Cerebral Psychosomatic Scramble Stasis

September 23, 2008 9:27 AM

Looking for specific songs that have a very particular, idiosyncratic quality to them...

The quality I'm looking for can best be described as ... a sublime mind fuck. A very particular sound quality that makes the eyes flicker and the mind reel. It's an instrumentally guitar-heavy characteristic with ample amounts of foot pedal action, usually heavy distortion and feedback, with a windfall of melody comprised of high frets on the neck of the guitar.

I know it sounds somewhat confusing what I'm looking for here, so I made a little sample compilation: mp3

Songs used:

Paik - Tinsel and Foil
The Voom Blooms - Aeroplanes at 3am
Cecilia::Eyes - Shiftkill
The Radio Dept. - The City Limit
Ceremony - Old
Moving Mountains - Cover the Roots, Lower the Stems
Mahogany - Domino Ladder Beta
M83 - Gone
The Bridal Shop - Spectrum of Clarity
Have a Nice Life - I Don't Love
Cut City - Just Pornography
Asobi Seksu - Red Sea
Bitcrush - Drop Entitled
Stars - A Thread Cut With a Carving Knife
Port-Royal - Anya-Sehnsucht (Dedo Remix)

So you can kind of get the impression that I'm looking for surging, pulsating, ethereal, engrossing, hypnotic songs with a certain shrillness to the melody.

....

Anyway, things I'm not looking for include genre or band suggestions. I'm looking for specific songs, because this particular quality is rare to come across, but means the world to me.

My last.fm page and music blog if you need a frame of reference.

posted by Christ, what an asshole to media & arts (19 comments total)

Missle by Blonde Redhead? Wax Ecstatic by Sponge?
posted by millipede at 9:43 AM on September 23, 2008

I'm probably way off in terms of your musical tastes, but from what I heard in your mp3, it reminded me a lot of Third Eye Blind (their lesser-known stuff).
posted by karizma at 10:20 AM on September 23, 2008

Based only on the M83, which is all I have with me today, you should explore the world of dronecore. Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Ros, the Drunken Fish label, etc. and so on. Have you tried Pandora?
posted by rhizome at 10:27 AM on September 23, 2008

Coil? Some stereo total might fit your bill too.
posted by glip at 10:33 AM on September 23, 2008

Re-emphasis for the hard of comprehension: Anyway, things I'm not looking for include genre or band suggestions. I'm looking for specific songs
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:37 AM on September 23, 2008

Ah. Well never mind then.
posted by rhizome at 10:56 AM on September 23, 2008

Dalek - Ever Somber

Is the best example of the guitar you seem to like that I can think of, but it's a rap song.
posted by fire&wings at 11:33 AM on September 23, 2008

You can self-police this thread all you like, but Rhizome is smart to note that all of these bands are clearly influenced by that previous generation of shoegaze-style groups.

I didn't see any My Bloody Valentine in your top 500 Last.fm artists—the entirety of Loveless sounds exactly like what you're looking for.

And artists like that didn't really do singles, they made albums.
posted by bcwinters at 12:54 PM on September 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

'Dreams Burn Down' by Ride springs to mind.
posted by Chairboy at 1:06 PM on September 23, 2008

"X" and "Argonaut", both by Bailter Space, does the job. Maybe 10-20% of New Zealand musical export since The Clean's heyday would, for that matter.
posted by ardgedee at 1:22 PM on September 23, 2008

I've been thinking about your question because it's a genre I like too. I have more suggestions in mind but I'm afraid I can't recommend them in a manner according to your guidelines. Sorry.
posted by ardgedee at 2:41 PM on September 23, 2008

You can self-police this thread all you like, but Rhizome is smart to note that all of these bands are clearly influenced by that previous generation of shoegaze-style groups.

I didn't see any My Bloody Valentine in your top 500 Last.fm artists—the entirety of Loveless sounds exactly like what you're looking for.

And artists like that didn't really do singles, they made albums.

If I was looking for shoegaze recommendations, I would have asked for that. But what I'm seeking is a very particular sound quality, that, yes, is under and tangential to the shoegaze umbrella, but is as narrowly defined as I could try to make it (like asking for the most efficient route from point A to point B and just being handed a map). Your insistence that Loveless covers what I'm looking for means that either my definition or your interpretation is off. And in the instance of the former, my "policing" is simply trying to narrow down what it is I'm looking for. Which was the point of my inquiry in the first place.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 2:52 PM on September 23, 2008

Brought to mind This Will Destroy You - The World Is Our ___, but I think it might be a little on the slow/soft side.
posted by systematic at 3:59 PM on September 23, 2008

Oh, I remember you! You used to be Machiav3lli (or some similar spelling). There was a question about post-rock not too long ago that I'd hoped you'd answer, and maybe you did (under this name).

Look, here's the problem: Aside from the mp3, you're basically describing this in subjective emotional terms. I mean, a mindfuck? Seriously?

You may have better luck if you stop trying to live up to your new username and describe what things actually sound like.

Which brings us to the second problem—What's going on in your songs is different from song to song, though it's kind of an easy effect to create (especially now that Kevin Sheilds has talked a little more about how he does it). You've got some tracks where it's an over-dubbed tremelo guitar (like MBV) and a couple where it's a synth wash with either strings or choir voicing, and sometimes it's a chorus pedal. Generally, all of the examples have a high degree of compression and reverb (I assume that this isn't just an artifact of my speakers and your encoding), and that compression has a long attack, a long sustain, and a long decay. But when you overdub one reverb-laden lead over a reverb-laden sustain of just about any flavor, you get the beat frequency that's in all of these examples.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're hearing something that I'm not (honestly, "the sound of tinnitus" is kind of how I think of it), and there are a lot of folks here with a lot more production experience than I have (a couple classes, helping a band or two, nothing near actual engineering experience) who might have a better way to describe this, but honestly, trying to answer "what else will blow my mind like this?!" without just saying "Hey, have you listened to My Bloody Valentine and Flying Saucer Attack? Because this effect is all over their stuff" is pretty hard, and the vocabulary that you're using isn't making it easier to help you.
posted by klangklangston at 5:13 PM on September 23, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

No, you're right. What I was looking for in retrospect is more emotion-based, and therefore subjective and pretty much implausible to find under anyone else's terms but my own. And I have been a pretty big douche, generally out of frustration of being unable to translate my "vision." In person with a CD player right there, it works a lot easier.

Anyway, what was your post-rock Q?
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 5:30 PM on September 23, 2008

I think klangklangston means this question.
posted by PueExMachina at 9:49 PM on September 23, 2008

CWAA, to me, your proffered sample sounds like a webleak of a future MGMT release.

Sorry I can't zone into a specific track for you.
posted by Exchequer at 9:19 AM on September 24, 2008

Yeah, that's the question.

Regarding emotional responses: It's the same reason that it's pretty difficult to recommend porn to anyone else—even if you're turned on by similar stuff, it rarely hits that exact, inarticulable moment.
posted by klangklangston at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2008

I kind of agree with klangklangston here. I'm partial to the kind of music you specify here, and if pressed, I'd say I was looking to it for the same kind of psychological release that you mention. Yet, I'd have a hard time recommending tracks that would hit you in the very same way that they hit me.

Having got that out of the way, some songs that might fit the bill:

Daturah, Shoal.
Surface of Eceon, The Open Sea.
Red Sparowes, The Sixth Extinction [...]
Jakob, Oran Mor.
Flying Saucer Attack, In the Light of Time.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:43 PM on October 6, 2008