Sun City Girls: 330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Rig Veda (1996)
An old favorite of mine, and one that's been getting a lot of attention from me recently. Avant-garde folk/experimental rock with a distinct Southeast Asian flavor, 2 discs. The first disc is the more 'rockish' of the two, but can also be pretty difficult to get into until you get used to the vocals. It's a very noisy affair, very abrasive and pretty sloppy sounding, but if you just sort of let yourself go it can reveal some really stunningly beautiful moments, especially as it winds towards the conclusion. Some of the tracks are even downright poppy. The second disc is where the real magic is, for me. The band piles on the drone and improv here, and make wonderful use of the violin throughout. The centerpiece is the 34 minute track 'Ghost Ghat Trespass/Sussmeier,' which layers Indian-infused drone, violin virtuosity, and guitar distortion beautifully for a solid 15 minutes before just exploding into demented, fuzzy chaos that devolves into a plinky mess before building up again. There's not a lot of music out there that sounds like this: the noisier experiments of Nico and Tim Buckley in their prime are probably the closest approximations to what unfolds here.
