Fortean Music

mikelegs

mikelegs

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Fortean Muzak

I'd be interested in knowing if there are any bands out there who center their material around strange phenonema. I'm a pretty big Clutch fan, and their material covers aliens, conspiracies, rednecks, and other stuff that flies way over my head. Oh, and I'm not looking for Dead Kennedys/Rage/Amen/etc. anti-conformist (anti-EVERYTHING) stuff so much as bands that write about truely weird stuff. Thankya.
 
Well there's the ever-popular standby They Might Be Giants...

Some of the music from Rush might fit what you're looking for, their early stuff especially.

Some selections from Iron Maiden might fit the bill (I know they have two songs referencing the 60's TV series The Prisoner).

I'm afraid that's the best I can think of.
 
I SING IN A BAND CALLED SASQUATCH. AS WELL AS THE NAME OF THE BAND, PRETTY MUCH ALL THE LYRICAL CONTENT OF OUR MUSIC HAS A FORTEAN THEME. WE'RE PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN EXTREMES. EVERYTHING I WRITE ABOUT HAS SOME BASIS IN (REPORTED) REALITY. WE'VE SONGS ABOUT A DOCTOR PERFROMING A SEX CHANGE ON HIMSELF,(AS REPORTED IN FT), SASQUATCH, POLTERGEISTS, MAN ON THE MOON CONSPRACY AND ON AND ON THE LIST GOES. IF ANYONE WANTS TO HEAR THIS GODAWFUL DIN WE'RE PLAYING AT THE NIGHT & DAY IN MANCHESTER ON 4TH DECEMBER. I CAN GUARANTEE IT'LL BE LIKE NOTHING YOU'VE EVER HEARD !
 
I've actually got Sigur Ros playing at this very moment. I have no idea what the lyrical content covers because it's in Icelandic but it's some of the most strange and beautiful music I've ever heard.
 
Is your name Earhorn connected with the fact you seem to need to SHOUT?;)
 
How about Eno and Byrne's Jezebel Spirit from the My Life in the Bush of Ghosts album. (You could justify calling that one Fortean just for the title). Jezebel Spirit uses the recording of an actual exorcism as the basis for the track.
 
Ooh, you've got me started now. (Sorry some of these are individual tracks rather than bands so I’m not really answering your question but I’m enamoured enough of my own taste in music to tell you anyway).

Aim, Cold Water Music ninth track Demonique which uses part of the soundtrack to Halloween. At least I think it’s Halloween it’s so long since I saw it. Whatever, Donald Pleasance is in there along with a lot of spooky choral stuff.

Siouxsie and the Banshees were always inclined towards the strange. Overground is a great scary track influenced partly, I think, by Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring. And, most bizarrely, the B-side to one off their 80’s singles was based around the young Elizabeth Bathory’s (of Dracula fame) witnessing of a gypsy being stitched up in the stomach of a dead horse. Easy listening or what!

Robbie Robertson. Not a fan of his at all normally but he did an album with The Red Road Ensemble called Music for The Native Americans which has a couple of very atmospheric songs. The final song Twisted Hair is very eerie indeed.

Kate Bush. The Ninth Wave (flip side of The Hounds of Love album) has all sorts of references to old gods, witches and other folkloric motifs as well as a sample from The Night of the Demon and at least one other horror movie I’ve never been able to place.

Julian Cope, Jah Wobble, Jim White, Nick Cave - all live in peculiar universes.
 
I love Hawkwind's Space Ritual , with all that Dungeons & Dragons Science Fiction stuff. Robert Calvert's poetry between the songs is all totally bobbins and some of the titles (Orgone Accumulator, Master of the Universe, Sonic Attack) speak for themselves. Its as loud as a very loud thing too! :D Michael Moorcock wrote a book about them too, and can be heard reciting some of his poems on the Warrior at the Edge of Time album.

Best rumour I heard about them was that they were going to do the music for the Doctor Who story Battlefield, something that I reckon would've improved it no end...
 
Ground Elder said:
Is your name Earhorn connected with the fact you seem to need to SHOUT?;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read that in a loud voice (in my head) and now I have a headache...

Az
 
Some of the super furry animals stuff is about strange happenings (chuppacabras etc).
 
"Subterranean Homesick Alien" by Radiohead (on OK Computer) is about being abducted by aliens "late at night/in a country lane", and is rather nice.

I agree about the Super Furry Animals: some of their music is specifically about strange things (Demons could be interpreted as some sort of Illuminati-type conspiracy story, Chupacabras is about, well, Chupacabras), and their album "Mwng", although not all about the supernatural, does have a very ethereal quality to it, especially the last track "Mawrth oer ar y blaned neifion" (A Cold Mars Over Neptune). I suppose if I could understand Welsh, it wouldn't be so eerie :)
 
IF YOU'VE GOT A HEADACHE NOW YOU SHOULD HEAR THE GODAWFUL RACKET WE MAKE.
 
The psychedelic music of the 60s probably carved out a new field of Forteana for itself. Some say it was drug inspired, but with songs like "I am the Egg Man" and "(K)nights in white satin", who needed drugs?
 
Coil makes music that is heavily influenced by magical phenomena and mind-altering substances. If you can, by all means pick up a copy of "Horse Rotorvator".
 
rynner said:
The psychedelic music of the 60s probably carved out a new field of Forteana for itself.
Click to expand...

Early Pink Floyd being a good example! The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn has got all that mad Syd Barrett stuff on like Astronomy Domine, Lucifer Sam, The Gnome and Scarecrow, and Saucerful Of Secrets has the title track, Let There Be More Light and Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, all mining UFO imagery to good effect.

Also Jimi Hendrix had tracks like Third Stone From The Sun (from Are You Experienced , and Up From The Skies, about an alien coming to Earth and not being impressed with what he sees, found on Axis: Bold As Love (the opening track, EXP, has some fairly amusing sped up dialogue about flying saucers, but is mainly an excuse for the great man to make an almighty feedback racket!) My fave from him is 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be), a side-long mini-rock-opera which, as far as I can tell, has the (then!) future human race, thoroughly pissed off with the damage caused to the planet by pollution etc, returning to the sea. Whether they all drown or become mermen I'm not sure!
 
Fortean Songs

Reading the interesting article in the recent FT about sonic weapons, I was reminded of the Kate Bush song "Experiment IV" which seemed to be based on the mysterious Dr Gavreau experiment. The video dramatised something like it, anyway.

So what other Fortean songs are there? I think the Hot Chocolate record "No Doubt About It" is about the band spotting a UFO one night.

Any others?
 
There are two relating to the Phantom Hitch-Hiker legend: i) 'Laurie' - a ballad from the 1960s, popularised by Dickie Lee (actually it's pretty bad). And there's the Country song 'Bringing Mary Home', by Waylon Jennings.
 
There was the report in FT a couple of years back, and mentioned on another thread, about the REM track "What's the Frequency Kenneth?", inspired by an attack on an American news anchorman by a guy suffering with schizophrenia. As he beat the newsman he demanded to be told "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", so that he could jam what he believed to be the transmission of voices into his head from the TV station.
I suppose Very Metal music covers 'Fortean' topics more so than any other genre, e.g., Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath" (the musical equivalent of a Hammer Horror), Slayer's "Postmortem" (the musical equivalent of a Clive Barker movie) and Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley" - to but scratch the surface.
Apart from this, only "Camouflage" comes to mind - the chart topper from 1986...
 
There was that song by David Bowie, withe the lyric "major Tom to ground control" cant remember the title though.
 
P> Space Oddity

Hospitaller> I heard that What's the Frequency Kenneth was about Dallas' Ken Kercheval...

Oh - and...

Chupacabras by Super Furry Animals off I think Radiator - "Soy soy superbeing!"

Hometown Unicorn, also by SFA, off Fuzzy Logic - "Will you ever return me, just like Frankie Fontayne"

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft by the Carpenters

Starman, also by David Bowie

Name of the Father(is that the title, or is it the Reverend Black Grape?) by Black Grape - mentions Nazi gold and the Pope aiding and abetting - always a good topic for Fortean debate!
 
I have a Kate Bush music vid and it seems there are one or two Fortean subjects on it: Cloudbusting, The Dreaming.

What was the Dr Gavreau Experiment?

Carole
 
What about the Carpenters last single.I think it was called"Calling All Interplantery Beings"or something like that.Truly a bizzare little ditty.
 
Bowie has quite a few 'fortean' tunes to his credit.
In "Have you ever had a dream?" he sings about OOBEs - "I will fly around the world one night, on the magic wings of astral flight".
"The Supermen" is about an advanced prehistoric civilisation "where sad-eyed mermen tossed in slumbers, nightmare dreams no human mind could hold".
"Saviour Machine" tells a tale of global destruction by A.I.
"The Width of a Circle" is crammed full of esoterica.
"Station to station" has explicit references to the Kabbalah.
And those are just off the top of my head...
 
Sonic Attack..hawkwind/moorcock

Kate Bush is a follower of Gudijeff i understand...
 
...and of course, Kate Bush wrote a song called Strange Phenomena. Just check out these lyrics - (WARNING! Fairly high cheese factor) -

Soon it will be the phase of the moon
When people tune in
Every girl knows about the punctual blues
But who's to know the power
Behind our moves

A day of coincidence with the radio
And a word that won't go away
We know what they'r all going to say
"G" arrives, funny, had a feeling he was on his way

(Chorus)
We raise our hats to the strange phenomena
Soul birds of a feather flock together
We raise out hats to the hand a-moulding us
Sure 'nuf-he has the answer
He has the answer
Om mani padme hum.

You pick up a paper, you read a name
You go out, it turns up again and again
You bump into a friend you haven't seen
For a long time
Then into another you only thought about last night

You hear your sister calling for you
But you don't know where from
You know there's something wrong
But you don't want to believe in a premonition

(Chorus)

God, I love her... er, it!

She's ace, is Kate...

:p
 
Every Yorkshireman's favourite song "Ilkley Moor" has always struck me as a bit weird... it's about indirect cannibalism, ultimately (sort of).

the lyrics are here

it's in an approximation of Yorkshire dialect, though, but as half the posters on this site (me included) seem to be from God's Own there'll be no problem.:D

Ilkley Moor has a lot of fortean stuff linked to it... holy wells, rock throwing giants, prehistoric sites, standing stones, UFOs, Black Dogs, ghosts, great pubs...
 
August Verango.. no she loves me!..she just hasnt met me yet!

odd fact about our Katie.. Kick Inside was the first album i ever bought and at the time acording to publicity she was younger than me!...now shes older than me! is she liveing life in the fast lane?...
 
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