From the performance art stunts of Lol Coxhill and Feminist Improvising Group, to the surrealist action of LAFMS, there’s a fine tradition of absurdist humour in improvised and experimental music. While older generations of British free improvisors were steeped in the music hall surrealism of BBC radio’s The Goon Show, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Monty Python, today’s artists take their comedic cues from absurdist comedians like Vic & Bob, Neil Hamburger, Eric Andre and Limmy. Comics are another important influence, not least on Usurper, whose Malcy Duff is a celebrated cartoonist. Musically, free improvisation, sound poetry and the neo-dadaist noise of the US tape underground all go into the mix. The art of the new wave is silly, weird, often dark or unsettling, yet governed by a spirit of generosity and inclusiveness.

Secluded Bronte
“Section 5”
From Live At Supernormal
(Ffordd Allan) 2022

Brothers Adam and Jonathan Bohman and composer Richard Thomas formed Secluded Bronte 21 years ago, naming the project after a juxtaposition of words found in a catalogue of paving tiles. The group create music and sound from homemade instruments, found objects, tapes and cut-up texts, interspersed with James Holcombe’s short films. “All too often it’s presumed what we do is some form of post-Cage non-idiomatic free improvisation with text,” writes Thomas in The Wire 465, clarifying that their sets are in fact built around stories and songs. Their marvellous Supernormal 2022 set features bleeping synthesizers, post-punk guitar, tape wobble, much bowing and scraping amid mundane yet mysterious yarns, as well as guest appearances from two additional performers, Hugo Holcombe (aged 14) and Xena Holcombe (aged 10) on cello and vocals respectively.

Usurper
“Part 5”
From Fishing For Tripe
(Chocolate Monk) 2013

Edinburgh’s Usurper – Malcy Duff and Ali Roberston – conduct stilted and often very funny conversations across a tabletop full of amplified junk and tapes, which they scrape, rattle and mangle. Envisioned as a wholesome document of domestic life, Fishing For Tripe throws in the gurgling of the kitchen sink, alongside vocal contributions from the duo’s partners Louise and Collette. The overlapping voices of “Part 5” sit somewhere between a Robert Ashley opera and Ivor Cutler’s Life In A Scotch Sitting Room.

Firas Khnaisser & Ali Robertson
“0.4 Miles”
From Inspiring Capital
(Takuroku) 2020

As lockdown restrictions eased in the summer of 2020, Firas Khnaisser and Ali Robertson began meeting up for al fresco jams in Lochend Park near their Edinburgh homes. Subverting the neoliberal language of Edinburgh’s official “inspiring capital” slogan, Khnaisser and Robertson make mischief in the ruins of the city’s annual festival, scraping, twanging and plinking assorted instruments and junk while seagulls squawk and people walk past. This neo-dada noise picnic is the perfect antidote to bourgeois Scottish culture.

Olivia Furey
“Cluttercore”
From Various Wonderful Christmas Extravaganza Vol 1
(Fuzzbat) 2020

An Irish artist based in Edinburgh, Olivia Furey takes on a hysterical persona in her performances, throwing diva strops in the face of perceived indifference from her audiences. Her set at Glasgow’s Counterflows in April 2022 was a tour de force. “I’ve been on Radio 3, I’m fucking class,” she exclaimed. “Would you rather watch Usurper flinging marbles with teaspoons for the millionth time?” Through Furey’s sheer commitment, what could simply be a parody of an art school noise dilettante – she claims to have invented a new genre: Cluttercore – becomes oddly righteous and uplifting.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton
“I Am The Cardboard Prince”
From I Am The Cardboard Prince
(Cardboard Club)

Inspired by Prince and Suicide, Bristol’s Robert Ridley-Shackleton is a master of the DIY pop song and the free-flowing monologue. He’s released scores of tapes, CD-Rs and LPs on labels like Chocolate Monk, Goaty Tapes, Crow Versus Crow, featuring DIY electro-funk bangers and disarmingly frank discussions of mental health. The title track from his latest album, I Am The Cardboard Prince celebrates his favourite art material – as he remarked in The Wire 436, “Is [cardboard] of royal value or is it just trash?” – with promises to be “corrugated just for you” and a hilarious aside about stretched-out Turkey Twizzlers.

Territorial Gobbing
“Honk If Phillip’s Dead”
From Suffer For Succotash
(Chocolate Monk) 2022

Emerging from the creative tension between “messy noise muckabout” and “silly little songs”, Suffer For Succotash is one of the finest releases to date from Leeds based Territorial Gobbing aka Theo Gowans. “Honk If Phillip’s Dead” nods to a Thatcher-baiting skit by Scottish comedian Limmy. A newsreader’s solemn announcement of the death of Prince Phillip is hijacked by a collage of smarmy 80s pop, before Gowans sets to work on his amplified junk and pedals, chewing and slurping on a contact mic. In the final third, a DIY vocal ensemble emerge from the murk, an oddly beautiful Meredith Monk-like twist.

This Friendship Is Sailing
“This Friendship Is Sailing”
From This Friendship Is Sailing
(Scatter Archive) 2022

Skatgobs
“Pointless”
From Pointless
(Poot) 2021

Veteran vocal improvisors Maggie Nicols and Phil Minton have made fruitful connections with a younger generation of artists. In 2022, Nicols joined saxophonist Sam Andreae, guitarist David Birchall and vocalist Odie J Ghast for a tour of inclusive and child-friendly afternoon gigs as This Friendship Is Sailing. As the ensemble gurgle, chatter and squawk, children can be heard running around the room, squealing with delight: Nicols’s concept of social virtuosity in a nutshell. In Skatgobs, Minton joins Dylan Nyoukis and Luke Poot for an orgy of grunting, slurping, whistling and foul-mouthed Scottish ranting: Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” via Seymour Glass’s neo-dada noise bible Bananafish.

The Lovely Mr Honkey & Acrid Lactations Jubilee Chorus
“B”
From Sing The Futile Tapestry
(Poot) 2021

The third collaboration between The Lovely Mr Honkey aka Luke Poot and Acrid Lactations, the duo of Stuart Arnot and Susan Fitzpatrick, is a prime slice of absurdist noise-making. The A side shrouds churning mechanical percussion in a fog of reverb, while the flip layers wobbly and phantasmal Dictaphone vocals over kitchen utensil anti-rhythms to uncanny effect.

Yol
“Eat Out To Help Out”
From Viral Cats And Dogs
(Crow Vs Crow) 2021

Yol’s barked incantations are as unsettling as they are comic. The Hull based artist fixates on images drawn from everyday life, working over a phrase with slavering fervour until his voice cracks. On “Eat Out To Help Out” – named after a UK government discount scheme that sought to revive restaurants during the pandemic, contributing to a spike in Covid cases in the process – Yol’s deranged chant of “a few days ago in the street there was a plastic fork with a nugget on it” captures the bleak absurdity of Tory Britain.

Gwilly Edmondez
“Make Your Own World Now”
From Trouble Number
(Slip)

One half of father-daughter duo Yeah You, Gwilly Edmondez has been honing his wild pop aesthetic since the 1980s, when he was a member of Welsh post-punk group Radioactive Sparrow. Edmondez spins improvised song from fragments of noise, power balladry, hiphop, black metal, folk and jazz. A fine example of Edmondez’s “psychoanalysis through pop waste”, “Make Your Own World” combines cracked confessionals with absurdist riffs on rock stardom. Forgoing his customary electronics, Edmondez creates a backing track with voice and Dictaphone, reimagining the chug and wail of a stadium rock band through free music.

Posset
“Nip Dip Dah”
From Grindcore My Rave Years
(self released) 2020

A Dictaphone jacker supreme, Newcastle’s Joe Posset is a key figure in the No Audience Underground. Grindcore My Rave Years finds him stripping his set-up down to just voice and tape, overlaying prerecorded parts and experimenting with procedures. Reminiscent of Hugo Ball’s sound poems and Henri Chopin’s tape pieces, “Nip Dip Dah” is a duet for micro-cassette players, the catchy title refrain bounced between machines, the scrunchy pause button edits adding a playful sense of unpredictability.

Sophie Cooper
“Dial A Bone Ring Tone”
From My Sof Called Life
(self released) 2017

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Mariam Rezaei & Kenosist
“Starm Reduction”
(TOPH) 2020

Thanks to the Tory party’s implosion, Labour leader Keir Starmer is likely to be Britain’s next Prime Minister. Singularly uncharismatic, this centre-right authoritarian has made it his mission to court the establishment and alienate the young and the left. Armed with turntables and VCV rack, Mariam Rezaei and Kenosist hit back with this outrageous slice of sonic shitposting, annihilating a radio interview in which Starmer said he’d take unconscious bias training following criticism of his description of Black Lives Matter as a “moment”.

Mercuro-Chrome
“Part 1”
From Athlete Of Joy/Athlete Of Despair
(self released) 2019

Beamed from the kaleidoscopic mind of Glasgow artist Jamie Bolland, Mercuro-Chrome’s “Athlete Of Joy” is adapted from his poem “On All Fours”, devised to accompany a performance with costumes by Morven Mulgrew. It begins with Bolland reading out a litany of identities: “I am a seabird… the tree of Tolstoy… a vision in the body electric”. Then out of nowhere, an Ornette Coleman-derived rhythm kicks in and Bolland's voice blossoms into blissed-out Auto-Tune. Bursts of absurdist humour (a blink and you’ll miss it KRS-1 sample) are followed by moments of touching vulnerability.

Fritz Welch
“The Donal Judd Vs Elmer Fudd Inner Space Crisis”
From A Desire To Push Forward…
(Radical Documents) 2018

Resident in Glasgow since the mid-2000s, Fritz Welch brings direct experience of the US underground to the UK, having developed a practice in 1990s Brooklyn that involves customised percussion, vocal improvisation, sculpture and painting. A heavy trip into psychedelicised sound poetry, “The Donal Judd Vs Elmer Fudd Inner Space Crisis” finds Welch modulating his voice into phased gloop and hovering drones, before exploring a series of mumbles, gasps and choked utterances. There's a rigour and intensity to Welch's absurdism that ensures it’s never merely wacky.

Yes Indeed
“Lies Everything Went Right Today”
From Rotten Luck
(Bison) 2022

Laurie Tompkins’s Slip Imprint is a key node for offbeat composition and underground pop. As Yes Indeed, Tompkins and Otto Willberg revel in once verboten tones – processed slap bass, 80s synth pads – to playful and occasionally unsettling ends. With contributions from Sam Adreae and Gwilly Edmondez, Rotten Luck is their third album, its prog pop tunes and reflective instrumentals subverted by distortion and creepy vocals.

Max Syedtollan
“Four Assignments”
From Four Assignments (and other pieces)
(GLARC) 2021

Max Syedtollan first came to my attention as Horse Whisperer, whose 2016 debut The Fifth Season is a breathless collage of bedroom prog, happy hardcore and Tolkien samples. Since then, his composition has become increasingly sophisticated. Four Assignments is a picaresque adventure through archaeological sites, accompanied by the modernist chamber music of Plus-Minus Ensemble. Syedtollan performs the piece live as an illustrated lecture, the academic rigour of his slides adding to the fun. Yet for all the humour, he has serious points to make about colonialism and the construction of national identity.