Every so often, you'll catch an artist live or listen to an EP or Compilation and stumble across a weird instrumental track. Sometimes these tracks are riveting, other times they're not, but as an audible gawker you stop to listen and try to understand the "why?" This Friday 8-track is a small sampling of bizarre compositions that have caught our ears and keep coming to our forebrain each time is pops up in a shuffled playlist. There is no doubt these tracks are quite off the beaten path. Enjoy!
1. Yoko Ono - "Voice Piece For Soprano"
*(performed by Coco Haley Gordon Moore)
-from SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century | website
"The directions for this piece are as follows:
Scream.
1. against the wind
2. against the wall
3. against the sky
fairly self explanatory. Very short (12sec) and very interesting." (JS)
2. Radiohead - "Meeting in the Aisle"
-from Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP | website
"This is easily my favorite instrumental from a band that generally doesn't do instrumentals, and it may be one of my favs of all time." (BK)
3. Messer Chups - "Tchaikovsky Beat"
-from The Best: Coctail Draculina | website
"Who would of thought you could mash up some Nutcracker with classic surf guitar and produce a strangely enjoyable mess? Throw in the sounds of female pleasure and you got your self a hit!" (CG)
4. Sonny Sharrock - "Soon"
-from Monkey-Pockie-Boo | website
"This starts off fairly pretty, with a woman oh-ing and ah-ing a nice melody, then its sounds like some crazy orgy/riot. It kinda scared me the first time I heard it. I wonder what the recording session looked like." (JS)
(flip)
Program 2:
5. Gescom - "Bronchusix"
-from Invisible Soundtracks: Macro 1 | website
"As a big fan of electronic music, half of my music collection consists of weird instrumentals, so I really didn't know where to start on this 8-track theme. While digging through the archives, I ran across this track by Gescom, which was (is?) a side project of Autechre's Sean Booth. I'm not sure how "weird" this is, but it certainly was one of the more obscure things that I ran across."(BK)
6. The Go! Team - "The Ice Storm"
-from Are You Ready For More? Tour EP | website
"When I first heard this live, I couldn't understand why Go!Team would do a track like this. Yeah, it's pretty and flowing, but it reminds me of interlude music for a children's show." (CG)
7. John Zorn/Naked City - "Krazy Kat"
-from Radio | website
"Another short one, clocking in at 1min and 24 sec, this track spans
about a dozen different music styles. Kinda like spinning the radio
dial." (JS)
8. The Evolution Control Committee - "Candy Wrapper"
-from Plagiarhythm Nation | website
"This is borderline instrumental. There is a vocal track though I would hardly describe it as lyrical. You hear this uptempo hyper jazz track with a garbling old lady monster voice rambling up top, with the only distinguishable word being "Candy". It is totally off-kilter, makes you think: What the hell is going on?" (CG)
hey.. finally a site where there's a couple of radiohead's instru'! i wanted to know if anyone has radiohead's ``street spirit`` instrumental, i'm searching really hard for it and can't find it.. thanks alot guys
Posted by: noz | 02/08/2007 at 05:59 AM
Meeting in the Aisle is also on the Karma Police 12inch. When I first got it I played that side having alread heard karma police i was more interested in the b-side, but the record didnt say what speed so i played it at 33 1/3. I thought "wow what a neat song" then I flipped the record over and realized that karma police sounded really slow. switched to 45 and went back to meeting in the aisle. At either speed its a beautiful song.
Posted by: cinchel | 01/27/2007 at 09:44 AM