I am doing a radio show in the very early am hours this Christmas morning on the local college station. I’m looking for traditional Christmas music performed in a very non-traditional way. Bonus points for eeriness.
Examples:
mom and daddy: O Holy Night
Autopsia: Stille Nacht
Love Spirals Downward: Welcome Christmas
Any recommendations?
O Little Town of Bethlehem
A Claymation Christmas has odd versions of traditional tunes:
I knew this song was an instant classic the first time I heard it. SDMB’s own brujaja and a takeoff of We Three Kings…
It may not be strange in the way you mean, but I’ve always loved this atypical way to handle carols. (I’m also glad I found a video of adults playing it.)
You need to contact my cable company. The channel with the program listings includes some of the most gawd-awful renditions of seasonal music I’ve ever been forced to hear. (Well, no more, thanks to the miracle of Mute.) Honestly, I can’t think of any specifics because what little I’ve heard is so horrific, I’ve blocked it out. Worst of all, it started a couple of weeks ago.
MAKE IT STOP!!!
I heard an electronica version of The Anvil Chorus, unfortunately I did no manage to catch the name of the artist/s =(
No! No! No! Stay away from holiday music on cable and the EZ listening stations!
Check out some of the selections already given. The Joy Strings Little Town of Bethlehem is great. The Brujaja stuff is wickedly fun too.
Christmas music is so well-recognized it can give an artist freedom to work with a piece guaranteed to be so familiar to the audience that he/she can try most anything unusual and still maintain that deep recognition.
Sure most Christmas music is bad, but there are awesome examples of good stuff as well. My interest in particular is to find music that is quite comfortable exploring the serious religious feel of the holiday music. But don’t dismiss the whole caroling thing outright just because of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.
Yes, try “We Three Kings Bop”.
Another strange but not eerie carol I adore.
EDIT: Should’ve refreshed after listening to it. It’s the one Chefguy mentions first but gives the wrong link to.
Check this out: “The Holly and the Ivy” by Alfred Deller & The Deller Consort – Vanguard Classics OVC 8023, orig issued on Vanguard VRS 499 … ? Sorry, I can’t find it on Amazon but it should be there.
I like “The Holly And the Ivy” tune & lyrics in general: They don’t RHYME 
Interesting version of sugar plum fairy. * Mannheim Steamroller - Faeries *
Ah, crap.
If anyone ever tells you the Beatles only got weird around 1966 or '67, show them this: “Good King Wenceslas”.
O Little Town of Bethlehem to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.
And don’t forget O Holy Night with a cattle prod.