(on the basis of music contained - not necessarily quality of music - some difficult music is very good, but not easy to get into or enjoy on a casual, common-or-garden basis).

My vote goes to:

Shut up and play your guitar - Frank Zappa - highly statistically dense, complicated time signatures and polyrhthmic constructs (e.g. quintuplets (i.e. five notes equally spaced in a beat, septuplets (7), and true polymetric phrasing - things like 13 notes equally spaced over five conventional 'beats of the bar' - 13:5 (as opposed to 13 time, e.g. 13/8, which is a completely different thing and only marginally easier). Even following the score (available seperately) it's tough, even with years' sight-reading experience...

What's your most 'difficult' and 'unlistenable' (but not crap in the qualitative idiom)???

jtc

I once bought an LP by a group called Whitehouse at a boot sale for a £1. Sold it on to a specialist record shop for £40 ish though as I found out it was quite rare. Why anybody would want this -just noise!!!!. Scared the shit out of me - made Kraftwerk sound like Dollar.

I have a double CD of 10th century Egyptian Epic poetry "the Hillali Epic" sung in archaic "peasant" Arabic by a very old man accompanying himself on a single string "viola". This one can be a little hard to get into sometimes.
The Korean Shamanistic "Sinawi" trance is also a bit of an acquired taste I reckon.

Recently bought St Anger, Metalica. I was hoping for big things in the Load, Reload vein.
Oh dear am I getting really old or is this just too sophisticated for me.
Played it once. Will probably never play again.

I have that FZ guitar album. The thing is that it's all build and tension with no rhthmic or melodic pay off, so you justy can't sink yer teeth into it. When Zappa did do harmonically gratifying improvisations though he could be awesome. There's a sublime version of (I think) Zoot Allures on the live The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life that's testament to this.

It's a lot of fun when heavy going music finally clicks though. I've always liked the instrumental aspect of extreme metal, but could never stand the Cookie Monster vocals. Nowaday though I couldn't imagine the best examples of the genre working any other way.

No question. John Zorn's "Kristallnacht", especially track 2, "Never Again", made up largely of layered samples of the noise of glass shattering.

Back in the 80s, the various Come Organisation groups (Come, Whitehouse, Sutcliffe Jugend and the like) made some violently extreme electronic albums. A mixture of high-pitched monosynth wails and psychotic vocals.

Whitehouse are still around, but I haven't heard much of the recent stuff. For a taste of how ear-bashing they could be, check out the sound files at http://www.susanlawly.com/ (they *must* be played exceedingly loud)

-- Ian

Pavlovs Dog

Both of 'em

P

Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica', Tangerine Dream's 'Zeit' and Magma's 'Kohntarkosz'. A lot of stuff by Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Department and Throbbing Gristle requires you to be in just the right mood as well :D

Jazzkammer's Pancakes is quite hard-going in that you can hardly hear it. It's a noise record which after an initial 30sec blast goes virtually quiet. You really have to turn it up to hear the scrapes and wooshes swirling...
I saw it, that which before I could only sense by Fushitsusha is completely opposite in that it is ferociously intense and loud power trio improv rock. The title track grabs you by the balls and doesn't let go for 85 mins.
Brian Lavelle and Richard Youngs' Radios Series can be challenging too...
All of the above are interesting and/or great records though, I'd find it much harder to sit through a Cheeky Girls cd!

I completely forgot about this. It's gotta be the most famous 'difficult' album - or at least one of them.

"A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous..." Indeed.

There's also some Grateful Dead that can be pretty tricky as well. "Aoxomoxa" (I think it's called, but then I do forget) was a bit of a challenge. Also, a fair amount of Allan Holdsworth can be tricky to get into unless you're a muso (or ex-muso like me).

What else? Oooooh, let's see. Plenty modern classical - but then I'm deliberately excluding such people as Stockhausen, Cage, Nancarrow and even Stravinsky on the basis of the fact that their music is difficult by the very nature of its genre and idiom. If that makes any sense.

Am I having an early 'senior moment' in finding most modern contemporary chart music impenetrable? Not because it's complex (it rarely is) but because it lacks the magic ingredient (music)...???

jtc

Anything by Roland Keating. Two bars and I'm off to the garage for the anglegrinder.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones..." by No-Neck Blues Band. Would dearly love to have the time to get into this as there seem to be moments of magic. It is, I fear, one of those albums which requires complete concentration for its length.

See All Music Guide (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=CASS80307310703&sql=A7y6qoa9aqijp)

Originally posted by JTC
I completely forgot about this. It's gotta be the most famous 'difficult' album - or at least one of them.


THANK GOD! It's not just me then - my mate put this on at his birthday party, and I'm an uncultured heathen who doesn't "get" free form jazz or anything like that. I found it unlistenable, even though I was on, ahem, an enhanced plane at the time...

Even my other mate who was there, who's a grade 8+ pianist and thus has bound to have been exposed to this kind of stuff during her learning, likened it to a cat in a bag being smacked against a badly tuned guitar whilst someone threw drums down the stairs - I couldn't have put it better myself.

Maybe it'd have made more sense on acid (not E - you need a beat for that I feel!)

TMR is one heck of a strange album, of that there can be no doubt. Then again, the old Cap'n was/is* one heck of a strange fellow too.

I had a friend (sadly gone now) who was also somewhat strange and had a complete Beefheart collection, more or less. He loaned some of them to me one summer and I think I struggled to make up a tape from six cds or so. I do rate the Cap'n, but that's not to say I find his music easy. And that's saying something, from someone who really likes music of 'high statistical density'.

jtc

* I think he's still alive, but in another 'senior moment' my memory fails me. I think it's that impending birthday, you know the one with the 0 at the end of it... And no, not 100.

110?

Originally posted by JTC
And that's saying something, from someone who really likes music of 'high statistical density'.
Have you tried drum band music from West Africa?
If not, I think you'd appreciate the very high statistical density, as well as the circularity and general vertical/horizontalness of the music :D
Will dig out an amusing link later.
Personally, I've never found Zappa's music difficult, just turgid. But I will give it another go for the polyrhythm and polymeter.

Nah, 110 would be pushing it somewhat, though I expect some of those 552 owners might need to live that long to pay the piper...

;)

jtc

Ok, so that's a bit of a deep subject tag, but what the hey...

Have you tried drum band music from West Africa?
If not, I think you'd appreciate the very high statistical density, as well as the circularity and general vertical/horizontalness of the music

Not really heard that much, other than the occasional bit that you encounter during the festival, and that I heard on a trip to Egypt a few years back. Would be very interested in any recommendations...

Personally, I've never found Zappa's music difficult, just turgid. But I will give it another go for the polyrhythm and polymeter.

It depends on which slice of his musical pie you have experienced. The man's body of work was immense, and covered huge tracts of ground, both musically, stylistically and qualitatively. The difficult stuff is the bits without the words, generally speaking. Zappa seemed to have a few different mindsets - to wit:

Orchestrated Vocal Tracks (e.g. Apostrophe)
Orchestrated Instrumental (e.g. lots of the non vocal stuff)
Sprechgezang (sp.?) (e.g. The jazz discharge party hats)
Jazz (e.g. Hot Rats)
Rock (e.g. Sheik Yerbouti)
Polyrhythmic (e.g. the Black Page, etc).

That's a lot of musical ground. The orchestrated thing was mainly scored, and though arrangements would change, the MO was generally the same. The Jazz and Rock is more accessible, and the Sprechgezang is improvisational, polymetric (without being scored) and generally experimental. The Polyrhythmic stuff is the most difficult as it challenges the listener both on atonal or modal progression grounds, and also on rhythmical grounds (odd meter, resolution and dissolution, and the whole nature of extremely difficult-to-comprehend phrasing). In short, to the untrained or inexperienced ear, it sounds like cats and dogs fighting inside of a piano whilst primary two do music studies with tambourines and woodblocks.

I digress. That's why I find the polyrhthmic stuff difficult, but fascinating at the same time (from a musical and an envelope-pusher perspective)

jtc (who always wanted a shot of the cymbals)

Originally posted by JTC
Sprechgezang (sp.?)

It's 'Sprechgesang', actually.

FWIW, I've often thought of Zappa as quintessentially white in his approach to music, very brainy, as opposed to the black, body/soul oriented approach. Dangerous territory, here - I'm not being racist, if forced to choose, I would definitely go for the black approach. Zappa had a phase when he would employ young musicians fresh out out of school. They were given sheet music, and if they could play it straight away, they were hired. For the rhythm sections, he had weird stuff like 19/13s and the like.

Too clever by half, for me. I tend to like music that's not the result of a mathematical construction.

I have some tapes of lod Yemenite music which can be quite challenging, rhythmically, but which speaks to me more, emotionally (even though I con't understand the lyrics at all), than anything by Zappa.

BTW, Bobby Brown was a radio hit in Germany and still gets air play occasionally - it seems the programmners don't get the lyrics, or surely it would be banned.

I have some tapes of lod Yemenite music which can be quite challenging, rhythmically, but which speaks to me more, emotionally (even though I con't understand the lyrics at all), than anything by Zappa.

I'm not disagreeing with you on this point - I never really found Zappa's music to be emotionally engaging at all, in the same way that I don't find (say) the photography of Ansel Adams to be emotionally engaging. That's not to say I don't enjoy both - emotional response is only one slice of the entertainment pie, and it is possible to enjoy and appreciate art on many different levels.

I'm a big fan of instrumental music, but for me much of that instrumental music I admire and appreciate (as one muso listening to others) rather than feel an emotional response. My other topic about the 'sparser' forms of music, without excessive instrumentation and layering, probably springs from the counterpoint kneejerk reaction to some of my more 'dense' music.

I'm of the general opinion that it's easier to engage an emotional response to music if that music is sparser, more paired down. I think it's got a lot to do with having the space in the music to really lock into that emotional thing...

Anyway, I'm fascinated by the way this topic is developing. Does anyone agree with me on the multiple levels thing, or am I just johnny-bizarre because of my eclectic leanings?

jtc

In a nutshell, the key difference between Zappa and the majority of modern musical 'artistes' is that Zappa straddled the difficult middle ground between populist and avant garde. The fact he dressed it up with silly lyrics is secondary - and even he admitted this on several occasions.

I always like to think of Uncle Frank as a kind of cross between a dynamic conductor (wild hair, funny 'tache, big nose) and a circus ringleader (wild hair, funny 'tache, big nose). His main instrument was the orchestra, he just had a rather unusual combination of instruments in it.

jtc who has always been an admirer and fan of FZ

Trout Mask Replica is pretty difficult but the rest of his stuff seems fine to me - better than fine - Clear Spot would be on my desert island list and if I could only take one track it would have to be Big Eyed Beans from Venus. He's probably still alive check out the radar station...here (http://www.beefheart.com/) and this tribute album (http://www.furious.com/perfect/beefheart/beefheart.html)

Trout Mask doesn't sound at all difficult if you give it more than a few casual listens. I first heard it circa 1980, thought it was odd but intriguing, kept listening to it, and it soon became one of my favourite records (it was, in fact, my first intro to Beefheart).

I agree with timh, however - anyone who wants to find out about Beefheart and wants some fabulous immediate thrills should get Clear Spot. Big Eyed Beans From Venus is awe-inspiring.

-- Ian

Originally posted by TomF
"Sticks and stones may break my bones..." by No-Neck Blues Band. Would dearly love to have the time to get into this as there seem to be moments of magic. It is, I fear, one of those albums which requires complete concentration for its length.

Does that mean that you're selling it cheap? I've got a few of theirs but not that one. I saw NNCK with Vibracatheral Orchestra a few weeks ago in Leeds and there were indeed several moments of magic.
If you want something a little bit easier to get into I'd like to recommend you some Pelt or Charalambides... or some early 70s Japanese drone improv... Taj Mahal Travellers or East Bionic Symphonia.

Originally posted by sideshowbob
Trout Mask doesn't sound at all difficult if you give it more than a few casual listens. I first heard it circa 1980, thought it was odd but intriguing, kept listening to it, and it soon became one of my favourite records (it was, in fact, my first intro to Beefheart).

It was certainly "intriguing" - I'm willing to give it another go - straight this time - as I don't think I gave it a fair go. I wasn't really in the mindset to appreciate something so avante garde at the time - I was more after 60s rawk or 90s downtempo trance at that moment of the day...

One of the people who I share a lab with just put on their 'Classical Chill-out Album'. Fcuking unlistenable rubbish. All the cliches. It got me so angry I had to pull rank (which I don't do very often) and demand silence! Give me Einstürzende Neubauten anyday.

Does that mean that you're selling it cheap?

No way! I just need the time to devote to it. Unfortunately the nature of my working life means that I am able to devote less time to listening to music than I'd like. Consequently, it's often not at the top of the list when there's a spare half hour. That said, I shall get up early on sunday and annoy the neighbours with it.

If you want something a little bit easier to get into I'd like to recommend you some Pelt or Charalambides... or some early 70s Japanese drone improv... Taj Mahal Travellers or East Bionic Symphonia.

Thanks for the recommendations. I shall search them out. Any specific albums?

The 50 Cd box set Merzbox by Merbow.

(well from waht I have of his work anyway)

DS

ITC Pole - Pole

I really really want the Merzbox... £500 though... I'll get the Day of Seals 4xcd at £22 instead I think!
TomF you've got a PM.

The recent Merzbeat Cd actually had a beat in some places!

Jack Danger of MBM was invovled in one of the tracks.

I have Ikebana , a 2 CD remix set from Amlux in myh to be listen to pile.

DS

OTD - Czukay - The New Millennium

Dillinger Escape Plan - "Calculating Infinity"

First listen "What the hell was that??"
Second listen "Hmm, a bit of melody"
Third listen "Ah, now I get it!"

Gary

Song X by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. (I tried and tried)

A Faust album which I do not know the name of.

Queen.

TMR is a fantastic album.................heavy hallucinogens are probably required to "focus" the work :-).....

I saw a documentary on that there TV once and it transpires that Beefheart had the magic band imprisoned in a shed in the woods for rehearsal, only one of them was allowed out for supplies.

It was then done in one take in the studio , much to the amazement of Frank Zappa..

s

I find that Trout Mask Replica is emotionally engaging; the emotion comes in the moments of "resolution", where the apparent disharmony gives way to a simple straightforward blues sound (for example) -- if only for a few seconds.

It's an emotional effect akin to that generated by a lot of thematically dense but dissonant classical works. For instance, Bartok's 3rd Quartet is an incredibly dense and cerbral work at first hearing, but there are striking moments of resolution, most notably in the coda, when the first violin recapitulates its theme in C# major after 15 minutes of dissonant C# minor development.

A similar emotional effect occurs at the end of the wedding feast in Stravinsky's Les Noces, when the bride suddenly starts singing that simple, plaintive russian folk song. Although Les Noces is an allegedly difficult work, the effect of this song is emotionally quite powerful precisely because of the dense, polythematic dissonance that preceded it.

I can think of a lot of examples of this kind of emotional resolution in difficult, cerbral, white-boy music, actually (Shostakovich, Schnittke, Prokofiev, Penderecki, etc.). It's sort of like a heroin addict torturing himself by withholding the smack until he can't stand it, in order to amplify the subsequent rush.

So I guess I don't quite buy the white-boy-brainy/black-boy-soul thing.

Incidentally David, Merzbox doesn't count as music. I know that seems presumptuous of me to say but I've heard a bit of it and -- no. ;)

Originally posted by Eric L
So I guess I don't quite buy the white-boy-brainy/black-boy-soul thing.

Absolutely.
Black music has soul and brains. An unbeatable combination that now rules the world, even if in hideously tortured and diluted white boy pastiche.

I had a copy of this when I was a teenager, purely because it was cool to have a copy. I never understood it though, but I guess I never will because someone stole it. I much prefer PF's DSOTM onwards.

These days, I have major trouble getting on with the Chemical Brothers. I bought one of their CD's (forget which) that was being touted as a great system workout. That one, I gave away, only because I couldn't find anyone to steal it!

Oddly, these are the only two records I remember buying for reasons other than music. Strange that.

Mick