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

possibly more cathartic than disturbing though

*art bears i mean

How many songs have proper jump scares? Like that horrible scream at the end of The Cure's Subway Song.

xxxp nah it was a friend of mine who is probably even more into Ween than I am. it's a polarizing tune but they play it every show so I guess their fans mostly like it.

How many songs have proper jump scares?

"Cautious Lip" by Blondie. Debbie's scream caught me unawares a few times.

am brainstorming this. will also listen to these choices and vote, eventually

Immortal Technique - Dance With The Devil
Foetus - Kreibabe (tt: "This isn't disturbing, this is just edgy crap!")
Murcof - Oort (you want jump scares? you want COSMIC jump scares?)
KTL - Theme
R.D. Laing - Eleven
Judy Henske & Jerry Yester - Farewell
Portishead - Half Day Closing
The Cure - The Drowning Man
Giles Corey - The Haunting Presence

A couple from this year:

Jute Gyte - Oviri (the track)
Bedwetter aka Lil Ugly Mane - Haze Of Interference (his track Intent And Purulent Discharge as LUM from 2015 was also terrifying)

> How many songs have proper jump scares?

pale saints - colour of the sky
mercury rev - that early, long b-side of car wash hair.

How many songs have proper jump scares?

the Peel session version of Everybody Is Dead by Microdisney (which, unlike the album version, ends with Cathal Coughlan screaming "I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU") nearly gave me a heart attack the first time I heard to it (via ipod headphones, half asleep on a bus travelling to work at about 6.30 in the morning)

https://youtu.be/gnbbG4Pd-0U

that sudden jarring fanfare on Into the Night by Julee Cruise on the Twin Peaks soundtrack album made me jump a few times

there's a proper horrible jump scare at the end of The Cure's Subway Song.

I suppose I'm not easily disturbed. There is a style of music that is made up of high-pitched electronic sounds that is very painful for me to listen to. I believe a lot of the artists or musicians are from Japan. I tried Googling the genre to no avail.

I actually quite like The Tower Recordings and some mid-tone noise and ambient, I find it oddly relaxing. It's the extreme frequencies and pitches that I find very painful and, therefore, disturbing.

Also, sliding up and down octaves and pitches very fast and often is also slightly painful or disturbing to my ears (e.g., Penderecki, Stockhausen, etc.).

Good jump scare on the Swans 'Blind Love' off Children of God iirc

There's a weird Exorcist or something parody at the end of Brad's Shame which put the shits up me the first time I heard it, dropping off to sleep.

Is "the sound of space" the same user as "the tune is space" ie D.D.?

holy shit daredevil is an ilxor?

pj harvey "Taut"

"even the son of God had to die my darrrrrrlin"

"You Better Run" by Junior Kimbrough

Le Bateau Ivre, I don't know the user "the tune is space" or D.D.

So, unless he or she has magically possessed my body or keyboard without my knowledge, it's fairly safe to say I am not that user.

Pre- the escape, the cockfighter was the scott walker jump scare tune

Comparison of the former with the man behind winkies is a good one for a few reasons inc daftness and the capacity to unsettle even after multiple listens/watches when you know what's coming

don't get why 'the escape' over 'clara'

the donald duck voice surely

Obviously.

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

I listened to that song today because I'm not that familiar with that album but I knew there was a song with Donald Duck on it and I thought "The Escape" was probably it - I still almost leapt out of my chair.

'clara' is the better & more disturbing piece imo but i shan't list its virtues

It doesn't have Donald Duck on it though.

I think Clara is a better song overall but that bit in The Escape is more terrifying.

No Penderecki?

The Cockfighter is great too and always reminds me of this post of yore:

uh, the first time i listened to Scott Walker's "Tilt" was with my friend whose last musical obsession was Bobby McFerrin. after enduring all his "what is this shit?" and "This sounds like The Phantom of the Opera on crack" comments during the first track, i convinced him to give at least the next track "the cockfighter" a shot. anyway, after turning the volume way up during the first minute or so of indescript mumbling and shuffling noises, we were then blown away by the screaming locust wall of yell and chaos around a minute and a half. we both started screaming, the car started swerving, we almost got into an accident, we had to pull over, and i was never allowed to put another cd on in his car.

― methanie tanner (methanie tanner), Wednesday, September 27, 2006 3:45 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I suppose I'm not easily disturbed. There is a style of music that is made up of high-pitched electronic sounds that is very painful for me to listen to. I believe a lot of the artists or musicians are from Japan. I tried Googling the genre to no avail.

Onkyo! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkyokei. Can be quite painful, although nowhere near Maryanne Amacher levels. Speaking of which, she gets my vote for actually giving me a panic attack while listening to her Tzadik CD on headphones, due to the frequencies making my inner ear oscillate in an unexpected manner. I forget which piece it was and haven't dared listen again.

this hilarious one was always my favorite from the extreme music comp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdTS7YDvLBY

didn't know it was its own genre though.

"need" from kathy heideman's "move with love" also seems disturbing to me

vibing up the senile man is pretty awesome, just dudes shouting and ranting against "eerie" noises and stuff

the Maurizio Bianchi stuff I heard on Spotify was excellent, just these reverberating muffled explosion sounds bouncing around, cool as hell

lol I was gonna post my anecdote about The Cockfighter but I see Gavin has already quoted a post I did about it 11 years ago. nice.

100% I think the work of modernist/micropolyphonicists like Ligeti and Penderecki is meant to be religious, that is, comfort music, I'm always amazed at when like Lynch uses this music as a signifier for "DISTURBING!" because the collection of pure acoustic pitches and sound walls just feels to me like gazing into a telescope or reading about Calvinism

Similarly, even though Scott Walker set out to create The Most Disturbing Recorded Piece Of Music Ever with "The Escape"-- and he succeeded-- I don't find anything particularly disturbing about the goosebumps and scare-moments that that song has and will still elicit, it's the aural equivalent of a perfect horror movie and there is nothing disturbing about a piece of music that successfully elicits the emotional sensations the author has attempted to elicit, even if those emotions are "fear"

Surprised that Berg isn't on this list, the final couple scene of Wozzeck are the best examples of "music designed to disturb"

Frankie Teardrop to me is just like a fun roller coaster wheeeee my emotions

What disturbs me I guess is music that makes the very act of music-making and music-listening seem cultureless, and futile, an extension of nationalistic jingoism (patriotic country music), co-opting of political text (nu Katy Perry), exhibitions of laziness-as-depth or personal-anecdote-as-artist-statement (William Basinski)

The most disturbing piece of music in my world is Cat Stevens' "Wild World" I think, or maybe "Party In The USA" or something from Rent. Of this list, I'm voting Magnetic Fields "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" for the big lie that is that band, and how depressed it makes me about homosexuality and gay culture and New York City and money.

The most disturbing piece of music I've ever encountered was a 2nd-year composition student who was telling me about a piece he'd had performed where one of the movements in this otherwise straightforward non-postmodern exercise was free of content, that the 4th movement was simply left blank, and he was telling me about this piece and it was horrifying to view the expectation of a reaction on his face, and made me feel awful about the musicians he'd had to have put through that ordeal

Oh also Schnittke "Symphony #1" because that asshole wanted to "reconcile pop music and serious music if it killed him" and so he assembled a collection of vignettes of the entire history of 20th century music to be performed by a symphony in a concert hall, removing all history and context of all these genres and museum-ing them for a starched and seated crowd, that is the death of everything I've enjoyed in life and if Alfred wasn't dead I'd probably murder him for making a piece as disturbing and misguided and sociopathic as that piece of music

when it comes to the john phillips thing of "songs by musicians who also happened to be genuinely wicked people", there's bruce haack's "haackula". maybe he wasn't a child molester but whatever he did people aren't willing to talk about, and whenever stuff like that happens i just wind up assuming "child molester", especially since "haackula" is a really messed up album. graham bond was also a child molester, but none of his satan stuff like "love is the law" comes off as evil or disturbing or anything like that, and i think it's a mistake to draw too close an association there. like people think gesualdo's music is "disturbing" because he butchered his wife (actually he made his servants do most of the work, which is a little bit more disturbing than if he'd killed her personally), but from what i can tell it's more that the diatonic system wasn't established yet and that freaks people out.

when i first heard the last couple scenes of "wozzeck" i just thought it was badass. but i was much younger then.

i'm not disturbed by schnittke's first symphony, i just don't like it. i guess i'd be more disturbed if it worked. i like his "concerto for choir" all right.

Oh god Schnittke makes me want to find a job vacuuming up the ashes of human remains, I hate him so much. Conductor solos? A sophomoric knowledge of How Harmony Works so that all his pomo bullshit is not just evil, but badly made also? The fact that every string quartet in the world stans for his bullshit non-pomo work and talk about him to impress you? I want to die

I'm meditating right now breathing in "Charles" and breathing out "Ives" because I need some respite rn

100% I think the work of modernist/micropolyphonicists like Ligeti and Penderecki is meant to be religious, that is, comfort music, I'm always amazed at when like Lynch uses this music as a signifier for "DISTURBING!" because the collection of pure acoustic pitches and sound walls just feels to me like gazing into a telescope or reading about Calvinism

otm

rushomancy also otm re: bruce haack

Peter Blegvad - Irma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wn-qyDlcPY

It's like living inside Catherine Deneuve's head in Repulsion

Voted for Donald Duck.

what are the stories around haack?

I have never heard any of these Haack stories either

I mostly get irritated by "disturbing" so I'm not the best judge for this stuff but someone preferring Simone to Holiday on Strange Fruit is just baffling. Everything genuinely gut-wrenching in Holiday's version gets turned into this cartoon version of horror by Simone.

Matt #2, yes, that's the one! Thank you!

I always considered myself an adventurous music listener but that's where I draw the line. I don't even want to listen to one of those musicians to confirm it really is that genre. Too painful! I have visited the ENT and have what I think is a strong understanding of what is going on with my hearing and ears. Because of my involvement in music for most of my life, I have developed a very sensitive ear to a very broad range of frequencies, so even day to day sounds are a little jarring if they hit the right range. It's a gift and a curse.

Someone mentioned Berg. I find his music quite playful and wonderful, actually, but not something I can listen to in long periods because I get listener fatigue from it. I think it's because my brain is trying to reorganize the tones into a particular structure or a form it previously knows but can't find it due to the nature of Berg's pieces.

Penderecki's Threnody, on the other hand, does seem "catastrophic," as he describes it, and just filled with terror to me.

when it comes to "apocalyptic" classical karel husa's "apotheosis of this earth" hits me hardest

the point about haack is that there _are_ no stories anybody tells. it's all just hints and innuendo. people say that he was a troubled man who really loved children. there's an obvious conclusion statements like that (both obviously correct) lead me to, and if that conclusion is wrong, nobody who would know seems to have an interest in _saying_ it's wrong.

There are some really good suggestions above but then there are some really good suggestions on our list as well, even if most of our list doesn't leave me with horripilation myself. I can't speak to what other people find disturbing - it's too much of a subjective issue. For example I find nearly all power electronics and harsh wall noise either irritating or mildly funny but I get why other people might feel differently - it's not that great a leap of the imagination.

However I did pick Richard Dawson's Poor Old Horse and will defend my choice.

As I said in the capsule, it's nothing to do with the violence meted out to the nag compared to how funny it is and any feelings of self-disgust this may inspire but the sense of disquietude that seeps out during the final verse (“Now each he goes his separate path/ For a cup full of ale or a nice hot bath/ A kiss on the lips of a wife newly wed/ Or a look at the baby sleeping in bed.”) The song is ostensibly about three men beating a horse to death but it's also about the violence of men in general and how this affects their families and how it's passed on from each generation to the next. I think there are certain groups of people that have very specific first hand experiences of violence which may make this song resonate with them in a way it doesn't with other listeners (regardless of their feelings about man on horse violence).

There was a lot of talk between Luke and I in the office concerning TG. Both of us toyed with including them but *generally speaking* we find their music to have too much of a humorous aspect. I think Hamburger Lady is a grotesque song and worthy of inclusion in such a list... I probably would have gone for Very Friendly over it though, which has a specific resonance to people, like me, who were children growing up in England in the 1970s - Ian Brady underwent testing at the Scott Clinic on the grounds of Rainhill Psychiatric Hospital about a mile away from where I grew up and I was always aware of these people without really understanding what the Moors Murderers had done. Now there's a lot of humour in Coil as well but both of us would rep for them as making disturbing music over TG simply because of specific autobiographical details. The pair of Musick To Play In The Dark albums might strike a lot of people as being the very antithesis of disturbing music ("Whoooooo! Scary arboreal synth music!") But a track like 'Ether' puts the fear of God into me precisely because it speaks directly to some of my experiences of chronic alcoholism in a very visceral and terrifying way - however I wouldn't necessarily expect other people to feel the same way. I've never been a victim of third degree burns or met anyone who has been so Hamburger Lady has less of a grip on me despite being obviously quite a tough listen.

ok, now this is fucked up. i mean, you know, internet. but i google "hamburger lady" and this comes up:

http://www.scaryforkids.com/hamburger-lady/

i know the kids love creepypasta and so on, but what the hell kind of sick fuck is suggesting that children should listen to "hamburger lady"?

John, I started this thread wholly because I loved the idea and execution of it on tQ. And also because the question invites very open and diverse answers. For that - and not just for that, but today specifically for that - I applaud what tQ does and continues to do. It's subjective, it's inviting, it dodges usual suspects. It inspires and invokes.

Just want to say that to you/tQ, regardless of this thread.