What's the most unlistenable band/album you listen to?

This was inspired by another thread.

I'm curious as to where the people on this board draw the line-- what's the most unlistenable thing you still really enjoy? What's at your unlistenable limit?

I'm probably going to be one of the wimpiest ones on here since I favor drone. I probably top off at Wayne Rogers' heaviest stuff, which is, I know, nothing compared to what some of you willingly subject yourselves to.

I suppose "unlistenable" doesn't necessarily have to mean harsh. So with that in mind, I would pony up my affinity for song poems in general.

Quoth avantgardening:
jamie stewart singing a capella is unlistenable.


i can't exactly explain why, but i want this quote on a 1" button.

how about some costes on your video ipod? that's nice for the kids looking over your shoulder on the bus.

Thies thread inspired me to go back and have a listed to Non's 'Physical Evidence' for the first time in a few years. Still sounds pretty good in an unlistenable kind of way. I think it's about time I got a bit deeper into the harsh noise stuff again, listening to The Cherry Point at pain inducing volume a couple of days ago put a big smile on my face.

And things that people round here cite as unlistenable just have to be great, right?

incapacitants are pretty damn loud. killer bug gives me what i want. lefthanddecision destroys my mind. r.h.y. yau gives me tuvan throat slicing. the new blockaders break mirrors constantly. astroromero annihilate car stereos. and sachiko m cleans everything out with a sine wave.

oh and asthmatic sounds like cornered, small animals.

Quoth buffaloscotch:
how about some costes on your video ipod? that's nice for the kids looking over your shoulder on the bus.
costes is pretty bad, but otto muehl is still the grossest, unless costes has thrown fresh pig heart onto a female model covered in blood, mense and rice pudding? i think its rice pudding. then he threw flour at anybody in the audience who protested while singing o tennenbaum. high art at it's finest.

Quoth love_forever:
this is tough. i can't honestly say i listen to much unlistenable stuff for obvious reasons.

the most? i guess cosmos "tears" or something along those lines. anyone working with sine waves, beating tones, or the ear as instrument. But I find those all very listenable - this is just me projecting what i think others would be most annoyed by.

Yeah, I was thinking of some of Sachiko M's work using sine waves. To me it's very beatiful but I guess to others it would just be beeps, pings and whoops. The same goes for a lot of the Japanese 'onkyo' scene and European electro-accoustic improv. Then there's free-jazz and non-idiomatic improv. Let's face it, when you come down to it most of what I listen to would be called unlistenable by others, present company excepted of course.

Truly unlistenable, is pretty much anything in the pop charts and bagpipes.

i know i listen to things that might be more annoying but this comes to mind for some reason: Outside the Dream Syndicate


i remember buying a CD because i was in love w/ the people recommending it...it was Lovebomb. part of the review was about how he's such an artist, those pathetic souls w/ ignorant ears will NEVER UNDERSTAND this work of ART! not in a million years.

i sold it back.

i find my friends giving me strange looks when i play trapdoor fucking exit real loud late on tuesday nights.

La Monte Young's Excerpt "31 69 C. 12:17:33-1 or Part 2 are probably deemed unlistenable by many. The first is two continuous sine waves (in stereo) which are very interesting as they sound different in different parts of the room, and when listened to loud it creates an interesting numb state of mind. The second sounds like... umm.. dragging something on the floor, and since I get the conception that it's not made by an electric guitar, I just wonder how it was made.

Like cjcarne, I also find Sachiko M's sine wave work beautiful. In the similar vein, Alva Noto, Kaffe Matthews and Ryoji Ikeda are really interesting. I suppose some of the contemporary classical music I listen to is also considered difficult, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, even Pierre Boulez.

i want to get some La Monte Young. someone told me it would compliment my love of Terry Riley. any recommendations? i hear recordings are expensive & difficult to come by. maybe if i figure out how to use BitTorrent...

If you're into Riley's The Harp of New Albion (which is my favourite), you might be interested in Young's The Well-Tuned Piano since that's the piece in which he explored the tuning that Riley used. It's a 5-hour piece and difficult to find though. Luckily I found it in the local library. If you're more into Riley's Poppy Nogood, or Rainbow in Curved Air, I'd recommend Young's Theatre of Eternal Music or perhaps The Tamburas Of Pandit Pran Nath. Those are all more or less streamable on last.fm albeit the Well-Tuned Piano is only an hour long version.

Quoth zppaulz:
figure out how to use bit torrent, fill me in. i've been trying to download some things from eztorrent for weeks and i'm on the egde and about to jump. as far as la monte, if you see me on soulseek, i have some rather listenable la monte. ( manwhosheadexpanded)

it took me awhile to figure out how to use the torrents, but it's actually not that hard. you need to download a bit torrent client, i used azureus. then you download the torrent from the torrent site. then in your client i believe you just select open file and then choose the torrent you want. making a torrent is a whole other annoying process. i find the torrents to be a waste of time since everything ends up on soulseek. it's good for the no queue thing, but then you have to worry about the ratio and making sure your torrents are perfect for the mods. bleh.

i'm just about giving up on torrents. but i just can't find on soulseek any of theses great sun city girls radio improvs they did from 1997. i've been digging around on soulseek for a long time for one. and there is one on eztorrent. but i guess the problem is it's dead. i guess i need to keep looking elsewhere. anyone from new york that would feel like digging around in Kim's cassette bin for me? just kidding.