Are there any examples out there of particularly abstract and weird political music?

Ilhan Mimaroglu's "Agitation" and "Sing a Song of Songmy" LPs are fearsome works of political musique-concrete spiked occasionally with jazz: deeply disturbing, awesome, uncompromising stuff.

Bob Ostertag's "Sooner or Later" also belongs here.

Also, Crass.

jimi hendrix - the star spangled banner

I recommend the Crass Records label in general, especially the D&V and K.U.K.L records. Also the Crass-affiliated Corpus Christi label esp. Annie Anxiety, Cravats, and Rudimentary Peni. Flux Of Pink Indians. The amazing post-Indians album by Flux, as seen here:

C or D:: Flux "Uncarved Block"

Drew's answers remind me of a CD called "Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima" by an artist I cannot currently recall - Q. R. Ghazala?

Also Test Department, some Legendary Pink Dots (particularly The Tower), some early Current 93 ("Falling Back In Fields Of Rape" and "Killy Kill Killy"), and The Ex.

Krysztof Penderecki, I believe.

yeah, but Ghazala did a different version... I read a rave review of it but have never found it.

And of course with PE, the unspoken context for "wierd, challenging, etc) is 'in terms of pop music.'

But nobody mentioned Public Enemy, man! The label Public Record is mentioned up above, but you brought in PE. Not that I necessarily disagree with your critique, just noting that it wasn't brought up as an example.

Some Cardew can fit here too, but most of his political music was actually designed to be played by amateurs, in a community setting (things like the Great Learning, eg), so he's actually more an example of political music written with political intent. Nono would have very definitely disagreed with Cardew's beliefs on political music (although they would have agreed on most politics); same goes for Rzewski, who follows the more populist model.

A good place to look is Dutch music - Louis Andriessen's early music is very political, and he spawned a whole generation of similar composers.

Thanks for the heads up on the Ghazala 'Threnody for the New Victims of Hiroshima' by the way - I must try to find this myself.

Osvaldo Golijov is an argetine composer who has an insane amount of coverage given to his music lately: he gave an interview on TV last week saying that music (his music?) could be a solution to the world's problems. That's sorta political, innit?

Yikes!

Next in line: Some guy saying "You don't know what you are talking about".

The two tracks that I mentioned have Steve Ignorant from Crass doing some of the most scathing rants of his career.

"PINSTRIPED BETRAYERS BRINGING THEIR TWILIGHT OF DUST ON A WHIRLWIND OF WAR!!!"

God I love those tracks. The rest isn't "political" by any reasonable definition, except for the awesome "Curse" piece on Swastikasa For Noddy.

"all art is in essence political"

Disco Inferno, arguably, are an excellent example, with songs like "Summer's Last Sound," "Next Year," and "Waking Up" being too obvious to ignore. "Real power never has been nor will be shared."

the fall are endlessly political, but easily grasped. kan mikami is damned political, but less so if you dont understand japanese...the list, the list...

Just looking at the qn again (I read the title and not the initial post properly apologies): From my initial post 'Pacifika..' is pretty accessible throughout except for the group of kids screaming in the penultimate section. And Henry Cow are quite accessible, in the sense that they had a singer and there are songs (with some improvisations but its not like that's so alien in pop). As for Cardew, much of the amateur stuff might be fun to perform, maybe fun to watch but its, well, a tad bloodless on record. Doesn't 'Treatise' have far more of a politcal dimension as in how unspecified it is, thus requiring just as much coorperation between the players? Except that it wasn't talked up by Cardew as political so its implicit and therefore not quite making in the terms the thread has set up. otoh, following on from Tim's post almost anything that goes very out of its way to be "abstract" in sound terms could be explicitly political as well (thinking of Lachenmann here who was Nono's student -- check out 'nun'), even if not accompained by angry programme notes or provocative titles.

The seminal anti-establishment North Walian production outfit that invented Welsh-language hip-hop.

On holiday in New York in 1984, a young Welshman named John Griffiths witnessed the explosion of hip-hop culture first hand and returned to his home town - the poverty-stricken mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog - with the seed of an idea germinating in his mind.

Recruiting his friend Kevs Ford, he founded Llwybr Llaethog - a revolutionary dance outfit pioneering a bass-heavy agit-rap style with a sharp satirical edge that single-handedly invented the genre of Welsh-language hip-hop in one fell swoop.

Their debut release for Anhrefn Records, 1986's Dull Di Drais EP combined an urgent political message - support for imprisoned Welsh-language protester Ffred Francis, scorn for Thatcher's Conservative government - with a genre-crunching musical style that introduced the turntable scratch, sample culture, and cut'n'paste production to the staid Welsh music scene.

Many, however, refused to take the act seriously, partly because of the pair's love for futurist gimmicks - one interview the pair did for Welsh TV was supposedly phoned in from outer space - and partly, because of the group's physical dislocation from Wales: for a while, the pair recorded their music in a home studio based in a council flat in Peckham, South London.

Come Llwybr Llaethog's debut album, Da!, the line-up had expanded to a three-piece, with Ben Bentham coming onboard as bassist. It was the group's second album, Be?, that was widely assumed to be their best, though - a mischievous skewering of dole-age culture that encompassed dub reggae, formative acid house, and on Popeth Ar Y Record Ma Wedi Cael Ei Ddwyn, the phenomenon of sampling. Griffiths and Ford took fragments of Welsh records and pasted them back into an anarchic whole.

The mid 90s saw Llwybr Llaethog move to Ankst and begin a collaborative spree, which saw them work with Beganifs, Datblgyu frontman David R Edwards, and anti-establishment poet Ifor Ap Glyn. 1996's Mad!, recorded for Ankst Records, even found the duo turning their hand to the Gaelic and Punjabi tongue. But later in the decade, where many of the bands peers in groups like Catatonia and Super Furry Animals took the leap into the mainstream, Llwybr Llaethog seemed content to continue to stalk the margins.

Periodically, Ll-Ll have emerged from their hibernation to play a reggae-heavy live show, remix the Super Furry Animals, record a Peel session, or collaborate with musically sympathetic groups like Tystion or Anweledig. In 2000 they released Hip-Dub Reggae-Hop, a collection of tracks from 1985-2000 that is a great starting point for newcomers to their music.

However, the compilation didn't herald a slowing down in their output. The following year they put out the Stwff LP and the Llanrwst single, and in October 2002 put out Anomie-Ville on Crai. The following year was pretty quiet for the duo, but in early 2004 they came back in style with Sherbet Antlers, a collaboration with former Catatonia members Mark Roberts and Paul Jones. It'll be a while before we hear the last of Llwybr Llaethog.

weird political, yes

To me, that sounds like an apolitical stance - suggesting music as a solution to the world's problems is a pretty pointed way of not suggesting any real solution.