English experimental electronic composer Anthony Manning maintains something of an odd connection to the stylistic involutions of his contemporaries. Although he uses the tools of the techno trade, dabbles in some of dance music's less obvious rhythmic structures, is signed to a techno label (Irdial), and appeals most often to admirers of... [+] Read More

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Composer and designer Uwe Schmidt is one of experimental electronic music's most prolific and prodigious post-techno experimentalists. Issuing a flood of material under a variety of pseudonyms (from singles and compilation tracks to scads of EPs and full-lengths) and maintaining an almost daunting album-a-month release schedule through his own... [+] Read More

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Vienna-based guitarist Christian Fennesz is one of the city's many artists associated with the noted Mego label, which releases mostly freeform ambient and experimental electronica. Similar in some respects to the work of Seefeel or Experimental Audio Research, Fennesz's six-string soundscapes are both darker than the former and more complex and... [+] Read More

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Closely allied with post-industrial dub terrorists such as Bill Laswell, Techno Animal, James Plotkin, Robert Musso, and Anton Fier, Birmingham-based artist Mick Harris is something of a study in extremes. A drummer with noted death metal outfit Napalm Death through the group's late-'80s/early-'90s heyday, Harris began experimenting with... [+] Read More

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Upon the 1991 dissolution of the British trance-rock quartet Loop, bassist Neil McKay and John Wills formed the Hair and Skin Trading Company, leaving guitarists Robert Hampson and Scott Dawson to found the highly-experimental Main, a project combining the aesthetics of ambient music with layered tapestries of droning electric guitar textures... [+] Read More

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If most artists in contemporary electronica are like islands unto themselves, turning out tracks in relative anonymity, Pete "Namlook" Kuhlmann is a whole continent. A dizzyingly prolific composer who's steadily built up an entire industry around his Frankfurt-based Fax label, Namlook's name is inextricably linked with the post-rave resurgence... [+] Read More

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An Australian artist specializing in a pastiche of ambient, hard body, and trip-hop styles, Shinjuku Filth is an offshoot of the similarly named Shinjuku Thief which made its American debut with Junk, a collaboration with David Thrussel of Smog and Black Lung. Zero: Stung followed in 1999. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide

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New York-based composer Terre Thaemlitz is one of only a handful of significant American artists working in the new ambient vein. He's released the bulk of his material through the Instinct Ambient label, but has also issued tracks (under his own name and as Chugga) on his own Comatonse label and through others. Although Thaemlitz's entre into... [+] Read More

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A native of Tokyo, Japan, Tetsu Inoue is an ambient composer whose solo and collaborative works with the likes of Pete Namlook, Jonah Sharp, and Atom Heart are important documents of new school ambient and experimental electronic. Inoue began playing music in high school, starting on guitar in pop/rock cover bands. He began experimenting with... [+] Read More

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One of the few musicians with ties to the unrelated but somewhat connected fields of contemporary avant-garde, techno and indie-rock, Thomas Köner has released albums of sparse ambience for the Barooni label, recorded similarly skeletal and lo-fi techno (with Andy Mellwig) as Porter Ricks, and appeared on albums by Bill Laswell's Divination as... [+] Read More

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