From an article by Ross Simonini, words from a member of the group Animal Collective :

"...As far as the boundaries and the future of avant-garde, I have no idea. I don’t think the people who reach that next step are thinking about it either. That process of searching out new boundaries to push in order to be the next avant-garde seems too academic for me. People should just do what they want to do, and if it happens to be something that pushes the boundaries, then that’s sweet. If you are just trying to do something to be different, but feel no personal attachment to what you are creating, then that’s a shame. If it’s not something you would respond to on a deeper level, why would anyone else respond to it?

RS: What about your own boundaries? As musicians who create new sounds, what are the limitations you find yourself fighting against? What are your musical crutches?

GEOLOGIST: I would say the only boundaries we fight against are ourselves and our past. But it’s not too hard. We consciously try and move beyond what we’ve done before....." (source!)

Animal Collective has gained some popularity recently- for good reason. While their music is usually too harmonically static for me to love it, the sounds they're producing are marvelous and inventive. "deconstructed rock/altern" is the term i read earlier, which is a thoroughly shitty term- it fails to express the degree of diversity in the sounds and harmonies, or even give an idea of how rich their textures are. There are folk elements, electronica, rock elements and experiments everywhere. There's a constant stream of sounds, often in thick layers, this music is vertical in an non-harmonic manner. This can be problematic, as they dont have much in the way of dynamics.

But they've got it. Aggressive songs like Grass and even Leaf House are at the avant-garde end of the music spectrum. They're pushing, and its really interesting.