Genuinely unsettling music
I've spent most of today listening to In Bocca Al Lupo by Xela and I can honestly say it's the single most unsettling hour of music I've ever heard. Good review of it here, incidentally:
http://tinymixtapes.com/Xela,7880
Anywhoo, what pieces of music freak the shit out of you?
Tweet This
Share on Facebook- Relevant artist taggings:
- None
Thread not appearing correctly? Click here to rebuild | Report this
Last.fm
SoundCloud
MySpace
Friendster
RSS
Scouting for Girls
^5
this was the first band that popped into my head
indeed
Scouting for Girls are SHIT
ok, scouting for girls is SHIT but it's hardly terror inducing...
swans- the beautiful days
anything by dev/null
deathprod- dead peoples things/cloud chamber
Berlin by Lou Reed
"Kids" is pretty mental
"Suffer Little Children" by The Smiths ain't no picnic either
Good call on The Smiths
On the same Moors Murders theme, "Very Friendly" by Throbbing Gristle wades in similarly dark waters.
Burns' victim song "Hamburger Lady" is pretty macabre as well. As are most TG songs really.
burial hex
Climbing Up The Walls
Most of the stuff on Joy Division's Closer.
And most of all. "Mutherfuker" by Beck.
Scott Walker-The Drift
listening to that in the dark might be the single most creepy thing has ever happened to me
Also
Stem/Long Stem by DJ Shadow always gives me chills.
Hip Priest by The Fall
Is a bit moody too.
Used to good effect towards the end of The Silence of the Lambs
I also find the whole of Abbey Road a bit unsettling due to the fact that you can literally hear them splitting up
Literally?
Gross!
Blut Aus Nord
http://www.myspace.com/thehowlingofgod - listen to the song 'The Howling of God'
Anything by Deathspell Omega: http://www.myspace.com/deathspellomegaapocalypse
Plague Mass by Diamanda Galas
like nothing I had ever heard before nor have I since.
^this
It's equally horrific as it is amazing.
Ancestors by Bjork
the heavy breathing sounds in the background are really creepy, i can't listen to it without getting a bit scared :(
Sunset Rubdown
Colt Stand Up, Grow Horns
Espeically the last section
anal cunt
argh
Suicide
Frankie Teardrop
^this
it still scares the hell out of me every time I hear it.
Frankie Teardrop
is well fucking dark. AOOOOOOOOUGGGGGGGH!!!!!!! Frankie...
PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?
Paddy Wolf - Childcatcher
there's some pretty fucked up shit right there
KTL - Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg (Pita)
weird/drone fest, this was initially the music for dance/performance piece "Kindertotenlieder", partly written by Dennis Cooper, but they continue to release music under that name. Really dense, eerie stuff!
NIN
Downward Spiral
Nick Cave - Song for Joy
Godspeed
dead flag blues
sufjan stevens
enjoy your rabbit is a bit of an uncomfortable listen at first
this made me giggle
i'm just imagining someone putting on sufjan stevens and then being like 'oh god this is terrifying!!'
:D
just made me laugh at work actually
hiding under the covers going "eeeeeee!"
maybe not 'scary' unsettling, but it was a difficult listen.
yeah, but there's more.
"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." really creepy. especially when he says, "he took off all their clothes for them..." also, the last line is unsettling. the impact really comes from how bright the songs surrounding it is.
oh yeah!
the creaky piano and heavy breathing at the end is a little creepy when you're listening very loud on headphones.
Intense Humming of Evil - MSP
4 stone seven by MSP
is the most unsettling Holy Bible track.
The most unsettling stuff I've heard in a while
is anything by Shackleton.
The voices, the voices...
Other than that, Delirium Cordia by Fantomas is pretty horrifying, The Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed and Nick Cave's Red Right Hand and The Carny.
shackleton is a great call
its amazing how he makes such sparse tracks so evocative and lonely/scary sounding.
gnaw their tongues is pretty scary, lots of samples of murdering rapists on trail, huge orchestraed doomy noise
Shackleton
is pretty unsetteling I'm a little bermused at how loads of doom / drone / post-rock types haven't got on board with him yet they share a hell of alot of the sonic sensibilties, I guess it's a guitar thing...
I'd be really interested
to find out where Shack's influences lie, beyond FWD circa 2003-04 and Warp stuff. I wonder if he's into a lot of the darker post-rock/doom guitar based stuff as well.
His earlier music isn't so much unsettling as mournful, but the stuff on Soundboy's Gravestone is downright scary. The Branch is Weak and Death Is Not Final. Chilly stuff.
yeah
he has definatly got darker and more deranged.
I'm not sure I've seen any interviews by him, he doesn't really do press as far as I can tell just makes tracks. He doesn't even give out promo's and stuff like that.
He probily listens to allsorts Appleblim plays a mad amount of stuff on his Rinse podcasts from folk / indie / rock / funk / soul / techno / electronica you name it, oh yeah and garage / dubstep of course. I would imagain Shak gets through alot of stuff too.
I was impressed to hear This Heat on his last Rinse 'podcast business'
I would imagine he's got a pretty varied music taste, yeah. I like to imagine him blissing out to Stars Of The Lid or some other melodic drone/ambient, then going away and cutting some hideous voiceover from a 1980s crime documentary...
i think with as close a relationship appleblim and shackleton have
they've probably got to have a similar musical ethos/taste. I think all the most interesting/innovative artists in genres probably have very varied taste, its part and parcel of what makes them innovators in their own genre - utilising elements of far removed genres
You Could Feel the Sky
by Boards of Canada, although the underlying themes of most of the tracks on Geogaddi are rather unsettling if you dig deep enough
A lot of Music Has the Right to Children can unsettle
Hearing the children's voices emerge beneath the tracks is a strange experience.
Like Aquarius, 'ORANGE! YEAH THATS RIGHT'.
Nadja - Skin Turns To Glass
Freaked me out and turned my stomach. Don't listen to this with headphones on!
a couple of bits
the theme to dario argento's film, suspira, there's these horrid raspy sounds in the background that are really grim, also the charles manson family album, you've never heard a girl singing so joyfully about being beaten by her daddy...!
Oh and of course "come to daddy" by aphex twin, wonderfully unhinged
:)
suspiria is amazing
soundtrack does sound pretty dated though dontchathink?
Elvis Costello - I want you
The stalkers anthem
Good for cows
love that band
Xiu Xiu - Support Our Troops OH! (Black Angels OH!)
brilliant & horrific.
Essex Dogs by Blur
is pretty dark sounding, I remember it used to freak me out as a kid (around the same time when I didn't 'undersdtand' Blur anymore), but alas, I thankfully grew out of that phase
Throbbing Gristle
I finally summoned the will to listen to them after reading Rip It Up and Start Again last year. Thing is, I was sick when I read that chapter, so I think the plenty-disturbing nature of their output was made disturbinger due to my paracetamol-addled state.
I didn't help myself by making a 10-minute pilgrimage to the addresses where they variously lived and recorded in my neighbourhood in Hackney. Stood outside, fucked up with flu, looking in through the windows and thinking this was where they wrote Slug Bait and Hamburger Lady.
I am over it now. Plus, they were actually not very good.
bullshit
Throbbing Gristle were one of the greatest bands this country has produced. They are hugely under rated.
see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8klW9trVTQ
WOW!
^^ i literally just finished reading that chapter about Throbbing Gristle
all that stuff about enemas and injecting blood into 'black eggs' made me want to spew.
Swans can be quite unsettling
in a brilliant way - see 'Failure' from the album White Light from the Mouth of Infinity
'Báthory Erzsébet' from Black One
In my opinion one of Sunn O)))'s best moments.
all of Selected Ambient Worls vol 2.
What's He Building?
Tom Waits
Very true
indeed
This Xela stuff sounds really interesting
Allmusic say The Dead Sea is the best place to start, is it?
yes
His early stuff was fairly run-of-the-mill IDM, but his output from the Dead Sea onwards has been magnificent.
And runs the also magnificent Type Records, which is a bloody good thing.
Both The Dead Sea and In Bocca
are outstanding. You could pick up both from Boomkat for under a tenner - well worth it. Dead Sea is less drone-based and more melodic, with a few psych folk influences thrown in. It's also a concept album about a doomed sea voyage in which the sailors are eaten by zombies and the artwork is wonderful. So yeah, buy both!
Boomkat sale!
Dead Sea for £2.95!
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=23220
In Bocca A Lupo for £5.95!
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=145098
I cannot recommend these highly enough. Mostly Dead Sea, but go for both at those prices...
Also, there's about half a dozen limited cassette/CDR releases he's done recently-ish, which you can find to download easily enough.
Meat is murder
turned me vegetarian for twenty five years and still weird's me out a bit
22 Going On 23
by the butthole surfers
Inhuman by sonic youth
Anything by skrewdriver (not for artistic reasons, you understand?)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SqVG0XX_LKI
butthole surfer link
Oh yeah, how could I forget the inimitible Mr Bungle?!!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=onyCiIkoffw&feature=related (jaw-dropping stuff)
Good call on the Sunn 0))) track, but by far 2 artists win this hands down
any album by Jandek, intensified by the myth of the man and the acapella albums.
secondly Wolf Eyes especially rattleshake snake.
I was just thinking about this theme the other day.......
Without doubt I would say anything by Burial Hex or Khanate.
Khanate in particular have a genuinely frightning sound.
I'm a bit confused by anyone who posted Blur, the Smiths or Elvis Costello? Have I misunderstood the question or are there other bands with the same name who are 'genuinely unsettling'?
Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
The music isn't particularly unsettling but the lyrics, especially when you know the back story, are pretty creepy.
haha
i posted about this when they were discussing enjoy your rabbit, and i hadn't read your post yet. i was surprised nobody had brought it up yet...but i guess somebody (you) actually had already, so my surprise was unfounded.
What's unsettling is I scanned the whole thread and was about to post that and then yours was the last one!
Have you seen this video? Terrifying.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=otx49Ko3fxw (John Wayne Gacy Jr. by Sufjan Stevens)
and my ultimate shivers-down-the-spine is The Boiler by The Special AKA feat. Rhoda Dakar. But nasty youtube types have removed the video
That video
enhances the unsettling nature of the song, it's very well made though, just adds an extra layer of creepiness.
Scott Walker - Jesse
Very creepy...
'I dreamed I dream' by Sonic Youth
really creepy crawly guitar and some kind of murder ballad going on in the lyrics.
Brotha Lynch Hung
Season of da Siccness. Absolutely horrifying.
The Langley School's Music Project
has the power to invoke the heeby jeebies! Particularly the 10 year old girl singing 'Desperado'
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFW9cFk5Lx4- halfway through this ting.
I'll try again...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFW9cFk5Lx4
Solaris Soundtrack
Check it out! The Solaris soundtrack (George Clooney) is quite scary in the dark and massively atmospheric. If you required a comfort blanket whilst getting re-settled the check out www.myspace.com/ledbettertheband, mmmm...nice and toasty.. MM
off top of head..
the cure - 'pornography' and burial - 'unture'
the few which spring to mind...
most of the more droney songs on Loveless...Sometimes especially
Phoenix In Flames by Converge is pretty malevolent
Like Herod always seems to get me to grip whatever i'm holding on to at the time that wee bit harder...
Pantera - Good Friends And A Bottle Of Pills
CREEEPY!
Enjoy the lyrics. They aren't mine...
"I f**ked your girlfriend last night.
While you snored and drooled, I f**ked your love.
She called me Daddy. And I called her baby when I
Smacked her ass. I called her sugar when I ate
Her alive till daylight. And I slept with her all
Over me, from forehead to ribcage I dripper her ass.
Sometimes I thought you might be spying, living out some
Brash fantasy, but no. You were knocked out. But we were
All knocked out you know. In a way
I serve too many masters.
We didn't know you'd break the bottle that the magic
Came in to use those jagged shards to cut our wrists
And neck. And you'd do it too, you're that kind of dude.
But you wouldn't know what you were doing because
I didn't, your girlfriend could have been a burn
Victim, an amputee, a dead body. But god damn I wanted
To f**k.
I'm serving too many f**king masters.
[I told you. I told you motherf**ker]"
Jolson and Jones
from Scott Walker's 'The Drift' is on of the most unsettling pieces of music I've ever heard.
ha, yes, I'm just listening to this track at the moment.
but that bit in Clara when it sounds like someones punching something meaty is just a bit more disturbing as well, especially with the women singing over it. goosebumps throughout this album.
www.myspace.com/trem001
Suffocate for fuck sake - Blazing fires etc etc
Shameless I know, but I definitely felt unsettled the first time I heard it.
www.myspace.com/trem001
At times,
Mike Pattons 'Adult Themes for Voice' is rather brutal and unsettling. Still an ace listen, but... yeah.
gorgoroth
gorgoroth
Eturivi - Ylhäisten kastien kelvottomat jälkeläiset
The most disturbing thing ever to grace my ears.
Listened once about 4 years ago. Not been back to it since.
The Intense Humming Of Evil - Manic Street Preachers.
Puscifer - V is for Vagina
basically Maynard James Keenan solo, this album sounds creepy as buggery. the gratituous use of the word vagina in a very creepy context within the third track is disturbing indeed.
Violent Femmes "see my ships" and "world without mercy" from the Blind Leading the Naked album used to scare me quite a bit.
not as much as some other songs already posted
(frankie teardrop etc) by 'names' by Cat Power kinda freaks me out
Tool - Disgustipated
Ok so maybe not the song but the last part of the song really used to freak me out.
- Last paragraph of this - http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/35173/2/ASC/
Oxbow...
...especially live.
venetian snares
are pretty unsettling
if the wasp factory was a song....
A couple of dark, orchestral types...
From the Donnie Darko soundtrack; Steve Baker, Carmen Daye & Michael Andrews - 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzPV7xHU9Wk
From Scott Walker's masterpiece Tilt; 'Farmer in the City' : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0LHj3Xu9ac
Cardiacs
seconding 'For Who The Bell Tolls'
there something beautiful yet genuinely forboding about this track.
The Chalet Lines
by Belle & Sebastian is pretty grim.
^this. Can't listen to it.
Probably the contrast with the tracks around it makes it seem all the more grim.
i can't believe that
no one's mentioned 'drum's not dead' by liars
it scares the crap out of me
I forgot about Moëvöt
Les Legions Noires were pretty alarming at the best of times but this is creepy as fuck: www.myspace.com/moevotone
See also Amaka Hahina: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FgE1VbxKz9M#
big black
jordan,minnesota and the sleeve notes for it
Pere Ubu's
Dub Housing album i always found a bit creepy. not as creepy as the thinly veiled sexual metaphors that make it into daytime radio friendly Snow Patrol songs mind
I'm gonna go check out this Xela stuff.
In the meantime, I think Lou Reed's Berlin album is up there somewhere. It's not creepy but it's just distressing. As for other things, I'll give it some thought.
I listened to some Xela
Actually, I really like it. It's kinda Sunn 0))) but different. If you like the genuine disquiet this music throws in your face, listen to 'The Kennebec' by a bloke who calls himself Hallowed Butchery.
I know it sounds like a fairly generic brand of stuff-core but, honestly, it was the last song to make me really scared in broad daylight just because of the atmosphere it provokes.
Khanate
are pretty good for feeling freaked out, as are Torture Wheel.
Agreed.
I did know about Khanate at the same time as Sunn 0))) :D I like 'em both!
Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima
Is soooooooooooooooooooo dark. As is 'The Dream Of Jacob'. Penderecki beats all.