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Quora Answer : How can you create a music album that makes no sense, but at the same time is completely genius and forward thinking?

May 17, 2020

There's no such thing as an album that makes no sense and is worth hearing.

Part of the virtue of what makes a great, "genius" album, is that it has a kind of coherence to it.

However, that doesn't mean that the coherence needs to be simple in the sense that everything sounds the same.

Or that it needs to be obvious.

Part of the pleasure of some great albums can be in puzzling out the coherence. Or the fact that you can feel it imposing its own vision and order on what feels like such disparate material.

One album like this that comes to mind is Current 93's Swastikas For Noddy

This is an album that I don't like much. And hardly ever listen to. In fact it's been years since I bothered. And I've only come back to listen to it to write this answer.

This is, on the surface, not a promising album. It's from a band with a reputation for some kind of Satanist tendencies. With two (by all accounts) obnoxious neo-fascists involved. "Nudge nudge, wink wink" references to swastikas. Plus the dubious participation of a "runeologist". It has sophomoric Charles Manson references. A quote claiming that "the Anti-Christ is a black man" (which I presume is Manson related). Fragments of portentous Nietzsche. And a bunch of misogynist songs featuring a scary rapist, someone laughing at a woman falling down stairs, a slut-shaming children's rhyme.

Musically it's all over the shop. The lead singer pretty much can't sing in tune. There's a bunch of arbitrary "samples" (probably just bits off of tape) of hymns and classical music, sounds of tanks and other random shit thrown all over the place without any apparent attempt at structure or working them into the rest of the music. There's a cover of a forgotten minor pop hit from the early 80s for no good reason. A breathless version of an English folk song with its words mangled. A lot of dreary acoustic guitar, strummed artlessly. Hardly any tunes. And bookended by some other completely random folky guy singing about everything being cursed. But who doesn't turn up anywhere else or seem to have any other connection to the band and music.

In other words, a mess of disconnected random junk. That you almost certainly wouldn't want to listen to.

And yet ...

This is a band which has become my second favourite band of all time. The guy behind this record, David Tibet is undoubtedly a genius who I am an awestruck fan of. Who has gone on to make many incredible records. In fact only a couple of years later, he goes on to make a stunningly beautiful, creative and powerful record, one of my all time favourites ...

... out of more or less the same elements!

ThunderPerfectMind isn't quite a perfect album. I think a couple of the songs go on a bit too long. But it's damned close.

On that, everything has had a bit of an upgrade. The melodies are now gorgeous. The singing is a bit more in tune. The electronic movements and the samplings of other music are more carefully and subtly layered in. The sequencing of the tracks has more of a sense of narrative. And the dodgy misogyny and racism have thankfully gone. But there's still a song about Hitler. And another about Satan. And another about one of the fascist guys from the earlier album. There's still quite a lot of acoustic guitar strumming. And random folky references.

But the thing is this. Thunder Perfect Mind is a wonderful album. While Swastikas For Noddy is kind of horrible. But it's absolutely obvious that Swastikas for Noddy is a sort of prototype or dry run for Thunder Perfect Mind.

You see. I may not like Swastikas much. But many people are passionate fans. And love it intensely.

And here's why it's so powerful.

You can hear that the participants are horribly committed to it.

They may, or may not be, taking the piss with some of the outrageous negativity. But they are always serious about this thing.

The impression the album gives is one of absolute, uncompromising, artistic vision. This is a scrapbook of random odds and ends, of recordings, of songs, or song ideas, or fragments of poetry, or collaborators, that David Tibet has obviously found, decided he liked, and decided to bricollage together.

It doesn't matter that things are played or sung badly. It doesn't matter that some of the people involved are shunned by polite society. It doesn't matter that you think jokey horror about rape is bad taste. Or that many ideas are undeveloped fragments. Or that the overlaid samples are out of key and out of sync. Or that the songs don't really have any proper structure. Or that the album as a whole is such an unstructured hodge-podge that doesn't seem to go anywhere or say anything.

The only thing that matters in this is that Tibet thinks that these are the right things to put together into his system. Without compromise to any other concern. It's a magnificently crazy esoteric conspiracy theory. You may not understand the secret logic of this. But you can feel that he does.

And you can sense that this is the album that he wanted to make. To express himself with. Completely free of anything that he might have felt obliged to put there. You know that. Because what's here is so outrageous, that if there had been any constraint on him, either externally from a record company or manager, or due to his own internal inhibitions, half of this stuff wouldn't be on the record.

And that is ... to be honest ... thrilling.

And it's the way Tibet goes on to make his other albums ... many of which are amazing.

If you want to hear great albums, I recommend Thunder Perfect Mind, Sleep Has His House, I Am the Last Of All the Field That Fell. These are deeply, deeply poetic, spiritual albums, with gorgeous and daring music, thrown together from disparate elements and guest collaborators, that are absolutely made to work by Tibet's vision and artistic "will-to-power".

But if you actually want to hear that artistic will-to-power in its rawest, most blatant form. Spread out and open to inspection and analysis. Then listen to Swastikas for Noddy.

Like I say. I don't know if you'll enjoy it. I don't, particularly. But you might find it instructive.

And it's the answer to this question. How an album can "make no sense" ie. seem so lacking in coherence, structure or musical virtue. And yet be completely genius. And "forward looking". (In this case, the technique / artistic intelligence clearly on display here is applied over the next 30 odd years to make great albums.)

It's that artistic single-mindedness, and ability to make the musical elements that don't "want to" fit together, fit together into a coherent whole.

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