As any audioblogger will tell you, finding a logical context for the music presented on a site is one of the more challenging aspects of maintaining and contributing to it. There are probably a few dozen records that I own that I cherish and praise, yet because of stylistic considerations and their inherently arcane nature, I rarely get the chance to expound upon them in a single collective post. This should resolve the issue, as I present the first of hopefully more installments on some of the more stranger, or ‘esoteric’, if you will, favorites in my collection. An open mind and healthy taste for adventure are highly recommended here.

Devo Hardcore Devo, Vol. 2: 1974-1977 Rykodisc 1991

One of the more lesser-known pieces of pop music trivia is that before the ’80s New Wave, oddball stage costumes, and the universal success of “Whip It,” Akron, Ohio’s Devo recorded some of the most bizarre, incomparably brilliant music ever committed to tape. Four-track tape, that is, which is the recording medium of which the band’s two Hardcore compilations are sourced from. These basement demos were unearthed by Rykodisc and released in 1991 before going out of print, and are now fetching steep prices on the online auction market, but they’re worth every cent – especially the second volume, which is even more delightfully warped than the first. It’s a heady challenge to describe the material here without succumbing to schoolgirl-like levels of giddiness, but I’ll try to rein my enthusiasm down to a manner of coherency. Hardcore Vol. 2: 1972-1977 (1991) contains all of the following: surf guitar freakouts, slick power punk, candy-coated pop songs, psychedelic rave-ups, serene electronic mood pieces, and the most impressive application of shitty malfunctioning synths that I’ve ever heard in a “pop music” context. Hell, there are so many tracks that are just beyond description I would have an aneurysm trying to explain them. Let’s just say that they’re in spirit with the cover, a shot of the band wearing 3D glasses and fake plastic breasts accompanied by half-naked women in various sexual poses, perfectly in line with the “what the fuck exactly is going on here?” mantra that reverberates around the listener’s head when first hearing the record. I don’t even care for the rest of Devo’s catalogue; the Hardcore volumes, on the other hand, are truly something special.

“Can You Take It? – Devo 3:02 (Hardcore, Vol. 2: 1974-1977, Rykodisc 1991)

Bernard Herrmann The Day the Earth Stood Still 20th Century Fox 1951

While it would certainly be a tough call, my vote for greatest film composer of all time would have to go to Bernard Herrmann. Generally speaking, I’m not one for soundtracks and other programmatic music without their corresponding visuals (blaxploitation titles and various Morricone works excluded), but Herrmann’s scores stand up so well as “absolute music” that I’ll gladly pick up anything with his name on it regardless of whether I’ve seen the accompanying film or not. There is a chain of thought that most people follow whenever they hear the name “Herrmann,” which goes something like, “Hitchcock – Janet Leigh shower scene – now-parodied “eek!-eek!” strings – horror music,” but Herrmann’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is eons more frightening. From a strictly instrumental standpoint, what the composer did here was entirely groundbreaking at the time, employing two theremins, amplified strings, organs, vibraphone, and various brass and percussion – light years ahead of the standard four-section orchestra that was de rigueur in the film music industry back then. The effects that Herrmann wrings from this setup are simply astonishing: dark swells of sonorous brass combined with the psychotic electronic hum of the two theremins, nervous violin drones and chilling bursts of white noise from the clashing cymbals. There are a couple of Copland-ish “Americana” pieces to break the tense atmosphere halfway through, but by and large, this is edge-of-your-seat music that begs for headphones and a dark environment. For purely sentimental reasons, Vertigo (1958) will always remain my favorite of Herrmann’s scores, but The Day the Earth Stood Still comes in damn close as a runner-up. (This score was re-recorded in 2003 by Varese Sarabande with Joel McNeely conducting, and while its fidelity is crystalline compared to 20th Century Fox’s transfer from the master tapes, the original is still to be preferred.)

“Prelude/Outer Space/Radar” – Bernard Herrmann 3:50 (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 20th Century Fox 1951)

JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band Explodes Across the Nation Soul Fire 2001

With no information to glean from the production credits on the jacket and little coming up in the way of a Google search, I still know next to nothing about JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band. I mail-ordered an LP copy of Explodes Across the Nation (2001) from the Truth and Soul site a few years ago without hearing a note of the music, one of those rare caution-to-the-wind moments that I can’t afford now that my income isn’t of the disposable variety. What a jewel this album is – albeit one that’s been nicked, scratched, cracked, and submerged in a barrel of used motor oil. In terms of pure vibe, Explodes’ closest comparison would be the scorched-earth, apocalyptic funk of Miles Davis’ Agharta/Pangaea (1975) records, but weirder, grittier, and, well, much more “evil.” The funk here is raw, loose, and almost otherworldly, with backward vocal samples, torture-chamber percussion, and a menacing voice whispering, “DIE” on occasion. Song titles include “Beer (So Nice) Right On” and “My Beach, My Waves, Fuck Off!” This is precisely what funk shouldn’t be – inaccessible, cryptic, drugged to a near-comatose state of hypnosis – but it works marvelously. I’d be tempted to sacrifice one of my toes to hear another full-length from the group, assuming the members are actually mortals instead of ghosts who haven’t already dissipated into the ether. If you like your funk with a sinister, uneasy edge, you’ll love this (then purchase the above Miles records, along with Dark Magus [1974] and On the Corner [1972]).

“Heavy, Heavy… Heavy” – JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band 4:19 (Explodes Across the Nation, Soul Fire 2001)

Peter Thomas Film Musik Polydor 1997

German TV and film composer Peter Thomas experienced a bit of a resurgence in his work during the late ‘90s, as everyone from Jarvis Cocker to Stereolab eagerly cited his music as a heavy influence on their own material. A handful of European labels rushed to issue as many Thomas “lounge” compilations as the market could handle, all but ignoring his horror and spy soundtracks as well as his more experimental works (he actually invented and developed a synthesizer called a ThoWeiphon). Film Musik (1997) was one of the few that got it right, a two-in-one disc that combined Thomas’ soundtracks for the 1960s German television series Edgar Wallace and Jerry Cotton. Like many of the greats, Thomas was at his best when he took unthinkable risks with his music, and Film Musik is loaded with cues that flagrantly span extremes: free jazz colliding with a bluesy sitar, a rollicking ballpark organ pitted against tense brass figures, a dreamy harp accenting a thick buzzing guitar, and so on. It would be convenient to dismiss this music as little more than camp or kitsch, which is an incredible disservice to Thomas’ ingenious arrangements, to say nothing of his sheer balls when it came to instrument combinations. Even the players here sound hesitant, unsure, and not a little clumsy, which only adds to the music’s charm, as one envisions the guitarist scratching his head uneasily at the direction of “noisy beach-party surf guitar solo.” With nearly 50 cues and vignettes, there’s enough Thomas here to snack on for weeks, which is why I believe it’s the best introduction to his anomalous sound-world.

“Der unheimliche Mönch” – Peter Thomas 2:45 (Film Musik, Polydor 1997)

Various Artists Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma) Sublime Frequencies 2004

Whenever I feel like my listening tastes have stagnated and there’s little hope for any sort of new music exciting me anymore, I conveniently (and arrogantly) remind myself that there are seemingly hundreds of thousands of “world music” records out there that are just waiting for my ears to discover them, ravage them for weeks, then spew out some psychobabble on this site about how incredible they are. I was likely in one of these moods when I picked up a used disc of Princess Nicotine (2004) for five bucks in a CD Spins a few years ago, intrigued by the cover art and the fact that I had little idea of what Burmese pop music actually sounded like. And I’m still struggling to describe, with any sort of accuracy, how bizarre and flat-out amazing the music contained within this disc is. Princess Nicotine was compiled by a gentleman named Alan Bishop, who journeyed to Myanmar back in God-knows-when and purchased and/or traded armfuls of 45s and cassettes until he had his dozen favorites to compile here: batshit-insane signatures and stop-start patterns that only a grindcore band could match, pastoral love songs based on mind-warping microtonal scales, thunderstorms of percussion aerobics with a de-emphasis on pulse, stoned mid-tempo psychedelia, gongs, chants, harps – it’s all here. I guarantee that you’ve never heard anything like it, and here’s the best part: it’s all fucking phenomenal. There is a wonderful looseness to the ensemble playing, even when executing some sickeningly complex passage, that simply can’t be replicated, and the sheer number of unidentifiable instruments bouncing around the mix is enough to keep me entertained for hours. Kneejerk descriptors like “snake charmers on crack” are not only condescending, naïve, and flat-out ignorant on my part, but more importantly, they prove how futile it is to place everything in the context of Western musical systems and thought – and so help me Christ if I hear someone bitch about the fidelity. Princess Nicotine has become something of a rarity since it went out of print some time ago, but if you happen to stumble across it, by all means pick it up immediately. Just trust me on this one. You’ll be thanking me for years.

“Really Strange and Weird Things” – Sein Sah Thin 3:15 (Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar [Burma], Sublime Frequencies 2004)