I recently got flooded with recommendations of some good meat and potato bands (Queens of the Stoneage mmmmm) but personally I can only do with so much standard music (even excellently made stuff.) Unfortunately, I dislike the torture of listening to the radio and the 99% of crud to find the 1 or 2 interesting good bands–let alone wierd ones.
Just to cut things down:
Odd lyrics or profanity isn’t an original musical sound
Neither is dressing weird
The music is still very good
You play some for someone–who has publicly stated seeing a live performance where the band members put coke bottles in each other’s anusses–and they still look at you like you must be insane to like such stuff
To give some examples (unfortunately mostly Japanese):
The Eccentric Opera
The Tiger Lillies
Sentimental Bus (before they became mainstream–which weirded me out)
Geinou Yamashirogumi
Downy
Cirque du Soleil – Alegria and Mystere
Crash Worship – Espontaneo
Queen (who got famous regardless)
J.A. Seazer
Which appears to be my entire catalogue (that I’ve had to subsit on for 25 years! :mad: ) But I have to assume there are more out there besides Japan.
He’s not really a band, but Glenn Branca was pretty original. Most of the no wave movement was experimental for experiment’s sake, and some of it worked. He has more listenable compositions than most.
The Boredoms are pretty much the strangest sounding band I have ever heard. Some of their stuff is pretty noise oriented, but sometimes they are geniuses. The two mp3’s at the link are really quite good.
The problem is, what you think might be listenable and original, may be garbage to other people. But, if you can listen to Crash Worship, you may be able to listen to either of these two. Branca’s first symphony (from 1981) makes Crash Worship seem like they are not really hitting those drums hard enough =). If you like these two, maybe I could suggest more, but I do not want to bore you with a big list of bands that does not suit your taste.
Well, there’s Can, possibly the most relevant of the Krautrock bands. Man, if listening to Tago Mago doesn’t make you feel all weirded out, I don’t know what will. Ege Bamyasi and Future Days are also very good, and just a tiny little bit less weird.
For another kind of weird, you can consider King Crimson, and pick something like Starless and Bible Black, or, for something more modern, Trakattack. Or you might want to go for slightly more normal and consider Larks’ Tongues In Aspic. Or there’s also another little-known group, Gentle Giant. Very, very good. Intricate playing. Lots of musical ideas packed in a song. Give a try to Octopus or The Power and The Glory.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, anything related to John Zorn, Mike Patton, Steve Albini, or Yamatsuka Eye, Black Dice, Magma, Efterklang, Ghost (Japanese psych band, not various other Ghosts), Sun Ra, Dose One, Tom Waits, Malice Mizer, Khanate…
Just a few. They’re not all weird, just all very good and relatively nonradio. All the links go to pages with mp3 downloads, and I’ll * the most “unusual”:
Well was about to step out to go shopping, so think I’ll check out at least the Boredoms and Gentle Giants.
Though, just wanted to add some further comments to try and keep things to a minimum of “weird yet good.”
In Espontaneo, CW was able to keep a feeling of growing menace or fright as each song went on (which was beautiful when they switched to the bagpipes at the finale, mmmmm), but other music I have heard from them (Assesinos) never seemed to go anywhere–like new age with drums =\
Since Malice Mizer slipped in there (apologies)–and since I recognized that one–I would just like to re-refer everyone to rules #1 and #2. Similarly for any sort of death-metal, speed-metal, or other metal. I like metal and people singing about frying babies and serving them to Hitler or anything, generally disturbs me less than Alanis Morisette’s lyrics.
Not sure what a Krautrock band is–but generally if you can classify the band properly in a genre, then I’m not sure that’s what I’m looking for. (Again, apologies)
But please do keep sending in recommendations! Just trying to fill in some more info since most of the bands I listed, no one will recognize.
Gentle Giant. In case there’s another band with a similar name.
It means “German Rock Band”. It mainly implies nationality, it’s not exactly the name of a genre. However those bands do influence each other… BTW, check out Amon Duul…
My nephew is a former punk/thrash rocker now teaching and studying Jazz. I burned him some of my Soul Coughing stuff and he said that while he liked it he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stand on the same side of the room as me.
It is like beat poetry set to a weird rock music played by a trad jazz combo. I have loved them for years. It doesn’t sound at all weird to me but I have found very few fellow fans. People I play them for are generally bemused.
Let’s see… I don’t know what is your threshold for weird, but here are some albums I like for offbeat yet good stuff:
New Rock (Buffalo Daughter). Buffalo Daughter went from being completely wacked-out space rock to semi wacked-out dance pop, although they still cut loose with some experimental stuff from time to time. I enjoyed their show in Sapporo last summer, one minute everybody was like let’s happy bouncy dancing and the next minute the band segued into this Moog keyboard solo, blooping, squeaking, arrhythmic whale-fart stuff and everybody in the audience was just standing around looking at each other nervously like “what do we do now?”
Sound-dust (Stereolab). Great album, and I especially like the tune “Captain Easychord” which I nominate for best country-western slide guitar by a psychedelic french pop band. You have all these hugely dissimilar parts coming together, and coming together to make a really interesting whole.
Young Team (Mogwai). Maybe “strange Scotsmen” is redundant, but that’s how I describe Mogwai. I am not able to explain their music in words except to say it is virtually all instrumental.
Assume you’ve heard of Kronos Quartet? If not, check out their album “Night Prayers.” In the first tune they do some amazing stuff with Khoomei (Tuvan throat-style singing" and a string quartet.
Bongwater, one of my favorite bands of all times. New York producer Kramer and actress Ann Magnusen. I’ts pretty hard to describe their sound, but it veers from the eerily beautiful to the sandpapery abraisive from one song to another. Many of the lyrics are excepts from Magunsen’s dream journals. She’s a fantasitc lyricist. My box set off all their albums is one of my most prized possessions, but Too Much Sleep is probably a good place to start.
[url=http://www.omnology.com/zorn03.html]John Zorn and Naked City*. Zorn is an experimental jazz saxophonist who has an incredibly wide musical palate. His Naked City phase combined every concievable genre, from hardcore punk to speed metal to lounge jazz and twangy country, often in the space of a one minute song. Yamatzuka Eye from the aforementioned boredoms is a guest vocalist on some albums.
There are more genres out there than you can shake a stick at, and there’s no loss of oddity.
Anything with Mike Patton is good. His two most essential works, IMO, are Faith No More’s Angel Dust and his collaboration with the Dillinger Escape Plan, Irony is a Dead Scene.
John Zorn is another really weird dude with some serious musical chops. Naked City is another one for your short list.
In case you’re not familiar with his work, Philip Glass is worth checking out. Glassworks is the generally recommended starting point.
Rasputina’s Victorian cello-based goth-pop is strange, and it fits comfortably in a genre.
Sigh is another Japanese band who are very strange.
Arcturus (The Sham Mirrors, Solefald (In Harmonia Universali) and Ephel Duath (Rephormula or The Painter’s Palette) are most excellent.
Early industrial music is a good source of odd sounds. Einstürzende Neubauten (Strategies Against Architecture) and Laibach (Opus Dei) are worth checking out.
There’s Merzbow, the most famous Japanese noise composer of the late 20th century. 1930 has to be heard to be believed. You might also check out his work with SUNN 0))) on Flight of the Behemoth, which may be the slowest, heaviest album ever recorded.
Praxis – wicked chops; skewed rhythms and melodies
Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains – lot of the same players as Praxis, but with satirical lyrics and Les Claypool singing and playing bass
Huun-Huur-Tu – Tuvan throat singing
Klezmatics – modern practitioners of Klezmer music
Shudder to Think – Pony Express Record Hard Rock with odd song structures and vocals that at first seem to be poorly paced to the band. This was truly a difficult record to get my mind around. I would think most folks would find it offputting
Caterwaul’s singer has a way-past-the-edge style of singing I’ve never heard anywhere else. YeahYeahYeahs has an in-your-face agressiveness that’s thrilling, but also scary. My wife heard Karen O singing “I got a man who makes me wanna kill,” and she decided she didn’t want to hear YYYs anymore.
Here are a few thoughts; some of these may already have been mentioned.
Throbbing Gristle
Chrome
Helios Creed
Psychic TV
Amon Duul
Coil
The Residents
Wimme
Angelit
Johnny Dowd
Transjoik
The Damo Suzuki Network
Acid Mothers Temple
Baby Gramps
The Blood Brothers
The Trachtenberg Family Slide Show Players
Glad that you liked the Boredoms! You might actually find their CDs in a strore in Tokyo.
I gotta pop badk in and mention Captain Beefheart, if you like the blues at all (but a lot of his stuff isn’t what you would call blues). Try * Trout Mask Replica * on for size. It is like watching Jackson Pollock play the blues. If you do not know his friend, Frank Zappa , he is worth mentioning, too. Zappa’s catalouge is a bit deep and wide, though. I would not know of a good place to start. I am telling you, it is huge.
The Butthole Surfers are a mandatory plug for me here, too. * Rembrant Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technidian,* and * Hairway to Steven* are their heyday.
Caution, all of these bands do have odd lyrics, but they are usually accompanied with orginal sounds, even if the Surfers are certainly psychedlelia, and Beefheart has blues players. I realize that you have probably heard all of these names, but few people have heard a lot of their music.
Big, gigantic fourth here for John Zorn, btw. Sudder to Think, too, I suggest * Ten Spot*, they are a punk band, if that even means anything at all. But, they are the D.C. sort (not loud and angry to be loud and angry), and an unusual one at that. (name drop: I once sang the theme song to Sesame Street in the bathroom at Club Clearview with their guitarist and singer, I felt special)
