Srangest ,most out there sounding music

"Is a Woman" by Lambchop
To me, this is like a philosopher with minimal instrumental backup. It's good music to nod off to.

Judy Dunaway: music for rubbed balloons. No kidding! There's a recording of her work on CRI, I believe..

Yusef Lateef "Encounters" haunting, yet beautiful in a very strange sort of way. Don't play while other people are around or they will think you have lost it. I like to play this with the lights off.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005NG40/qid=1081428970/sr=1-37/ref=sr_1_37/002-6102916-2970426?v=glance&s=music

Dave

Diamanda Galas with her vocal range of 8 octaves is the strangest sounding artist in my collection.

French avant-garde composer Pierre Henry's "Variations for a Door and a Sigh".

Rabih Abou Khalil's "Al-Jadida" is a sort of Arabic jazz CD, played by Western and Eastern musicians. A friend and I heard this playing in Tower Records many years ago, and both of us bought it on the spot. I didn't even own a CD player!

For a true original try Harry Partch. An American composer who developed his own microtonal musical scale in the 30s and wrote for it until his death in the early 70s. His compositions often combined theater along with his striking and unusual instruments (which he invented to play his 40+ note scale). His 3 LP release "Delusion and the Fury" had one record showcasing his instruments along with a great booklet containing many pictures of them.

http://www.harrypartch.com

Charles Carpenter in his "Frog a La Peche" CD used an unusual tuning (Bohlen-Pierce scale) and made the music sound both in and out-of-tune at the same time. Made me a little queasy at first hearing and drove a friend's dog to the closet every time she played it! Yaaah!

"music from The Body" - featuring music by Roger Waters and Ron Geesin.

John Cage's 4'33". The pianist walks up to the piano, sits down, opens the keyboard cover, waits 4minutes and 33 seconds, closes the keyboard ccover, and gets up and walks away. Silence is one a part of the musical material a composer uses. John just took this to the extreme.

Ornett Coleman. I listen to his stuff every so often thinking I'm going to get it, I still don't.
Sonny

Todd Rundgren "A Wizard a True Star" first time I heard "Dogfight Giggle" is a moment in time Ill never forget,,

I think this is very culturally relative. When I first heard classical music from Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma, the microtonal scales and rhythmic meters really threw me. But after repeated exposure to it, I found that it no longer seemed so strange. But man, talk about strange looks when someone walks in and hears southeast asian music playing at work. "Pat Waing: The Magic Drum Circle of Burma" on the Shanachie label is a very interesting cd of contemporary Burmese percussion music played on a 21 drum ensemble.

Most any John Cage will fit in here, but the antithesis of silence is a piece called "Solo for Voice 22, Theatre with Electronics (from Songbooks, 1970)". It is a duet of sorts that involves electronically filtered sounds of breathing and sniffing. It actually has a written score that dictates when and where motifs of irregular vs. regular breathing through mouth and/or nose are to be administered. It is hard to imagine that it was written with a clear mind.

Can't remember the exact album, but an old Pink Floyd song that I heard called..."Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave & Grooving with a Pict"

by far the strangest I have ever heard

Ellery

Ornette Coleman "Dancing In Your Head" (correct title?) and most anything by Roland Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society.

Ellery911,

"Several Species..." was on the Ummagumma album.

Have to agree w/ Photon46 alot of music that initially seems totally alien, disjionted or unfathomable can later seem perfectly logical - like just plain good or great music, (Varese, Ruins, Beefheart, Univers Zero, Area, Morton Subotnick). Can't say that yet about some of the stuff released by Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey or Anthony Braxton.

David Holland - Conference of the Birds

Free Jazz improv of bird songs at dawn, in the jungle, etc. Truely amazing stuff.

Captain Beefheart - "Trout Mask Replica." This is supposed to be one of the 100 best, whatever, according to Rolling Stone. I think it's really twisted, don't get it. I'll probably try to get through some of it again someday, but don't know why. Hmmm, maybe I'm the one who's out there?

Find an LP called MC 900 foot Jesus with the track "Born With Monkey Asses" . Very strange, like a mental hospital rant with a back beat.painful and foul.

A performance of The Whale at Ravinia about 12 years ago. The flautist sings through the flute to make a very odd whale like sound while others make keekoo keekoo sounds in the background. My wife and I still joke about that performance. It was very strange. Does anyone know where a recording of this can be found? I'd like to have it just for fun.

Wildoats: With Trout Mask Replica, it helps if you have a background of delta blues and some avant garde jazz. It's an amazing blend of those two seemingly unblendable genres and is well worth the effort you put into understanding it. Start with the more accessible tracks like "Moonlight on Vermont".

Blue Man Groups' new "The Complex Rock Tour."

first time I heard David Bowie album "Diamond Dogs"I thought it was out there, today it seems pretty tame,also when VanHalens first album came out me and my guitar playing buddys jaws hit the floor ,,hard.

Richingoth,I checked out Diamanda,,WOW!!

Any music from Tibet, religeous or profane. My girlfriend thinks Sun Ra is the strangest vinyl ever to grace the turntable but she has no idea. Throbbing gristle is a contender as well as Marcel Marceau the pantomime artist from the 60s.

Little Black Egg, by the Nightcrawlers; I still have not figured out what the hell it means, let alone why the song exists in the first place. If anyone knows the history of this song I would be very appreciative.

Pink Fairies - Never Never Land, early 70's British Acid Rock. This has been remastered and still sounds great today. I had an old scratched up LP I got from my cousin around 1976 or so. Standout tracks are Do It and Uncle Harry's Last Freak Out.

Nash the Slash - Children of the Night, saw him twice in the early 80's. Very unique, he performs wrapped in bandages like a mummy. Music is great too, out there indeed.

Anything by the Residents, but especially "Not Available"
and "Third Reich n' Roll". Also, "Alien Soundtracks" by Chrome. Fun music, once you get used to it.

Mice On Mars /Bordoms / Lauire Anderson / Bjork
The first two are very strange. Early Laurie anderson and Bjork are a bit strange but Mice on Mars take the cake !!

Frank Zappas' favorite...Edgar Varese!

Try some Esquivel, he and others recorded a lot of strange but good stuff in Hollywood in the early sixties

The great thing about Esquivel is that whenever you put it on, and whatever you're doing, it suddenly becomes "martini time at the bachelor pad." Try it.