One of the best things about music is that it's an almost limitless form of expression. For every Taylor Swift song written by a middle-aged marketing expert, there's some indie musician doing things with instruments that no one's ever thought of before. It's just that some of the things they think of are utterly insane, which produces music that sounds like it could be the soundtrack to that dream you had where you fought a giant banana who spoke with your dad's voice.
Animal Music
It's metal with a parrot, fuckers! Polly's going to take that cracker and shove it up your ass! As silly as it is, you have to admire the fact that it exists.
But what if you love the idea of making music with animals, but prefer music that doesn't sound like a jackhammer giving rough anal to another jackhammer? Then please enjoy the relaxing drone of Reynols' "10,000 Chickens' Symphony."
It was recorded in a chicken coop in Argentina, and while it's pushing the definition of music, it deserves acknowledgment if for no other reason than this may be the only recording in history where there's a decent chance you've eaten one of the performers.
Colors
You know how when you get really high you swear you can, like, taste the colors, and then you get arrested for trying to lick the neighbor's son because you thought his hair would taste like a Creamsicle?
Uh, me neither. But that must be how Ken Nordine felt when he created Colors, a spoken word and light jazz tribute to, you guessed it, America's military heroes.
OK, no, it's about colors. I was trying to be suspenseful. Here's one of the 34 tracks:
There's no way you can say things like "As an intellectual vibration smack-dab in the middle of spectrum, green can be a problem" if you're not about to crumble Doritos onto your butterscotch ice cream. Listen to Nordine's passion as he voices his complaints about the stupid green, his disdain of the envious green, his disappointment in the so-so green, and his quiet joy when he finally reaches the intelligent green, the green that has something to say, man. Truly, a man voicing this much enthusiasm over a single color has to be tripping at least several balls, if not all of them. And to think, this project all began with radio commercials for PAINT.
Stalaggh
"Stalaggh make the loudest, heaviest band you can think of sound like nursery rhymes sung by unusually innocent children", as one critic puts it. Stalags, of course, were Nazi prison camps, while the extra "gh" stands for "global holocaust," suggesting that the band members either are misanthropes or have a serious misunderstanding of World War II. Considering that one of their albums is called Projekt Misanthropia, it could very well be both.
It's not music so much as an attempt to destroy the very concept of music. Listening to it is like screening a horror movie in your brain, and playing it publicly violates at least two human rights conventions. Enjoy! Here's a link. You'll hate me later: https://youtu.be/br5tyuEUBWE .
For those of you who don't have the time and/or mental stamina to listen to 35 minutes of what sounds like a recording from one of the crappier levels of hell, let me explain what you're missing out on:
Stalaggh decided they wanted to work with people who have serious mental illnesses -- schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, etc. So they got a bunch together and spent several hours recording these people beating the shit out of the contents of abandoned buildings, screaming their lungs out, and moaning and jabbering in fear and pain.
The end result is a nightmare in aural form. It is primal and surreal and will suck every last bit of joy from your body, which is of course why I've brought it up on a comedy site. These aren't heavy metal musicians who scream as loud as they can on stage and then go off to snort cocaine and bang groupies -- these are people suffering from serious anguish, and it comes through in every godforsaken second.
After releasing three albums, the anonymous metal musicians behind the project renamed themselves Gulaggh and upped the terror by working with 30 children from a youth mental hospital. Oh, and they started using classical instruments. Don't tell me that "this is what Hell must sound like" didn't cross your minds.
Portsmouth Sinfonia
Classical music has a bit of a stuffy reputation. It's what rich old white people listen to while sipping on brandy and puffing a cigar rolled in a poor person's skin. A budding musician can't just sit down with a few friends and jam out Beethoven's Ninth -- it takes many people training a lot of hours to put something like that together. It's beautiful music that's inaccessible to most musicians.
At least it was, until a dozen British art students said, "Fuck it, we're not going to let any of that stop us from starting a symphony." And then they did.
If you've heard Portsmouth Sinfonia, you'd think you'd just heard an orchestra composed of entirely deaf people. Obviously, I can't keep such a masterpiece of knowledge to myself, so here's a link: https://youtu.be/hpJ6anurfuw
It's comprised mostly of rank amateurs, who are backed by a few professionals playing instruments they're completely unfamiliar with. The end result makes dogs howl, babies cry, and grown adults laugh their heads off.
They took their absurd work seriously -- practices were mandatory, and while they knew they were terrible, they saw their performances as new interpretations of classic works. That goofy yet genuine attitude may be why they swelled to 82 members in just a few years. They counted film score writer Michael Nyman and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno among their ranks. They made a record on a major label -- all in one take, of course. They played at a sold out Royal Albert Hall. For one piece at that concert, the piano was played by an actual pianist, and that just made it funnier.
Sadly, the group disbanded in 1979, although there's been talk of a reunion. Whether that comes about or not, the Portsmouth Sinfonia is a testament to what people can accomplish if they believe in their work and don't give the slightest of fucks about how bad they are and what other people think of them. It's a philosophy that has inspired both my career and my sex life.
Credit to Mark Hill
I'd recommend reading his entire article over on Cracked. It's both troubling and fucking hilarious.