Avant-garde progressive rock

Avant-prog
Stylistic origins	Rock in Opposition,Canterbury scene
Cultural origins	Late 1970s; United States, Europe, and Japan
Other topics
Zeuhl

Avant-prog (short for avant-garde progressive rock) is a style that appeared in the late 1970s as the extension of two separate prog rock sub-styles: Rock in Opposition (RIO) and the Canterbury scene.

A host of groups and artists mainly from the United States, but also from Europe and Japan, started to write mostly short instrumental pieces that focused on complexity and stripped down instrumentation, while avoiding the pomposity and stage props of the big progressive rock acts. Some groups (Thinking Plague and the Motor Totemist Guild, for instance) kept working with long durations and rich instrumentation but also forayed into free improvisation, sound collage, and other avant-garde techniques.

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