I’m looking for some incidental music for a play that is set in an insane asylum. (actually in an person’s dream)
I want some music (preferably orchestral or orchestral-ish, trios quartets) Vocals not in English OK. Stuff that sounds nightmarish, or insane. Maybe solo bassoon or cello?
Stuff that Schoenberg would flinch at and say “Dude! That’s not music!”
Bonus question, I remember a piece back in my college days (early 80’s) and the listening test for it. It was an orchestra, the work about Hiroshima and I remember that my way to remember the work was that the string section sounded sometimes like a squeaky screen door. But now I don’t remember the title of that. That would be a good piece.
Any suggestions?
Have you ever heard of the band Stalaggh? They have an, um, unusual oeuvre.
Stalaggh - Project Misanthropia; skip ahead to about 5:50 if you want to hear some actual guitar and drums in there as well. There’s more, but that’s the first bit of it.
The same group also released an album (just the one so far) as Gulaggh called Vorkuta that features screaming, wailing & caterwauling from the residents of a children’s mental hospital as vocals. Good times!
Tom Waits has some short instrumentals that are very bizarre in a different way from the classical repertory listed so far. Try “Knife Chase” or “Bride of Rain Dog.” The nonvocal passages snipped from “Hell Broke Luce” would be very effective as well.
Hell, just set the whole thing to “God’s Away on Business.”
Katzenjammer is an all-female group that has some cuts that outweird the inestimable Mr. Waits. Try “Demon Kitty Rag” or “Soviet Trumpeter.”
Not orchestral, but instrumental, Animals As Leaders sounds like the soundtrack to an insane asylum.
Virtuoso playing, nauseating atonal-chromatic melodies, and weird time signatures and polyrhythms so deep that “Who can find the one [beat] first?” is a game I play with my friends when a new song comes out.
Not orchestral, but listen to Eno’s Nerve Net, there are some tracks on that that would make for a good crazy dream soundtrack: Wire Shock, My Squelchy Life, What Actually Happened. I have always liked In Dark Trees from Another Green World, but it is a bit short.
Not being a jerk (because you might remember we’re both from the same small town in Oklahoma and live in the same city now, so you’re cool in my book!), but I’m really wondering: are you looking for music that’s in the public domain, or are you willing/able to go through the procedure to secure the rights to use whatever music you end up deciding on? Because we could name all the songs in the world, but to use it in a public performance without permission isn’t a good idea.
So let us know if you’re looking for something pre-1924-ish that you can use without hassle, or if anything is game because you’ll be going through the right channels, and that’ll help us suggest appropriate things.
You want some solo bassoon? Try Gubaidulina’s concerto for bassoon and low strings. Here’s a link to the first movement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMiTj4xyJfM. It starts out more weird and disjointed than scary but it gets wilder later on. There are four more movements so take your pick :D.
As a bonus, you get a strange (and totally unrelated) video.
