Head fux - Music that weirds you out

[alan nagsworth]

Stuff you love which never fails to leave you feeling distant, disconnected and morbidly intrigued. Has to be stuff you love obviously, otherwise it'd just be "this song is well random, it's shit but it spins me out lol".

Liars
Such a fantastic band, but for me their highlight is the incredible 'Drum's Not Dead' album. From what I can gather, the album is a conceptual tribute to the beauty of percussion (on this record, two of the three members are mainly drumming) mixed in with a story about having a heart attack - the drum being the heart. It's very heavy in percussion for the most part, and it's such a thick, droning slur, I find it easy to lose myself in it.

Nevertheless, it's really quite an oddity and the off-kilter vocals and imperfect drumming (it sounds like it was done in one sketchy-as-fuck take after much rehearsing, even though it's a chunky slab of heavily-produced genius) are a merit to the beauty of the whole thing. I'm not gonna upload a track or post a video for this, as it needs to be listened to in one go. If you like it, buy the album as it comes with a DVD featuring three home-made videos that each play alongside the entire album. The first video is surreal as fuck and so ridiculous, it's superb!

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Someone on here has once said that Web Of Mimicry was a record label for Trey Spruance's friends that never get listened to. What an insult! It's a great label... SGM are one of the most disturbing bands I've ever heard. They sound like a rock n' roll rendition of 17th century unanaesthetised surgery, scraping away at your bones and nerves with bent, rusty saws. It's heavy as fuck in places, and in other places it's avant-garde that nestles in your soul like a ghost sighting - you never quite forget what you witnessed. A lot of their percussion is home-made, and it shows with the way that it clanks and crashes around awkwardly. The guitars often sound metallic but at the same time they're so thick and sludgy... to describe it sounds like a total mess but to hear it is, well... a mess, but not in the way you're thinking. It rips out your heart and shakes the very core of your soul. And you should see the outfits they wear...

Here's a couple of tracks, YouTube stylee:
Sleep Is Wrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y45d4fQOrKg

Ambugaton (Live) - this song blow my balls off. Intense!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stQOll7LDTc

[Famous Mortimer]

The long instrumental track on the "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada" EP by Godpseed You Black Emperor. I was listening to it on a long, argument-filled car journey and by the time the song had finished I'd become convinced that the driver was going to crash deliberately. Never listened to it again.

[trotsky assortment]

For reasons, I've never understood, the end part of Julian Cope's 'Metranil Vavin' makes me feel weird.  Must be the detached way that woman says 'that's nice...'

[Johnny Townmouse]

Throbbing Gristle 'Hamburger Lady' and 'Very Friendly'
Not good music to listen to prior to beddy-byes time.

[buttgammon]

I heard Tamphex (Hedphuq Mix) by Aphex Twin for the first time in ages last night and it really freaked me out. The combination of cracy, nightmarish beats and the tampon advert sample is weird and terrifying. It's definitely not the only Aphex Twin track which could be included in this thread either.

[The Boston Crab]

The entire album 'Pop' by Gas.

It's very textural ambient, melodic without having any tune at all. Gradually though, it becomes so 'other' that I find it quite uncomfortable. I feel it's not really music, just gratifying tones...hard to describe. It's quite an existential angst in fact. I find it quite addictive though, at the same time, which also freaks me out on occasion.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The end track on purlieu's album. Which you could call persistently uncomfortable ambient music. Makes a change from the assortment of tinkly indian bell sounds and whale noises I have elsewhere in my collection.

[DanRev]

All that shit they write about in Wire magazine and give away with their CDs that I pretend to like.

[brand_new_modems]

The entire album 'Pop' by Gas.

It's very textural ambient, melodic without having any tune at all. Gradually though, it becomes so 'other' that I find it quite uncomfortable. I feel it's not really music, just gratifying tones...hard to describe. It's quite an existential angst in fact. I find it quite addictive though, at the same time, which also freaks me out on occasion.

but pop is joyous! all blissed out smeared loveliness, except for the last track which is like slightly more THIS IS SERIOUS NOW HERE WITH THE 4/4 BEAT. zauberberg is kind of sinister in parts but it's not 'weird'ing sinister, i don't know, courses 4 horses etc etc

i find certain melodies can make me feel uneasy, usually ones which are intentionally quirky or have a tendency to stick in your head and be repeated over and over. i cant fucking stand certain tunes from telly i remember as a kid because it reminds me of that prepubescent existential angst being unable to sleep on a sunday night before school with the theme tune from 'mona the vampire' on an endless loop in ones head. music like that just begs the question as to why it was made

[tom_exorcisto]

Yes I also found 'Pop' to be one of the loveliest records ever, certainly didn't weird me out or fux my head. For that kinda thing I'd recommend 'Twin Infinitives' by Royal Trux, then maybe move on to more avant garde recordings... perhaps 'La Voyage' by Pierre Henry? Weirdness.

Steer well clear of 'The Weirdness' though.

[The Boston Crab]

This sounds like a load of wank but it's the only way I can describe it. I've just listened to 'Pop' again and I got the same angst hit...I realised what it is.

The first four tracks are fucking gorgeous, sounds almost beyond form and structure, just aesthetically pleasing noise, stripped of context or meaning. This kind of freaks me out in itself, makes me question what the process of listening to music actually IS...and WHY it's enjoyable. Partway through, I stop worrying about it and just succumb to the ringing throb. It seems that my brain has adapted to the simple idea of aural pleasure in a very open and newly receptive way. Then track five seeps in and the palette shifts slightly. I'm not sure how exactly but there's a definite sense of dread. It's almost as if my brain, now slightly more attuned to the effects that sound can produce in and of itself, is being altered on a quite subconscious level. Then tracks six and seven build upon that sense of unease and I often find myself turning it off.

A lot of ambient music gives me similar shudders though, now I think about it. I'm not sure why but I seriously dread the idea of aural soma. I can't bear the idea of music separate from the personality who created it. It disturbs me on a very basic existential level. I guess I'm just not a chill-out kind of guy either. I hate the idea of sitting around, 'relaxing'. It seems like a waste of my life. I much prefer to fill my time with meaningless distractions and futile activities, when I'm not in the company of others. Maybe I'm just conditioned to be over-stimulated.

[brand_new_modems]

embrace it my friend, you're experiencing a whole new means of connecting emotionally to recorded sound, JUMP IN AND NEVER LOOK BACK. meself i don't understand it when people say 'hey, this stuff you're listening to is nice and chilled' or 'relaxing' or whatever. william basinski isn't relaxing, it is totally existential, evocative, whatever, i get my kicks from the aural soma, when i was a kid i used to have trouble sleeping (nightmares etc) so my mum got a cassette recording of the inside of a womb to induce sleep, the thing was copied over and over and gradually distorted and the tapes ended up degraded before a new copy was made and so it became this whole thing unto itself, accumulating sounds from the environment (we didnt have a dual tape deck, just point these 2 knackered GHETTO BLASTERS at each other), this whole fog of otherwordly noise bathed me in sleep for the first 8 or so years of my life and it was the deepest shit ever (im great at parties)

to add to my comment about certain melodies, ones like the 'chasing pavements' chorus by adele completely put me on edge, just the way it goes OR should I just KEEP chasING Pavemeeeennts. it's wholly unpleasant, nausea inducing, the musical equivalent of an OCD tick

[alan nagsworth]

Ha, that's a good spin on the concept, b_n_m. I definitely get a sense of unease from some pop music. Dancing Queen by ABBA is pretty fucked up... the low notes of the chick singing when she goes "you're in the mood for a daaance" really makes my face purse up. There's a seriously sinister undertone in ABBA's music. That other tune they did, Lay All Your Love On Me, the whole tone of it is so menacing, it scares the hell outta me. It makes me think of some dramatic murder scene from a 70s flick or something. ABBA is anything but nice pop music, it's genuinely frightening.

[sapphic and plunder]

Mr Bungle's first album.  It seems to have some kind of evil weaved through each and every bar.  Every time I've played it, something goes horribly wrong later that day.  I'd love to hear it again some day but as I now have a wife and son, I just can't take the risk.  I'll save it for the funeral.