Whitechapel - The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T15:57:23-07:00

Tell me about it. What's the strangest music you've ever heard? Run a search on YouTube and show it to us, if you can. (Or play it for us or link it if it's possible and you feel moved to.)

--W

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T16:07:30-07:00

Many years ago Kenny Everett (I think) played the 50 Worst Records. Amongst these were two that stuck in my mind because they weren't so much bad as disturbed genius. I can't find them on YouTube and I may have got the titles wrong but one was Paralysed by The Starstruck Cowboy which is one man screaming his pain at the world and one was I Want My Baby Back for which this is the Wikipedia entry:

The most legendary parody of the genre is the 1965 novelty record "I Want My Baby Back", written by Perry Botkin, Jr and Gil Garfield and recorded by Jimmy Cross for the Tollie label. The singer/narrator tells of a road accident similar to that in "Last Kiss," but it turns out that the couple is on the receiving end of the motorcycle crash at the climax of "Leader of the Pack." Several months after his baby's death, the singer decides that he is going to have her back "one way or the other." With realistic sound effects, he digs up his baby's grave, crawls into her coffin, and closes the lid for a muffled final chorus of "I've Got My Baby Back." The record failed to make the national top 40, but was rescued from obscurity in the 1970s by Dr. Demento, who featured it regularly on his syndicated novelty record program.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T18:12:42-07:00

Most of the stuff I hear nowadays is considered strange, as I'm really into noise (and the related genres). So your regular Merzbow, Whitehouse, Grey Wolves, Women of the SS, to name the most recent on my playlist. A great artist that none of my friends can't like is Diamanda Galas. Something less noisy and more musical that many find strange (but usually like) and is unknown is Univers Zero (http://www.univers-zero.com/). Actually the strangest thing that I heard regularly was Eigenradio (http://eigenradio.media.mit.edu/), I was addicted to it while it lasted, spent months without listening to anything else.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T18:31:26-07:00

'Strange' is so subjective! Depends very much on taste and mood/setting, and in that sense, I'll mention Stockhausen's work used in the Brothers Quay's "In Absentia": http://youtube.com/watch?v=zNqSd_pHqV0 - Some of the audiovisual combinations there stood my hair on end.

Edit: I think it was a section in Part 2 that got me when I first saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzj3ryC1TW4

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T18:45:23-07:00

THAT. Was very strange indeed.

The strangest music I've ever heard probably doesn't at all match up to what people are going to post here - I'm not nearly as musically educated as I'd like to be.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T18:47:26-07:00

Oooh, that's an amazing question.

For sheer weirdness, STIMMUNG, by Stockhausen, is pretty out there. It's all vocal, all dissonant, and stretches the human voice very, very far. Stockhausnen based it on 50-some "magic words", which are stated in an order to be dertermined by the players, and with great emphasis and intent. Moving through all these words takes about an hour, and is overwhelmingly surreal.
A small sample is here.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T19:04:20-07:00

The strangest music I've ever heard was at a friends house. Her father was a zen-buddhist with a training studio in the house, and he had a giant thing given to him by Genesis Audio Ltd. It was a decagon made of metal pipes, but huge. Speakers were placed on the vertices and it had a bed in the center with subwoofers underneath it. It was hooked up to an old Apple running proprietary software that would show "the flow of energy" or some metaphysical B.S.

Anyway, my friend's dad had me lay on the bed in the Genesis and listen to music played on/with human bones by Tibetan monks. HUMAN BONES. Flutes and shit. Blew my mind. Not sure I can find any, but I'll give it a try.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T19:29:52-07:00

Not the strangest music certainly, but the videoclip to Soundgarden's Spoon Man always had me thinking how horrible living would be if that was how the world was every second tuesday of the month. The ever present pervading sense of foreboding as the days ticked by closer and closer... Heheheheh.

For a legitimate entry to this thread I'll have to go back and study my Culture Club book. Its got an awesome section on the reeeeally out there compositions from artists like La Monte Young and so forth. One of the compositions was written and performed many decades ago, and technically the performance is still going...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T19:42:23-07:00

For sheer weirdness, STIMMUNG, by Stockhausen, is pretty out there. It's all vocal, all dissonant, and stretches the human voice very, very far. Stockhausnen based it on 50-some "magic words", which are stated in an order to be dertermined by the players, and with great emphasis and intent. Moving through all these words takes about an hour, and is overwhelmingly surreal.

I've seen some other information on this composition; Stockhausen also notated this composition with the words connected and drawn in lines that showed the direction the tones where meant to go, i.e. a word would then be followed with another word (connected with a line, in the way that cursive letters are connected) placed lower on the page, indicating that word should be sung in a lower tone. He was trying to break away from the hierarchy of traditional musical note notation. This notation looked like a huge "follow the path/maze" on the page. Stockhausen was the man, that's for sure!

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T20:08:18-07:00

@Adam - What happened to the Shuf? Is he still on JJJ or did he get kicked off when Charlie and Mel's show disappeared?

I still say he should of taken over The J Files. Give me a reason to listen to JJJ.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T21:33:25-07:00

Well, in my case the strangest I've listened so far is The Legendary Pink Dots. Of course, at this point, they have become normal for me, but I remember that years ago I was hanging with some friends at the house of one of them, and after watching a movie, this friend pulled out a fatty and started smoking it and he says "you have to listen to this" and he starts playing 1992's "Shadow Weaver"; my very first Pink Dots album! And that blunt was really abnormal, I've started to feel sick and dizzy and shit, and I started shouting to him: "You son of a bitch, what did this shit had?!"

Mmmm, yeah, well, I kind of got carried with my comment.
Anyway, you should try this:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=157927438
http://www.myspace.com/thanatoloop
http://www.myspace.com/unfestinsagital
Chilean bands.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T21:40:09-07:00

@acacia I love that film. Terrifying visuals to go with a terrifying piece of music. I saw the Quay Bros. do a talk and they showed that film and they said when they showed the film to Stockhausen he got really upset and started crying and carrying on. If I remember the story correctly, he then accused the Quay Bros. of somehow reading his mind and thought the woman in the film was his mother that was killed in the concentration camps.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T21:56:51-07:00

Diamanda is up there for me...

And then there's Fantomas...

Fantomas is overall is strange and experimental. Patton has been experimenting with vocal chords for awhile now, claiming in an interview that he didn't write lyrics for any of the Fantomas songs because words always expressed an agenda. Diamanda Galas was ahead of him in this, but between all the talent in Fantomas, specifically Buzz Osborn's guitars and tone from the Melvins and Dave Lombardo's drums from Slayer, I do find them more influential personally style-wise.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T21:58:24-07:00

What I honestly cannot understand is this:

ELP, WTF?

Somebody please explain this to me.
What the hell?
What happened to make this seem like a good idea?

Don't get it.

also, YMCK always scores kinda high on other people's strange-o-meter.
(but, for me, it's just Tuesday.)
Go YMCK, GO!

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-26T23:04:45-07:00

I have an incredibly soft spot in my heart for Spinmaster Plantpot:
http://www.myspace.com/ppot
http://youtube.com/watch?v=m1E24hZ9WDA&feature=related and loads of other You Tube videos

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T00:00:27-07:00

Einsturzende Neubauten's (spelled from memory) song on the Heat soundtrack, "Armenia."

This song is probly the best horror music I've ever heard because it's much more atmosphere and sound effects than music.

Oh, there's a melody... a faint, haunting string arrangement that almost sounds more like howling wind. The rest is grunts, clatters, quiet mutterings in german, a screeching buzz-saw, and exactly two shrieking, grating human screams.

This song is the sound of insanity.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T00:50:56-07:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T01:32:50-07:00

I can't link to this, only describe it. Many years ago, probably 1995, during Winchester's annual Hat Fair street festival, a group of travellers struck up camp in the car park behind my flat. About 3am, they struck up the most insane music I'd ever heard (although bear in mind that I'd been asleep and possibly drunk as well). It was this kind of Lovecraftian swamp noise, crazy back to front rhythms, some form of trumpet, a fiddle, god knows what else. I had to fight the urge to get up and join in, leaping around in the night like some sort of savage demon, yelping and cackling. My girlfriend at the time was petrified, she thought the Devil was coming and was cowering under the duvet.

Then someone from one of the houses went and yelled at them to shut up and it stopped.

The closest I've ever heard to this again is Coltrane's Meditations, which is absolutely intense, cathartic and so furious it just beats your mind into submission before calming down and letting it breath again. Probably the musical equivalent to being flung into an icy ocean and then pulled out again and wrapped in blankets.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T01:42:58-07:00

it's hard to define strange, sure, I can throw in whitehouse, renaldo and the loaf, non, the residents, nurse with wound, ptose, die todliche doris, fred lane, jandek and a cast of thousands but they're not that strange to me. Strange music, to me, is music that has that "what the feck?" factor. for example the Butthole Surfer's had a side project called The Jackofficers and released a truly mad album, "Digital Dump" which, seemingly, was inspired by the acid house scene, only without ever listening to and acid house music. It's great.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T01:44:30-07:00

Stockhausen's pretty up there in weirdness. i don't know anyone else who'd think playing violins in a helicopter or recording the silence of an orchestra would be a good idea...

also, tibetan hip-hop is pretty weird. no links as i only heard it while i was there. it was like they heard one hip-hop song once, and tried to recreate it with cheap electronics and asian scales. didn't quite work.

Nurse With Wound i'd consider up on the strange scale, but also very listenable and hypnotic.
Nurse With Wound

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T02:06:13-07:00

I find King Missile kinda odd, but this:

Mike Silverman - That 1 Guy

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T03:57:05-07:00

"Strange" is when you can't get a grip on what you're hearing , and it genuinely confuses your expectations.For me a lot of noise/improv etc. is exactly what you're expecting to hear and nothing more....Strange would be buying the latest Whitehouse/ Merzbow album and discovering that they'd traded power electronics for funk-influenced power ballads. Or Rachel Stevens's new free folk direction. The closest example I can think of is 60s boyband loverman Scott Walker's transformation into meat-punching avantgarde deathballadeer on the albums Tilt and The Drift , but this was a gradual process.

In the middle of this was ( for me)his genuinely strange album .... 19834's Climate of Hunter , because I genuinely don't know what I'm listening to.....it veers from 1980s synthpop with slap bass , a duet with Billy Ocean through to Ligeti-esque twisted strings and industrial fear factory laments. I don't even know if I like it.

.

a crap interview on the tube , and the video to "track 3" off that album. It features a terrible guitar solo

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T04:23:23-07:00

can I add Godley and Creme, more precise their 'I pity inanimate objects' track from their " freeze frame" album. It's on a rather poppy album, however this one screams at you. Phil Manzanera plays the guitar in the style of a madman, however, the vocals, or how they did the vocals, are the thing. i still don't know how the hell they did it short of an insanely long process of very early sampling, or an insane amount of tape splicing ( it's 1981 after all )

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T04:26:26-07:00

Probably something off Einsturzende Neubauten's "Strategies Against Architecture" collections. Or, yeah, Diamanda.

Though there's some Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra stuff that ranks up there.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T04:35:39-07:00

Einsturzende Neubauten are probably the best strange band I've heard, particularly their mid-period stuff where they were more coherent than they were at first, but still experimenting more than they do now.

A lot of people single out noisy stuff or musicians that use eccentric instrumentation (both of which apply to Einsturzende Neubauten of course), but I think one of the strangest musicians I know of might be Ryoji Ikeda, who does a lot of stuff with pure electronic sounds, sine waves etc. His music sounds like it was made in a sealed lab with no access to the outside world. He sometimes uses extreme high frequencies that some listeners can't hear, or are only noticeable on their absence. He even wrote one album, Matrix, where the first disc consists of a different frequency in each speaker, so that it sounds different depending on where in the room you are, and you create your own music by moving around.

Along similar lines is Satoru Wono, who wrote Sonata For Sine Wave And White Noise, consisting of, obviously, only sine waves and white noise. He also wrote quite an interesting piece for string quartet.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T04:54:29-07:00

to accompany Neubauten's 'Armenia' here's Die Todliche Doris' 'Maria' from the three minute symphonies compilation album, which is one of the creepiest things I have heard.

and former Yello member Carlos Peron's "et" from the "Komtur" single from 83. I have often found myself saying "eh?" after and during this. It's also great.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T05:09:17-07:00

ooh, i just discovered you can play multiple audio files from the players here at the same time. the strange just got stranger.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T06:39:53-07:00

This thread calls for some Klaus Nomi:

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T06:53:33-07:00

Laibach

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T07:35:22-07:00

@ Thalia

Klaus Nomi is definitely worth mention. Thanks for the reminder!

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T08:05:13-07:00

A band from Baltimore Maryland called "The Irregulars"

Wait for the music..

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T08:05:21-07:00

I have this. It's fun. :)

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T08:31:59-07:00

I'll have to back up both the Stockhausen and Fantomas claims.

There's a couple of tracks of Tool's "filler" material on their albums that I would consider strange, as well. "Faaip de Oiad" from Lateralus is a combination of a Danny Carey drum solo and the most unusual of the extremely unusual Art Bell Show call-ins. And some really well done static. And "Viginti Tres" from 10,000 Days is pretty creepy. The vocal part in it always reminds me of a really weird experience of sleep paralysis combined with what might have been lucid dreaming I had once. So maybe it's just strange to me, I don't know.

Anyway, again, Stockhausen and Fantomas.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T08:52:55-07:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T10:50:54-07:00

Paralysed by The Starstruck Cowboy which is one man screaming his pain at the world
Hey Mark,
I've got it for you, the song is by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, the rest of his work is quite amazing too, right up there with Hasil Adkins.

The Stardust Cowboy:

Hasil:

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T11:50:29-07:00

My jazz band teacher used to make us listen to Sun Ra as punishment for not doing our jazz reports.

Part of a documentary.

While I normally only count artists I don't listen to as weird (hence the lack of noise band list or Mike Patton/Xorn projects), I'm going to be hypocritical and list John Cage, because he's fucking weird but I still like him.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T11:51:48-07:00

Okay it didn't like my links so let's try that again.

Sun Ra documentary excerpt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sApYx27yfnw

John Cage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T14:31:30-07:00

Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis always gets me. Utterly huge and powerful choral piece which just overwhelmed me when I first heard it, and continues to. Best heard very, very loud.
There's a performance of it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y, and one comment neatly says :
"The last minute of this piece is amazing. Thomas Tallis invents the wall of sound 400 years in advance of Phil Spector:

Also - Pressed Rat and Warthog by Cream mostly as I listened to it first when I was a kid and it conjured up images of rather jaded and mercenary capitalist corruptions of 'Wind In Willows' type jaunty anthropomorphic characters at the end of their tethers. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/cream/pressed+rat+warthog_20034203.html for the lyrics, can't find anything on youtube.

Someone mentioned Jesus Blood never Fails by Gavin Bryars in the hauntology section, which is strange and stunning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnYA0w4cWiE

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T14:33:56-07:00

the residents - eskimo

one album never to fall asleep listening to (another being diamanda galas' litanies of satan)
I woke up feeling very very cold.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T14:49:25-07:00

No Forcefield - Ler LeLonde and Brian "Brain" Mantia with some members of the Invisible Scratch Pickles doing some really weird shit. Not sure if I can really classify it as music.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T14:59:04-07:00

@ Corey R - aw gee, thanks very much for that. Brought back a lot of beautiful memories. You're a gentleman, sir.

@joncarpenter - there actually is a Hat Fair in Winchester! For years my brother has pleaded off coming up to London for my birthday because he was going to "the Hat Fair" and I thought he was making it up. Bloody hell.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T15:03:51-07:00

Horse The Band: A Million Exploding Suns!

The music isn't as weird as the video.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T16:48:17-07:00

Before you watch this I want to tell you that I am not trying to destroy your various headphone and speaker arrangements, so please adjust your volume accordingly:
MSBR live in liege belgium 1999
This is an example of what I like to call Noisecore, though I don't really know what its called officially, if any of you do then please let me know. If you like this enough to want to explore more, you can download the Koji Tano 10 disc tribute album Here! absolutely free. I can't imagine that people would pay more than a cover charge for this music, plus the cost of a few dozen drinks to help the "appreciation" of it.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T17:16:46-07:00

It's hard to be objective considering I love most of this stuff, but I thought of a few more (older) oddities while I was at work:
Captain Beefheart

Was Not Was

Tear Garden

Negativland

Wesley Willis

Some internet favorites:
El Chombo

Samwell

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T18:01:56-07:00

Hee. I love this thread.

I can't believe no one brought up the Shaggs yet!

Or Shooby Taylor:

Barnyard Dadaist composer Adrian Munsey, as blogged on Coilhouse:

Songs In the Key of Z is a MUST OWN for everyone here.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T18:26:12-07:00

Fantomas - probably not strange ENOUGH, but it's the closest I've come to weird-ass music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8291t_3COzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD6BXEFDzfI

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T19:44:30-07:00

Also... People have CALLED Deep Forest strange... I just think it's beautiful. ^_^

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T21:43:38-07:00

@Thalia: Love the Tear Garden! And Almost every Edward Ka-spel project.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-27T23:01:43-07:00

The strangest music I have ever heard was probably a several disc set called "A Storm of Drones" - It is basically what you'd expect - very dark noises, dark and droning and waving. In and of itself it wasn't tremendously strange, though quite unsettling, as I recall. But then I left it in the cd changer and accidentally listened to on acid. Scary as fuck in that circumstance. Don't do drugs, kids.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T01:41:19-07:00

@Mr. Effbomb

Is Laibach those guys who do hardcore German covers of Beatles songs?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T02:18:04-07:00

laibach do covers of anyone and anything, their latest being Bach. they have done 8 version of 'sympathy for the devil', the entire beatles 'let it be' album with the exception of 'let it be', queen, opus, daf, marianne faithful, national anthems and a whole lot more. their approach is to keep the vocals and start from the ground up. see their take on status quo's 'in the army now'.

their approach is similar to the residents covers. and they make the whole cover version thing better for it. Life would be incredibly dull if all covers sounded like the original, no?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T02:18:29-07:00

I always forget Wesley Willis is dead...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T07:57:01-07:00

@zoem: Oh, Storm of Drones was just the exclamation point at the end of the entire Drones Trilogy, a collaborative effort by a bunch of high-profile dark ambient artists that was released under Asphodel's Sombient sublabel back in the mid-90s. Throne of Drones (1 disc) was followed by Swarm of Drones (2 discs), and the entire thing was concluded with Storm (3 discs), which made for over seven hours of music that would make most people want to drive off of a cliff. I think it's gorgeous melancholy stuff that flutters into noise fairly regularly. One other notable quality of those discs is that the later two releases are meant to be listened to consecutively, so the CD publishers had a little fun with the Redbook audio standard: if disc one contained tracks 1 - 10, then disc two would contain tracks 11 - 20, which freaked out a lot of early CD players and still doesn't play nice with a number of CD ripping applications, including iTunes.

As far as the weirdest music I've heard, let's go ahead and slap Terre Thaemlitz's Means From an End up and hope it sticks. The title track's simultaneously haunting and dissonant, and so far I haven't found anyone besides me that enjoys it. :)

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T13:09:07-07:00

People have been talking about Laibach and yet no one has posted this:

http://www.rathergood.com/laibach/

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-28T23:23:43-07:00

I'm still trying to make it...

Otherwise, how about Hans Reichel's Shanghaied on Tor Road? The daxophone operetta...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-29T01:14:20-07:00

I'm going to define strange as unexpected. These guys erased my preconceptions of Japanese hip hop.
Hifana

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-29T02:18:27-07:00

Great to see other guys are fans of The Legendary Stardust Cowboy too. I totally love that Weirdo.

Talking about interesting Coverswongs by Laibach I really like "War" and "Jesus Christ Superstar".

saw a Crash Worship Live Performance once:

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-29T11:06:30-07:00

The problem I have with the Re:Search Incredibly Strange Music book and CDs is that most of the music they call "strange music" is only done in a strange context or by strange people. The music itself isn't particularly strange.

Today's vote is for the Thai Elephant Orchestra

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-31T16:44:56-07:00

Hmmmm.

The Shaggs,
The Residents,
Renaldo and the Loaf,
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band
Primus
Mr. Bungle
Fantomas
Pere Ubu
Man Man

One day I shall make an amazing compilation.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-05-31T16:45:15-07:00

Oh and Boredoms, of course! Musn't forget them!

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-06-01T14:09:20-07:00

My buddy Jordon Hossack in Calgary has a band called Azeda Booth. It's remarkably strange sounding stuff.

I remember going to his show once to support him (a friend), and all the friends I brought with me won't go to shows with me anymore. They're strange.

EDIT: They have a few youtubes, but the quality is really bad...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-06-01T15:35:06-07:00

Smoke on the water as it would sound normally, on Titan and on Venus.

Not a strange tune by any stretch, but a strange feeling to hear the differences from (emulating) playing it on different worlds.

*Imagines instruments built for playing on titan...*

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2008-06-01T16:23:19-07:00

At some point Ween and Japanese experimental group The Boredoms got together and formed Z-Rock Hawaii and the whole album they made is just freakin' strange. Here's a song they did called God In My Bed.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T17:45:49-07:00

I can't stop making this strange music.

www.myspace.com/allaboutmemusic

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T18:05:56-07:00

My long-time pals at Radio Savage Houndy Beasty - includes the likes of ecoactivist Merrick Godhaven, poet Mahalia and writer/creator of Towards 2012, Gyrus - have run a Leeds pirate station show for many years. Half their stuff is comedy, and some of it is like this...

Many downloads of the lads here.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T19:46:45-07:00

My first thought was Hentai's Toy factory; at this point, I guess that anything from Vital Records might fit the "strange" label.

Sleep Research Facility's Nostromo is a tribute to the spaceship, and meant to sound like it.

I've always found Navicon Torture Technologies to be a challenging listening experience.

Now, for a totally different kind of strange: Normand L'Amour is one the weirdest musical entities in Quebec. He claimed to be spiritually inspired to create songs, which he does, or did, at an alarming rate. Here's an example, which sadly will probably not give its full strangeness if you do not speak french (speaking it the french canadian way will also help). This song is about the fact that there are two sheeps on his lawn, and that they are there because he put them there.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T20:37:30-07:00

Most of the really weird stuff I know has already turned up on this thread, but I thought I'd post this classic...

Buffalo - Stump

Captain Beefheart has been mentioned a fair bit, but this is my favourite of his...

Icecream for Crow - Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band

I'm not even going to comment on this one...

Constipation Blues - Screamin' Jay Hawkins

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T21:19:20-07:00

There's lots of fantastic ear torture out there. Off the top of my head, Orthrelm comes to mind:

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T23:30:18-07:00

how about "Brainticket" by Brainticket, parts 1 and 2.

best experienced via CD or CD-quality, eyes closed, in a darkened room.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-03T23:47:55-07:00

the incredible Prince Rama (formerly Prince Rama of Ayodhya):

http://princerama.com/album/architecture-of-utopia
http://princerama.com/album/zetland
http://princerama.com/album/threshold-dances

psyche-expanding without a doubt and even better live.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T01:05:39-07:00

Hmmm, is this 4 pages and no-one has mentioned V/VM? Cognitive dissonance ahoy!

I think there's plenty of Residents stuff that really bent my mind when I first heard it. Now it's nestled its way in there and I can listen to it, dare I say, comfortably. But at first it was really disquieting.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T04:11:34-07:00

Trevor Wishart frightened me quite a bit at my first exposure, but I came to love listening to him. Search as I might, I can find no reputable link for free/decent sized chunks of his work. If you can find it, listen to Tongues of Fire. Cut-up loops and stretches of vocal noises, it's great.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T05:50:00-07:00

I don't really like it in comparison to the rest of the album, but here it is.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T11:14:25-07:00

Corey R Beat me to the stardust cowboy. Nice work on the shooby tailor Theremina.
EDIT (Oh man I really should pay more attention, just realised those posts are from years ago. Please insert jokes below about 2008 calling wanting its whatever back)

Today these are the starngest songs I have ever heard. Tomorrow, no doubt they will be different.

Cardiacs - R.E.S.

The Sea Nymphs - Shaping The River

Nico - Frozen warnings

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T14:14:17-07:00

...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T14:47:15-07:00

All right, time to dig into my personal vault of strangeness:

Starting with Magma

Magma

Then there's Zlad (who's obviously bad on purpose)

Elektronik Supersonik

Happy Grindcore

Gegen Sex in Speiseaufzügen

Jason Forrest

War Photographer

Ove-Naxx

Ovekeyashiki

Noir Fleurir

Omocha no Miisha (skip the first 45 seconds as it's just the vhs intro)

Psyclon Nine (most of their stuff seems standard ebm/industrial/goth thing but this particular one is interesting)

Scar of the Deceiver

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

A Hymn to the Morning Star

Blam Honey

Witch Fly in the Air

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T17:05:40-07:00

Some of my favourite music in this thread but I would never have called it strange...I guess it depends on what people are used to hearing and how much music they've been exposed to. I have never described music as strange, except,occasionally, to people who don't really listen to a lot of it and don't have a broad frame of reference. Would these be classified as strange music?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T17:59:05-07:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T18:28:41-07:00

Can't believe I forgot this David Bowie madness...

Please Mr Gravedigger

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T18:28:53-07:00

I present:

Rammellzee: It's like Afrika Bambataa & The Soul Sonic Force as produced by El-P / Techno Animal. Lyrics laden with futurism. Biomechanical, earthcrusher digi-hiphop? Not super weird compared to some Kool Keith stuff ( or a lot of other stream-of-consciousness hiphop I could name ), but it's taking me a few listens to really appreciate. Apparently he passed away in June and only ever did one full length album, but was a very influential artist and theoretician behind the scenes. Hope you enjoy it and track down more.

Would Ikonika or Flying Lotus be considered weird in the general scheme of the current glitchhop / mutant dubstep / wonky electronica landscape?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-04T19:30:47-07:00

Maybe not the strangest I've ever heard, but it's certainly up there.

Angizia - Schaukelkind

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-05T00:03:53-07:00

@ Purple Wyrm LOL why not The Laughing Gnome!
The Laughing Gnome

really its weirdness comes from putting it in the context of the rest of Bowie's career. I mean, what the fuck was he on to think that this was a good idea?

Also seconding @offtandiscord on Nurse With Wound. I think the range of different things that NWW does is what makes it weird, as any one selected track of theirs (his? it is mostly just Stephen Stapleton) is not really representative of their sound.

I Cannot Feel You As The Dogs Are Laughing And I Am Blind
Crusin' For A Brusin'

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-05T00:08:13-07:00

@The_Toxo_Zombie - I thought about the Gnome, and then thought, nah, I won't inflict that on everybody :)

Edit - suppose I'd better include some music...

William Shatner - Mr Tamborine Man

His version of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is perhaps more famous, but I think this is a better performance. You seriously get the feeling that he's completely losing his mind by the end of it.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-05T00:34:11-07:00

Unfortunately I don't have any recordings of it, but there was this one piece I used to play with my clarinet quintet that was called "Labyrinth" that was pretty wild. It'd been composed by a friend of my music teacher's (I think it was Christoph Leard, but it's been a few years and I might be misremembering) who lived out at Katoomba and by the sound of it ("it" being the piece and the occasional hint good old Greg would drop) smoked a lot of something I'd be tempted to try.

Basically, it was a woodwind quintet (assorted saxes and clarinets with an option for flute) that was based around a main melody that was played as a round. Most of the harmonies were minor 7ths, and it changed time signature like three times. One of those times it went to 7/4. It was based loosely on a blues scale (the key signature also went through a few phases), and unless you've played clarinet you probably won't get what I mean when I say there was a hell of a lot of little finger work involved, not to mention some hellish register jumps.

It actually sounded pretty interesting when we got it happening, (I thought) but it definitely wasn't a crowd pleaser.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-05T01:54:49-07:00

@ Purple Wyrm

Yes. Inflict is a good word for that song. Really though most songs from that early album (which sadly, The Laughing Gnome is not on) are just plain strange. She's Got Medals, We Are Hungry Men, ect, could all go on this list. Only the sincerity of Bowie's delivery saves really saves them from being totally unmemorable novelty kitsch.
We Are Hungry Men

also

Hell yes the Shat. Why not keep the image of him climaxing next to a blue lollipop static for the whole song?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-05T23:05:56-07:00

I'm with Nigredo on this. A lot of these folks are artists I listen to frequently and don't consider especially strange unless you simply haven't been exposed to a broad enough spectrum of music outside the mainsteam (I mean, Shatner? Funny, kitschy, but not really strange). Strange people do not always make strange music. Many, like Beefheart or Nico, are my standard reference points for approaching more obscure artists. But I've made a nearly 30-year career out of putting unusual music like this on the radio.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T00:53:17-07:00

This music isn't all that strange, but the instrument is. Ladies and Gents, I present the thongophone:

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T04:35:29-07:00

I'm in the same camp as Nigredo and Brent on this. On the other hand, it's nice to calibrate the meters now and again. In case thta came off a too-cool-for-school douchebaggery, apologies. That was not the intent.

I play in this and I still can't understand what the hell we're about:

Iannis Xenakis. I love his music, but I have no idea how the process for thinking something like this up goes.

In a slightly similar vein, whatever Scott Walker is doing nowadays goes off on some mindboggling tangents. Bear in mind the context here is, supposedly, pop music.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T09:54:37-07:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T09:54:49-07:00

You have to consider Xenakis in the context of European avant-garde music of his time, in the first instance. Messiaen and Stockhausen played a big part in his musical development. Serialism is also important, in that he tried to find ways to escape its limits, like he did with traditional harmony. Xenakis resorted to the method of basing his compositions on mathematical concepts: calculus, stochastic and probabilistic processes etc, in order to move away from the linearity of traditional polyphonic composition. He also experimented heavily with rhythm, inspired by Messiaen and Stockhausen, and created several works for percussion. He developed a lot of his music concurrently with architectural projects, with a view of performing it in certain spaces (he worked with Le Corbusier in Paris).

Xenakis is one of those composers whose work you cannot really approach without some knowledge of his politics, because that's what ultimately lead to the formation of his compositional practices. He fought against the Italians in Greece, and after the English took over from the axis powers and supported the Monarchists, he lost an eye and part of his jaw in battle against them, having joined the communist resistance. He later escaped to France where he lived until his death.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T10:06:07-07:00

Thanks for the primer on Xenakis. [Tangentially, I have to say, that seeing a staging of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise was completely mind-altering (or rather ear-altering).] Certainly dudes like Penderecki and Ligeti deserve mention if we're talking 20th century orchestral weirdness.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T10:11:44-07:00

:)

I love Messiaen's music. The organ stuff, the orchestral works, anything. His work was a big eye-opener for me, too. It also made me realise how much later avant-garde music, from modern composition to jazz and beyond, has been influenced by him.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T11:24:41-07:00

I love this stuff: the sho, Japanese mouth organ. Thing looks a bit like Sauron's pointy helmet...

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T12:37:07-07:00

Not the strangest song I know. But I nice song most people would probably find strange.

By the by, I love Venetian Snares and cant shut up about how fantastic his stuff is.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-06T13:29:58-07:00

Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum.

Four-hour long solo piano piece reputed for how technically demanding and frighteningly obtuse it is?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-07T17:55:21-07:00

I wonder what I would make of this if I had never heard the original?

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-07T21:51:27-07:00

Call me a nit picker, but the timing for the piano was sloppy. The rest of it was pretty badass.

I don't think I've ever heard the original before. Eh, not too bad. Bit repetitive though.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-08T04:45:28-07:00

@antistigma - My brother had the privilege of meeting Rammellzee a few years back and wrote this great piece when he passed away.

Edited to add music: This might not be all that strange, but Mongolian folk-rock band Altan Urag do a mean take on Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto with traditional Mongolian instruments (excluding the drum kit).

Plus they have Giger alien heads on their fiddles, rather than the traditional horse heads.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-08T14:08:58-07:00

@ taphead I had totally forgotten about The Drift. If you watch the documentary 30 Century Man about Scott Walker there is a pretty interesting behind the scenes look at making The Drift. It's fascinating to see the kind of great lengths he goes through to get the exact sounds he wants.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-08T17:33:11-07:00

My wife saw Klaus Nomi several times in the early 80s. I wish I'd known her back then!

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-08T20:30:29-07:00

The first time I ever heard THROBBING GRISTLE it blew my mind, and honestly it's still the standard that weird shit I listen to aspires to hit.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-09T09:56:52-07:00

EVIL BOY (official) from Die Antwoord on Vimeo.

I.. Uh.. just watch it.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-09T13:57:31-07:00

@costa_k:

You can't just post a link to the wiki if there's GREAT live footage to be found on Youtube!

Throbbing Gristle - Discipline

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-09T20:01:20-07:00

I thought TG was far to well known to post......

oh well, glad someone put it up here.
er....

COIL?
A Warning From The Sun

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-23T10:50:50-07:00

I adore a lot of what's been posted before, and industrial and cut & paste stuff is a particular passion, but none of it seemed weird or without form compared to early Leafcutter John. Sadly none of that stuff is on the internet, but

are good examples of what he does.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-10-27T17:24:19-07:00

Apologies if this track has already been posted in the past, but can anyone tell me how and what the FUCK these guys used to create that glorious "NNYYYEEEEOOOOWWWWRRRRRMM" noise at the very end of the song? (from roughly 1:31 to 1:36)

Zappa was GODLIKE. I've been obsessed for well over half my life, and his stuff still surprises me with every listen.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-02T10:20:00-08:00

I can't vouch for it's veracity but God's Cricket Chorus is pretty far out if it is what it claims to be.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-02T11:21:57-08:00

WALKING ON THE MOON by Lucia Pamela, from RE/SEARCH's INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC VOL II.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-02T13:37:14-08:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-03T08:52:50-08:00

I present you, from Brazil, Damião Experiença, who is basically a prophet madman that has been making music for ages, he's known in underground circles but he's mostly unknown here. Here's a sample:

And, from his website, check this downward spiral into the essence of insanity:

His website, which contains mp3 downloads from his stuff (some even from the early 70s) is this.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-03T10:18:53-08:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-03T10:39:18-08:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-17T23:34:08-08:00

In memory of the late Don Van Vliet (aka Capt Beefheart), go pick up a copy of Trout Mask Replica, for something both seminal and strange.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-23T09:17:34-08:00

john zorn is pretty out there, completely blew my mind the first time i heard his stuff.

i think he did an album with mike patton playing the kazoo.

oh yeah, and the boredoms

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-26T13:39:30-08:00

You'll find a bunch in here, Warren.
Non-English music thread from a while back

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2010-12-26T19:17:04-08:00

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-01-07T20:30:13-08:00

Gave me vertigo and tinnitus on headphones.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-01-07T21:46:43-08:00

About half the Butthole Surfers' discography for starters.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-01-07T22:56:46-08:00

Here's a weird video for a weird song by a weird guy.... song 6.) from Rotate the Completors:Completed Rotations of the.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwZxbnv2JVw

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-01-12T11:24:00-08:00

(starts about 20 seconds in)

by ... and the native hipsters

more things i learned from listening to wfmu

-ted

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-01T14:18:55-08:00

All right, I've arrived a little bit late to the party... perhaps my offerings will bring joy.

This has an early Residents feel to it, and the whacked-out redneck lyrics just add an additional level of demented delight.

George Coleman here goes on a very odd crime spree.

Jascha Ephraim was a guy who lived in Asheville (NC) for a while. He did some wild live performances back in the day.

These days, it takes a lot of perversion to shock me. That said, Joe Aufricht is fucked in the head.

Thanks to the Subgenius Hour of Slack, I discovered Joe Newman's amazing "Rudy Schwartz Project". Here's a sample.

Johnny Future hails from Little Rock, Arkansas. He is nuts.

More to come soon, including more Johnny Future and Rudy Schwartz Project.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-02T12:08:56-08:00

Apparently slowed down rubbish pop by prepubescent bundles of fuck becomes the soundtrack to an existential dilemma.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-03T04:33:02-08:00

Korpiklaani - Beer Beer

A Finnish metal band doing Irish folk-inspired songs. This came up on my Dropkick Murphys Pandora station, and my eyebrow quirked.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-03T21:30:18-08:00

@Fauxhammer

"Wooden Pints" is even better. :)

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-04T02:57:05-08:00

@theremina: oh my god that one guy smacking the shit out of that poor drum

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-04T20:18:27-08:00

Two Virgins -John Lennon and Yoko Ono The one record of John's work never commercially published, for a good reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNKKcoyQPis And pretty much most of these guys' songs.
Peach Plum Pear - Joanna Newsom Her voice.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-02-13T04:29:58-08:00

i heard this last month while writing about electronic music in Iceland. although it's not quite the strangest music i'Ve ever heard (there are numerous comparisons with Stockhausen), it's credited as the 1st ever electronic music peice composed in Iceland. When it first played in Iceland in 1960, it damn near caused a riot amongst the highly conservative chattering classes.

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2011-10-15T14:24:57-07:00

I have to be full of myself and say that pure ego is perhaps the strangest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WHJsN2zKY0&feature=relmfu

The Strangest Music You Ever Heard

2012-02-12T13:19:46-08:00

Here's some entries that may qualify as strange, in different ways:

Arthur Brown - Fire

Fractal music, Mandel based math; recursive patterns. Unknown composer. I like this piece, tonally, more than some of the other similarly generated compositions people have made.

Alarmingly insane, utterly wonderful granular audio/video installation performance at STRP called "Model V".

Current 93 (David Tibet)... Awesome neo folk. Great lyrics.