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Mindfuck music

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16:19 / 22.04.03

I'm looking for music which has decidedly consciousness-altering properties or intentions. Genre doesn't matter. It doesn't even have to be particularly good-- my taste in music is sometimes lamentably "diverse", and anyway I'm focusing on theme, not quality.

Some examples:
Splashdown (now defunct Buddhist poplectronic)
sufi music of any sort
Kula Shaker (Yeah, I confess, I only heard about them through The Invisibles)
Aphex Twin
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer (sometimes bluegrassy folk written out of vaguely shamanic dreams, with references to Celtic myth, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity)

Any suggestions? I've recently become a compulsive music collector. Feed my addiction and I'll be eternally grateful.

17:16 / 22.04.03

So by "consciousness-altering properties" do you mean music that has an actual physical effect - like really heavy frequencies and trance-inducing stuff for meditating etc. - or, to put it crudely, stuff that just sounds really trippy..

Cos stuff in the former category is obviously going to be hard to come by, but I could list literally thousands of examples of the latter..

Whatever's the case, I'd imagine the work of Acid Mothers Temple is pretty much the epitome of what you're looking for.

18:04 / 22.04.03

Bongwater.

at the scarwash

20:13 / 22.04.03

When I need some fall-down-the-well deep, engulfing stuff, I put on Pole or Pan Sonic. If I just want my brain shaved, Christian Marclay or one of John Frusciante's solo albums.

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01:29 / 23.04.03

Rizla, some of both. And some which has really trippy lyrics. Some which just seems to have strange (or illuminating) states of consciousness as its theme, and not particularly drug-induced ones. I think perhaps the intention of the musician to raise consciousness or alter it in some way is more important than the actual effect... I don't know what I want, to tell the truth. I'll find it, though, if I sort through enough suggestions. At least that's the theory.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I'll be on the lookout for them.

Matthew Fluxington

01:51 / 23.04.03

Gosh. This thread is waaaaay too hippie for me.

I'm just going to duck in, mention that most every record shop has a New Age section, and then duck out, okay?

02:06 / 23.04.03

Yeah, you want your head expanded, you head straight for the section marked "Yanni". Everything just seems so ... catatonic when the Yan-man hits the amp.

I'd actually recommend Negativland. Start with "The Perfect Cut(Piece of Meat)", "This Statement is True", and move on from there. They make music, but it's not necessarily musical.
The Beta Band - they seem to be all over the map of Planet Trippy. Inner Meet Me", "Squares" and "The House Song" are all highly regarded.
oh and I can't rave about People Like Us enough. That's the band name, and they've been difficult to track down on file shares.

10:27 / 23.04.03

ok then, some suggestions:

Acid Mothers Temple - what they essentially do is take the template of Grateful Dead style acid rock and enliven it with that good old Japanese cultural tradition: INSANE FUCKING EXCESS. Which means either an hour of Tibetan percussion jamming, or forty minutes of obscenely over-amplified spiralling multiple lead guitar frenzy, droning unidentifiable UFO noises, shrieking unearthly female vocals, shredding violin and what sounds like an entire drumkit made of gongs, depending on which of their many records you buy. About the most mind-warpingly extreme rock music I've ever heard. They create a sound that's really (I know I used this word just a few lines ago) .. unearthly - lots of their song titles / artwork relies on UFO & Buddhist imagery, and at their best they kinda manage to sound like simultaneously docking with the mothership and attaining nirvana through noise .. or something.

Oneida - "Sheets of Easter" ; This track begins with someone saying "You've got to look into the..", and then the band start hammering one note at hardcore speed & intensity and chanting "lightlightlight" and continue with no let up for the next 15 minutes. Which is enough to make anyone hallucinate, quite frankly. A stomping, primal, transcendent evocation type thing of the highest order.

More later, perhaps.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:37 / 23.04.03

Rizla- great description of AMT, but you missed out the throat-singing!

No-one'll be surprised if I say Throbbing Gristle, will they?

Let's try some others-
"Asylum" by the Legendary Pink Dots- covers pretty much the whole spectrum of their eclecticism, from folky acoustic to bleepy electronic with noise, sinister spoken word, and a disturbingly cheery track called "The Hill" which has to be the greatest ever bubblegum pop song written about a guy going nuts with a gun.

Nurse With Wound, of course. If Surrealism was a band, it'd be NWW. Again, they vary drastically from release to release- "Rock and Roll Station", for example, is like minimalist krautrock, and is ace. In terms of headfuckiness, though, NWW's "A Sucked Orange" has to be my all time favourite- the sublime majesty that is "Rockette Morton" used to be a spectator sport back when I was an acid-head- namely, you'd put it on, and time how long the people who'd never heard it before could cope (very few made it past about four minutes). And then your brain would be filled with visions of cartoon frogs in spacesuits. Ah. Wonderful days.

02:26 / 24.04.03

Throbbing Gristle, Merzbow, Black Lung and Lux Mammoth for the former category.

erm

Squarepusher, Autechre and Coil for the latter.

08:57 / 24.04.03

I'd second Acid Mother temple, and raise you Xinli Supreme - who are another Japanese noise/psychedelic band vaguely reminiscent of Acid Mothers Temple, but worryingly more so.

lord nuneaton savage

11:14 / 24.04.03

If you can track it down (and I beleive you might have to pay quite a lot for it now) the 'Brian Jones presents the Master Musicians of Jajouka' album is well worth it for full on trance inducing lunacy.

11:19 / 24.04.03

I'm moderately surprised that nobody's mentioned Camembert Electrique by Gong yet.

12:06 / 24.04.03

I think I saw the Brian Jones + Master Musicians Of Jajouka on CD or remastered vinyl a few years ago, so it shouldn't be too expensive.

Muslimgauze's Drugsherpa is good trance-y stuff, but it's only 18 minutes long. A friend swears by DO MAKE SEE THINK, a side project of Godspeed You Black Emperor and said it was the most trip-inducing since Skylab #1. A group that most consciously used psychoacoustics were The Anti-Group Conspiracy / Clock DVA, especially Digitaria, the long version originally on Sweatbox. Lustmord's Heresy, Monstrous Soul and The Place Where The Black Stars Hang are good.

There's more if you want gloom...

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

16:42 / 24.04.03

Shankar - 'Visions' on ECM Records.

Ooh, spooky. Suits Farmer Sue Tickle states of every description, preferably a few different ones all at once.

Like, the sound of Quantum Physics, maaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnn

17:00 / 24.04.03

i would like to humbly suggest:

Boards of Canada - amazingly complex and multilayered patterns of ambient/IDM-ish electronic music
Current 93 - veers between experimental/noise and apocalyptic folk, and throws in references to Celtic myth, Thelema, Buddhism, Christian mysticism, etc etc etc.
Coil - electronic music, ranging from experimental to dance-oriented, delving into magick, sexuality, death, psychedelia, and altered states of consciousness.
Shalabi Effect - i just picked up The Trial of Saint Orange over the weekend and it utterly blew my mind. post-rock in the same family of artists that includes Godspeed You BLack Emperor! and Do Make Say Think, who are also very good.
Acid Mothers Temple - Japanese psychedelic rock that everyone's already recommended

i'm starting to also get into Bill Laswell, who's all over the map musically but seems to be really interested in Caribbean and Middle Eastern rhythms.

17:19 / 24.04.03

Sooner or later someone's going to mention the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka. It would usually be either Flux or myself, but as he's too busy being snotty I'll field it. It's an album on four CDs designed to be played simultaneously on four CD players.

Of course, if you're going to do the whole octaphonic sound experience you could always substitute Zaireeka for Live at Brixton Academy by Atari Teenage Riot, Music for Eighteen Musicians by Steve Reich, Vision Creation Newsun by the Boredoms and Sick Love by V/Vm, making sure the left and right speakers of any single system are mixed up with those of the others.

That'd be why no-one wants to form a band with me, then.

17:34 / 24.04.03

Hmm. Lots of goodies already covered. Here are a few that weren't:

wevie stonder - drawing on other people's heads : a bit like Boards of Canada in feel, but very, very fucked up.

Shpongle : Er, kind of psi-trance, mostly not. Experimental progressive electronica. Really hard to describe, but really talented across the board. Been one of my favorites for awhile.

And if you liked Gong, System 7 is some more recent space jazz by some of the same folks that's pretty out there.

And of course, Tool. Shame on all of you for neglecting to mention them for this long.

17:56 / 24.04.03

Oh, and I almost forgot the hip-hop side. Look for folks from the Anticon crew for some wild psychedelic word-fu. Some goodies there: aceyalone-book of human language, dose one-circle, eyedea, cloudhead, hieroglyphics-third eye vision, deep puddle dynamics-the taste of rain.

And of course, there's the classics: Firesign Theater.

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18:00 / 24.04.03

Thank you, flux, for your extremely insightful reply.

I guess I did specify that it didn't have to be good, didn't I?

What a great list. Thanks, everyone, for furthering my till-now sadly lacking musical education. Looking for this stuff will probably keep me occupied for the next few months, at least.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:11 / 24.04.03

There's this amazing song I heard a while ago that starts with minor organ chords playing over the sound of rain falling, and then the monks come in, with a mournful lament. After that, the human beatboxing kicks in, all those weird, alien clicks and low notes made with just a larynx - and then the singer starts to tell you a story about how his heart got broken (but it's a high-pitched, androgynous voice), and he's singing a message of hate but in a way that suggests only longing. The melodramatic strings are added, and it builds and builds to a crescendo of gasped pleas and beautiful venom, while a doleful second voice adds "the damage is done, so I guess I'll be leaving" over and over again.

It alters my consciousness every time I hear it.

'Cry Me A River' By Justin Timberlake, produced by Timbaland.

19:56 / 24.04.03

cusm: good call on doseone.

it reminded me that i had forgotten MC 900ft Jesus.

there's also the Geinoh Yamashirogumi's soundtrack to Akira, with all the gamelan drumming and choral singing and such.

the trippier bits of Future Sound of London are really cool, too.

21:28 / 24.04.03

Future Sound Of London are THE psychedelic kings of electronica. Get a hold on their live mixes somewhere floating around in cyberspace. They include a lot of psychedelic and spiritually oriented music, with samples of gurus and wackos thrown in now and then. Like they say themselves, it's "cosmic space music" and " a monstrous psychedelic bubble exploding in your head". Also check out their latest album Isness.

21:30 / 24.04.03

The recommendation of Anticon stuff is heartily seconded - Themselves is still my favourite.

uncle retrospective

21:48 / 24.04.03

I can't recommend Squarepusher enough for fucked upness. Try "this is my fucking sound" and hide.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:37 / 24.04.03

That'd be why no-one wants to form a band with me, then.
No, it'd be because you're over there! I'm keen! I even volunteered a zither.

How can Lords Of The Fucked exist with international-level distance?

01:07 / 25.04.03

I've seen some very odd things listening to Dirty Three.

Tryphena Absent

01:46 / 25.04.03

Mari Boine- one of her earlier albums sung entirely in Norweigan is better (Goaskinviellja or Leahkastin). They should come under world music but you can probably only find them in big stores. She's kind of got this weird jazz/folk thing going on with lots of tribal noise in the background and occasionally a bit of that Jan Gabarek jazz saxophone. I've seen her live twice and she literally sends shivers up my spine.

04:05 / 25.04.03

Had they not already been mentioned, I would've recommended Merzbow, Squarepusher, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Boredoms, Steve Reich, People Like Us.
I would be one of the last to recommend Acid Mothers Temple.

Now that you have an idea of my tastes:

The User - "Symphony No.2 for Dot Matrix Printers" Two Canadians mic'd 15 obsolete printers playing their text-files-as-sheet-music; this occupies some territory between white noise and minimalism.
Art of Noise - "In Visible Silence"
Can - "Tago Mago"
Melt-Banana - anything. anything at all. This one's less "consciousness-altering" than it is "sanity-obliterating."

04:19 / 25.04.03

Also I should mention the be-all, end-all of mindfucking radio:

WREK Atlanta, 91.1fm (www.wrek.org)

the entire programming format is at least something of a mindfuck, but a few points stand out in particular:
Mondays 11pm-12 is Psych-Out, where you'll find your higher-than-recommended Acid Mothers content, along with any other psychedelic music you might desire
Wednesdays 8-9pm is Destroy All Music, a noise show that takes its name from a Flying Lutenbachers (who really should get mentioned in this thread) album.
Wed 10-11pm, The Mobius plays mentionworthy electronic music.
Sat/Sun 12-2 am Hour of Slack, "Bob"'s Slacktime Funhouse would literally fuck your mind if they could.
Also, the Overnight Alternatives block (1:30-7am, weekday nights) is worth checking out.
All of this can be accessed from the website's archive.

17:21 / 25.04.03

Amebix
Rudimentary Peni
Mankind
Icons of Filth
Filth
Brother Inferior
Choking Victim aka Left Over Crack

20:07 / 25.04.03

Mindfuck music that aphonia likes:

Derek Jarman's Blue album. I first heard it years ago when I was a security guard at the Walker Art Center. One of the rooms had the thing looped, near a huge blue screen. Sometimes I would take my breaks in there. It's mostly spoken word, but I recognized a song by Coil interspersed during one part. Bonus points for the phrase "I'm a cock-sucking, straight-acting, lesbian man."

Future Sound of London's Dead Cities album. Usually helps if you're altered; it becomes a soundscape. Best with headphones.

That's two. I'll see if I can come up with some more, later.

A.

21:11 / 25.04.03

One of the rooms had the thing looped, near a huge blue screen.

Heh. That blue screen was, in fact, the film: you were listening to the soundtrack. The screen remains a constant shade of blue throughout the film's running time—it's sort of an antifilm, in that sense.

Jarman was in late-stage AIDS at the time of making Blue, his last movie, and had gone blind: the movie was a cinematic depiction of his sensory experiences.

02:26 / 27.04.03

In terms of generating altered states of consciousness

f course throbbing gristle > during the early mid 70's they specifically built proto-samplers/frequency generators and self-experimented on sounds that induced brain change - read the book "wreckers of civilisation" for the full story.
Of course anything by Coil that emerged from the ashes of TG - particularly HorseRotavator and Scatology - the other band with GPOrridge were psychicTV - the only time i experienced a serious altered state (comparable to high dosage entheogens) was watching PTV during the godstar tour -the whole audience it seemed suffered amnesia when a certain frequency was reached.

Other asc inducing stuff - michael mantra and ecco by the late great john c lilly on silent records from sanfran - again psychedelic explorers whos sounds are specifically designed for brainchange.(mantra operates with alpha/delta frequencies and lilly does weird shit with repeating sounds/phrases.) "cogitate" by john lilly completely trips out -the word is repeated 100's of times in such a way that new phrases and words are heard (ie generated by your brain).

also polar regions by cosmic trigger (hafler trio) - a wonderful example of low frequency drone.

also check out the recordings of crystal frequencies by current93 and a guy whose name i have forgotton -again v.cool.

as for the couple of postings above - rudimentary peni / amebix/ icons of filth and the rest of the discharge influenced anarcho-punk sounds were certainly a mindfuck (live especially) but , psychedelic (nope)- i would especially include anti-sect in that categorywho were awesome live.

has anyone mentioned ANYTHING by the ButtHole Surfers yet ... where do i begin > the masters of the operation mindfuck along with Negativland (already mentioned)

The Return Of Rothkoid

05:03 / 27.04.03

Have a poke around on Tzadik's site. There'll be something there that'll pique your interest. The new-ish PainKiller live disc gets weirdly trancey after a while...

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