I recently presented a rare record by Assagai called Zimbabwe. Looking for relevant information in the web, I stumbled upon a Guardian piece written for their "101 strangest albums on spotify" series. Curious to see which others are included, I sought the rest of them. I present the list here, directly copy-pasted from the website albumoftheyear.org, including photos and comments. I'm unfamiliar with most of these records, and currently only own 6 of them in LP or CD, but judging from the ones I have heard, these aren't strange/unlistenable but rather strange/interesting. You might want to check some of them out for yourselves. FYI, this series is quiet old, and some of these albums aren't available for streaming any more...
In the last post of the series, jazz drummer Horacee Arnold’s frenetic breakbeats and his band’s delightful riffs complete more than two years of Spotify-mining
Kicking off a new series, Rob Fitzpatrick delves into the darkest corners of Spotify to bring you this cocktail lounge number, with added tiger growls
This Ivy League professor helped develop the first digital synthesizer and used tapes of the Apollo moon landings on this 1970 track
Norman's spacey music was a million miles away from the saccharin-fuelled puppets of Christian rock
An extraordinary recording of nomadic herders, which uses just a single voice and drum to redefine our concept of melody
Think of this as a grinning punk cousin to Miles Davis's brutal and brilliant Bitches Brew
Toni Arthur is best remembered as a former Play School presenter, but she also made bewitchingly beautiful folk music
Using little more than a single preset drum pattern, Chief Kooffreh's many albums can be considered outsider art. But few are as strange as his Princess Dianna tribute
A recording of life in London yesterday? Dull. A recording of life in London 50 years ago? Brilliant
Everything you need to hear in order to successfully express breast milk. It didn't go platinum, oddly enough
Famed for a furious workrate and 'blood-curdling whoops', the energy soars from these 50s recordings
In which the Man tries to co-opt psychedelia to give the Kids a more wholesome way to blow their minds
There's nothing kitschy or arch about White Dog. But there is an awful lot of feedback and noise, if that's your bag
It barely scraped out of single-figure sales when released, but this 1974 album rewards close attention
An experimental film-maker unveils his version of Mongolian throat singing – minds will be blown
Welcome to paradise: the place where gospel meets Hawaiian music. And greetings to the first group to use a tour bus
Susan Alcorn takes the pedal steel guitar and uses it as a platform for wild improvisation far from her country roots
They were, ostensibly, a Christian rock band, but Fraction explored the downtuned darkness of Black Sabbath
It's very hard to make a truly strange record these days. But not impossible, as Sumach Ecks has proved
You could never accuse the Hungarian organist at Stockholm's Catholic cathedral of not making full use of his spare time – as this Tibet-inspired album proves
She broke down race barriers, attracted huge crowds, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom – and loved her cat
One of the trillion folk groups entering the world in 1964 had a secret weapon in their ranks – the king of sunshine pop
To promote African music, Francis Bebey hit on a simply plan: use western technology to make it sound more familiar
Serene psychedelia from the heart of Massachusetts – from a man whose fortunes were revived by cratediggers
New age music didn't always mean washed-out blandness – at its best, it reached into eternity
Inspired by Star Wars, a young label manager decided that what the world needed was an album set in space
It's 1968, and a young psych band are making excitingly fresh music. The problem: so is everyone else
The modernist composer destroyed many of his own works, but what survives is a passionate, visionary noise
Even Gospel Music Hall of Famers have those days when the Lord guides them someplace a little weird …
A committed stoner retreats to a cabin among the California redwoods and commits to tape a psych-sludge masterpiece
It's metal, but the kind of metal that could have been made by Brian Eno if he found his dog had been murdered
History remembers them as one of Krautrock's second-string groups, but Agitation Free deserve to be remembered more kindly
It's a miracle any copies of this privately pressed album survived – but be thankful it did, for here is an individual vision
There's no milkman on earth who could find something to whistle in the work of the Shadow Ring
Peter Ivers seemed like an outlier for strangeness in the 1970s. Now, though, he sounds oddly contemporary
European crooning, American jazz and the rhythms of Congo came together in Les Bantous De La Capitale
Their one Euro-disco smash overshadows the glorious bonkersness of this brilliance Austrian space-dance-cruise-ship hybrid
She made music because she wanted to heal, and in the process created a new kind of composition
A young Japanese guitarist gets entranced by jazz. Then he hears what English guitar bands are doing. The musical result? Extremity
This groovy soundtrack to a 1967 exploitation film about brutal, drunken bikers (one of whom is Jack Nicholson) has more flutes, sitars and soft-pop melodies than you might expect
This remarkably single-minded record about wanting money or the process of getting money is so obscure and one-dimensional that it becomes fascinating
So freeform it makes the phrase 'freeform' sound constrictive, this spellbinding band construct a maze of false starts, clicks, overdriven digital screams, furious silences and extreme noise
An album that does what it says on the cover: a jazz flautist stood inside the Taj Mahal, and played, not just his instrument but the building itself
The Man trampled all over Mountain Bus's career – but he couldn't kill the music, dude. No way
As the sixties melted deliciously into the seventies, this Australian psychedelic band sounded like they were having a wild time
Tequila-scented numbers, a jazz-noir piece of grave-friendly beat poetry and some tracks just the wrong side of appalling. The Mummy's got it all
Something raucous was clearly going down wherever the Toilet hung out as, even 43 years later, their country-inflected, choogling blues-rock and acid-fuzz still sounds remarkable
America's only superstar of the zither made 18 albums for a major label. File under: feats never to be repeated
You can't do your chores while you listen to this – not unless you want to accidentally destroy your house
He was one of the early jazz players, but Tiny Parham got truly interesting when he became a bandleader
Made by 24-year-old Moroccan-born composer Didier Marouani, Just Blue is a prog and classical disco fusion album that redefines bombastic with its hands-in-the-air oddity
While America basked in the faux-Hawaiian sound of exotica, a Frenchman revealed the true sound of Tahiti
A synapse-squeezing blend of pop-psych, folk, circus music, jazz and space-rock ballads that'll leave you aptly giddy
This brilliant compilation - pieced together nearly 40 years ago - is a lost collection of mesmeric French Guinean sounds
Dislocating, disturbing and disjointed music your bag? The Brooklyn band's debut is an exhausting triumph in violent beauty
He's the seventh of 27 children, and was traded for a bottle of whiskey. No surprise Lonnie Holley is an outsider artist
Recorded in one single six hour session, proto-punk Fowley sounds on the point of orgasm or vomiting his guts up
14-year-old Cedric Hailey and his crew play super-funky boogie-groove jams on their debut album, released back in 1983
Before Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left to join Deep Purple, the group made a sharp, precise album full of mad ideas
Dry January? Get your ears around the bizzare wonder of Arthur Avant's Be Drug Free Like Me, Drug Free Fairy Tale, or even Drug Free Military
We reprise the Washington DC-born brothers Chris and Doug Grimes' gorgeous funky-psyche-soul and pitch-perfect late-60s wannabe-oddball pop
Take a listen to hip-shaking freak-beat grooves and a thrashy racket that's rougher than a badger's arse, if you like
Listen to Stoopid Symbol Of Woman Hate or Can't Stand Up For 40-Inch Busts - truly terrible noises slung together to make something wonderful
Welcome to a world of sunset-enraptured hippy-folk idealism and LSD-stained experimentalism, as brought to you by a man named Clive
We find ourselves in front of another album that really should have done well, something that was destined for greatness. But despite its ridiculousness and beautiful sounds, it didn’t
Before falling silent for nearly seven years, Davis released this tremendously odd, funny, furious and funky record
Incredible title aside, this 1997 album features gravity-free melodiousness and a history of gospel in fifteen seconds
This 1982 compilation and a-political mess about features tracks from Brothers Gonad, Peckham’s Splodge and Sniffing Glue favourites Menace
Bathed in echo and a warm blanket of hiss, Suzy Soundz' voice is utterly without guile on her Casio covers and Outsider Art explorations
Forming after the Harlem Riots of 1964, Har-You make Afro-Cuban sounds with furious and hip-shakingly groovesome rhythms
Meet Barry McGuire - former washed-up drug casualty turned Hollywood Jesus Rocker - and maker of easy-strolling FM rock and noodle-doodle jazz-funk with lashings of gospel-themed lyrics
Meet the inhouse trip accompanist of LSD guru Timothy Leary, and his second far-out album
Based on the Wheel of Life described in the Tibetan Book of The Dead, Henry's album is full of fantastically odd electronic experimentalism
Released in 1983, this album from New York crew Warp 9 worked real emotion and intelligence into the world of experimental hip-hop and electro
Bernie Schwartz's group - discovered first by Jim Morrison - made an album full of rich, textured sunshine-pop harmonies and perfectly pitched psychedelic dream weaving
Listen to the album from the Jamaican born, New York bred musician Jet, and help us decipher why exactly he made such a spectacularly competent album
A collection of songs made by a long-forgotten group specialising in super-heavyweight funk and astral Afro-jazz, Assagai's aim was to get people dancing, not to chase fame
The man behind this most mysterious of early 80s mood albums turned out to be a Canadian stockbroker. It takes all sorts, eh?
It's hard to imagine a record more locked in time than this one,yet Dane's rich voice expresses the anger of the anti-Vietnam movement powerfully
If you really want weird, listen to this experimental oddity from one of the most radical bands of the psychedelic era
Fancy a ‘groaning wave of ectoplasmic noise’? Then look no further than Campbell Kneale, bringing you ecstatic power from the southern hemisphere
Back in 1968, the airwaves were a psychedelic paradise, awash with the sounds of softly-grooving, sitar-scented music. Here’s a lost classic from that year
Jeff T Smith, aka Juffage, produces sound-art that splices tape-chopping sonic experimentalism with his smart pop voice. It’s an odd, charming album from this multi-instrumentalist who’s due to release a new album following collaborations with Sky Larkin, Wild Beasts, and Vessels
In the mid-70s, a jazz singer summoned his inner loverman and came up with a set of lubricious proto-disco
Spawning from the 70s Krautrock scene, this visionary composer with an obsession with Indian classical and all things avant-garde penned a skull-bursting symphony of serene synth minimalism
![Valentine [70s] - Valentine](https://cdn2.albumoftheyear.org/100x/album/324469-valentine.jpg)
Before they became simply a band that ‘features Sylvester Stallone’s brother’, Valentine were the 70’s drive-time Yacht Rock hopefuls
Sometimes this column just features odd music. Sometimes – and this is one of those occasions – the music is also quite brilliant
Mixing prog-rock, jazz, showtunes, Krautrock and indian classical music, this San Francisco band’s unloved masterpiece sounds like it was recorded only last week
Retreat into the minimalist sounds of Japanese composer Satoh. His 1994 creation is full of soothing stillness – and near silence
When Tangerine Dream’s Peter Baumann decided to make a cash-in disco record, the result was this odd combo of breathy erotica, high camp and sheer awfulness
Featuring white noise and sepulchral vocals, this album by a classically trained opera singer is as wildly experimental as it is fantastically listenable
Released with little fanfare in the early 60s, this ‘Indian country’ protest record arrived amid Cash’s pills and whiskey trip
This iconoclastic, political and yet open-hearted fixture on the 1960s Greenwich Village scene produced the first out and proud, by-lesbians-for-lesbians folk album
Unable to tour thanks to their affiliations with West Ham’s ICF crew, Cockney Rejects threw themselves into recording back home – one product of which was this 1984 monstrosity/classic
Raymond Scott was a composer, engineer, recording studio pioneer, an inventor of electronic instruments whose influence lives on
Gordon Mumma’s pioneering electronic music – which he first began composing in the 1950s – is showcased on this mesmerising and disquieting compilation
John Cale meets easy listening by way of hazy cosmic jive in an experimental album of mood music from the masters of the art
You’d have to be a fantastically introverted stay-at-home teen to embrace this Canadian jazz flautist – but perhaps Moe Koffman’s uncool cash-in LP helped spark the Brit Beat revolution?
In the penultimate post of the series, here’s a lost treasure from Mumbai – as crackly and muffled as it is mellifluous and magic
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