"Weird" music

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This is one of my fascinations when it comes to music. I love music that is just out there and unconventional. Stolen Babies, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Dirty Little Rabbits, Oingo Boingo, Giant Squid, etc. Anyone else love this stuff?

Mike Oldfield's Amarok is a favourite of mine, a single sixty minute track, it's quite, quite, mental (and check the secret message.)

Try George Lygetti's compositions (I hope I have his name spelled correctly); for a brief note - if you have watched 2001 A Space Odessy, you have then heard parts of his requiem; weird, but beautiful stuff. Also, may I recommend Schoenberg's string quartet no. 2 in F# minor? It is his first atonal composition (well, the 4th movement is atonal, and the other three movements stretch tonality to the brink of destruction). As for Rock, Try Faust, or Universe Zero. Tis true I am more of a post-romanticist and prog-rocker, but once in a while, I am fascinated by the endless boundaries that music can make one experience by force of sound patterns alone.

Mr Bungle.

Lately I've been listening exclusively to film scores and cinematic-sounding music. A lot of dark ambient too (ie Lustmord).

A lot of the avant-garde bands suffer from too much forced weirdness and academic pretensions. For many, it's all about how many genres they could cram into one song. It's all about doing a zydeco gospel surf punk version of John Cage's 4'33.

I really enjoy Filk music and artists like Tom Smith and Leslie Fish. It's so cool to find a song about an obscure TV show or comic book that only a true geek would know.
Rasputina also is very eclectic and fun - they're Victorian cello rock.

wolfram tones
an interesting website for the rest of us who lack musical talent but still enjoy listening to something unusual as well as musical.

Steve Reich would certainly fit into the category you mention, try 'Six Pianos' or 'Drumming' or 'Music for 18 Musicians'. Also try Seralism (not to be confused with 'Surrealism'!), this is very interesting music too.

Tuvan Throat Singing. I actually quite like it. I put some traditional stuff (can't remember the name of the group, something to do with horses I think) on just to see what my sister and her fiance's reaction would be and they fell about the floor laughing. It truly is very weird.

From Wikipedia: "The art of Tuvan throat singing is a style in which two or more pitches sound simultaneously over a fundamental pitch, producing a mesmerizing, even entrancing sound."

A modern version of Tuvan Throat singing would be Yat Kha who describe themselves as Tuvan Throat singing Punk Rock.

http://www.last.fm/music/Yat-Kha

I lent their album to a guy I used to like, he called it corporate and turgid. Some people are hard to please.

Thanks for posting this. I'm listening to it now and it's great!

In Short, YES!! !!

Stuff like:

Ruins/ Koenji Hyakkei
Magma
Acid Mothers Temple
The Residents
Plastic People Of The Universe
Pocahaunted
Sunn 0)))
Boredoms
Centipede
Arab On Radar
Can
Faust
Ibliss
Urban Sax
Peter Brotzmann
M.A.S.S.O.N.N.A
Les Rallizes Denudes
Ash Ra Tempel
Guru Guru
Taj Mahal Travellers

Here's a few that mite belong here
Primus,
Southern Culture On The Skids
The Hazzards,
Green Jelly
Gnarkill
Tenacious D
The Dresden Dolls
Katy Rose's 2nd CD~ Candy Eyed
They Might Be Giants
both William Shater CDs
The B-52's

CocoRosie, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Mars Volta.

Ok, let me find something weird ...

How about ... how about ....

Marcus Stockhausen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOW5w1u6YTE

(I'm not sure I'd put it on my stereo, but I like surfing YouTube for this sort of stuff. Take away the trumpet and it sounds a bit like Autechre.)

Or ... Peruvian Soprano Yma Sumac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6lVY9oopKE

(Ok, this one isn't that weird. Amazing voice by the way.)

Glad you like it! Amarok and Ommadawn (to which Amarok is a sequel) are my favourites from his work. Ommadawn has a fantastic guitar climax (I'm very deliberately using that word ) on the first side, but it's much more conventional than Amarok as a whole.

Two other artists who come to my mind for strange music are Katy Carr ("Borderline", "Reddle Woman", half of her songs; I think she's crazy, in a neutral kind of way) and Raissa Khan-Panni ("Gimme Strength" and "Beautiful Glassy Creature").

Mr. Bungle and Detroit Grand Pubahs are the only two bands that really stand out as being weird for me.