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March 18, 2012 7:20 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for weird-ass music.

As opposed to weird ass-music, which I can make on my own after a trip to Taco Bell.

I'm looking for excellent examples of avant-garde/experimental rock to jam out non-melodically to. The holy trinity in my head of this is:

- The Beatles' "Revolution 9"
- Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals..."
- The Mothers of Invention's "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet"

with a special shout-out to the second half of Blur's "Bugman" and the marathon of endurance that is Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music."

The Pandoras and Slackers of the world aren't really geared for this type of exploration, I've found. What else would I like in this vein?
posted by Golfhaus to Media & Arts (53 answers total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
Sounds like you need to spend some quality time with Einstürzende Neubauten. There's an enormous body of work, so you can go from when they were young punkers who thought the right way to put a pop song together was to climb into an empty water tower and start banging on things, to their later albums, which involve actual lovely melodies (while never straying from their banging-on-things roots).
posted by feckless at 7:26 PM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


Some of Moondog's stuff and the Flaming Lips come to mind, but they might be obvious suggestions.
posted by piedmont at 7:29 PM on March 18, 2012


Aphex Twin: Girl Boy Song
Brian Eno: King's Lead Hat, Papa Negro Blowtorch, The True Wheel
Brian Eno & David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Eprhyme: The Impossible Dream
Kate Bush: Waking the Witch
Laurie Anderson: Let X=X, Sweaters
Minty: U Got It
Pere Ubu: anything, really
Sufjan Stevens: Ya Leil
Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping
Von Sudenfed: Fledermaus Can't Get Enough
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 7:31 PM on March 18, 2012


Jandek. more on Jandek on Wikipedia.
posted by radiosilents at 7:32 PM on March 18, 2012 [5 favorites]


Mr. Bungle esp. Disco Volante
posted by jcrbuzz at 7:33 PM on March 18, 2012


Best answer: How about Miles Davis, On the Corner?
posted by brennen at 7:34 PM on March 18, 2012




Magma (wiki)
posted by phrontist at 7:38 PM on March 18, 2012






The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
posted by smorange at 7:49 PM on March 18, 2012


Boredoms. The entire catalog, but maybe start with Super AE?
posted by mr_roboto at 8:05 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (classical, not rock, but contains collage-snippets of over 20 different pieces)
posted by costanza at 8:06 PM on March 18, 2012


Early Severed Heads, particularly 'Since The Accident'.

Start with Gashing The Old Mae West.
posted by pompomtom at 8:08 PM on March 18, 2012


Seconding Einstürzende Neubauten. Throbbing Gristle (and maybe some of the CarterTutti and Chris & Cosey offshoots of TG, but some of it might be too musical for you). Negativland's "Escape From Noise". All staples of my weird-ass music phase.
posted by bedhead at 8:15 PM on March 18, 2012


When you are done with the Swans catalog come back to me. The Swans are good weird-ass music.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:26 PM on March 18, 2012




Don't forget radio stations as a source for strange music:

These stations are good starting places.

WFMU: http://wfmu.org/wfmu.pls
WZBC: http://wzbc.org/listen.html
posted by pknodle at 8:33 PM on March 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Liars - pretty much anything off of They Were Wrong, so We Drowned, but for the musique concrete thing you're going with, you'd want "Read the Book that Wrote Itself". As a sampler of the other stuff on that album, here's Broken Witch and We Fenced Other Gardens with the Bones of Our Own (the first minute or so is not in the album track). The Liar's ouvre should generally be pretty rich vein for you mine.
Aa - pretty much anything off gAame, but here's Death Mask/Best of Seven
Stone Roses - "The Foz" (may be difficult to find, but probably not on iTunes. It's a hidden track, #96, on the cd)
Beatles - "You Know my Name, Look up the Number"; I think the version on the Anthology is significantly longer and more bizarre than other versions.
The Beta Band - Monolith. A number of other tracks on the Three EPs are fairly weird; even the ones with a beat and normal instrumentation are a bit...off.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The first track off F#A#8, but a number of their stuff is odd and has "found" audio.

This is all just musique concrete stuff though - there's whole other things that have viable categorizations to them, like "drone" or whatever that are plenty weird and tests of most people's endurance. If you want some drone recs, I can give those too.
posted by LionIndex at 8:35 PM on March 18, 2012


This is my favorite genre. You probably won't be able to find all of these, but:

Merzbow
Acid Mothers Temple
Nurse With Wound
Illusion of Safety
Planet Size: Clit
Lockweld
The Hafler Trio
Deutsch Nepal
Filthmilk
Zoviet France
Zipper Spy
Bruce Anderson
Turk Knifes Pope
Xome
Sunn O)))
Radiosonde
Rubber O Cement
Sleeping With The Earth
Petit Mal
John Bischoff
The Bran (another plight of medic's...) pos
posted by greasepig at 8:35 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


Weird in a different way: Glenn Branca, Symphony #3
posted by LionIndex at 8:43 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


You may be interested in Gamelan music.
posted by outlaw of averages at 8:51 PM on March 18, 2012


Try the shibusashirazu orchestra. It's the weirdest of the weird. this is fairly representative.
posted by paultopia at 9:13 PM on March 18, 2012


How has no one said the Residents yet? Eskimo is a seriously weird-ass album.

also ...
Caroliner Rainbow
Captain Beefheart
Negativland
People Like Us
Art of Noise
Ken Nordine
posted by chbrooks at 9:13 PM on March 18, 2012


Happy the Man. Vert. Cardiacs.
posted by jet_silver at 9:19 PM on March 18, 2012


Pierre Henry?
posted by ODiV at 9:27 PM on March 18, 2012


Caetano Veloso - Araça Azul
John Cale - Sun Blindness Music
AMM - AMMMusic
posted by hydrophonic at 9:28 PM on March 18, 2012


Try things off 8 Armed Monkey, a collaboration between Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto from King Crimson and Finnish avant-garde accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen.

(sample)

You may also find Pohjonen's other stuff germane.
posted by Nomyte at 9:28 PM on March 18, 2012


OP, that Blur song you linked to quotes Sun Ra. He's got a deep deep catalog; AskMe has recommendations.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:52 PM on March 18, 2012


Tod Machover's operatic version of Philip Dick's Valis
posted by Seamus at 11:11 PM on March 18, 2012


Best answer: Paranoimia (The Art of Noise)
Love's Secret Domain (Coil)
Endless Summer (Fennesz)
No More Mosquitoes (Four Tet)
See 'em (Hifana)
False Awakenings (Lucid Dreams)
Roses and Teeth for Ludwig Wittegenstein (Matmos)
Anythign at all by Weevie Stonder
Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy, and Peas (Terry S. Taylor)
We're Pastie to be Grill You (The Orb)
posted by aubilenon at 11:37 PM on March 18, 2012


From the same era of Floyd/Zappa/Beatles, I'd add-

Henry Cow/Fred Frith
Soft Machine
Captain Beefheart
Red Krayola
The Fugs
Incredible String Band

For the next wave of 70s - 80s stuff including art punk, industrial, early noise-rock, no-wave, etc. I'd hit up the Nurse With Wound list. Some personal favorites:
Throbbing Gristle
Family Fodder
Popul Vuh
Chrome
Material
Severed Heads
The Residents
Butthole Surfers
Pere Ubu

On the tail end of that wave, and into 90s/00s:
Boredoms
Half Japanese
Sun City Girls
Caroliner
Jim O'Rourke
Flying Luttenbachers
Quintron
Melt Banana

But now neo-psych revival has permeated pop, folk, and even hip-hop a bit - beginning with stuff like Animal Collective, Of Montreal; now you hear trippy sounds and unconventional instrumentation in almost any alt/indie band.
posted by p3t3 at 12:07 AM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


Would it be out of line to say you might like the music I'm making? I won't self-link, but if you memail me I'll point you to it.
posted by squidlarkin at 1:04 AM on March 19, 2012




The Books! So weird. So good.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:03 AM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


There was a really good AskMe looking for music with no beat that might have some good suggestions in it.
posted by saladin at 5:04 AM on March 19, 2012


Check out the Paper Chase.
posted by mmmbacon at 5:44 AM on March 19, 2012


Music that'll make your ass weird (I'm just going to stick with rock for now):

- Goblin, Suspiria Theme is a prog-rock-nightmare incarnate
- Anything by Captain Beefheart, but especially Moody Liz (take 8)
- Blissful Krautrock from Can
- A bit further off the scale, The Boredoms; Lightning Bolt; Zu

I could go on indefinitely
posted by 0bvious at 7:11 AM on March 19, 2012


You need some Antennas Erupt in your life.
posted by baniak at 7:40 AM on March 19, 2012


tUnE-yArDs, dude.
posted by dlugoczaj at 8:13 AM on March 19, 2012 [2 favorites]


Goldfrapp- Felt Mountain or
Shalabi Effect- Skin job
posted by rmless at 8:45 AM on March 19, 2012


Give Ozric Tentacles a go, specifically the song Sploosh.....
posted by guy72277 at 9:11 AM on March 19, 2012


This might not quite fit what you're looking for but War Ich Nicht Immer Ein Gutter Jun by Pigface definitely qualifies as weird-ass music in my mind.
posted by Jacob G at 9:45 AM on March 19, 2012


Dead C.

Keiji Haino

Seconding AMM

Musica Elettronica Viva
posted by porn in the woods at 10:10 AM on March 19, 2012


Maybe some Sigur Ros?
posted by chrisulonic at 11:05 AM on March 19, 2012


This previous question has lots of suggestions for extremely abrasive music.
posted by hydrophonic at 12:25 PM on March 19, 2012


Death in June, The Microphones, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Please Inform the Captain This is a Hijack, Pygmy Lush, Pg.99, City of Caterpillar, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Fucked Up!, Fall of Efrafa, Spiritualized, The Flaming Lips, Shellac, Grails...
posted by anoirmarie at 1:28 PM on March 19, 2012


There's a lot of goodness mentioned so far, the only other things I can think of are Jackie-O Motherfucker, Sunburned Hand of Man, Ruins and Arab on Radar.
posted by Kattullus at 2:28 PM on March 19, 2012


Eugene Chadbourne
posted by AJaffe at 3:09 PM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


I would like to nominate Idiot Flesh for the hard-rocking difficult-listening officemate-insanifyer of choice!
posted by Rube R. Nekker at 4:20 PM on March 19, 2012


Deerhoof, deerhoof and more deerhoof.
posted by umbú at 7:10 PM on March 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


Adam Green
Super Furry Animals
Tim and Eric
posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:12 PM on March 20, 2012



posted by Ralph at 9:09 PM on March 24, 2012


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