Music that is spookily ahead of its time

Ach, I know it sounds retro-futuristic now, but wtf.

Lifetones - Good Side [Dub/New Wave/Psychedelic Pop](1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdLk9YIfbm0

I could tell you this was released in 2016 and you would believe it.

Solo project from This Heat's vocalist/guitarist who also sounded ahead of their time.

Listen to the Reece bass and the drum sound on Ralph Lundsten's 'Horrorscope' (1979).

https://youtu.be/WACqp1iXkGY

Some remixes of Aksuk Maboul's 'Saure Gurke' around but here's the original from 1977.

https://youtu.be/bLW2zPUawS4

Also this:
Mariah - Shinzo No Tobira (1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRgLhEGEetc

Don't really know what genre to put this in... Japanese New Wave? Sounds like Grimes - Genesis.

Those are some good suggestions!

Also mentioned upthread but Raymond Scott's Cindy Electronium is mindblowing for a 50's track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SHJ6CcML80

what is this sorcery!?

The Monks - Oh, How To Do Now too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBqXXmPqyoA

They sound 60's of course but sounds like a more modern band copying the style.

Bernard Parmegiani's 'Capture Éphémère' (1969). Yoo sort of expect it from the GRM crew, but still.

https://youtu.be/0TcLzIm7rWY

Also CAN - MUSHROOM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dHYSXsJX6A

The first time I heard it I thought it was an indie band from the 90's. Has that sort of slacker sound that was very popular in the mid 90s, only thing that dates it is the synth sounds.

Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Beggin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQgmyQFFQjo

Another one where the style of music dates it but this has always sounded like it comes from the future to me. Can someone with a better ear tell me why?

still such a big fave of mine. don invents acid house. plus, first song about george best?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ACr2EHSjo

also best documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPlvX0lgfao

i mean it's a GREAT documentary. and also best. about best. actually there may be better ones, but it's very entertaining.

Igor Wakhévitch - Rituel De Guerre Des Esprits De La Terre (1973)

https://youtu.be/lNcTePruv3Y

Lizzy Mercier Descloux "Hard-boiled Babe" - from 1979, beat sounds v contemporary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpWl_IsPneI

^this was a remix included as a bonus track on the 2003 reissue of Press Color, as someone in the comment section points out. I don't think the original version was ever released.

^this was a remix included as a bonus track on the 2003 reissue of Press Color, as someone in the comment section points out. I don't think the original version was ever released.

― small doug yule carnival club (unregistered),

That is an excellent song! Descloux has several songs that could count, the whole punk-funk movement sounds like it's coming from another time. It feels like a timeless genre.

from the comment section: I looked it up on Discogs. It's not really a traditional remix, but it's not a 1979 original either. It was recorded in 1979 but the mixing and overdubs were done in 2003. Check it out, this is track B9: "B8 and B9 recorded "N.Y.C 1979 & Overdubs & Mix 2003 at South Factory".

There's definitely some trickery in there, there's just no way that mix is from 1979.

There's of course also this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jOhqOsouM

Cro-magnon - Caledonia

Proto-industrial folk black metal

John Giorno - Give it to me, baby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDpK9fyeVBI

It's kind of disturbing. Many tape manipulations from the 60's still sound way ahead of their time for me..

i still have a hard time believing this was recorded in '67

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku87A2hOQU4

i was pretty baked when i first heard the swamp rats but i was thought they were like a band from Cleveland circa 1975 or something

Louie Louie in general is a song that feels out of its time. The Sonics version also sounds like it could have been released 10 years later.

german proto dream pop from mid 70s

Das Licht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTasQTdZCpM

Der Mensch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8XXBCf5LHw

so is "i feel love" too obvious? that song _still_ sounds like it's from the future.

👻

also: beethoven's "grosse fuge" is about 100 years ahead of its time.

...> youtube?

There's a Beethoven piano piece that has short section at the end of each verse that is pure ragtime - can't remember what it was beyond being in the A-flat major, but while searching also turned up Sonata #32, his last piano sonata, whose second movement anticipated 1950s boogie-woogie way back in 1822. It's distinctly Beethoven boogie-woogie, but boogie-woogie nonetheless. Go to 15:50 in this youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIRkBvDCb54

great revive. that Raymond Scott piece in particular is insane.

holy shit at "das licht" that's incredible

citing early electronic stuff is almost too easy, but nevertheless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jetzY-W78gg

Whoa! that Beethoven incidental ragtime moment is very underrated! I had never heard about it and it's very impressive.

This slice of 60s texan psych sounds to me like wire and a whole kind of herky-jerky 'new wave' rhythm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwzTSX6e4jU

I was just searching thru Delia Derbyshire too, trying to find something that actually sounded modern rather than soundtrack music to scary '50s/'60s movies. Maybe this one from 1965:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jetzY-W78gg

Oh oops, you already posted that

ok, how about Tom Dissevelt from 1957?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-n6GWFAvI

great revive idd, with all the discussion on youtube embeds in rolling threads and spotify lists... well, clearly a thread like this benefits from the vast archive youtube has become

10 Ragas to a Disco Beat is the only thing that comes to my mind, even though it's widely known I'll go ahead and embed because it's still fantastic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A

Leiyla Visitations by Halim El-Dabh are from 1959. As an example is Visitation 4 (mp3 link here) which when played to an uninformed subject resulted in suggestions of early 80s industrial, maybe Bianchi or Lustmord.

"zizwih" and "theme from noah" are perhaps more immediately accessible and comprehensible in terms of later musical forms, but i'd say delia's best works are "blue veils and golden sands" and "the delian mode". ("tutankhamun's egypt" is also highly underrated.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyUkmxy5VMI

those and "Love Without Sound" (with White Noise)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI

I was gonna post Beethoven piano sonata 32 but someone beat me to it

T. Rex's tracks "Monolith" and "Mambo Sun" both have a hazy sound around a loopish back beat that to me doesn't sound all that unlike some triphop from the 90s.

MX-80 Sound invent Slint in 1981:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWEQL1cQ7o

1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wDnFbcocfE

Not kidding-- but I actually think "Cotton Eyed Joe" by Rednex was ahead of its time, and would have been an even more massive hit now.

But Rednex didn't even start the "country + Eurodance" mini fad of the mid-90s! The Grid was the first, and 2 Cowboys' Everybody Gonfi Gon preceded "Cotton Eye Joe" too. Rednex were just following a trend.

I don't agree that it sounds ahead of its time but eurodans+country should definitely make a slight modern comeback.

I think "Timber" kinda filled that gap

What's that late 70s/early 80s disco record that sounds like microhouse

Kikrokos - life is a jungle? (6 min in)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0d8nJlEnw

it's funny how so many commenters on that IHOP commercial insist that it sounds weirder than they remember and that there must be something wrong with the playback, as if they're not willing to admit that they were exposed to such crazy shit when they were growing up. imho it sounds very much of its time (in a goofy Raymond Scott/Perry-Kingsley vein) but it would fit right in on a Focus Group album

Holger Hiller's sampling experiments predate glitch pop by a solid decade. As Is (my fave of his) still sounds visionary, it could've been issued by Morr Music in the early aughts and nobody would have blinked

This angry calypso/jazz/punk number from Harry Belafonte in 'Odds Against Tomorrow' (1959)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFd3u8mCb_U

Sorry, that's the wrong clip, and can't find the right one.

This Mannfred Mann song is the title track from their 1966 EP where it already sounded futuristic. But theremin band Lothar and the Hand People took it to a new level two years later - From the clashing machinery keeping the beat to the detached deadpan vocals to the dissonant guitars and synths, this could easily have been the work of Gary Numan or any of his early-80s new-wave synth pop disciples, or even current-millenium acts like, say, Modest Mouse. But this was released way back in 1968!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUFaRiUwsk

oh wow, I get a big Albert Marceour/Zolo vibe from that