The five most unlistenable records in my collection:

RandomKoolzip

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Fri Jul-08-05 12:35 PM
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The five most unlistenable records in my collection:

And by "unlistenable," I mean "fucked-up, noisy, tension-producing, wacked-out, and obscure."

Area: Event '76

Area were an Italian progressive rock band of the mid-70's who extended some of the ideas of Henry Cow, Zappa, and King Crimson into free-jazz and experimental realms that the creators themselves could barely imagine. It was said that even John Cage was a fan.
Although the rest of their catalogue resembles music (as most sentient humans know it), this live (!!!!) record resembles no known genre, includes no forward motion, and is noisier than a dildo factory. Mechanical drones, a few sax bleats courtesy of Steve Lacy (!!!!!!!), some fast drum tattoos, but mainly a monolithic, static-y black cloud of dense noise. All in all, about as psychedelic as finding a severed toe in your Slurpee, which is odd, since this band's market was the mellow prog audience....imagine if Genesis suddenly turned into the Boredoms and you'll have the feel of "Event '76."

Blue Humans: Clear to Higher Time

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Regarded by noise aficionados as their high=water mark, this is NYC guitar terrorist Rudolph Grey's art-jazz band. "Clear to Higher Time" is nothing more, nothing less, than a detuned guitar, a heavy pick, and Satan himself scraping his scaly cock against a drummer bashing his cymbals for forty minutes straight. One single crescendo....that never subsides. I use it after a hard day at work. Good stuff.

Incapacitants: No Progress

Possibly the most unpleasant record ever made. There is no sound on this album that resembles the output of a playable instrument. For a half an hour, a fifty-foot fingernail is scraped against a blackboard the size of a football field. It sounds like a dentist's drill, but in a good way.

Doug Snyder and Bob Thompson: Daily Dance

Long before there was a "noise scene," there were isolated eruptions in musky corners; socio-musical outcasts plying a trade no one had a use for. While the rest of the world was digging Yes, The Partridge Family, and Jim Croce, Doug Snyder and his drummer buddy Bob locked themselves in an Ohio living room for a day in 1973 while bashing the juicy fuck out of their guitar and drums (respectively). Untuned, unrestrained, unlistenable. It was released on a Candaian Jazz label and the world, surprisingly enough, ignored it, even though their aesthetic was a good ten years ahead of its time; no one would find a use for these sounds until the tail end of the No Wave era, when Sonic Youth picked up this particular torch.

Mahogany Brain: Smooth, Sick Lights

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Is it possible that the French are the enemy, like the republicans say?
Sometimes the ideas that the English-speaking world takes for granted get translated by other cultures, coming out the other side resembling nothing the creators had intended. Using simple rock instruments, but having no earthly idea how to play them, Frenchies Mahogany Brain decided to record an album in 1972. What they ended up putting to disk anticipated the racket Half Japanese later pooted forth in the early 80's, but (and here's the clincher): Mahogany Brain fancied themselves something along the lines of Yes or Jimi Hendrix.
Guitars twang away, untuned, drums stumble all over themselves, puking. A singer oinks and whistles like a pig, alien to the concept of "key" and "form."
A masterpiece.