[atsonicpark]

There was already a thread for this ("what's the weirdest album you know?" or something like that) but it was kind of a messy read for someone looking for a list of truely weird albums. So, let's restrict this to just the absolute weirdest shit you can think of. Let's look at it as "essential weird albums". Some of these are ones we listed on the other thread, some are ones I recently found, but all are really bizarre!!

First off, PRIMARILY weird bands/artists you've probably already heard that it seems redundant to list albums by: Mr. Bungle, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Idiot Flesh, the Residents, Renaldo and the Loaf, Snakefinger, Darth Vegas, Vicious Hairy Mary, Omoide Hatoba, Primus, any weird noise project, various Patton and John Zorn projects, Caroliner, Sun Kich, various Boredoms side projects, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Jandek, The Shhags... you know they're weird, I know they're weird, there's no point in relisting them. Now onto the good stuff...

JUDY DUNAWAY - BALLOON MUSIC
Music made of a girl rubbing and popping, deflating and inflating balloons. Check out the classic "Piece for Solo Tenor Balloon".

THE LANGLEY SCHOOLS MUSIC PROJECT - INNOCENCE AND DESPAIR
Some elementary school kids singing popular songs in a gymnasium (including David Bowie's "Space Oddity"). Weirder than it sounds.

CROMAGNON - ORGASM
Dark, evil people beating on buckets and growling.

SELF - GIZMODGETRY
A guy making pop songs with nothing but toys. Extremely well-produced and well-made, much better than stuff like Toychestra...

FLORENCE FOSTER - GLORY OF THE HUMAN VOICE
An opera ish singer singing really really badly for about an hour.

JON - SMOKE
Sounds like a little 5 year old Japanese girl, playing somewhat interesting organ and singing in a voice about 10 pitches higher than the Deerhoof chick... all the songs are about a dog.

WESLEY WILLIS - [any]
Though most of you probably know about Wesley, it's still pretty bizarre. I think the bizarreness of it has kind of worn off because the familiarity (and actually, if you hear one of his songs, you know EXACTLY how every one of his songs is going to sound), but... it's a schizophrenic guy talking about people in a vulgar way over casio keyboards.

KIDS OF WHIDNEY HIGH - SPECIAL MUSIC FROM SPECIAL KIDS
A bunch of uh... MENTALLY CHALLENEGED kids making mentally challeneged music... Produced by Mike Patton.

MIKE PATTON - THEMES FOR ADULT VOICE
Okay, I cheated and listed Patton anyway. This and his other solo album are incredibly bizarre. This one is him making fart noises into a tape recorder.. and that's about it. I definitely need some more albums of people doing stuff into tape recorders, I love Beefheart's tape recorded poetry, Jandek's spoken word stuff on tape records, and Agent Dale Cooper's (from Twin Peaks) tape recorded album.

JACK MUDURIAN - DOWNLOADING THE REPERTOIRE
Some 52-year-old guy in a nursing home singing 129 songs into a tape recorder for 47 minutes. Sometimes he forgets the words and goes "la la la". And, uh, that's it!

DAVID SOLDIER AND RICHARD LAIR'S RECORDING OF "THAI ELEPEHANT ORCHESTRA"
I haven't heard this, but I will immediately! It's apparently 6 elephants trained on instruments. It supposedly sounds like free jazz. With elephants. ACTUAL ELEPHANTS PLAYING MUSIC. Doesn't this description sound amazing? Can elephants make music? By the sounds heard on Thai Elephant Orchestra, a collaboration between humans Dave Soldier and Richard Lair and the Thai Elephant Conservation Center (not to mention the six creatures doing all the work), the answer is a resounding, percussive, and unimaginable "yes." Provided with oversized instruments--including a large harmonica, gong, synthesizers, and numerous drums--six elephants between the ages of 6 and 17 were allowed to create whatever racket they wished. The results are astounding and about as avant-garde as music gets. The elephants' free improvising isn't melodic, but the rhythmic interplay here is complex and the instrumental solos are all remarkable. On "Big Band," a somber gamelan-like opening is followed by a spirited harmonica solo, while "Percussion Trio" features a heartbeat-sounding bass drum backed by a crashing thunder sheet. In sum, the elephants perform unaccompanied on 12 tracks; the remainder of the disc features elephants playing alongside humans as well as a handful of tunes about animals performed by North Thailand locals. All of it is entertaining, but the human-led tracks just can't compete with the inventive elephants and their ragged, slow-paced, and off-kilter music-making. Granted, you probably won't want to hear Phrathida, JoJo, and Luuk Kob pounding away everyday, but the elephants probably feel the same way about Cecil Taylor.

BROKENHEARTED DRAGONFILES: INSECT ELECTRONICA FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA
This one was put out on Sublime Frequencies, I believe, which is a pretty weird record label run by the Sun City Girls. Some of the albums they've put out are really musically rewarding; actual bands in Niger or the Sahara Desert playing music.. really great shit. SOME of the albums they release are just random street sounds or of random gamelan performances. This is probably the most bizarre album they've released though; it's just the sounds of dragonflies, but the dragonflies are more noisey than Merzbow or Wolf Eyes or something. This is crazy shit, it actually hurt my ears.

SOUNDS OF NORTH AMERICAN FROGS
Haven't heard this either, I assume it's in line with the last two albums I've listed.

DION MCGREGOR - DION MCGREGOR DREAMS AGAIN
A guy talking in his sleep. Can't remember who reccomended this on the other threads, but this is some scary and weird shit...

YASUANO TONE - SOLO FOR WOUNDED CD
You know how most glitch artists may have noisey parts but they end up coming up with beats and melodies? Okay, this isn't like that at all. This is completely random cd skipping with no structure whatsoever. Just.. uh.. random skipping. It's pretty good!!

LUCAS AND FRIENDS - DISCOVER A WORLD OF SOUND
Two kids in a room banging on shit while a tape recorder captures it all.

DON SALSA - whatever that long ass cd title is
Okay, I said I wouldn't list any bands, but this one was too weird to pass up. The first song on this thing is 31 minutes of EVERY MUSICAL GENRE EVER put together. It's about 100x more insane than Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, or wahtever other genre-jumping band you can think of. Truely the epitome of insanity. However, after that, after the true technical workout of that song, some of the songs are straight-up bizarre.. an underproduced hardcore garage recording that is nearly impossible to listen to... a song of spousal abuse over loud sirens (a man and a woman screaming and fighting each other)... some truely truely bizarre moments. And, then, you know, the most over-the-top technical music ever recorded also on the same CD. A classic.

JLIAT - [complete discography]
Everything this dude has done is weird. Recordings include: Bombs blowing up, an album of one note for 80 minutes (followed by an album of ANOTHER note for 80 minutes), an album of recorded silence, a Beethoven symphony programmed into a machine to play all the notes on an electronic drum pad instead of piano or synth or whatever... truely bizarre bizarre stuff.

COCK ESP/EVIL MOISTURE - MONSTERS OF COCK
381 songs in under 5 minutes.

V/A - BLLLEEEAAAUUUURRRRGHHHH! A MUSIC WAR 7"
84 songs by 73 bands on a 7 inch.

THURSTON MOORE/MARCO FUSINATO - TM/MF
Thurston plays 10 noise songs with Marcos tries to paint a different picture during the song. All the canvases turned out red. Weird.

TANGERINE AWKESTRA - ALIENS TOOK MY MOM
Avant garde music played by pre-schoolers... takes on Bach, Sonny Rollins, and more.

A KOMBI - MUSIC TO DRIVE BY
An entire cd made using the sounds of a Volkswagen Kombi!

THE COLLINISTS - self-titled
I can't remember if that's the name of the artists, but it's the band Cock E.S.P. cooking. It's the sounds of them cooking. That's it.

TELESMATA - NEOLOGISTICS
An entire cd made of a robot voice saying random letters.

Impulse to Injury Label presents... SEALED BAG
This is a recording of a CD being packaged into a paper bag. Limited to 5 copies.

D-503 - I'M FEELING PUFFY
The entire album is an album D-503 ripped to his computer of a skipping Puff Daddy cd he found on the side of the road.

ELECTRIC FAMILY - MARIOPAINT
Not that weird of a concept, but once you hear the music it's pretty bizarre; an entire album of original songs composed on Mario Paint.

COLLIN OLAN - REC01
Two waterproof contact microphones frozen inside a 10 by 10 block of ice, then the ice was melted. This is the recording.

ERIK MYLENEK - YOURESOFUCKINGSELFISH
Haha, Erik was an old friend of mind, so I had to mention this. It's a long droney noise track made solely out of an angry conversation Erik had with his girlfriend. I actually own this CD, it was limited to like 5 copies. It's pretty bad!

and finally...

OBSCURICA RECORDS SLOPPY SECONDS COMPILATION
I'm on this 3 times! 4800 tracks by 4800 different bands, 80 minutes long exactly, one second per track! You can still submit to this and listen to samples. The plan is to break the CD-R up into 80 minute long sets of 60 tracks each. More info here:
http://www.obscurica.com/sloppy_seconds.html

I may make a whole thread separately for that one sometime, pretty awesome!

[atsonicpark]

Hey look, Monosodic is on that last entry now! I'm just gonna make another entry for it since people will probably miss this..

[gualbert]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

COCK ESP/EVIL MOISTURE - MONSTERS OF COCK
381 songs in under 5 minutes.

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

V/A - BLLLEEEAAAUUUURRRRGHHHH! A MUSIC WAR 7"
84 songs by 73 bands on a 7 inch.

I find this record confusing to listen to , also because there's no break between songs.

[atsonicpark]

Haha.

[greedrex]

not my thing but i have to say i admire the work u do / did here.
r e s p e c t

[blunderbuss]

Ghedalia Tazartes: The one that I have is Une Éclipse Totale De Soleil, but I have a feeling that any of his releases will be equally bizzare.

http://webclectic.blogspot.com/2007/...totale-de.html

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Neither of the following bands are among the weirdest stuff I listened to, but I don't see them get mentioned around here:

Anything by Gary Wilson is pretty weird. He sings about all these women that got away from him in the 1970s in Endicott NJ. His album from the 70's "You Think You Really Know Me" is great, as well, as his album he released a few years ago "Mary Had Brown Hair."

http://www.myspace.com/garywilson64

listen to the song "Gary saw Linda kissing Frank Roma"

Also, Grand Buffet. Cool rap group from Pittsburgh. Two guys who perform with a CD player playing prerecorded music. Their albums are pretty weird.

Here's a video of them live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fst_dJ48_8

[atsonicpark]

sweet!

[uhler]

cromagnon are amazing!

[noisereductions]

This is too much. Yr awesome, man.

Langley School project is incredible. It's heartbreaking. (yeah, I know, let it go). I love it.

TM/MF is one a lot of ppl overlook & genuinely seem to hate. I don't get the red canvas thing myself, but the guitar tracks are varied and cool.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

WESLEY WILLIS - [any]
Though most of you probably know about Wesley, it's still pretty bizarre. I think the bizarreness of it has kind of worn off because the familiarity (and actually, if you hear one of his songs, you know EXACTLY how every one of his songs is going to sound), but... it's a schizophrenic guy talking about people in a vulgar way over casio keyboards.

KIDS OF WHIDNEY HIGH - SPECIAL MUSIC FROM SPECIAL KIDS
A bunch of uh... MENTALLY CHALLENEGED kids making mentally challeneged music... Produced by Mike Patton.

!

I first heard wesley willis back in 1993-94, on a cassette someone had given me of his tunes. Classic shit. "Sorry that I got fat", "rock n roll McDonalds",

"He rocked out like a magic kiss."

I got the first Whitney high CD that same year, after having heard it in 1992.. it is pretty hard to listen to, but INSECTS is genius . I did not know Mike Patton was involved. (wait....doing research)
it seems that the second album is the one released by Mike patton (Let's get Busy 1999)
the one I ahve is the 1988 release "Sepcial Music From Special Kids" which was released by their school.

[atsonicpark]

Ohhhh. Thanks for clarifying. Been forever since I listened to 'em.

[afterthefact]

Hey, if you know D-503, let him know that me may have my Puff Daddy CD. I think I threw one out the window when I was about 17.

[StevOK]

Does anyone have upload links? I looked and looked for some Tangerine Awkestra a few weeks ago, but to no avail.

[ZEROpumpkins]

Dammit, I thought of one last night, but forgot it.

[SuperCreep]

I really wanna find something similar to that Orgasm album. One of my best recent discoveries.

No Record by Nihilist Spasm Band would also fit nicely here.

[ZEROpumpkins]

Oh wait I think I was thinking of Solo for Wounded CD

I spose you could consider Pole somewhat "bizzare" along the same lines. He dropped a filter and then ran everything through it. The whole of his first 3 albums has these clicks and pops all over it.

[atsonicpark]

back on a don salsa kick

please download the don salsa album and have your mind blown

[PAULYBEE2656]

 

senor coconuts collection of kraftwerk covers

 

music of kraftwerk performed on vintage 8 bit video game systems

[Pelle]

Dunno if someone have wrote about it before, but Arsedestroyer - TeenAss revolt LP isfucking bizarrely insane.. check it out!