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

Sure. This is the original Botellita de Jerez one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2BJD2qLNxI

And this is the more popular Cafe Tacuba cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl3oooLM9R8

They sound like two very different songs.

This has turned into quite a fascinating discussion.

After reading this thread, some approach the topic from an aural angle; e.g., sounds and tones that sound disturbing. Others come at it from a narrative or lyrical content perspective (no doubt fed by one's culture), regardless of the tones used. In the latter, there is much more discussion to be had, of course, and I would thus add an array of examples such as Wagner for its appropriation by Nazi supporters, Charles Manson, and one which gives me a bit of a chuckle that has not even been hinted at: performative metal (such as black, doom, etc.). It appears as though the post-modern tick of "death of the author" (bless Barthes) has bitten a few, so authorial intent gets thrown out the window. It's definitely not a bad thing. Constructing an argument for disturbing vs non-disturbing songs makes for a far more interesting read. My apologies for this meta-analysis on the ways different users in a community or ILXOR.com interpret the topic at hand.

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