KUNTARI

Senmuth is the solo project of Russian multi-instrumentalist Valery Androsov (b. 1973, Moscow), extraordinarily prolific with well over a hundred releases combining ambient, industrial/industrial metal, EBM, and 'ethno metal' built from guitars, programming, and ethnic instruments (sitar, dutar, domra, tarka, duduk, oud). Albums are conceptually organized around ancient civilizations — especially Egyptian, Mesoamerican, and Asian themes — with the project's style shifting from guitar-driven doom/industrial metal in its early years toward increasingly sample-based, ethnically-fused, ambient composition over time.

Aaen Anima is a Prague, Czechia avant-garde/doom-metal project founded April 25, 2002 as, in the band's own words, "originally playing acoustic avant-garde." Its 2003 album "Aniline Harp" pairs guitars and bass with cedar drum, bell, didgeridoo, darbuka and harmonium (all played by founder Aaen), plus flute (Ismia) and keyboards/djembe (Jari Velaochaga) — an eclectic, ritual-tinged folk-instrumentation palette rare even for avant-garde metal. No activity is documented past 2008.

Harvestman is the cosmic folk and psychedelic drone project of Steve Von Till, the guitarist and co-vocalist of Neurosis. The music blends delicate 1970s British-style folk with shimmering psychedelic drift, doom drone, krautrock, and space-raga textures built from electric guitars, synthesizers, dulcimers, and effects processing. Von Till has recorded albums including Lashing the Rye, In a Dark Tongue, Music for Megaliths, and the full-moon-timed Triptych series, all issued through Neurot Recordings. Members of Grails and Om have contributed to the project as supporting players.

Casualties of Cool is a duo project by Devin Townsend and vocalist Ché Aimee Dorval, releasing a self-titled debut in 2014 after a crowdfunded campaign. Townsend described it as sounding like "haunted Johnny Cash songs — late night music, completely isolated," pairing alternative country, ambient and blues-rock textures with Dorval singing most of the leads; guests include saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby (Shining) and drummer Morgan Ågren (Zappa/Kaipa circle).

Keiji Haino is a Japanese guitarist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist active since the 1970s across rock, free improvisation and noise, best known for his long-running band Fushitsusha, formed in 1978. His intensely cathartic sound blends noise, psychedelia and Japanese traditional inflection into massively amplified guitar exploration. Within this atlas he intersects the drone axis directly: Black: Implication Flooding (1998) is a live collaboration album with Boris, and a 2006 meeting with Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley (via Oren Ambarchi) grew into the trio Nazoranai.

Hint is a French avant-garde industrial/noise-rock duo from Angers formed in 1993-94 by multi-instrumentalists Arnaud Fournier and Hervé Thomas, backed by sound engineer Pascal Ianigro. Across albums like 100% White Puzzle, Product Topology, Dys- and Wu-Wei they fused dissonant guitars, screaming saxophone/trumpet, samples and industrial rhythms with ethereal, cinematic and traditional-music passages, including a split 7" with Unsane and a 2009 collaborative tour with electronic act EZ3kiel.

This node covers the atmospheric, largely un-distorted pole of Devin Townsend's solo catalog: Ocean Machine: Biomech (1997, "a mix of hard rock, ambient, and progressive rock"), the pure-ambient/experimental Devlab and The Hummer, and Ghost (2011) — a deliberately quiet, New Age-inflected release Townsend paired with the heavy Deconstruction as two halves of one project.

Dumb Waiter is a Richmond, VA quartet formed in 2012 that fuses noise rock, free/fusion jazz saxophone, mathy post-punk structure, and metallic heaviness into a genre-resistant, frequently absurdist package. Fifth album Gauche Gists (2022, Ossein Records) drew comparisons to Pharoah Sanders and This Heat, with klezmer-tinged sax lines colliding against distorted bass and drums. They sit at the noise-rock/jazz-metal fringe rather than squarely inside metal, but their heaviness and structural weirdness keep them on the avant-garde-metal chart's radar.

Vegan Mustache Jazzplay in the dock

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The Book of Knots is a Brooklyn experimental art rock studio collective formed in the spring of 2003 at Joel Hamilton and Tony Maimone's Studio G, with Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt completing the core quartet. The group built a trilogy of themed concept albums: the self-titled debut (Arclight, 2004) about failed sea voyages, Traineater (Anti-, 2007) about crumbling Midwestern rust belt towns, and Garden of Fainting Stars (Ipecac Recordings, 2011) about flight and space travel. Their records feature a rotating cast of guest vocalists and musicians including Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, and Jon Langford.

Formed in Helsinki in 2016 and describing themselves as a "conjuration from the Northern Wilderness," Babes in the Abyss build a dark, primitive avant-garde sound around harmonium and organ rather than guitar, with bass and drums filling out the low end. Their 2022 debut Physis is organ-driven, cinematic and ritualistic, closer to a doom-adjacent drone ensemble than to riff-based metal, with haunting shared vocals over sustained keyboard tones.

Fish Eyeplay in the dock

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