Music: Saturday Mixtape: We’re punishing you with experimental music
- Experimental music is in its gravy days. With bands from Animal Collective to Grizzly Bear taking on-its-face odd music to the Billboard charts, we figured we were due to look back at some of the roots of weird tuneage. Most of this stuff isn’t as listenable as, say, Lady Gaga, but there’s something to be said about the challenge they offer.
- 1. This is kinda accessible. Steve Reich is perhaps the most famous name of minimalist music. From magnetic-tape-looped early works such as “It’s Gonna Rain” to later instrumental and sampled works, he’s a huge influence on what indie rock has become. You can hear, for example, some of Sufjan Stevens’ musical left fields in “Pulses.”
- 2. Talk about acquired taste. The Residents may perhaps be the most acquired taste in the history of rock music, but not one without a great history. A bunch of experimental raiders, the band has managed to keep its public profile secret for about 40 years now – or about four times longer than KISS did. And in 1979, they even got nominated for a Grammy for “Eskimo,” an album of made-up Inuit folk tales. The comparisons to Animal Collective are myriad.
- 3. Also acquired taste. The Red Crayola/Krayola is a band that famously knew little about playing their instruments at first (but lots about freaking out), and now is a musical front for psych-rock survivor Mayo Thompson, who later worked with members of Tortoise. Fun fact: The guy playing keys on “Hurricane Fighter Plane” is Roky Erickson, a garage-rock icon who has a pretty interesting history of his own.
- 4. By this point, also acquired. Scott Walker’s early career – which leaned heavily on orchestral pop – was hugely influential on dudes such as Beck (“Scott 4” is one of the most underrated albums ever). But by the early ’80s, he started going off the grid, to the point that by 1995’s “Tilt,” his music was completely unrecognizable. “Farmer in the City” is a beautiful, cinematic tune, but it’s also a complete mind-screw.
- 5. This is acquired, too. Captain Beefheart‘s weird, off-key masterpiece, “Trout Mask Replica,” still isn’t very easy to find legally online, but debut album “Safe as Milk” still has a lot of the cluster-screwing elements that his later works did. If you had Howlin’ Wolf drop a lot of acid, you might get kinda close.