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FFFFFARGH THIS FUCKING MUSIC... MY MIND!

Started by alan nagsworth, June 17, 2012, 05:58:05 PM

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alan nagsworth

There's a time and a place for music that is subdued, unchallenging, laid back and lovely. That music is pretty good I guess, but right now after five pints of cider, a whiff of skunk and a Sunday roast to feed the 5000, I don't give a fuck about that music!

This is a thread for music that provokes a response. This is a thread for music that challenges the listener's preconceptions about a genre, a style or just the very nature of human beings creating art in general. Neville Chamberlain, the chair recognises your worthwhile contributions to this esteemed music forum! Arise, good sir, and enlighten us. Ditto Don_Preston, ditto Johnny Yesno and ditto NoSleep!

The main reason I started this thread is to bring attention to a Norwegian band called Årabrot. Quite truthfully some of the most challenging and aggressive "true" metal I have heard in fucking forever. Lee Van Cleef and other metalheads should check them out, for sure. I honestly don't give a flying turd about bands like Mastodon any more. Excluding their first album, they are a band that no longer bring into question the boundaries and borders of what hard rock is meant to sound like. They are piss-weak in my eyes, and bands like Årabrot are the future of truly raw and aggressive music, each and every song holding a core sensibility but each sounding heavier and more hostile than the last simply because they are an uncompromising and unstoppable force. I'd probably compare them most of all to bands like Melvins and Iron Monkey, both extremely aggressive and unflinching bands of raw power and prowess, but they take a lot from black metal and hardcore punk at the same time. I think it's a crime that Mastodon are recognised as modern pioneers of metal because of how fucking wacky (in other words, deeply uninteresting) they are, and stuff like this is sorely overlooked. The production will immediately remind the listener of Big Black and the other works of Steve Albini. The music is feral and fucking nasty. Every song is foaming at the mouth. LOUD.

The more I think about why I made this thread, the more I slowly realise just how quintessential raw noise manipulation and feedback is in solidifying the foundations of brutal and challenging music. Quite simply, it is frayed around the edges and completely shameless about it. That means a fucking great deal to me. If I were to reference another genre, I'd hasten to mention hip hop, and groups like dälek who have created a wild beast of hip hop and pure distorted noise that is unlike anything else I have ever heard. Naturally, this all draws great inspiration from such pioneering acts as This Heat, Throbbing Gristle and suchforth in that it never aspires to be anything else, simply because it doesn't need to. As a singular entity, bands like this have paved the way not for countless clones of the original sound, but for more artists to stand up and be noticed for their unflinching approach to making incredible rackets that actually make you think.

I guess I'm rambling wildly into the void now, but noise rock/hiphop/anything is some of the most unpretentious and aggressive music in existence, and I don't ever want the world to forget the importance of such stuff. There are so many bands throughout the years who have never ceased to exist on their own wavelength regardless of their fanbase's expectations (and Steve Albini is one of the most prominent players in keeping that dream alive today) and I want this thread to bring as much attention to that side of music as possible.

The Fall. Melvins. Captain Beefheart. Mr. Bungle. Dead Kennedys. dälek. Frank Zappa. Årabrot. Oneida. Magma. The Locust. Aphex Twin. The Residents. This Heat. Cardiacs. Crass. The list goes on and on...

BRING OUT YER DEAD!!

:-/

BlodwynPig


gabrielconroy

I just checked out dälek - you might like MF DOOM and Anti-Pop Consortium.

I guess if you like Aphex Twin you've heard the Steinvord stuff, which lots of people are assuming is Mr James under a pseudonym. A lot of Autechre's stuff is very inventive and challenging, if of a different tone to Aphex's stuff.


Subtle Mocking

If we're talking hip-hop, take a look at Death Grips. Amazing album released a few months ago, another album coming in Autumn. Making a lot of other hip-hop look piss-weak in comparison. The Money Store is a real attack on the senses, and your perceptions of rap music.

Death Grips - Hacker

Don_Preston

Well I'll add a few of my own favourite stoned listening joys. Apologies for a few Youtube links also.

Firstly, Acid Mothers Temple. Modern Japanese Noisy Psych Rock who release umpteen albums a year. For me, my favourite period are the live albums from 2001, The Day Before The Sky Fell In and especially Live in Japan. It also boasted my nomination for the sexiest female musician - the beer swillin', cigarette smokin' (as listed on the sleeve notes) synth player with a penchant for Degeneration-X jerseys, Cotton Casino.

La Novia - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IlBe9GqXU&feature=related

As you mention This Heat, I'll have to point you in the Direction of The Art Bears. They formed with the singer, guitarist and drummer from Henry Cow, but trimmed the song lengths to that of the traditional pop song, making a very unusual Avant/Art-Pop sound. Completely different to the pop songs of Yes and Genesis released in the early 1980s, they in no way fell victim to the sheer triteness, or studio production, of these groups. Instead there are time changes, Socialist themes conveyed through allusions to Medieval folklore. The BBC described reviewed them with "Carefully wrought dissonances, angular folk tunes, sudden shifts in dynamics, dense layers of spectral drones, slabs of noise, topped off with Dagmar's strange, elastic Sprechstimme." I prefer calling Dagmar Krause a Teutonic banshee. Just try not to blanch while listening to them.

Freedom - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYRO5T1voLE&feature=related

Goldentony

I'm going to recommend the album that this song came from.

Prurient - Cocaine Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kIMhSD5r8

I remember
Spoiler alert
downloading
[close]
the original cassette rip of this record many fucking moons ago after hearing about this chap via a local show he played that wound up becoming double booked with a bunch of crust punk. So you had a near half dayer of this guy, Emil Beaulieau and Vitamin X.

Anyway - this record blew me the fuck away. So much of what I was hearing from him at the time was regular old angry feedback with angry roared vocals and general angry angry behaviour. Then up pops this. The entire thing (and i'm talking about the original cassette here which only had two tracks on, as far as i'm aware) sounds like it's coming from another world. The music behind the above track, which for all I know could be a sample or anything, is just so beyond me. A haunting other dimension organ with demonic, wet vocals delivered over the top of it surrounded in a horrible, mysterious haze.

One of my favourite records.

This leads me to this -

Vegas Martyrs - The Male Poison - Diamond

Same guy plays, I think, guitar in this band. So much of how terrifying and amazing this band is is the way it's recorded. So much of this is just an impenetrable wall of chaos.

The Masked Unit

Another vote for Death Grips here, but I prefer their first album/mixtape Exmilitary. Really aggresive, hard shit.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: gabrielconroy on June 17, 2012, 06:18:27 PM
I just checked out dälek - you might like MF DOOM and Anti-Pop Consortium.

I guess if you like Aphex Twin you've heard the Steinvord stuff, which lots of people are assuming is Mr James under a pseudonym. A lot of Autechre's stuff is very inventive and challenging, if of a different tone to Aphex's stuff.

Yeah man, already a big fan of DOOM and APC, in fact only this week I was revisiting Arrhythmia and remembering how amazing it is. Not so much a big fan of Steinvord if I'm honest, it definitely doesn't sound like Richard James to me, I found it quite boring and generic by comparison to stuff like The Tuss and The Doubtful Guest. TDG's music is properly terrifying sometimes, the Acid Sauna EP is a beast of a record.

Quote from: Goldentony on June 17, 2012, 09:27:46 PM
Prurient - Cocaine Death

Vegas Martyrs - The Male Poison - Diamond

Not so much an immediate fan of Prurient but that Vegas Martyrs stuff is ace, nice one!

I reckon you might like The Mentally Ill, I stumbled on them whilst browsing through compilations of the filthiest hardcore crusty shit I could find. Their album Gacy's Place: The Undiscovered Corpses is typically gruesome but, again, it's the sound of the recording that makes it what it is. The sense of humour is just as base as the explicit lyrics, which are just as base as the fuck-awful dying wasp guitar sound buzzing your cheeks off and the singer that sounds like he's yelling into your toilet. It's just fucking ridiculously unapologetically hilariously hostile and ugly. Great guys.

Gacy's Place

Split Crotch Straight Jacket

Famous Mortimer

#9
The first Suicide album is pretty extraordinary and fits this thread to a tee. I remember the "Rebellious Jukebox" section of Melody Maker had Steve Albini on it once, and he picked "Frankie Teardrop" from this album. His explanation was "when I had this album on was the only time my mother asked me if I was on drugs".

I can't remember the name of the song, but there's a Whitehouse video which is just the "band" against a white background making a horrific racket.

For sheer mind melting, I always quite liked Jandek's spoken word albums. There's one which has a 30-minute solo voice track, which just goes on...and on...it's incredibly odd and just accumulates oddness. Well worth at least one listen.

Goldentony

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on June 18, 2012, 08:48:35 AM
I can't remember the name of the song, but there's a Whitehouse video which is just the "band" against a white background making a horrific racket.

That'll be this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRbWvLKWS1k&feature=related


Lee Van Cleef

I'll have to check out Årabrot.   TBH I'm going off a lot of metal of late, I'm not entirely sure why, but I tend to be withdrawing to the stalwarts (in my eyes) and sometimes rediscovering bands that I long since lost touch with.  With that said... I struggle to reconcile your representation of Mastodon with mine.  I don't think I've ever seen (aside from the first album) as a band on the fringes, pushing the boundaries of things, rather a band that seeks to integrate their brand of sludge metal into prog rock's more expressive form.

Now to the topic at hand...

I'm suddenly reminded of LeftHandedDecision's final untitled track on the 'Instinct & Emotion' album.  It amounts to a distorted, slowed down presentation of Mel C's 'Never Be the Same Again'.  I've mentioned it before on this forum, but it really fucked with my head when I first heard it, I couldn't not pay it attention.... Something about the bleak nature of it all really struck me.

Dirty Boy

#13
I think most of what i would have suggested has already been mentioned, but, ummmmm...Naked City? Are you into jazz/noise Nags?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iGBGRdHWUI

The first album in full
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0xcf-P7FBk

Cows are good. Might be a shoo-in if you like Melvins.They used to share a bass player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J10i_wC_24k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdCEN2UDEc8

Foetus can be noisy, but his more interesting stuff isn't really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvR-reh8NJc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAaRxU6_VRM

Boredoms!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-9bXc-WM4Q

Neville will most likely mention  Pigment Vehicle when he wakes up. They're good too.

Quote from: GaspardW on June 17, 2012, 06:20:04 PM
Nurse With Wound.

More avant-garde-sound-collage than noise rock/metal i'd say but still admirably unhinged at times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjJXKfRjAjs&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLF65F699D3762E031

This album scrambled my brain when i first heard it as an impressionable teenager.

Brundle-Fly

I find this track gives my id a good floss.

GAE BOLG  AND THE CHURCH OF FAND -  LA VEUVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AWaLz2WlPI&feature=related

and I rinse with this.

RENALDO AND THE LOAF - OW STEW THE RED SHOE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntDmOsM0jZM&feature=related

Noodle Lizard

You wouldn't believe it from looking at these five model-like, stylish Japanese goons, or their fanbase, which is predominantly comprised of squealing weeaboo girls, but Dir en grey have made some of the most confusingly good music there is, in my opinion - accompanied by equally strange live performances (even now that they've dropped the huge visual aspects that made them famous).  A lot of people find them quite hard to get into - but they're great.  Anyone who likes a bit of Melvins or Bungle, the occasional bit of doomy/droney stuff and a few traditional extreme elements should give them a shot.

Try listening to The Blossoming Beelzebub, Reiketsu Nariseba or Stuck Man for examples of the current stuff, or songs like Deity or Myaku from their earlier days.

Noodle Lizard


gabrielconroy

Someone played this to me the other day, and I thought of this thread. So here I am:

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

alan nagsworth

Quote from: gabrielconroy on June 21, 2012, 02:05:39 PM
Someone played this to me the other day, and I thought of this thread. So here I am:

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

This is great. There's not a lot of batshit mental math grind stuff that I enjoy without it losing its sense of humour and becoming way too technical, but I do like this. The vocals are excellent. Have you ever heard The Red Chord? Their album Dreaming In Dog Years is a right piece o' work, but it's closer to technical death metal than grindcore, even though there are elemts of grind splattered through it, Like A Train Through A Pigeon as their song title suggests.

Sixteen Bit Fingerprint

You may also enjoy Ion Dissonance:

101101110110001

I suppose this is as good a time as any to plug The Locust, quite simply one of the greatest bands I've ever heard. Taking as much from the powerviolence/grindcore scenes as they do from bonkers new wave ideologies of bands like Devo, the music is typically uncompromising, but I also find it extremely good fun. It's menacing but it's playful with it, creating some kind of Burroughs-esque alternate reality of society's ills portrayed through electronic evil and sugar-coated pleasure. Pure punch-your-own-face-in-and-claw-at-the-sky music.

The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In his Office

Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better

Live From The Russian Compound


sirhenry

Metal Machine Music has long been seen as one of the more 'challenging' pieces of music. I'm not a big fan, but once I converted it to 8bit, I fell in love with it.[nb]though I may be the only person on the planet who even likes it[/nb]

So, Midi Machine Music Part 1

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: sirhenry on June 21, 2012, 05:22:57 PM
Metal Machine Music has long been seen as one of the more 'challenging' pieces of music. I'm not a big fan, but once I converted it to 8bit, I fell in love with it.[nb]though I may be the only person on the planet who even likes it[/nb]

So, Midi Machine Music Part 1
It's how Lou would have done it, had he had the technology

Neville Chamberlain

It's taken me a while to respond to this thread, especially with such a name-check in the opening post!, but here's something I don't think I've seen mentioned...

The Flying Luttenbachers

Absoluyely fecking marvellous band!

Neville Chamberlain

#22
The Ex - Embarrassment

Splatterpink - Linfa Grezza

HC Andersen - Pirvin Gane

Hellworms - Rat Brains on Crack

And a band I've seen in the Nottingham/Derby area a few times...Alright the Captain

Jazzcore fest

This was posted a while back by, I think, NoSleep, but I reckon it's worth putting up again...absolutely fucking beautiful...Hail - Destroyer

Noodle Lizard

The Norwegian band 'Shining' (not the silly black metal one from Sweden) opened with this when I saw them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPCEADNz74

Confused people greatly (nobody had come to see them).

Cagey Joe

sirhenry, that 8-bit MMM is fun, good job. I recommend Peter Brotzmann's Machine Gun, a nice entry into jazz for noise fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWiO5SFoh8g

Heavy brass.

gabrielconroy

Don't know how I hadn't come across this guy before, but anyway - just watched this video (installation) and it's incredible. Made the hairs on my arms stand on end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omDK2Cm2mwo&feature=player_embedded

And this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnai_KrK4Ko&feature=related



kngen

Quote from: alan nagsworth on June 21, 2012, 05:00:03 PM
I suppose this is as good a time as any to plug The Locust, quite simply one of the greatest bands I've ever heard. Taking as much from the powerviolence/grindcore scenes as they do from bonkers new wave ideologies of bands like Devo, the music is typically uncompromising, but I also find it extremely good fun. It's menacing but it's playful with it, creating some kind of Burroughs-esque alternate reality of society's ills portrayed through electronic evil and sugar-coated pleasure. Pure punch-your-own-face-in-and-claw-at-the-sky music.

The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In his Office

Anything Jesus Does I Can Do Better

Live From The Russian Compound

Discordance Axis are the one band I always cite as totally transcending their grindcore background - the guitarist was some kind of savant whose off-the-wall technique was almost impossible to replicate. Except he got tinnitus, and a stand-in had to fill in for him on their Japanese tour, and had the unenviable task of learning the songs. The 'tablature' he was given to help him looks like those weird Stockhausen scores that are more art than sheet music.

Anyway, Discordance Axis - Ikaruga (great video, too)

When it comes to power violence, the original and still the best:

Crossed Out - Internal

... and here's a slowie to end the night.

Man Is The Bastard - The Arena


Necrophagism

http://southwarknoise.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/part-6-october-14th-2009-with-mikko.html - No embed I'm afraid. A one Mikko Aspa, provider of vocals for Deathspell Omega and creator of various grind (porno or otherwise), noise, vomitus etc. recordings, did us all a mischief by offering an anthology of nasty shit via the equipment of some fuckers in Southwark. Back in the day.