songs that literally expand your mind

As a companion thread to the "destroy your mind" one.

And no, I don't mean songs that are just trippy or hallucinogenic in some way, I mean songs that literally, in some way or other - musically, lyrically, conceptually - expanded your mind and made you hear, see, think about, or conceive reality differently?

I don't have an answer to this right now, and I'm going to have to think about it, but I certainly know that there are songs that have done this, for me.

For me, 'Daft Punk - Teachers' was great as a pre-internet shopping list of awesome underground house to track down and obsess over.

i feel like there's gotta be something that hit me like this as an adult, but if i'm being honest the first thing that occurred to me was first hearing "i am the walrus" when i was 14.

this is a great thread idea! i love the concept of songs that do this.

Sometimes it's not even the song, but the *experience* of hearing the song - in context, or out of context or whatever?

One of the most mind-expanding experiences I ever had, was hearing Bootylicious by Destiny's Child come on the radio, in a car while on tour.

And prior to that, I had, in my late 20s/early 30s been an aggressively corny indie fuX0r, like "I only listen to EXTREME drone concrète on limited edition Canadian import heavy gram vinyl" and ::laughs uproariously:: I thought Radiohead were like the most mainstream band I could ever conceive of liking? And I used to make fun of the ~poptimist~ folks on ILM, like, I genuinely didn't get it, and I would quite seriously accuse them of "are you listening to this music ironically?"

But it was halfway through the Ladyfest tour, and having these miserable experiences with these ~indie-er than thou~ Riot Grrrl Types (e.g. "Super Furry Animals are totally sell-out patriarch war machine supporters because they bought a tank and painted it psychedelic colours") - and haaaaaating it. We ended up barricading ourselves in our own car and blasting pop radio (all of us singing along to Nelly's Hot In Herre, because it was like, *the* most forbidden thing).

And Bootylicious came on, and it absolutely blew my mind, how much *better* it was, than the stuff we were surrounded with. And how I always liked to go on that I loved 60s girl groups, but that 'R&B these days was just disposable crap' - but every single thing I loved about 60s girl groups, and *more* - was present in Bootylicious?

So anyway, yeah. Bootylicious was a mind-expanding experience.

For me, 'Daft Punk - Teachers' was great as a pre-internet shopping list of awesome underground house to track down and obsess over.

― (the one with 3 L's) (Willl), Wednesday, September 2, 2020 8:29 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Similarly, I'm yet to hear every good song by every good group on Losing My Edge

Branwell, I had a similar epiphany, maybe quite a bit later than you, watching Beyonce at Glastonbury on TV. When she came on and said "Glastonbury - Are you ready to be ENTERTAINED?" (as opposed to the cliched "Are you ready to ROCK?!", the whole concept of the pop star and their role clicked into place for me.

Autechre's "All End" is sort of the audio version of Derek Jarman's "Blue." Am I hearing melodies? Am I hearing multiple melodies? Has time stopped? Has time sped up?

Perceive reality differently? No, never. Of course not. Well, perception is always changing but reality is always reality and isn't really perceived in that sense, except inasmuch as the perceived is always reality.

So that leaves songs that can seemingly ffect an alteration of perception, or songs that do something you hadn't previously considered with sound. Or songs that just didactically tell you something.

In the second and third senses in suppose Faust's Baby is a good one. There's this kind of time slippage thing that happens in the percussion break that makes up the middle of the song between what seems to be the same part repeated twice at either end. It hints at infinity by way of this kind of parallax view that is uncommon in recorded sound. I've achieved something similar playing around with varispeed on multitrack tape while clocking sequencers from one of the tracks. So yeah, time slippage.

I think I meant first and second senses there.

I deliberately left the question quite open-ended, because I was in both kinds of experiences. Like, yes, music that changed one's perception of ~what music could even BE~ are welcome here - whether that's like, Aphex Twin or Throbbing Gristle or The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, or whatever!

But I was also interested in the more general question of, well, can art be mind-expanding? Can it open doors and show you perspectives one had not encountered or even considered before? In a cultural or political sense? I don't think consuming art makes you a better person - but is it possible to expand one's horizons through encountering things through music?

About a decade ago, an extremely British friend (not sure if she posts here any more) was telling me about how encountering music like, specifically in that instance, Electrik Red, really opened up her mind as to how different attitudes towards sexuality could be in the rest of the world. That that was mind-expanding for her.

Thinking about landing in the States as a very sheltered Britishes child, encountering extremely political hardcore punk as a teenager was certainly mind-expanding, hearing stuff like the Dead Kennedys, encountering those kind of viewpoints about America, from an American. Now, with 30, 40 years perspective, I absolutely cringe to listen to something like Holiday In Cambodia - the language is completely unacceptable - but that message, that you can NOT truly understand how people feel simply by listening to their music? The song is about what would now probably be called Appropriation.

But at the same time, listening to the Dead Kennedys as a teenager certainly *did* help me understand the (to me, very alien) political landscape of America.

However, people are free to define "mind-expanding" however they want, because what even is a mind.

Aphex Twin definitely blew my mind open as a young teenager. I think “Come to Daddy” was my first exposure and I loved how weird and complex and abrasive and subversive (to me, at that time) it was. On a more subtle level, SAW2 really paved the way for my current musical tastes. I still haven’t figured out the microtonal intervals he’s using on disc
1 track 2.

hearing the DK's "Riot" at around...15?... was my introduction to punk rock. I think I was on a train with friends, during a school trip. before that it was strictly alt rock and country-adjacent stuff. definitely a mind expanding moment. xp

another one was Bjork's Homogenic, the whole thing, because it was so self-evidently amazing and so unlike anything else I was listening to that even my conservative-in-every-sense dad loved it. it was eye opening to learn that great art could unearth the unlikeliest common ground. I think he even reimbursed me for the CD! (also happened with Mule Variations but that was a more predictable outcome)

Definitely hearing 'Bouncing Bucephalus Ball' felt like a neural pathway was being opened-up. And not long after that, 'Fold4,Wrap5' by Autechre

I remember stumbling across the video to Amon Tobin's 'Four Ton Mantis' when I was 15. I had no idea such sounds were even possible. 'Windowlicker' had a similar effect on me.

last one for me: the blood brothers' "burn piano island burn", in high school, completely altered my perception of heavy/loud music and what it was allowed to sound like - it was crazy and catchy and boundless, but not at all macho, but instead surreal and witty and frenzied, like a song and a band at war with itself. and from then on I was and remain on the hunt for rock music that's genuinely chaotic but somehow still cogent. (from there it was the locust, melt-banana, etc., who delivered on the chaos part but weren't as interested in, shall we say, "songcraft" for the most part) I can still re-evoke, on command, the exact feeling I got when I first heard it, every time I listen. it was ideal music for the Bush years, also, where all the time I wanted to scream my lungs out, and they had *two* guys to do that for me instead. thank goodness I fell into tha hole and not the Rock Against Bush shit (no offense to D4 etc).

seconded on Aphex & Autechre. I remember noticing the bass level going up & down on "Foil" and being like...woah...I didn't know you could do that

that said my first listen to the Richard D James album still sticks out in my mind, I still remember how fucking weird it made me feel

I just remembered this Maryanne Amacher piece, which is definitely meant to rewire your neurons (loudness warning):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MahrtRVhkA

My cliched version is coming up on acid listening to Freedom Run by Kyuss and being astonished by the vastness of it. It was the first real appreciation of music being something spatial or architectural; something to inhabit and be inhabited by. Man.

the last 2-3 minutes of mbv 'i only said' sometimes causes an extremely intense meditative effect on me- echoing the 'hinting at infinity' mentioned above. i avoid listening to it while driving

'Think Of Laura' by Christopher Cross destroyed my mind when it was a hit single in early 1984. That's why I never amounted to anything.

< oh I posted this on the wrong thread. See what I mean?

Organized Konfusion - Releasing Hypnotical Gases

First time hearing Devo's "Jocko Homo" (original Booji Boy single) in a record store. I was still coming down from my very first trip, and I could not comprehend how music could sound like that. Simultaneously chaotic and organized, sinister yet hilarious.

Post seems entirely appropriate xxp :)

dr. octagon - blue flowers felt like this to pre-teen me

pharaoh sanders - the creator has a master plan, that one unlocked a lot in my brain as well

first listen to a Cardiacs album was definitely a big "I didn't know you could do shit like that" moment

Todd Rundgren's "King Kong Reggae" has this crazy bit where it almost sounds like something's coming through the speakers, like the mix is pretty flat and then suddenly becomes 3 dimensional. idk how much of that was on purpose

could not comprehend how music could sound like that. Simultaneously chaotic and organized, sinister yet hilarious

NoMeansNo did this for me

Playing in a Sundanese-style gamelan ensemble while studying pelog and salendro modes/scales taught me a lot about minimalism, beating (intentional dissonance), and phasing. I was able to look backward at things like TFUL282*, OOIOO/Boredoms & Sun City Girls and realize how informed they were.

*I posted it on another thread, but this is the quite possible most Sundanese-gamelan sounding song encountered outside of Western Java:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S3EW_euij4

(standard tuning!!!)

Expanding is harder than destroying.

Udine by Henry Cow from Concerts
Black to Comm by MC5
A Sailor's life By Fairport Convention
That's No Way To Say Goodbye by Roberta Flack
Seven Ate Sweet by Kaleidoscope
Here she comes now By Cabaret Voltaire
THe NOthing Song by Velvet Underground
HIts of Sunshine (Dublin 98) Sonic YOuth
rejoyce Jefferson Airplane
Sally Go Round THe Roses Great Society
Journey To tThe Sun New kingdom

Sonic Youth's Evol
Phuture's Acid Tracks
Royal House's Can You Party

were all pretty formative for me

there was a point when Acid House broke and i was thinking a lot about Pollock at that time and i had this revelation that disconnected "the arts" from the literary, narrative mode of thinking about stuff that i'd had/learned up til then, when suddenly i realised that things were things to be encountered outside of narrative or eventually, i guess, outside of translation. then Sontag fed into it and then Derrida and then actual psychedelics i guess, all this happened in a space of 2 or 3 years between 17ish and 20 i think but the ways of experiencing and working that thru have been ongoing ever since. ego death slightly later maybe but Acid/acid is the seed

lots of stuff by throbbing gristle, psychic tv, coil - not all good but always interesting/original

I could not think of the first one, but I can definitely say that the last one was Lingua Ignota's album "Caligula", specifically the track "Do you doubt me, traitor?"

I heard it on the Iggy Pop Confidential, and though everyone else in the car wanted it switched over, i made a mental note to check it out another time.

Yes, it's not for everybody, to say the least. But, when you have music like that, it makes the whole "list your top ten albums of the year" thing a futile exercise.

OK, a first one - "Disturbance" by The Move - genuinely scary and unsettling - are we seeing a thread here? Anyway, I had this from buying it at a jumble sale when I was thirteen or so. It definitely opened doors in your mind. It didn't make me decry the "nice" pop music of The Beatles, Harry Nillson, or whoever. But, you know there's a dark side that can be investigated.

I could add "Oh My Lover" PJ harvey....

See, I never got particularly attracted by the Led Zep school of "rock", it seemed the opposite of "expand your mind"

(and now, I will run away...)

I think that Thinking Fellas Union thing did something to my mind. Not sure what

music that changed one's perception of ~what music could even BE~

John Lee Hooker's "Don't Turn Me From Your Door" album suddenly provided a way into Blues for me. I'm not describing it very articulately, but there was something around the bareness and minimalism of it that made me realise music can use space - like paintings and architecture - and there's a power in allowing a bare chord or two to play out and reverberate.

I'm envious of those people who find music revelatory, and enjoy reading about their experiences of it. It's never really happened for me on that level.

For me it's Fennesz' Endless Summer for breaking the notion of what music could be. The review I read about it mentioned summery tunes and a Beach Boys vibe so I went to buy the cd and listened to it while washing my car and thinking wtf is this....this isss garbage...no it's amazing, wait what?

Before that I guess Morbid Angel grunting about satanic pleasures was kind of mind blowing to me. Biohazard mixing rap and metal blew open my radical genre based narrow minded idea about music.

Savage Republic Jamahiriya
Tim Buckley knebworth 74 set
Birthday party Bad Seed e.p. especially Sonny's Buirning and Deep iN tHe Woods. I discovered it when i was 16 years old and it really was eye opening. Other 2 tracks are pretty great too
NIck Cave & The bad Seeds The Carney heard this when iit came out and hadn't heard anything like it.

Dinosaur L Go Bang

Black Flag Marquee 84 remained my favourite live set for years after seeing it. Think it sounds pretty unique even from other sets by the band around the time. Wonder how it would have changed if Kira was coming out with her own basslines

Stooges Funhouse.
Still not sure what is parallel to this. Heard it when i wa sin my early teens and have loved it ever since. NIce to get a contemporary live set finally.

Grateful Dead in August 1968 and May 1970 which I thik are teh psychedelic peaks. Channeling things like Coltrane through electric instruemnatation as well as their own edge of teh seat intuition.

Can early days too for similar reasons, from Monster MOvie through to the end of the Damo Suzuki era at least. Very other psychedelic rock stuff that's almost otherworldly.
Gets several new dimensions added when you hear the live sets from that era too.

POp Group Y which I bought on hearing the BIrthday p[arty Compared to tehm in like 1983 , I think from an earlier 80s NME.
Still remains one of my favourite records ever Free rock in free fall. Sounds like its suspended above a great drop or something, like there's no floor they're standing on. So have been listening to this since my mid teens and not sure what else compares.

Pere Ubu who i first heard in the shape of Dub HOusing and New Picj=nic time which I got as Xmas presents in 1983. Couldn't fina Modern Dance at teh time , may have been out of Print. Very other sounding material . Seems a lot like teh landscape depicted in Eraserhead or something neurotic otherness. May be a connection I was making later but I think I saw Eraserhead at teh Scala right around then. & i think they were both pretty much reflecting teh same geographical influences opf Cleveland Ohio.
Bought up th erest of the material from around that period over the years, love the live material from around the 1st 2 lps and up to about 79. Not so hot on the Mayo Thompson era which is just a point too abstract and conscioulsy so.
Also the Rocket From The Tombs Stuff which is an archetypoe I'd love to see used more.

Skip James 1931 recordings which I think I picked up after getting into the Gun Club and looking into some of their blues influences. love the otherworldliness here too. The way thatthe intervals seem semi random etc.
I had the Yazoo lp which has so much surface noise reproduced it sounds like it might be an in fluence on JAMC too.
Do love thisi stuff, now have it as the Document cd which I think has reduced the surface noise. ,

DP MIziani and Shirati Jazz
I first heard him through a single we were given either in my childhood or very early teens.
Great percussive guitar over a hipshaking rhythm section that is not really funky per se but very very contagious .
Finally got to hear more of the same stuff in the shape of Strut's KIngs of History

Swans
got to see tehir London debut and was impressed by that early total music .
BUt I think my favourite stuff was the 1988 heavy folk rock thing that didn't get recorded properly at the time. But I think wasan influence on later stuff and teh era that has presumably just ended.
BUt them live in the UK On that tour in 1988 was really mindblowing. Haven't come across anything really thaht compares with that would love to.