Trout Mask Replica

Finally got the legend.

In the end, I think it's about a 3. It flips between interesting and tedious.

Like the Sword Of Damocles, Trout Mask Replica looms over us all. I was fully prepared for one of the worst things I was ever going to hear but honestly I quite enjoyed it.

It’s definitely not an easy listen. It’s abrasive and chaotic but, for me at least, it works. It’s not something that’s gonna be in my regular album rotation but I can see myself once or twice a year taking a notion to give this a listen.

Top Track - When Big Joan Set Up

An experimental classic. Weird as hell but perfectly suited for a list like this. 5/5

It’s been said that you need to listen to this album at least 7 times before you really start to get it. I think I’m on my 5th or 6th listen since I first heard it a couple years ago and I am definitely still peeling back layers. There’s something new to take away every time you hear it.

Do I enjoy listening to this album? Maybe not in the way that I enjoy other albums. This is a dense, difficult listen that demands your attention. The guitar playing is jagged, fractured, and frequently following a different rhythm than the drums and bass. The lyrics are almost completely nonsensical for large parts of the album and aren't always in sync with the music because Van Vliet recorded them while barely being able to hear the instrumental tracks from one of the studio windows. It is most assuredly “fast and bulbous”.

The story of the rehearsals and recording of the album are just as bizarre as the album itself. The band lived communally in a house in which they were restricted from leaving for months where Van Vliet “asserted complete artistic and emotional domination of his musicians”, including verbal abuse and physical violence that frequently reduced members to tears. They practiced for upwards of 14 hours a day and barely had any money or food to eat. The scene was described as cult-like and Manson-esque. I genuinely cannot fathom why the band stuck around for as long as they did, but I am happy they did as this album has gone on to influence countless artist that I love (Tom Waits, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, David Lynch to name a few) and is the gold standard of experimental and avant-garde music.

Awful

Probably the most inaccessible album ever. I will say I liked it better on the second listen. Favorite track: Moonlight on Vermont

Ah man, it's already so shit and I haven't even hit the 20 second mark yet. It's just utter, utter bullshit. There's such little artistic merit to this. It's just a bunch of people fucking about between themselves, and, I suspect, with us the audience. Many of these people are also in 'The Mothers of Invention', another band that supremely grates on me. These guys think they're well funny. Well how's *THIS* for funny Captain Beefheart and your Tragic Band? How's *THIS* for funny!? 1 star. And you can thank me for it. Oh wait you can't, because you're dead.

I didn’t hate it, but I was glad when it was over.

Initial impression: this is an insane cacophony. Terrorism with musical instruments

Impression after reading the Wikipedia article: "[Beefheart] once told drummer John French that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia." Oh, this makes complete sense now.

This is absolutely what I imagine schizophrenia would sound like. I have dealt with numerous severely mentally ill, manic, and people in crisis, and this word salad nonsense is exactly what they sound like. It's impossible to replicate for someone who isn't in one of these states, but an instantly recognizable hallmark of the condition. Now, apply the word salad concept to musical instruments and you get this garbled nonsense with actual word salad stacked on top. This is more an accidental distress signal than it is music.

I made it halfway without skipping a song, but I gave up at Pena. This album was an assault.

⭐

The infamous album has finally come... If something is to turn me insane, that would be it

You know when modern artist painters take a white canvass and throw three squiggles of paint on it - and try (and often do) sell it for millions.

Yea, not buying it...the difference between schizophrenic and creative might be pretty thin....but i know which one this one lines up on.

Definitely belongs on the list. Definitely won’t choose to listen to it again.

Listening to this made me feel something.

That something often felt like being poked in the eye but I’ll take that over the feeling of nothingness from a dozen other albums the generator has given me.

Does this album belong on this list? Definitely. Every music nerd should listen to Trout Mask Replica before they die.

Does that make it a good album? Absolutely not.

This is so weird I can't even think of how to grade/eval this. Well, let's give it a shot:

1/5 for the result (one listening is enough for a lifetime)
5/5 for the bravery in creating this; althgough I think it's not original, it still needs a lot of courage to go and publish such work. It's one of those things "it's so bad it's actually great"
3/5 for getting into this list - yes, I get it, why not to be open minded and experience this? One time? Yeah, I get it
0/5 for the cover art, horrible and I guess it works as a warning for what is inside (which, on the other hand, might worth a 5 fot it's honesty?!?!?)
0/5 for the talent that, aparently, these musicians wasted on this! Everyone tells they're genius, I would love to listen to something great from them, not this :-D

Oh God, I'm so divided... nah, I'll give it 1/5! No one should suffer with this

*This album is some of the craziest stuff I've ever heard, but it intrigues me to listen more times to understand it better.

People on this website are so darn dramatic. I was expecting a pure cacophony, like 5 saxophones playing quarter-tones apart in 57/16. It wasn't that crazy. If I hadn't known the reputation of the album, maybe I would have had a different experience... but I had such a good time listening to this. Doesn't feel like 80 minutes at all.

Oh shoot. Only one song from the album is available on Spotify...

Sure, I get it. Be intentionally weird and annoying. We used to do this in high school. It's fun and funny, and you get to feel like your smarter than the normies. As an adult, I'm not going to spend my time listening to it again, but I get it. At least it's interesting enough to not be 1-star.

What is interesting though is the obvious influence on Tom Waits. Waits clearly took a lot of these same sounds and styles into his own music. The difference is that Waits was able to find the balance where its actually listenable.

assustador que os manos realmente compuseram essa porra toda na base do piano (que ngm sabia tocar) e do assobio. bizarríssimo.
no início parecia que todos os instrumentos tavam saindo na porrada. aí meu ouvido acostumou e percebi só que eles tavam """"dançando"""" no próprio ritmo, se encontrando em alguns momentos com o vozerão do captain beefheart balbuciando abobrinha pós-modernista

é por conta de albuns assim que eu quis participar desse site aqui. é um absurdo, maluco, doido, quase o equivalente musical a dar moral pra um viciado em crack que te pediu um cigarro sexta-feira 22h na praça rio branco depois que vc pegou o 4034, parou na rua curitiba c/ afonso pena e tá tendo que andar até a rodoviária. ele só queria um cigarro e um isqueiro, mas acaba dialogando sobre os 300 mil pensamentos que tão passando na mente dele no auge da droga. muitas vezes, nada faz sentido e vc fica assustado. mas, as vezes, ele faz um pouco de sentido sim e isso alivia um pouco a tensão de estar ali. esse album é bem assim.

(assustador como isso foi feito 1969 e nada parece que chegou perto da sonoridade desse aqui. doideira demais, curti muito)

How many different words can you jam into a double record?