Absolutely transcendent songs...

"Smoke Two Joints"

I would be happy (as well as amused) if those were the first two songs on the jukebox in heaven

The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
Joanna Newsom - Only Skin
Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely
Sigur Ros - Untitled #8
Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke)

Sigur Ros - Glosoli

lolindie

You'd think Pitchfork would be more of a hell thing

I don't mean anything, though. I'm listening to Moose right now, for heaven's sake.

I like that Louis picked a song that is disputably Sublime (it's a cover)

God would probably replace it w/Cocaine in my Brain

And now for a serious answer... :D

Actually, I need a new favourite song. It's gone Beck - Cold Brains to Blur - Essex Dogs to Mansun - Cancer and been there a while. I'm not going to attempt to discover a new one tonight, but as for a song I'd describe right now as transcendental (and why):

Well, there's three.

Oceansize - Savant. The best song of the best album of 2007, a slow-burning orchestral movement that uses three different guitarists, back-of-the-mix vocals and some extremely creative drumming to construct an emotional monument. Nothing is overdone. The sound is never deafening, never overwhelming. The most crushing moment is when a subtle, tremeloing guitar creeps in during a chanted refrain. The song just keeps on adding to its own glory, building and accelerating until a string section pierces the majesty and completely removes us from the vocabulary of rock music. Hell I sound pretentious saying this. Hell I don't care. Better chord-changes, better lyrics, better rhythms, better sounds, better everything.

Spiritualized - Won't Get To Heaven (The State I'm In). The 10-minute penultimate track from their much-maligned 2001 opus, 'Let It Come Down', this remains their best, most impassioned, most utterly spiritual studio recording. Beginning amidst a ticking clock, swirling sound effects, clicks, bubbling ambience and whooshes, a single piano introduces Pierce's familiar distorted guitar - and an entire orchestra. We then experience a beautiful 4-minute ballad in which our man bares his heroin-soaked soul before us, God, and whoever else feels like listening. Which then stops, quickens, and flies. The final 5 minutes are some of the most uplifting, thrilling, soulful minutes of music ever recorded. It's gospel as recorded by nuclear scientists and the best recording equipment money can buy. It features some astounding saxophone. Best of all, at the 7-minute mark it explodes in a sea of quite unstoppable synth. I think that might still be the most heart-stopping moment of music I've ever heard. All in the synth tone.

Which takes me onto...

Thighpaulsandra - Michel Publicity Window. I think this guy must be one of the biggest geniuses in music. Like, for serious. Very few people have heard of him. He is probably the main reason why the last song I mentioned is so great. He did most of the ambience, all the synths, he made it sound like it did. This is him on his own. It's 27 minutes long. The first 10 are a stupendously slowly-mounting series of outer-space atonal synth washes. They're beautiful. The oft-overused 'glacial' actually suits it to a tee. Then, without warning, a pop song breaks out. Fading in over the washes (but never dispelling them), Mr T plays a simple, bass-driven lament to the titular character, which lasts only about 3 minutes before fading back into the mix. But something has happened. No longer are the drones glacial, no longer unruffled. They become turbulent. They twist. They clash. And then...a SCREAM. A single, dying, electronic scream. It's repeated about 20 times. Towards the end, it slows down and dies. Another noise, this time a rotating upwards revving noise. In controlled chaos, the song finally fades from view. It's an absolutely stunning achievement.

Omitted due to 'don't wanna be here all night': Talk Talk, Cardiacs

I now feel so bad for leaving so much brilliant, sublime stuff out. :(

lolindie

-- W4LTER, Sunday, December 9, 2007 7:53 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

And the problem is . . . ?

My pick is "Song to the Siren" - This Mortal Coil version. For that matter, I can think of quite a few "absolutely transcendent" Liz Fraser vocal performances.

And, with regard to Spiritualized, how about "Feel So Sad (Glides and Chimes)" - or whatever the 10+ minute version of that song is called.

Power to indie:

The Mountain Goats - Pale Green Things
Panda Bear - Ponytail
Sonic Youth - Unmade Bed
Wilco - At Least That's What You Said
Wilco - The Late Greats
Wilco
Wilco
Wilco

New Order-Temptation

JGO, you can post more than one (or three!) I ain't stopping you. Your prose is appreciated. I'm gonna try to download anything that I'm not familiar with or haven't heard in ages. I wanna get a preview of such rewards what await me in the beyond.

Well, Thighpaulsandra's debut solo album "I, Thighpaulsandra" contains some of the best music you've never heard. When I first took the plunge (the record is, incidentally, longer than the new Stars Of The Lid album, which is fairly long, all while only having 11 tracks), I was in no way prepared for quite how complex, how thematically astounding it would be. Simple repetitive ambience this ain't; there's a truly absurd amount of detail, sonic trickery and remixing involved. Better still, he gets away with THREE cheeky garage-rock blow-outs. Self-regarding toss this ain't. Never mind that two of them devolve into noise experiments; this is high art, low art, everything in between, and one of the few albums I would recommend absolutely EVERYONE hear.

An absolutely transcendent song that goes in the direction of horror rather than beauty, of damnation rather than redemption: Foetus - "Kreibabe". This is what you'll be hearing if you wind up in the other place.

Oh, and how could we forget the last two tracks of The Teardrop Explodes - Wilder? Possibly the best closing 1-2 punch any album has ever had, and indeed one of the finest elegies written since the start of the 20th century.

Cool, I'll look into all of those.

w4lter likes as much as anyone in this thread.

w4lter likes indie as much as anyone in this thread.

The Late Greats is catchy, hardly transcendent tho.

the kiss - judee sill

I'm in danger of listing my favourite albums/songs here, but if you find Talk Talk transcendent (as you do, if you have functioning ears + a heart), the nearest equivalent I can think of is Ulver - Blood Inside. We cannot also forget quite how good The Beta Band are in this regard. Not all music I utterly adore I adore because it is sublime or transcendent. Much of it I love because of what it is, not what it invokes. The songs I've named here are portals to the imagination, means to further discovery. They're subtle, layered, and magnificent. Again I'm getting hazy. I've left a lot of stuff out that I could and would argue for. This is only tonight's doing. Tomorrow I will feel else. I will argue for XTC or Hood or Slowdive or Boards Of Canada. Not tonight, though. Well, maybe tonight. Depends on how many catcalls I'm getting/when I drop off. :D

Note to possible naysayers: this is a wanky thread, if you don't like it stuff off.

Well, Jordan, this, as we all know, is one of my fave blogs. so yeah.

"when its really cold outside one of the nicest things is to put on a sweater and sleep on the sofa with your sweater on. it feels really good"

this is otm.

louis you bolding names gives us another incentive not to read your monstrous posts. just saying.

the first song that comes to mind is

The Cure - "Disintegration" (the song)

Monstrous? I think 'rushed and overwritten' would probably be more accurate. The emboldening is actually so that people can skip all the tosh and get right to what matters - the musical recommendation. Anyway, I can't have a junior sass me out! Act yr age, get back to being defensive and self-justificatory! ;-)

Not all music I utterly adore I adore because it is sublime or transcendent. Much of it I love because of what it is, not what it invokes. The songs I've named here are portals to the imagination, means to further discovery. They're subtle, layered, and magnificent.

Sure. I guess that's why a couple of posts down I started toying with the idea of songs one would hear upon being ushered past the pearly gates; God's jukebox and so forth. Obviously, that could mean all kinds of things to all sorts of people, so this is a freeform thread by its very nature. But it's always great to hear people's explanations or attempts at such, in addition to mere mentions of a particular track.

strokes- barely legal
b.g. et al- bling bling
montell jordan- this is how we do it
bloc party- like eating glass
rich boy- throw some d's (i only kind of love this song but i'm hard pressed to think of a more cathartic song right now. "GET MONEY...........NEW MONEY" etc.)

i'm only a soph lou. and i was just joshing. i read your posts.

Yeah, I know. I shouldn't have used "junior", seeing as that's an actual year in US education. I was merely observing that you're one of a few ILXors younger than myself. Although you're not even the first such person to call me out on this thread! :D

Ulrich Schnauss. "On Your Own", "Medusa" and "Clear Day" especially.

Jord4n S your choices are interesting and completely different from mine. Care to go into a bit of detail as to how they're sublime/transcendental/whatever?

hm.

maybe deej or ethan or other rap dudes would disagree with me about this, but "bling bling" is kinda like the high point of the super-extravagance of late 90s/early 2000s rap, which is a period i really love. it's another song like "throw some d's" (which isn't nearly as good, but since i just brought it up) where it's about as cathartic and exultant as possible w/o saying so. the video would be able to illustrate this better than i can, with them throwing money out of helicopters and riding around in hummers and bentleys and the beatle convertible (that one kills me because i can't imagine any man would want a beatle convertible but it was a pretty big deal around then i guess so it's the ultimate we bought this because we can purchase). it's another thing of like really liking the cash money dudes and this is probably their biggest and best moment, or at least the one where they ultimately get out and say it as a group, throwing it all in everybody's face etc.

"this is how we do it" is just a song i'll never get sick of from like 1995 when i was 7 or 8 till last night i put it on at a party and it was still so awesome. idk i dont have the hugest emotional connection to it or whatever but i don't usually listen to big pop singles from the 90s that often but i listen to that and like "c'mon ride the train" once every few months or so.

"like eating glass" is kinda the big teen angst song for me that i guess older people have w/ like nirvana or fugazi songs. that probably goes for silent alarm as a whole. i spun the shit out of that cd a few years ago and that's still probably my favorite song. (probably letting on more about myself than i should here).

"barely legal" is just my favorite song on "is this it" which is probably my fav album of the decade. another one where i just have too many memories of singing that song loud as fuck not to put it on a list like this.

Defend the Indefensible: Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer...

"Those Eyes, That Mouth" by the Cocteau Twins
"Song To the Siren" by This Mortal Coil
"This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush
"Ceremony" by Galaxie 500
"Welcome to Hell" by Venom

"Odditty," the Clean.

For years this would have been the Stop Making Sense version of "Once in a Lifetime" for me, but I just can't hear that song fresh anymore.

"So What" by Ministry

or maybe some Julee Cruise...

bo rhap

East Mountain Joint - MV & EE
Minotaur - Skygreen Leopards
Lord & Master - Heron
Postcard - Comsat Angels
Born In Fire - the Frederic
And pink frost, obv.

Since I'm on a prewar-gospel/blues kick, I'll say Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground.

So, Jord4n, what's 'transcendent' for you is both the grandest possible materialistic celebration of wealth by popular culture, and an ability to provoke the most intense memories of prior enjoyment. These are valid criteria, even if I myself wouldn't subscribe to your choices. Thus is found the beauty of such subjective judgements. You're approaching the question from a far more populist angle, with the sublimity not manifested through sculptured sounds (assonance and dissonance, rhythm and arhythm, beauty and horror), but through real-life associations and communal experience. If I were to name a similar song that can transcend a group occasion, in my eyes Bohemian Rhapsody is nigh-on unbeatable. :D

you're missing what i'm saying re: finding rap songs transcendent. maybe you have a geir like predisposition to dismiss the genre, but there's a parallel feeling in finding something like "bling bling" or "throw some d's" transcendent. personal triumph same as their triumph etc. or finding personal triumph in their triumph. and again idk, i just think it's awesome to hear a dude like rich boy who by all means has worked his way up from the bottom to the top, got himself out of a bad situation etc. etc., scream "get money...new money!" idk how you can't feel great for a him.

also i didn't mention the musical qualities of those songs but undoubtedly the music on a visceral level is part of the appeal.

personal triumph same as their triumph etc. or finding personal triumph in their triumph.

Surely this is what I'm saying when I mention firstly "the grandest possible materialistic celebration of wealth by popular culture", and then when I speak of the "real-life associations and communal experience" you share?

Doubtless the music also helps, but an ability to slip into the character of the musicians is precisely what I described, in all its glorious escapism. I don't have any Geir-esque predispositions about rap; my only problem with it is that I haven't heard nearly enough.

right. sorry i read "grandest possible materialistic celebration" as a slight.

If "Uptown Top Ranking" isn't transcendent, than I want no part of transcendent.

Hey, if I ever use any sort of intensifier that insinuates ambition, largesse, or grandiosity, it's almost always positive! I have a special place in my heart for subtlety, and another for enormous sweeping statements. One in the context of the other is ideal. Bad music compromises, fudges, fails to make grand statements or subtleties, stinks the room with unambitious, mundane crap. No single KIND of music is bad except the sort which limits itself to extremely narrow and self-defeating parameters.

Al Green - Georgia Boy
Big Star - Back of a Car
Gilberto Gil / Jorge Ben - Meu Glorioso Sao Cristovao
Fleetwood Mac - Sara
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
John Fahey - Dalhart, Texas, 1967
Judee Sill - Lady-O (Live)
Joni Mitchell - Down to You
John Cale - Andalucia
Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
Velvet Underground - What Goes On
Van Morrison - Sweet Thing
Thelma Houston - Don't Leave Me This Way
Television - Marquee Moon
Soft Boys - I Wanna Destroy You
Prince - I Would Die 4 U

thanks thread, i needed a pick-me-up

Bowie - "Warszawa"

add this to the alice coltrane love -

http://www.discogs.com/release/533862

that's way too obscure

:-)

yeah that record's good

So many Low songs, actually.

Whore
Kind of Girl
Embrace
July
Laser Beam
Sunflower
Sandinista (Live)
Do You Know How To Waltz?

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
MMMMMMMMMMMMMM

velvet underground - oh! sweet nuthin'

Also, PJ Harvey. Seriously.

Oh My Lover
The Dancer
The Garden
The Wind
Angelene
Catherine
Is This Desire?
C'Mon Billy
Horses in my Dreams
It's You
Missed
The Devil (live)

Morris Brown - Outkast
I Want You - Elvis Costello
Sea Song - Robert Wyatt
Bad Patient - Piano Magic
French Mittens - Piano Magic
Halloween Boat - Piano Magic
Moonchild - M83
Missa Luba - Boniface Mganga
Misa Criolla - Ariel Ramírez y los Fronterizos
Marquee Moon, seconded.
This Lamb Sells Condos - Final Fantasy
The Pooka Sings - Final Fantasy
"Pie Jesu" & "Vieille prière bouddhique" - Lili Boulanger
Creole Love Call - Comedian Harmonists
Scatterbrain - Radiohead
Lepo Sumera - Piece from the year 1981
Moishei Wainberg - Symphony No.18 Op.138 - III.'Dearest little berry, you do not know the pain in my heart'

Horses - Tori Amos
Icicle - Tori Amos
Bells for Her - Tori Amos
Purple People - Tori Amos
Liquid Diamonds - Tori Amos
i i e e e - Tori Amos
Fine Day - Opus III
les amours perdues - Juliette Greco
Saint Mary - Sparklehorse
Maria's Little Elbows - Sparklehorse
Reckoner - Radiohead
The Diamond Sea - Sonic Youth
2+2=5 - Radiohead
Gmeeoorh - Iannis Xenakis
Trois petites liturgies... - Olivier Messiaen
Turangalila-Symphonie - Olivier Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time (Myung-Whun Chung version) - Olivier Messiaen
Vingt regards... - Olivier Messiaen
All Neon Like - Björk

osborne - 16th stage

Supplica a mia madre - Diamanda Galás
HW/Hope of New Fields - Jonny Greenwood
Verklarte Nacht - Arnold Schönberg
Piano Quintet in g-minor, Op 57 (1945) (iv) Intermezzo: Lento - Shostakovich
String Quartet No. 7 in F-Sharp Minor Op.108 (1960) (ii) Lento - Shostakovich
Thirteen - Big Star
Those Were the Days - Mary Hopkin
Janitor of Lunacy - Nico

^Transcendence ID skill +10

Instant Karma - John Lennon
Afro Blue - John Coltrane
La Passerella d'Addio -Nino Rota (the closing music from 8 1/2)
Peace Piece - Bill Evans
I Think It's Going to Rain Today - Randy Newman (we can have transcendent bummerz if we want to)
Sweet Jane - Velvet Underground
Cheree - Suicide

off the top my head:
Walker Brothers - Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore
Walker Brothers - Night Flights
Monkees - Porpoise Song
Nick Cave - Ship Song
Blue Rodeo - Hasn't Hit Me Yet
Love - Alone Again Or

Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Beast of Burden - Stones
Rainy Night in Portland - Watty Burnett
Merengue - Franco
Wimweh - Ladysmith Black Mambazo

The Kiss - Judee Sill

I was thinking about this earlier and noting that while bands like Spacemen 3 get there sometimes, the vast, vast majority of what I'd immediately think of when I think of "transcendent" is mid-to-late '60s jazz, particularly Coltrane. Also, I'm kind of surprised to not see more classical listed here—Holst and Dvorák, particularly.

Black Sabbath-Into the Void

the shangri-las, 'the train from kansas city'
giorgio moroder, '(theme from) midnight express'
zombies, 'hung up on a dream'
hanatarash, 'god-noise-god'
the upsetters, 'bird in hand'
robert wyatt, 'stay tuned'
deerhoof, 'whither the invisible birds'
albert ayler, 'angels'
carpenters, 'superstar'
my bloody valentine, 'swallow'

Cheree - Suicide

YES

Scatterbrain - Radiohead

probably the last Radiohead song I'd call transcendent, but to each his own...

add to my list: Placebo with David Bowie - Without You I'm Nothing

a lot of shit is crazy transcendent but other stuff not so much

w0rd

Nina Simone - Sinnerman

Well, it's all obviously very subjective, stephen. I guess the thing about "Scatterbrain" for me is the sense of exhilaration I get when I hear the despondent "scaaaaaaaaaaaaattebrain" wails above those beautiful, beautiful chord progressions. But, hey, at least we agree on the Low stuff. :)

Placebo & "transcendence" is something that I'd never associate, either.

I guess the more obvious (but no less "worthy") musical signifiers of transcendence are intersubjectively agreed upon, though. For me, nothing tops "Sirenes" by Debussy in that regard.

The Kiss - Judee Sill
Yesssssssssss. Especially the live version or the demo versions. Weirdly, I think the studio version with the strings waters down the minor chord changes.

Also, for that matter:
The Donor - Judee Sill

I love Low but would have picked "Lazy".. I told Alan and Mimi after a show how much I loved that song & they said maybe they'd play it next time they were in town. and they did! last song in the set at the 9:30, I believe that tour was with the Dirty Three. :)

Nice. :)

Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell

and for a classical suggestion, how about Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams

There's been so much said about "Wichita Lineman" on ILM, but let me add yet another OTM. This is a better song than "God Only Knows" IMO.

WHOA! just checked out Wichita Lineman! Yes!!! thanks, ilm.

But, hey, at least we agree on the Low stuff. :)

only my fav band :) !!

(Low is) only my fav band :) !!

Close to being my favorite, too. Of their recent stuff, I'd say Silver Rider and/or Death Of A Salesman are pretty transcendent.

velvet underground - oh! sweet nuthin'

-- phantompenguin, Tuesday, 15 April 2008 03:35 (2 days ago)

otm. just listened to this for the first time in ages a few days and had to replay it four times.

Ms. Jon Soda - Elusive

The rest of their work is nice, but this song just does it for me. So delicate and gorgeous, particularly from the second chorus on through the end.

miles davis - blue in green
ravel's piano concerto in d

a girl called eddy- golden

Madame George by Van Morrison

massive attack - teardrop
mbv - soon
rufus wainwright - beautiful child
spiritualized - i think i'm in love
spacemen 3 - like, half their catalogue (ecstacy symphony, big city, walkin with jesus, suicide, etc.)
carole king - natural woman
neutral milk hotel - oh comely, two headed boy pt 2

Throwing Muses - "Hate My Way"
Cyndi Lauper - "Time After Time"
Talking Heads - "This Must be the Place"
Neil Young - "Albuquerque"
Journey - "Don't Stop Believin'"
Modern Lovers - "Roadrunner"
Queen and David Bowie - "Under Pressure"
Donna Summer - "I Feel Love"
Simon and Garfunkel - "America"
Dionne Warwick - "Window Wishin'", "The Greeen Grass Starts to Grow", "The Beginning of Loneliness"

Seconded/thirded:
Waterboys' "Whole of the Moon"
Bill Evans' "Peace Piece"
Walker Brothers "Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"
etc.

great call on "time after time"

or, as you guys say around here, OTM

Oh! Both "You Broke My Heart" and "Rise in the Springtime:
http://lavenderdiamond.com/music/lavenderdiamond_youbrokemyheart.mp3
http://lavenderdiamond.com/music/lavenderdiamond_rise.mp3.

electribe 101 - talking with myself

aneka - japanese boy

Paint a Vulgar Picture- Smiths
Boxers- Morrissey
Atmosphere- Joy Division
He Stopped Loving Her Today- George Jones
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered- Ella Fitzgerald
In Dreams- Roy Orbison

tall dwarfs - breath