Quick. Put to the case that I am about to introduce you to an artist that perfectly embodies the term “experimental music.” Imagine what qualities that music will have. Some of the terms that will likely not come to mind are metal, bluegrass, electronica, or noise rock. Nevertheless, a thorough search for “experimental” through music archives on and off line will turn up exactly those long-established genres and many more. The term has become so misused and overused that it is almost as undescriptive as the word “music” itself. You may as well hope Google clues you in on the next Picasso by searching for “oil painting.”

My definition of experimental music? It has to blend styles, or simply create new ones; bonus points for fusing styles which heretofore seemed unfriendly to each other. Complicated time signatures do not hurt. A caveat: to be considered “experimental music,” the material has to be music in the first place, so oftentimes these guys will not qualify.

Last, incessant blind tinkering gets us nowhere, so — most importantly — some of the experiments need to pay off. An experiment is a pass/fail proposition. To keep me interested, I need an occasional pass.

All this is to say that Auditory Aphasia (home page, Myspace page, Pure Volume page) fits my rather rigid definition of experimental music perfectly, and scores more than just the occasional pass. I can appreciate their approach to self-publication in especial:

These collections are lossless quality. Each album is shipped directly by Auditory Aphasia and contains unique packaging with original artwork from one of us or a local artist (that’s right, no mass production of the artwork … you get the one and only original copy).

I just might have to grab a copy. Click any of their links above for a sampling of their music, and check out their home page for free downloads. “Baby Jane Doesn’t Live Here No More” is the first track I heard.