Whats the weirdest music you've listened to?

im bored at work and am looking for suggestions. I define weird as something non-traditional, so this can be something thats structurally odd or something that isn't even considered music at all, for example sound art or field recordings.

I recently got into John Wiese, who is pretty damn awesome. However, I am interested to see what others have to say. Musically right now, a band that goes by the name "Horse Lords" is pretty fantastic.

@katygaga: Probably not that weird compared to what others might listen to but the weirdest music I listen to frequently is probably Grimes.

@alphasquid: she's great! saw her in concert a few years ago.

@katygaga: Oh cool! I'd love to see her in concert.

The Gouranga Powered Band. Some bloke in Edinburgh sold me a CD of it. It's if Hari Krishna's organised a pub brawl.

@shindig: hahaha, sounds cool.

My friends knew quite a few obscure bands so I listened to some bizarre stuff, none of which is good enough to mention though. The weirdest album I – occasionally – listen to and legitimately think is good is The Seer by Swans.

Perhaps not quite non-traditional, but this is the first thing that came to mind. It surely is 'weird' to my ears, and equally fascinating!

I've listened to Merzbow a few times as a joke. If you aren't sure what that is and want to look that up, make sure your volume is real low.

Most recently, Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat singer.

She's amazing.

I listen to a lot of guitar music, and Bill Orcutt's playing could definitely be described as weird.

The Books- The Way Out

It's been a few years, but I remember this stuff just being absurd and kinda great.

I love a bit of "modern jazz" and James Blood Ulmer comes to mind as straddling the line between genius and cacophony. I love the first 2 tracks on his "Free Lancing" album:

Frank Zappa has also done some rather weird stuff, although it is essentially musical, but with odd timings and chord progressions.

Or are you after stuff like Phillip Glass, Brian Eno, etc?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialism

@magmamud: Interesting. I didn't know of him but then researched that he had ties to Harry Pussy. If you like that, look up Sissy Spacek. Its extreme noise-rock that sounds like a machine gun run through distortion pedals.

@diz: thanks for suggestion. Brian Eno and Phillip Glass are great but I'm looking for more of a contemporary or new sound than that. A lot of bands were influenced by those guys, so Ill do some research.

Death Grips anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cinJDxLUsNY

Or Shabazz Palaces for something as unique, but perhaps not as hard-edged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUEXhQEtMTk

@katygaga: That sounds pretty good, and I do like some noise-rock. Just quickly googling Sissy Spacek I saw that he's done some work with Wolf Eyes which is a noise band I have enjoyed listening to.

Melt-Banana and The Polysics, little bit of Die Antwoord

How about...

(Not the video-game affiliated RA.)

Black Star - Bowie. A jazz-infused, dark masterpiece with haunting vocals. Nothing to do with his death; it's a dope and clever song.

Rosemary's Baby - Fantomas. Crazy. Mike Patton humming the theme to a controversial film with Buzz from the Melvins on guitar...

Ain't That Easy - D'Angelo. His unusually layered vocal harmonies and almost off-beat music gels in a really unique way. Love him. Genius.

Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus. This is like a slowed-down Dead Kennedy's song but with gothic, swinging, cool vibes. It really culminates into a brilliant climax. One of the best songs ever.

Nannou - Aphex Twin. Nearly every aspect of the song -- percussion, melody, ambient noises -- were done on a music box.

Xen - Arca. There are fragments of motifs and phrases recognizable as music amid a mire of sordid emotions. Very clever.

Trans Europe Express - Kraftwerk. Hugely influential tune and band. Sounds like a dystopia condensed into sound. Electronic music on electricity. Meta, yo. Weird at the time, anyway.

If you like any of those, I have lots more I like. I didn't want to name too many.

Edit: Couple more.

Open Heart Zoo - Martin Grech. Gotta hear it.

Pendelous Skin - Mastodon. It turns into a gorgeous, syrupy song with gibberish (literally) lyrics at the minute mark.

Water - Yowler.

Stranger than Kindness - Nick Cave

Feel like going on a sweaty afrofunk space adventure?

edit: It wouldn't really feel right to me to call this stuff weird necessarily though but, eh.

Jenny Hval - Conceptual Romance

I would post the video but it's NSFW, so find it yourself :P.

Throbbing Gristle is amazing, but I can't deny that they're weird as all hell. Love 'em.

I mean, that one Sunn 0))) album is probably the 'weirdest' in an 'unlistenable' way, but generally a shit tonne of music from Japan combines about a hundred genres so is pretty weird in that sense. This came to mind in that I remember first hearing it and wondering what on earth the creative process was.

I read a little on danger music once. I don't really uhh..."get it." One of the performances I saw was a dude sitting on a desk screaming incoherently.

Don't know about weirdest music I've ever listened to but I love Eskimo by The Residents

The premise of the album is it's a national geographic documentary of the westernization of a fictional inuit tribe and exploring their culture and tradition. There is a story in the linear notes which you should read during the first couple of listens. It was incredibly ahead of its time coming out in 1979 and if often lauded as one of the greatest avant garde/experimental albums of all time.

Hey, a question I'm pretty good at answering! I'll put more time into compiling some recommendations, but for now I'll leave you with this one:

Cromagnon - Orgasm

An album from 1969 unlike anything of its time, created by two people who were commercial pop songwriters and wanted to break free from constraints. The first track, "Caledonia", is sometimes jokingly mentioned as approximating a black metal aesthetic basically before metal itself even existed. Oh but it has bagpipes. That's by far the most songlike of the tracks on the album; the rest are nightmarish freeform nonsense that only on occasion approach 'song'. Before any of these movements actually happened, it resembles industrial, freak folk, no-wave, etc. It's a sometimes terrifying but often hilarious listen I couldn't recommend more. Make sure you listen to this album and not the one titled Cave Rock, even though they're basically the same.

Also, John Wiese is very good. I'll try to avoid explicit noise stuff when I think of more albums, just 'cause there comes a point where noise really stops seeming weird unless it does something very explicit to make itself stand out from just the "be loud" thing.

@magmamud: Did you know about the program Bill Orcutt made? It's only Mac and Linux, but it's neat: https://www.thewire.co.uk/news/41540/bill-orcutt-releases-open-source-audio-programme

@rongalaxy: Naked City is such a good album. What if you mixed Avant-Garde Jazz, Film Music and like Grindcore together? Well..

@yummytreesap: Actually have the Cromagnon LP, crazy stuff.

Some stuff I'd recommend...

Horseback: Incorporates black metal, doom metal, noise, electronics, shoegaze, psych, alt country..into his music. You never know what to expect with this guy...

Third Eye Foundation: Another musical millipede this time more in the post rock, trip hop, sampling, drum 'n bass and experimental ambient genres. Nowadays working under his name Matt Elliott, with a much more subdued folky but still menacing sound.

Silo: Danish band with a only a couple of releases but they always manage to have a very unique sound to them.

The music itself isn't TOO weird I suppose, it's mostly the uniqueness and originality that makes it stand out to me.

If you want something truly out there, there was a Belgian/Dutch project called Stalaggh. Extreme noise. This particular "song" had a bunch of insane people locked in a room and performing some sort of screaming therapy...you know for the kids.

I'll just leave this here.

It's always hard for me to gauge what other people consider weird, but here's some suggestions:

Eläkaläisit - A Finnish band known for their Polka versions of rock and metal songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRZlXvjbH5k

Man... or Astro-Man? - Surf music filtered through science fiction b-movie aesthetics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUN0TyTmQ4s

Tweaker - Experimental electronic project by Chris Vrenna. They also did the Doom 3 theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzv7JR1mHwU

SPK - Early industrial pioneers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX15aFMJHss

Clock DVA - 80s industrial/cold wave band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEcc-X4zGXY

Edit: Changed the embedded videos to links. Five videos in a single post seemed a bit much...

How about Finntroll on speed and 2 litres of black coffee?

Also this, not too weird, but not exactly traditional music either.

Shining calls their music blackjazz.

@yesiamaduck came here to see if the Residents were mentioned, good man. I'd add that their album Duck Stab is also really weird and great.

Duck Stab is deffo my fav of theirs, a lot more approachable than Eskimo as well :) Thought I'd give the shout to Eskimo though because it's really weird.

@ignatz27: Robert Ashley is amazing. I forget what peice it is but he recorded a woman going explaining a sexual assault that happened to her and the way its recorded and scored is fucking terrifying

@brunothethird: thanks for the write-up, that all sounds great. Will definitely follow up

Not the weirdest stuff but oh well. Maybe it'll tickle your fancy.

• Kraftwerk - Autobahn
• Sigur Ros - Saeglopur
• Julian Casablancas & The Voidz - Human Sadness

Amnesia Scanner and Visible Cloaks. I don't think they're weird or anything but I would guess that some people would.

I highly recommend Diablo Swing Orchestra. They're a Swedish band that could best be described as a mixture of metal, swing, and opera. As odd as that seems, it works surprisingly well together.

75 Dollar Bill is a weird mix of African rhythms and guitars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuC_1S7d6rY

First thing that came to mind is the genre of EAI (Electro Acoustic Improvisation), more because it can feel so utterly obtuse and unique. It's an interesting genre I can't say I am big listener of though. RYM encapsulates it pretty well with:

EAI (Electroacoustic Improvisation) is a difficult to define style of Free Improvisation characterised by a very slow moving, physical, textured aesthetic, often created using unconventional instruments (like prepared guitars and turntables) processed through a laptop computer. It takes influence from a wide range of improvised music - such as Noise, Drone and experimental Jazz - although the sheer uniqueness of the genre makes it difficult to precisely pin down its development. It maintains a keen underground following worldwide, with labels such as Mego, Improvised Music From Japan and Erstwhile regularly releasing records from many of the key figures in the genre."

Otherwise I feel weird, can also be something that just kinda plays with a genre in an unexpected way or just manages to convey a certain atmosphere. I think weird, or maybe mysterious rather, fits the music Angelo Badalamenti did for Twin Peaks, even if I think that music is also can be very cosy and kinda fun to listen to (granted its tied so deeply to the surreal and good feel vibes the show has it's hard to separate it from its original context):

Or say the how the people over at PC Music play around with sugary pop music and maximizes the aesthetics of it to make something new:

In terms of artists who deal with audiovisual installations/music I think Ryoji Ikeda makes some absolutely hypnotic and really neat work:

Steve Vai. Check out "Erotic Nightmares" and "Freak Show Excess"