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The Most Frightening Or Unnerving Song

Yup, it sounds... menacing, doesn't it?

I'm thinking of the version played on the BBC all through my childhood, the 1932 recording by Henry Hall.

If you go down in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go down in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.


and

If you go down in the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home.


I used to listen hard to the lyrics to find out exactly what the threat was. Concluded that while the truth was too horrible to describe in a little kids' song, it was obvious that the bears, scarily animated by some nefarious means, would react to being watched with natural bearlike behaviour, turning on any observers and eating them. :shock:

I may only have been a child, but I was right and Timothy Treadwell was wrong.
 
Songwriter Mort Shuman's 1969 album _My Death_ included multiple pieces that were dark and disturbing. One included a recitation of a autopsy report on a drowning victim. I believe this is the cut 'Poem Concerning a Drowned Maiden', attributed to Bertolt Brecht. The final part about skin peeling off the hand like a glove was guaranteed to gross out listeners 'back in the day' ...
 
Where do I start? Stephen by Alice Cooper, written while he was sectioned. The B side to Cars by Gary Numan was called Asylum and very creepy. These Hands by The Damned (on the Machine Gun Ettiquette album), And a cover version of Space Oddity by The Langley School Music Project (who were a '70's school orchestra), but it really is spooky (they were from Canada).
 
There's a lot of interestingly odd songs on Freefall through Featherless Flight by Jeannie Lewis. Gary's Song in particular used to have an odd effect on me. I actually like it a lot more now than I did as a kid.
 
Any movie music by Bernard Herrmann! Well, from his SF and fantasy scores. Everyone on the planet knows PSYCHO, at least.

My favorite piece of Herrmann music is probably "Atlantis" from JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Couldn't find that, but this TWILIGHT ZONE excerpt is eerie enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukd5ZXmLajc
 
Stephen by Alice Cooper, written while he was sectioned.

Um, afaik Cooper was never sectioned, though the 'mental hospital concept album' From The Inside i believe was based on his experiences in a drying out clinic. He was quite the alcoholic back then.
 
Black River falls - I stand corrected about Alice Cooper. Must have been the album that made me think he had been sectioned. :?
 
Sussan Deyhim's song from Shirin Neshat's video/installation Turbulent. It starts at about 3:40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2DNMG2s_O0

I watched this in an art history class a few years ago. Several of my classmates commented on how beautiful and moving her song was... while I sat there with the hair on the back of my neck standing up at the mere thought of those noises coming out of a human mouth. :shock:
 
Black River falls - I stand corrected about Alice Cooper. Must have been the album that made me think he had been sectioned. Confused

Not to worry. I was always kind of dissappointed when i found out he hadn't been, kind of made the same assumption once upon a time.
 
while I sat there with the hair on the back of my neck standing up at the mere thought of those noises coming out of a human mouth. Shocked

There's a bit of processing on that, but it's still quite strange. A while back i was waiting for a calzone in the local take away and they were playing something similar but a bit more subtle, it took me a while to figure out that the 'instruments' were all voice, very very cleverly done.

I tried asking one of the guys there about it a few weeks later, but he seemed quite unnerved that i'd asked, or maybe thought i'd be offended when he said 'it's religion', then he put a cd of modern dancey allah pop on instead. Absolutely no disrespect intended there, i just don;t know what that genre's called.
 
I've heard loads of frightening bits of music, but one that first came to mind was off of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks soundtrack from Season One, the little song called, "Into the Night". Some years back I used it as background one Halloween whenever some kid came to the door and found it very effective.
 
Some Aphex Twin is quite creepy but most I love, except for "Come To Daddy" which owes a lot of it's horror to it's video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Az_7U0-cK0

But even if you were just listening to the music I reckon this is the scene you'd picture in your mind!

But a piece of music that really freaks me out is the one from the Rice Krispies ad. The tv has to go on mute or be turned over when it comes on; the hubby can't understand why a song that's supposed to be so harmless can cause someone to shudder! I can't explain how sinister I think it is!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS7X02Wa3GA
 
I also find a song called 'Run away' by an ambient band called 'Herbalism' really spooky. I actually used it on a home DVD I made of a vigil we did at Morecambe's Winters Gardens a few years ago. I was gutted to hear it on a U.S. ghost series they put on obscure Sky channels.
 
One of my sons as a teenager liked a rap song where the participants jokingly detail what tortures they'd like to inflict on each others' bumholes.

That went down well with his granddad over Sunday tea. :lol:
 
*nods*
Gave me a lifelong fear of keyboards, that one. :shock:
 
I can't find it on youtube but 'Dub Housing' by Pere Ubu (from the album of the same name) is one to listen to with the volume all the way up (if you want to get shit-scared). :)


EDIT: someone's put it on youtube as part of a dementia themed video :s
HERE
 
What song has the young man running away from a factory machine, which chases him onto a mulit storey car park roof? Used to like that at the gym. :D
 
escargot1 said:
One of my sons as a teenager liked a rap song where the participants jokingly detail what tortures they'd like to inflict on each others' bumholes.

That went down well with his granddad over Sunday tea. :lol:

Isn't that from the first Wu-Tang Clan album? One of the comedy talky bits!
 
Yup, it certainly was Da Clan! He was a biiig fan. :D
 
There's also a track on there of just someone having a coughing fit. I once mixed that into Patsy Cline's 'Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray', to, I thought, great comic effect. :D

Big Son wasn't amused. :lol:
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
Anything by Burial is pretty freaky, not in a creepy way though.

His stuff sounds like a walk down the dark alleyways of suburbia, late at night, alone....then you here the distant sound of breaking glass, or a cry...

Oh, yes.

I've just been listening to Rhythm and Sound, by..erm...Rhythm and Sound - who are actually the Berlin technokrauts otherwise known as Basic Channel. Can't help wondering if whoever's behind Burial has a copy of this in their library.

sherbetbizarre said:
No idea what Fever Ray sounds like...

Fever Ray is half of The Knife and The Knife can make some pretty spooky sounds themselves. Silent Shout is somewhere in my top tunes of all time. Not particularly spooky in itself, this one, but the video has it's moments.

On a tangent: I sometimes wonder if you were a burglar, and you'd chosen to burgle the house of someone who made stuff like this - you know, had these interests - and you were all alone at four in the morning, in that person's house, in the dark - and then you started opening the cupboards. I sometimes wonder what that might be like. :shock:
 
'The Curse of Milhaven' on Nick Caves 'Murder Ballads' creeps me out, both lyric wise and musically.

Anything by Joe Meek unnerves me I think its the huge amounts of echo and the way you know they were all crammed into his flat while making the recording. His 'I hear a New World' (a concept album) is very creepy to me, most people would probably fall about laughing at it but it's just, well.....menacing, to me at least.

Most of what the group Queen did manages to make me angry and I don't know why, nothing against them personally, I can see that they were talented but the music makes me angry. Why? Answers ona postcard please.
 
Most of what the group Queen did manages to make me angry and I don't know why, nothing against them personally, I can see that they were talented but the music makes me angry. Why? Answers ona postcard please.

Is it that any Queen music gets you to subconsciously think about the 'Greatest Rock Song of All Time' and 'First Video Ever to Be Played', Bohemian Raphsody? A song that we have all heard so often, that there is probably a few 1000 neurons in our brains that are continously playing it, in a loop, in our mind. I'd suggest that the sub-consciousness by this stage is probably gone through boredom with it and is now demented hearing this and is leaching through rage and anger to your waking self.

Or perhaps it's Brian May's poodle hair.
 
I was going to watch that but the monster creeps me out too much :shock:

The Visitation, from the White Noise album. Now that is freaky.
 
This song isn't particularly scary - in fact I think it's quite beautiful - but the first time I heard it I had fallen asleep with headphones on and woke up just after the track had started.

At the time it did freak me out a bit.
 
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