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Post by stallion pt. 2 on Jul 25, 2007 15:35:18 GMT -5
I've always been told I liked music that was weird, which was strange to me because I was never trying to be weird. But I do like music that is experemental, unpredictable or even noisey, and I guess I can understand why someone accustomed to top-40 or pop music would think what I liked wasn't normal.
So, what is the "weirdest" music that you like to listen to, or that you just find intriguing. Please post links to Myspace or other places to sample the music in question if possible.
To get us started I'll mention one of my all-time fav weird bands; The Residents. Since 1971 (and probably earlier), the Residents have been anonomously crafting incrediby strange music that defies description and convention. They have been a huge influence on the likes of Les Claypool and Ween. Their myspace has a good sample of their most recent "sound" but if you like what you hear I suggest you dig back to their 1970s recordings for maximum strangeness. www.myspace.com/theresidents
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
They're a band out of Baltimore that I used to see in college. Unfortunately they don't really tour much outside of the northeast, but they did make it down here for Langerado last year. Not sure how to describe, best to just listen.
Post by stallion pt. 2 on Jul 25, 2007 15:56:01 GMT -5
In an Aeroplane over the Sea is one of the most POWERFUL albums I have ever heard. Every time I listen to it I can't get far past King of Carrot Flowers before the album starts to break me down emotionally. Stong stuff.
And thanks for the Lake Trout links. I had seen their name around on a few festies (including roo, thanks aly for reminding me), but w/ a name like that I had assumed they were a "jam band." Nicely surprised by their electro-indie sound.
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
Love the Lake Trout. A very under-rated band. Used to be a bit more jamband 7 or 8 years back. Not much though. There's a band I'd love to see at Roo next year. I didn't go in '05.
Saw these guys earlier this year w/ Secret Chiefs III. My friends were a bit put off by these guys, but I enjoyed it. Crazy costumes and makeup, unique home-made instruments combined w/ violin, heavy guitars and a host of percussion weirdness. Definatly out of the ordinary.
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
I listen to primarily wierd music, here's some of my list (some obscure, some not-so.)
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult (weird industrial/sleaze/disco music, just bought tickets for the Nashville show, btw)
Einsturzende Neubauten (Experimental-industrial pioneers, use instruments such as shopping carts and power drills)
Legendary Pink Dots ( maybe not weird, per se, but definately one of the most interesting bands I listen to. Just think if Sydd Barret were alive and still with Pink Floyd, in today's musical climate of the past 25 years)
Yeah, I'd guess you could say I like gothic-tinged music a bit...
Post by canexplain on Jul 25, 2007 19:29:39 GMT -5
mothersky said:
I listen to primarily wierd music, here's some of my list (some obscure, some not-so.)
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult (weird industrial/sleaze/disco music, just bought tickets for the Nashville show, btw)
Einsturzende Neubauten (Experimental-industrial pioneers, use instruments such as shopping carts and power drills)
Legendary Pink Dots ( maybe not weird, per se, but definately one of the most interesting bands I listen to. Just think if Sydd Barret were alive and still with Pink Floyd, in today's musical climate of the past 25 years)
Yeah, I'd guess you could say I like gothic-tinged music a bit...
dude not giving you a hard time at all because good choices of tunes ... those 3 cds play often in my player, esp EN, good choices ... cr****
Saw these guys earlier this year w/ Secret Chiefs III. My friends were a bit put off by these guys, but I enjoyed it. Crazy costumes and makeup, unique home-made instruments combined w/ violin, heavy guitars and a host of percussion weirdness. Definatly out of the ordinary.
that must have been the tour we saw cuz secret chiefs was the other band there .. and one other but i forgot who it was .... cr***
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
The weirdest music I listen to is all electronic in nature. Off the top of my head, I would have to say Simon Posford's alter ego of Hallucinogen is probably single-handedly weirdest music I listen to on a regular basis. It's hard to describe it as music sometimes. When I think weird, I think of an artist who deconstructs melody, or rhythm, and re-assembles in shapes and fashions as yet unheard or unseen, and I think Posford does a pretty good job of that with Hallucinogen.
For anyone who likes weird music, check out Animal Collective's new disc, Strawberry Jam. It's as weird as weird gets.
Post by stallion pt. 2 on Jul 25, 2007 21:34:31 GMT -5
any particular Hallucinogen discs you'd reccomend. sounds interesting.
gougeaway said:
The weirdest music I listen to is all electronic in nature. . . . When I think weird, I think of an artist who deconstructs melody, or rhythm, and re-assembles in shapes and fashions as yet unheard or unseen
check out Prefuse 73 if you haven't already. also you may find these compilations interesting
Anthologies of Noise & Electronic Music - there are 4 2-disc volumes. Some of these examples of electronic music go back to the 1940s!
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
Twisted or the Lone Deranger from Hallucinogen. Be warned, it's got a very fitting name, IE drug music.
If you haven't heard of Posford, he's unique to electronic music, b/c he takes on alternate identities to play. He has 3 of these, Hallucinogen, which is very glitchy and, well, twisted. Shpongle, which harkens back to shamanistic ritualistic music with electronic influence, and there is Younger Brother, which is yet another manifestation of his twisted brain.
He's pretty good. Psy-trance. Some people think he is overrated, others dig him immensely. He's pretty big in europe.
Thanks for the recommendations. I've heard the Prefuse but not the other. I'll check it out.
And I don't know how i forgot to mention WEEN last night. Everytime I play Ween at the office, this one dude, Jeff, is like "What are we listening to??" It's WEEN bitches!
THIS is a flash movie made by Danny Gomez called "Flashback." It uses the music of Shpongle throughout the video. Pretty cool flash art too, especially for the psychedelic-minded. FWIW, Shpongle is far more accessible than Hallucinogen
Saw these guys earlier this year w/ Secret Chiefs III. My friends were a bit put off by these guys, but I enjoyed it. Crazy costumes and makeup, unique home-made instruments combined w/ violin, heavy guitars and a host of percussion weirdness. Definatly out of the ordinary.
yea i saw that tour. i love sleepytime. secret chiefs were awesome too.
Guess everyone has their own definition of "weird"....usually meaning something they don't particularly like or understand - LOL! Luckily we think "weird" is a good thing musically
I would put every Tom Morello guitar solo in the "weird" but incredible category....some more than others definitely....creative genius guitar god that he is! Who else could come up with a guitar solo that sounds like monkeys laughing ??? On purpose! Gotta love it! ;D
Post by stallion pt. 2 on Aug 1, 2007 16:54:52 GMT -5
gougeaway said:
Twisted or the Lone Deranger from Hallucinogen. Be warned, it's got a very fitting name, IE drug music.
If you haven't heard of Posford, he's unique to electronic music, b/c he takes on alternate identities to play. He has 3 of these, Hallucinogen, which is very glitchy and, well, twisted. Shpongle, which harkens back to shamanistic ritualistic music with electronic influence, and there is Younger Brother, which is yet another manifestation of his twisted brain.
He's pretty good. Psy-trance. Some people think he is overrated, others dig him immensely. He's pretty big in europe.
Thanks for the recommendations. I've heard the Prefuse but not the other. I'll check it out.
And I don't know how i forgot to mention WEEN last night. Everytime I play Ween at the office, this one dude, Jeff, is like "What are we listening to??" It's WEEN bitches!
I gave Lone Deranger a try and was surprised at how ordinary it sounded to my ears. Not a slam, it was still good electronica, but I was surprised by how much he still relied on that 4/4 pulse that is so omnipresent in most electronica. I've always gravitated more towards stuff like Aphex Twin and Fennesz, artists who break away from that dance pulse and make electronic music that is NOT dancable.
And Ween is awesome, the browner the better. Pod and Pure Guava in particular are good WTF records for friends caught in a top-40 rut.
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
Post by steveternal on Aug 2, 2007 23:35:32 GMT -5
stallion, I think you and I would have a lot to talk about.
Where to begin? There's a lot I listen to, just to know it and at least understand it, and to help constantly refine my perception of music. In other words, to list the very weirdest stuff I listen to is to go beyond the point where I'm still genuinely enjoying the music. There are a lot of modern composers in that heap, like Harry Partch, Arnold Schöenberg and Edgard Varèse. I love John Cage's early works, like the three Constructions and the Sonatas for Prepared Piano, but I think he became a hack later in life. There's the 60's rock group The Shaggs, aka the worst band of all time. Electronic artists like V/Vm and Negativland keep me on my toes. Jandek is fascinating, as is the one-man-rockabilly-band Hasil Adkins. The Boredoms, natch. Sun Ra is nearly impenetrable, but I keep trying. Scott Walker's newest album gets under my skin, in many ways. Qawwali music. There are several old school avant-rock groups, among them Magma, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, Kluster, Tangerine Dream, The Red Krayola and Pärson Sound, and newer ones such as Usaisamonster, Sun City Girls and Yowie.
But a list of weird music that I listen to and really enjoy, that would be a different. There are the classic free-jazz cats Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy, and their king and lord Anthony Braxton. Also for jazz you can't go wrong with any of the "modern creative" flock: Bill Frisell, David Torn, Dave Douglas, Paul Motian and Jan Garbarek, to name a few. If you're astute you'll notice all of them record for the ECM label (as does Keith Jarrett: his solo concerts are to die for), possibly the best jazz label today. If not ECM, it's Thirsy Ear's Blue Series, touting such geniuses as Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, William Parker, Spring Heel Jack, Groundtruther and Tim Berne. I also like Happy Apple. And for jazz/world music fusion, there's Shakti and Oregon. Speaking of world music, you can't beat Ravi Shankar, although Vishwa Mohan Bhatt comes pretty close. Tom Lehrer is funny. The Moog Cookbook did great work. Puffy AmiYumi is the best pop group today. cLOUDDEAD have yet to be topped. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is crystallized beauty. Yma Sumac was the world's first diva. I can't get enough of experimental electronic artists like Venetian Snares, Matmos or The Books. Captain Beefheart and Can are timeless. Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle! Fantômas!) is a visionary, plain and simple, and The Dillinger Escape Plan and Don Caballero helped give purpose to hard rock. There are many modern composers to whom we owe a great debt: Charles Ives, Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, and many more. And finally the greatest experimental musician of all time: John Zorn. Everything he has done, from Masada to the Film Works to PainKiller to his file-card compositions to Naked City, is simply astounding. Here's to ya, John.
Post by stallion pt. 2 on Aug 3, 2007 16:24:07 GMT -5
Mothersky - Negativland is great. "The letter U, and the number 2!" I still laugh when I hear the "radio edit" of that track.
Steveternal - I belive we WOULD have a lot to talk about. That post is now saved to my hard drive and I will be making an effort to check out the artists you mentioned that I am not failiar with. Since I know and love about 60% of what you mentioned, I imagine the other 40% I would enjoy as well. A particular thanks for all the free-jazz recomendations, since that sub-genre is woefully underrepresented in my collection (w/ the exceptions of Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and John Zorn, of which I have quite a bit.)
Danbird - I love that Rundegren album, and your descripion "weird as in extreemly trippy" got me thinking about just how we might define "weird" music. IMHO weird has less to do with sound effects, trippy imagry or oddball humor an more to do with the underlying structure of the music. Is it weird to take an ordinary pop song and slather on "psychadelic" effects or some strange noises? I'd say it's more "weird" to start by defying all convention and rules, and instead forge a new path. Someone like Harry Partch, who created his own instruments and his own scales and notation creates music that is so foreign to what we know as music by Western definitions that it can't help but sound weird, even to someone like me who seeks out different music. Likewise those artists who break out of the rigid convention of simple meter that encompases 95% of all western music and create rhythms so complex they are impossible to dance or tap your foot to. But the bottom line is that weird is just a subjective label. Anything outside of what is expected is weird, and what is strange and foreign for one may be par for the course for another.
John: We don't even understand our own music Spider: It doesn't, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it'll give us . . . strength John: I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it
I highly recommend the album they made with the Octopus Project - "The House of Apples & Eyeballs"
Self (Matt Mahaffey) - out of Murfreesboro, TN, now in Cali, I highly recommend the album "Gizmodgery" what's "weird" about it is that it was recorded entirely with toy instruments. The music overall is catchy pop-esque, but worth checking out.
Very true with my parents as well! - Beck, Bjork, The White Stripes, even if most of the album is pretty normal one weird part - and they don't like it. Though they love the 60s experimental Beatles stuff - which many of the bands I listen to clearly are influenced by their stuff