George Antheil was an american avant-garde composer (born 08/07/1900). With Ballet Mécanique he took the avant-garde music to new places by including, among else, 8 pianoes, several airplane propellers, an alarm, 6 bass drums, 3 xylophones and so the list carries on. Ballet Mecánique was created for a film by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, but the common project was given up eventually, since the composition was too advanced to perform and record for the film. However the work was played as a concert in Paris in 1926 and later at Carnegie Hall in New York. This is one of the most fascinating avant-garde pieces ever written, and if you think that it is stupid, it is probably just because your toupee was blown of during one of the performance.You can watch it being performed with modern technique here
Or you can watch the film with the music (rather bad sound though) here
This was written under influence of Current 93 - Black Ships Ate The Sky
