Experimental Folk

Experimental folk is folk music subjected to avant-garde method: acoustic instruments and ballad forms are combined with drones, free improvisation, tape manipulation, extended techniques and non-Western instrumentation, dissolving song structure into atmosphere and ritual. The tendency surfaced in the 1960s with *The Incredible String Band* and *Comus*, whose pastoral surfaces conceal violent and occult content, and continued through the industrial-folk underground of *Current 93* and the American cassette culture of *Pelt* and *Charalambides*. Its performers treat folk less as heritage repertory than as raw material, valuing archaic timbres, imperfection and trance over preservation.