And if it did sound like anything I'd heard before I don't know where I heard it.

First single I ever bought because of that TOTP performance.

Still sounds amazing.

Future Sound of London - Papua new Guinea

...I found music could still surprise me, when I saw this on Later. Much delighted giggling, and muttering of "oh boy!" ensued.

First time I heard this I loved it but thought it was from Mars

This is how TOTP dealt with it

When Devo made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1978, the schoolyard was divided between those who dismissed as weird trash (probably with a few insinuations about the sexuality of those who made, or those who might like) and a small group of few who's just seen the blackboard erased, and the possibilities of rock abruptly expanded (probably with a few insinuations of its 'neatness'. Punk rock had made no impact in the province of New Brunswick, and I can testify I was, to perhaps nobody's surprise, happily located in the smaller group.

Here is a contemporary video: http://youtu.be/jadvt7CbH1o

Clearly it's impact resonates. I mentioned that I was watching the 1978 season on DVD to a music-loving chum, and he immediately piped up, "The one with Devo?"

made me sit bolt upright in bed when Peel played it. I'd never heard anything like it before. It still knocks me cold and is proof that Morrissey and The Smiths are very special indeed.

Killed himself because of a noisy neighbour. Tragic.

http://graphikdesigns.free.fr/norman-dinky-diamond.html

Ashes to Ashes

I'm 13 years old and a homesick long-forgotten spaceman comes on the radio with sounds he's captured from beyond our solar system.

but the first time I and many others heard A Day In The Life it just sounded insane but wonderful.

It could be argued that Tomorrow Never Knows was as ground breaking, but I didn't hear that until years after Day In The Life.

...particularly the late 70s/early 80s chart items. That 1978-80 period was either a great one for UK pop music or just formative to me and a few others around here, I suppose...

This one, though, takes the biscuit as far as I'm concerned. I bought a US vinyl reissue circa 1981/82 I guess, aged 13, having been intrigued by anm encyclopedia entry on the band. So the first track I'd ever hear by the Mahavishnu Orchestra would be 'Birds Of Fire'.

Firstly, those endless, portentous cymbals... then the insistent riff (in 18/8) at ):45... then the incredible, weird melody at 1:05, played by guitar and violin in unison... it was an introduction to a soundworld that took some getting used to but which one knew, even then, was magical!

Definitely a Desert Island Disc:

Has to be in Icelandic, though - I loathe the English version, as it just strips away the mystique of the song.

("And why not?" - Massive) My guess would be the vast majority of crazy new-sounding experimental music is cack.
Here's one given away free with the NME which initially had me baffled but I ultimately came to love:

(Steinski, The Motorcade Sped On)

btw I'm not sure there's any actual music on this anywhere...

on John Peel

The masters of brevity metal.

Back in the day when you'd be taping the programme and if Napalm Death came on at the end of the 45 minutes of Side A of your cassette you ran the risk of losing an entire session track on account of having to take the cassette out, turn it round, put it back it in and then press and hold down play and record.

The follow-up to Relax was keenly awaited by the nation's pop kids. After quite a long time, Two Tribes came out and was totally different to its all-conquering predecessor. I remember hearing it and being confused but thrilled at the same time. Certainly wasn't Relax Part 2 - I needed to hear it again. Seems a bit tame now.

...had a really radical sound at the time it came out (which, of course, sounds tame now). It was all down to how high in the mix the visceral, trebly guitar riff was. Given the 'sonic mainstream' of the pop world at the time, it was an inspired move - radio people would HAVE to play it but you just knew if it hadn't been U2 it would never have got played on mainstream radio.

As I say, hard to appreciate this now, but I was very struck by it at the time.

...Patti Smith's Birdland

it sounded like something from another planet.

of this parish this sounded like it came from Mars

The Associates "Party Fears Two"

it sounded like Marvin. It was synthetic and sinuous. A torch song. A pop song. Probably the last time I cared deeply for any one particular act. Twenty. Twenty. Twenty years ago.

"Unfinished Sympathy". Massive Attack.

Never liked The White Stripes. Overrated, slapdash too cool for school nonsense.

However, this left my gob well and truly smacked

He says "geezer" and "birds"! He can't even rap in time..
Waitasecond. This is great!

(The Streets, Let's Push Things Forward)

I was simultaneously intrigued, entranced and baffled by this when I first heard it. Why would you create a beautiful, shimmering piece of music and then layer enormous sheets of noise over it, and then deliberately bend the pitch so it sounded like the record was warped, and send the drums and bass parts so far to the outer limits of the soundspace they cab barely be heard? I'm f*cked if I know. This is the kind of record you can listen to a hundred times and still never quite get to the bottom of. I love it for that. Still clears a room if you play it today! Hurrah!

(Aphex Twin - Omgyjya Switch 7)

The first time I heard this, I had to listen to it again. And again. And again. And again. Not particularly because I enjoyed it - that came later - but because it was fascinating and a bit scary.

Same goes for this:

(Slayer - Jesus Saves)

It's the sudden switch at 1:10ish from quite mid-tempo, grooving stuff to this kind of blurted speed-rush mess, almost tripping over itself, but so clearly done entirely deliberately and with terrifying discipline and control.

For the next covermount CD!

I've been introduced to so much good stuff on here, I've just got to post something so I can find my way back here at my leisure to follow it all up.

So here's one from me. Like all of them, it sounds crazy, but at the same time it's all under control.

and there's 74 more mind-buggering minutes of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony where that came from.

...I've seen it performed live. Otherworldly and weird, yet in a clearly very old way (like hearing BBC Radiophonic music from a '60s Dr Who)...

Still, it probably sounds like child's play compared to what Alexander Scriabin would have got to had he lived to finish his 'Mysterium in the early 1900s. It was a search for the lost chord - in the Himalayas, with bells to be hung from clouds according to some sources.

Here's what wikipedia has to say on the matter:

Mysterium is an unfinished musical work by composer Alexander Scriabin. He started working on the composition in 1903, but it was incomplete at the time of his death in 1915.

Scriabin planned that the work would be synesthetic, exploiting the senses of smell and touch as well as hearing. He wrote that

"There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. The cast of performers includes an orchestra, a large mixed choir, an instrument with visual effects, dancers, a procession, incense, and rhythmic textural articulation. The cathedral in which it will take place will not be of one single type of stone but will continually change with the atmosphere and motion of the Mysterium. This will be done with the aid of mists and lights, which will modify the architectural contours."

Scriabin intended that the performance of this work, to be given in the foothills of the Himalayas in India, would last seven days and would be followed by the end of the world, with the human race replaced by "nobler beings".

At the time of his death, Scriabin left 72 pages of sketches for a prelude to the Mysterium entitled Prefatory Action. These sketches have been completed by Alexander Nemtin to form a three-hour-long work, a task that took him 28 years, and recorded.

One of the key components of later Scriabin compositions is related to his preliminary thinking for the "Mysterium". The so-called "Mystic chord", C F# Bb E A D, starts gradually to serve as a source of harmonic and melodic material in some of Scriabin's works from the "Poem of Ecstasy" onwards. The notes of the chord are rarely used in the pure form just cited, all spaced in fourths, and are usually rearranged, doubled, and inverted in various ways when in actual use in a composition, so that the original chord spaced in fourths is scarcely recognizable, even when its notes are the basis of a passage. This use of the chord reached its climax in Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, while The Poem of Ecstasy which preceded it, although starting to suggest the chord, does not in fact use the complete chord with any frequency. Some hints of the chord start to appear even considerably earlier, however - for instance, in the Sonata no. 4 in F# major, op. 30.

This chord was to provide the tonal framework for "Mysterium" rather than conventional tonal triads. The "Mysterium Chord" is almost a whole-tone scale but with one constituent pitch-class raised a semitone, turning the Fortean aggregate (02468T) into (013579). This is the Prometheus scale, and its notes are the exact constituents of the Mystic chord. (However, for the Mysterium, Scriabin had expanded this chord up to stacked chords containing all twelve tones of the tempered scale.) Later on in the 20th century the (original) scale/harmony influenced composers such as Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen and Toru Takemitsu.

Here's a snatch of Nemtin's repair job on the 'Prefatory Action':

made me realise something earthshaking was happening.
I'm still staggered that something as bizarre as 'Heartbreak Hotel' was released in the mid-50s.
'Virginia Plain' and the look of the band on TOTP blew my mind.
Hearing 'Today your love..' by The Ramones on a Sunday afternoon was equivalent to all of the above and exploded like an atom bomb onto my consciousness..

Sounds like crazy music.
Sufjan Stevens - The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

I remember as a young teenager glued to Radio Luxembourg hearing The Weight by The Band for the first time and thinking "that doesn't sound like anything I'd heard before"

Anne Nightingale played 'Wood Beez'. There have only been a handful of instances where I have had to buy a record immediately on hearing it (This Town.... was one). This was another:

I only heard this a few years ago but it was a revelation..Won't see another Alex Harvey ever I'm afraid.

If ever there was a whole record that sounded like crazy music (but not necessarily in a good way) for me it would be Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones.

I bought it, the day it came out, from Musicraft in Hounslow High Street. I rushed home, put it on my parent's radiogram and, whilst perusing the 3D gatefold sleeve, sat back to enjoy it. Playing the track on the end of side one, 'Sing This All Together (See What Happens)' after about 6 minutes it went into a repeating musical pattern which, after a while, seemed to be changing but incredibly subtly. It didn't seem that odd, since 'Goin Home' on Aftermath clocked in at about 12 minutes.

After listening in this ernest to this for about ten minutes, I got up and found the needle was stuck.

For a record that sounded like crazy music but in a good way, I suggest the Velvet Underground album 'White Light White Heat' and particularly the track 'Sister Ray' which in it's day sounded more like it was recorded at some point in the distant future. It came out in January 1968 when almost everyone else was still wearing beads and kaftans and singing about flowers.

And this is from 1956!

Sun Ra of course. This piece out of the Space is the Place film is cool:

One exquisitely boring afternoon in the mid '80s I was listening to 'My Top 10' on Radio 1 where Andy Peebles' guest was David Bowie. One of Bowie's picks was The Velvet Underground's Venus in Furs. After 30 seconds or so I thought What IS This NOISE? and turned the radio off. Meanwhile, my brain was evidently still processing those 30 seconds and shortly thereafter thought Wait a Minute! and turned the radio back on - by the end of the track I was hooked.

Trying so hard to think of more recent examples one forgets the head staggers caused by the now familiar way back when first encountered.
A simple one: Cars by Gary Numan. It's so much part of the furniture now I wouldn't be surprised to find a version of it on one of those easy listening panpipe covers albums, but back then I recall running around the room in confusion because of the sustained note on the weird keyboard machine. In fact one of the strange joys of that 77-83ish period was hearing completely new plinks, squelches and nurrrs on every other top 20 record...

I remember being quite impressed by how this sounded like nothing else I had heard before. Apart from the "hey!" bits, of course.

Possibly the last genuinely exciting No 1 record?