, Skeleton Crew, Naked City). All About Jazz described their sound as existing somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. The quintet released Ragged Atlas (2010) and The Letter (2012) on Switzerland's Intakt Records, followed by Z Sides (2024). Its lineup draws together members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with longtime Frith collaborator Zeena Parkins.

HAH (formerly Hardcore Anal Hydrogen) is an avant-garde metal project formed in Monaco in 2009 by guitarist Martyn Clement and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Sacha Valony. Across four albums the duo (expanded to an eight-piece for 2021's Chimaera Monstrosa) folds flute, sitar, mandolin, Portuguese guitar, and orchestral strings into a genre-hopping metal base, drawing comparisons to Mr Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, and Igorrr. Guitarist Martyn Clement is also a touring/studio guitarist for Igorrr, whom he joined in 2021.