Songs Of Discomposure: Quietus Writers Pick Their Most Disturbing Pieces Of Music

Frankie Teardrop almost got me into a car accident once.

hah, ditto. I was driving home from work on an icy highway in the middle of a snowstorm, which in itself puts you on edge, then, listening to this for the first time...

Didn't see it at first but hard not to go for 'The Boiler' (only heard it for the first - and probably last - time this year).

Torn between Butthole Surfers, Khanate and Rhoda Dakar.

should have gone with Songs of Disquietude

Poor Old Horse is disturbing because it's so funny, right? And then you realise what you've been laughing at? Great song but a slightly weird choice here

Strange Fruit

Love the description of our very own DL about Scott Walker's The Escape: ‘The man behind the dumpster’ of musical moments.

I could have gone for Strange Fruit, The Escape or the Khanate album (the latter for personal reasons) but voted Kristallnacht.

That Gnaw Their Tongues fella tries too hard and his stuff comes across as OTT and silly rather than genuinely disturbing imo

No Penderecki no credibility

While I think Vibing Up the Senile Man marks a surprise turn in Alternative TV's music, I don't really find it disturbing, just unexpected if you've come to it after hearing previous Alternative TV stuff.

Actually, I agree with Tom D. - there's not much here that I find disturbing.

I guess it depends on what disturbs the listener most. When I was younger the Residents' cover of "Satisfaction" was the most disturbing song I knew. I also didn't like Frank Zappa's antisemitism-with-kazoos tune Jewish Princess. More recently I'm disturbed by Full Body Anchor, which seems to express the despair at the core of my being. There's "Babble" by Krause and Coyne about the Moors Murderers, humanity at its most twisted.

White rock musicians disturb me most. She's A Jar, by Wilco. Sensitive indie ballad with twist domestic violence ending. Nasty song.

And then there's "Polly" by Nirvana. There's an extra dose of futility to this one. Lunkheads took this horror song and used it as a template for rape. Cobain encouraged them to kill themselves, but if they did, Kurt killed himself first. No point in art. No point in communication. Not with people like that, and there are more people like that than we can ever believe. That's pretty disturbing.

where's parallelograms by Perhacs?

where's parallelograms by Perhacs?

Really? I can't possibly think of how that would be disturbing. Crazy beautiful? Sure. But disturbing how?

'22 Going On 23' is horrific, even thinking about that song makes me feel like crying

My pick would have been "Disturbance" by The Move.

b-side of "Night Of Fear", trust me, it's scary when yr a 10 year old buying 2nd hand singles at jumble sales.

Actually, I agree with Tom D. - there's not much here that I find disturbing.

... apart from that Donald Duck thing on the Scott Walker track.

I did the Scott Walker entry on this, but it's a great list and some nicely written accounts from lots of different perspectives. What other music would Ilxors add to this?

Ween, "Mourning Glory". Something to do with it being about pumpkins and not serial killers or whatever.

List needs something by Throbbing Gristle, my pick would have been "Hamburger Lady".

Of the songs I know, I thought the oddest choice was the selected Magnetic Fields song. The accompanying text simply writes it down as disturbing for describing pain (of the emotional/romantic kind) in a relatable way. By that criterium a whole lot of songs would qualify as being disturbing, perhaps the Beatles 'For No One' more than anything.

I'd be thinking more of darker themed, sinister songs, though.

The song that first came to my mind was Tom Waits' 'What's he building?', along with its video.

Then there's Nick Cave: Song of Joy. Someone seeks shelter at an inn, tells about his family being murdered, nothing known about the killer except that he leaves John Milton quotes on the walls with the blood of his victims. The man ends his story with a Milton quote before asking for a room.

Ed Sheeran singing about what his bedsheets smell like

xxp came here to write-in hamburger lady

Peter Gabriel, Intruder. (and I'm a Butthole Surfers/Coil fan.)

Couple more I'd have included:

Autechre - Bine, which soundtracked the closest thing I've had to a night terror / panic attack
Jacques Brel - Les Bonbons, whose protagonist is an oleaginous creep, bringing his (ostensibly under-aged) paramour gifts of sweets, because they're 'so much nicer than flowers'

Klaus Nomi doing Cold Song on TV while already ill

John Cale, Fear

Jacques Brel - Les Bonbons, whose protagonist is an oleaginous creep, bringing his (ostensibly under-aged) paramour gifts of sweets, because they're 'so much nicer than flowers'

Oh, I'd never realized before what this song was about, he always seemed to be playing it for laughs. There's a David Ackles song about a cripple who owns a sweet shop who takes his revenge on the people who mock him by hiding pornography in their children's sweets, that's pretty creepy. Another particularly disturbing 'singer-songwriter' song is Randy Newman's "In Germany Before the War", you don't really want to think about what's going on in that song.

In Germany Before the War is p much a variant on M/Tenderness of Wolves

"patricia" by doc corbin dart too, probably.

Brel is definitely 'in character' during that song. As with most of his songs, it's down to interpretation, and the interpretation is my own but it makes sense to me.

Here's a translation I found online (it's not great, a little too literal):

I've brought you some sweets
Cause flowers are perishable
And sweets are so nice
Although flowers look more presentable
Especially when they're in bud
But I've brought you some sweets
I hope we can go for a walk
That your mother won't mind
We'll watch the trains go by
I'll bring you back at eight o'clock
What a nice Sunday it is for the season
I've brought you some sweets
If you knew how proud I am
To see you Hung on my arm
People look askance at me
Some of them even laugh behind my back
The world is full of naughties
I've brought you some sweets
Oh yes! Germaine's not as nice as you
Oh yes! Germaine's Less pretty
It's true that Germaine has auburn hair
It's true that Germaine is cruel
Oh, you're absolutely right
I've brought you some sweets
So here we are on the Grand' Place
They're playing Mozart at the kiosk
But tell me isn't that by any chance
That your friend Léon is over there
If you want me to step aside
I had brought you some sweets
Oh, good morning Miss Germaine
I've brought you some sweets
Cause flowers are perishable
And sweets are so nice
Although flowers look more presentable

I think NWW is a fair shout here, although more on a level that it plays games in a slightly queer fashion rather than being str8 up disturbing.

I haven't heard everything on the list but by far the most harrowing thing here is 'The Boiler' - like the blurb's writer I first heard it on a 2-Tone compilation, I must've been about 12? I was aware of the Specials as a band who wrote about real life in a kind of direct way but nothing prepared me for that. I've maybe heard it once or twice again since, that first listen really did stay with me. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title.

To be honest the only recordings I can think of that ever properly shat me up are The Conet Project, The Ghost Orchid and the epilogue from War of the Worlds and none of those can qualify as music.

I would've picked Scott Walker's "The Electrician" as genuinely disturbing.

Also, there's a Selector song about a woman getting raped...

Are you thinking of "The Boiler"? If so, it's on the list. It was on 2-Tone, but not by The Selecter.

Yeah, The Boiler is on this list. One of the few songs I have to be careful about playing (if I ever play it) in mixed company.

LBI - "parallelograms" is disturbing to me in that it's like a siren song to bring one into a void or a heavy bad trip. It's gorgeous though

maresnest otm, the conet project is genuinely unsettling

Obviously it's influenced by the revelations about his behavior but I find a lot John Phillips's "John the Wolf King of LA" disturbing - the unrelenting mellow tunefulness with occasional suggestions that something awful is going on (esp "Let it Bleed Genevieve"). It sounds like someone who's just so constantly fucked up that he's oblivious to the fact that he's become a sociopathic junkie.

Parallelograms has been kind to me on weed, Ross :)

Hearing 'Automatic Writing' by Robert Ashley on the radio when my guard was down was a very unsettling experience, but that wasn't recreated the second time I willfully put it on.

With things like Coil, Current 93 (the girl screaming DEAD on 'All the pretty horses' gave me a right scare) and NWW, you pretty much know what you are going to get though. The surprise disturbance appeals more to me, narrative wise. Where you least expect it. Or, in Scott Walker's case, unthinkably whack.

uh what radio station was that

I forgot about The Conet Project, I have that stuff on my computer which means I've got about 5 hours of number towers recordings that I barely listen to but don't want to get rid of either. The worst part is that people sample it fairly often, so that stuff could pop up in your music collection at any point. It took me a while but I eventually noticed a Conet Project sample on a Plus-Tech Squeezebox song of all things, which was a real oh shit moment.

Lol, deserved question. A Dutch classical station that had an experimental avant-garde show on Sunday night for two hours. I was driving a van moving to a new house when a student. I didn't know they had this show on Sunday night, thought it was all just classical. It was crazy. But lead to me listening to it religiously for years (it's now defunct).

xp

can't think of too many songs that freak me out to the point where I never want to listen to them but Ween's "Spinal Meningitis" is one, which is strange b/c I remember someone telling me that they thought that song was hilarious in how cruel it was

"Devil's Triangle" by King Crimson always used to do it though. it sounds like the mellotron is being butchered as it goes on. man were they able to coax some ugly sounds out of that thing.

Listening to 22 Going On 23 is a good way to get a taste of what being clinically depressed feels like if you've never experienced it

can't think of too many songs that freak me out to the point where I never want to listen to them but Ween's "Spinal Meningitis" is one, which is strange b/c I remember someone telling me that they thought that song was hilarious in how cruel it was

It was probably on ILM, I remember discussing that song before. I don't think that song is disturbing or hilarious or (wtf) cruel fwiw.

Slapp Happy - Freedom

(with that spine destroying scream)

possibly more cathartic than disturbing though

I much prefer the Cafe Tacuba one and the video is good. So before watching let me put some context behind this song which makes it kind of a parody song... the lyrics on their own are disturbing but it is because they are poking at a very specific kind of tabloids we have in Mexico. We called them 'Amarillistas' which stands for Yellow Press or Yellow Journalism. The Cafe Tacuba video is even based on this sort of yellow press where the exaggerate and create a very morbid scenario when writing news... it's usually very disrespectful to the victims as they even include very explicit pictures of the corpses and the crime scenes.

I'm not from Mexico City but I think one of the most popular yellow tabloids was called 'ALARMA' so Botellita de Jerez were criticizing their news format with this song.

Yes, I just doublechecked... it was called 'Alarma' magazine and it was fucking horrific. Take a look at the google search but beware it is very NSFW / NSFL so only click if you don't mind looking at dead people:

https://www.google.com.mx/search?biw=1453&bih=843&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=alarma+revista&oq=alarma+revista&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i67k1j0l3.3275.3560.0.3784.3.3.0.0.0.0.158.305.0j2.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.2.304...0i13k1j0i8i7i30k1.0.fMlLriaM3Sw

Oh looking at the Cafe Tacuba video I now understand this part:

Her brother was always partying
he was 'el filo' (no idea what this means), lover of a fat man.

It's actually:

Her brother was always partying
They nicknamed him 'Lilo' and he was the lover of a fat man.

Lilo in spanish is a usual nickname for Liliane a girl's name.

Oh btw it seems 'coz' is not actually an invented word sorry it's spanish for the backwards kick horses do with their two legs... is there an english translation for it? Is it just called horsekick?

Good share Moka

Feral House published a book some years ago that included a lot of photos from ¡Alarma! and other Mexican tabloids, as part of a larger study of death in Mexican pop culture.

voted Boiler, I can handle fully whacked destructo sound terror and enjoy it, but I cannot listen to that narration any more

“Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon,” Robert Ashley

It's been a long time since I heard The Boiler and went to check it out again. I didn't realise it has a music video. Obviously the heaviest of trigger warnings apply to this, got to the end but not listening again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va5Rdg3ibBI

I reckon this + a good Channel 4 drama I watched = possibly the reasons I never had the rape humour phase which seemed to afflict so many of my fellow sixth formers.

The second most disturbing Scott Walker track for me is 'Cue'. The idea of the 'flugelman' (in my mind some sort of grotesque man/horn hybrid) stalking through hospital wards, was enough to keep me up til the early hours after a late-night Drift listen. 'The Escape' has the jump-cut but the imagery in 'Cue' freaks me out almost as much. 'Clara' might be about a hanging but I think of it as a moment of respite on an album full of incredibly tense moments.

for entries in the list its 'the boiler'.

for non-list suggestions, it has to be 'Requiem: The Holocaust' by David Axelrod.

“Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon,” Robert Ashley

Oh yes, this shook me up a bit the first time I heard it.

Having listened to a few of these...well, it's Diamanda, isn't it, always was going to be

opened this thread solely to see if the lisa germano album was mentioned

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

This series from The Caretaker, constructing a musical narrative around progressive dementia using jazz-age source material, is seriously unsettling/depressing to me, to the point that I'm dreading the release of the last three parts of the series:

https://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time

Stage 1 - September 2016 (A+B)
Here we experience the first signs of memory loss.
This stage is most like a beautiful daydream.
The glory of old age and recollection.
The last of the great days.

Stage 2 - April 2017 (C+D)
The second stage is the self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in.

Stage 3 - Released in September 2017 (E+F)
Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages.

Stage 4 - Released in March 2018
Post awareness stage 4 will be without description.

Stage 5 - Released in September 2018
Post awareness stage 5 will be without description.

Stage 6 - Released in March 2019
Post awareness stage 6 will be without description.

i've found the first volume of matana roberts' coin coin project particularly disquieting, given all the things i listen to that would disquiet most people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOu0Y52BqEY

... to the point where i don't really seek it out to listen to, even though i think it's great. i never feel up to it.

crut - stage 3 gets seriously rough.

Good call on Matana. The primal scream stuff on pov piti is devestating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKVq4_lBgzY

Just heard this one today, humoristic yet so so sickening and wrong

Alice Donut - Bucketfulls of Sickness and Horror in an Otherwise Meaningless Life (1989)

https://youtu.be/092DUlx2hX0

Sorry, song is called Lisa’s Father.

the escape song is weird because Donald Duck is saying something Bugs Bunny says, accompanied by wrangled slide FX that sound imported from Looney Tunes

― Week of Wonders (Ross), Friday, September 22, 2017 11:10 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been thinking about this recently. There's something eerie about, like, when I see fairground rides with cartoon characters that have been badly painted on the side of Mickey Mouse and also Tweetie Pie and Bart Simpson (etc) and they're all slightly off and clearly breaking copyright law. There's no reason this should disturb me but it's unheimlich. Same as those really cheap children's YouTube videos with badly-animated Spiderman interacting robotically with some other cartoon character...

I think the thing that disturbs me about poor-quality kid's entertainment is the sheer lack of concern for the target audience. Or rather the lack of concern for a target audience that can't be blamed for its lack of discernment, and also the tacit acknowledgement that children don't yet have a fully-developed consciousness - they soak up stimuli indiscriminately - which is disturbing in its own way because if you accept that consciousness results from the growth of the brain then it follows that we do not have immortal souls.

Of the songs in the list "Death Disco" is upsetting for the single cover, which is a drawing of little Johnny Lydon and his mum. It's grotesque but devastatingly sad. She lived a hard life and died painfully of cancer in 1978. "Frankie Teardrop" works because it's relentless, but I find it too melodramatic to be disturbing. "The Escape" is to date the only song that has ever made me jump - it's a perfectly-formed jump scare - but it's not disturbing on an emotional level. "Clara" from the same album is more affecting. I've never been able to take Throbbing Gristle seriously, they just come across as incredibly smug and self-satisfied. The same is true of Coil, Nurse With Wound, This Heat, all of the British dark noise bands. The members were all called Colin, Peter, Tony, or Charles. I can't be disturbed by a man called Charles.

Relatively-current internet sensation "Plastic Love" is smooth and upbeat but has surprisingly bleak lyrics, with roughly the same theme as "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend". Has any pop music disturbed me on a deep, spiritual level? Probably the genetic autotune hip-hop that plays in European supermarkets, because it spits in the face of the idea that pop music might be good. Also the Black Eyed Peas, because their songs sounded as if they were written by a team of seven writers specifically for a television dance routine.

Beautiful post (missed your posts here!)

I can't be disturbed by a man called Charles.

I can think of a fairly disturbing man called Charles who had an abortive music career...

I recently came across an early-career album from Brian Williams of Lustmord: Isolrubin BK Crash Injury Trauma and this is right up there with the most disturbing stuff I've ever heard and I'm never touching it again. If you've ever been in or near a car crash, you might want to avoid it altogether.

As long as this thread's gotten a timely revival: I'm planning to do a special Halloween episode of my local radio show, and though I've found a lot of good material by scouring this and every other ILX thread with "scary", "disturbing", "unsettling" etc. in the title, I'd really appreciate some direct responses (and just, in general, I'd enjoy adding to the canon of people talking about frightening music on here).

The theme is meant to be more "upsetting music" than broadly horror-themed (kind of like the original Quietus prompt), so while loud stuff is certainly fine - I'm planning to cap off the night with "Cue" by Scott Walker - it doesn't necessarily qualify just because it's black metal/power electronics/your edgy genre of choice. If it's placid and still manages to scare you that's a plus (eg, "This Is Not My Stomach" by Bedwetter is definitely getting played). And I'd rather not have to explain "this is about [horrific real-world event]" during my mic break to get the point across - so if it comes up in the lyrics that's fine, but it strikes me as somewhat insensitive to "goose" the scare factor of the music with an explanation of the subject matter if/when it isn't already apparent.
A considerable thanks in advance, and I'm already listening through Crash Injury Trauma to assess its viability.

I can think of a fairly disturbing man called Charles who had an abortive music career...

― Let them eat Pfifferlinge an Schneckensauce (Tom D.), Thursday, 19 September 2019 22:36 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I listened to a Charles Manson prison album once (Way Of The Wolf).

Plenty of stuff on there that would count as 'most disturbing'.
Listened to it once years ago out of morbid curiosity but wouldn't go there again.

The members were all called Colin, Peter, Tony, or Charles. I can't be disturbed by a man called Charles.

― Ashley Pomeroy

Scott Baio disturbes me. I know his actual name isn't Charles. The Prince of Wales disturbs me.

I feel like any name has the potential to disturb me, particularly if it's a man's name.

I’m with AP on Throbbing Gristle - they always seemed like desperate try-hards to me.

Champiness, I'd renominate "Disturbance" by The Move. See what you think...

@Champiness: try Elend, anything off The Umbersun or The World In Their Screams - thick choral/orchestral nightmarish music.

Also Deutsch Nepal Horses Give Birth To Flies off Tolerance for that reverbed horse's neigh.

I've been thinking about this recently. There's something eerie about, like, when I see fairground rides with cartoon characters that have been badly painted on the side of Mickey Mouse and also Tweetie Pie and Bart Simpson (etc) and they're all slightly off and clearly breaking copyright law.

The primary school I went to had a wall in the main hall with a load of Disney characters painted on it, I remember in one assembly one of the younger children bursting into tears because the picture of Dumbo frightened them - I was puzzled by this at the time but as an adult I know exactly what you mean.

Ladytron's "Seventeen". The whole of the lyric is "they only want you when you're seventeen / when you're twenty-one, you're no fun / they take a Polaroid and let you go, say they'll let you know / so come on".

It was queasy back in 2002 and is still queasy given #metoo and Jeffrey Epstein etc. I learn from the Youtube comments that Kellogg's of Australia gave it away on a CD free with Coco Pops(!):
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Kelloggs-Coco-Pops/release/9061049

I can listen to dissonant/extreme stuff namechecked on this thread all day and all night, but the one song that will mess me up without fail is Richard & Linda Thompson's "Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed"

Is anybody else discomfited by the sound of Jon Hassell's trumpet on 'Shadow' from On Land? It's so odd, plus all the mouth sounds and breathing in-between, ugh