[Alondite]

We've all heard those albums, the ones that the music community goes crazy over, and yet you can't understand why. "What is this crap?," you say. "How could anybody even listen to this?" At some point our curiosity gets the better of us (or maybe there a few parts of it you enjoy) and you give it a listen. It takes time, but at some point it all begins to make sense and you begin to understand what is so great about it.

It's been my experience that the best music is the music with depth, with staying power. It's not always immediately obvious, you may even hate it at first, but it's there. The catchy hooks and melodies of the songs you immediately fall in love with get boring, or even grating, but growers take time; they work your way into your very soul until they are a part of you.

Most recently, I've come across an album knows as "Jane Doe" by Converge. It's been labeld as "Classic," "Legendary," "Untouchable." It even managed to work it's way to the top of "Top Albums of the 21st Century":

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/blog/?p=2182  (Sputnik is, as a whole (it has its share of...well..you know), a very experienced, knowledgeable, and reputable music community)

It ranked above such megatons as Tool's "Lateralus" (my favorite album of all time, and the album which spurred the growth and maturation of my musical tastes) and Radiohead's "Kid A"

I had to hear this album.

I fired up Spotify, searched, and had a listen. "What in the name of...Spotify has to have this labeled wrong." Nope. Checked other sources and Spotify had it right. "How could this be the album of the decade?" It was noise. Even through my GR07s it was incomprehensible; unlistenable. The vocals were harsh and impossible to understand, the music just sounded like a mess of sound. 

I didn't understand.

There had to be something I was missing. "This album is so highly revered for a reason." I was determined to figure it out. I listened to it in its entirety, again and again. Still nothing.

And the one day, something peculiar happened. I found myself not listening to it to figure it out, but because I wanted to listen to it. It was then that I truly heard the album for the first time, and oh what an experience it was. Everything that had been so foreign came to me in perfect clarity; it was like a revelation. It now ranks among my favorite albums of all time, and I do my best help other people understand what I have come to understand: the beauty in the noise.

Here is the lead track, "Concubine." Listen at your own peril, and may you loathe it as much as I did

Check the writeup on the Sputnik page I linked to find out what my "revelation" was if you don't feel that you can tolerate listening to it long enough to get there yourself. And most importantly, share your own inaccessible music! Share your experience, what it means to you! I'd love to hear it!

 

[PastaChief]

Yeah... listening to that, I don't hear the appeal at all. I'll try to stay away from listening again lest I should start to like it.
 
I found a similar thing happened to me with this song:
 

 
At first I found it boring (and maybe a little silly), but now it's one of my favourite songs. I found that I kept going back to the Youtube link and listening to it, until one day I finally accepted that I enjoyed it.

 

[Alondite]

That has a pretty catchy groove. It's not my cup of tea personally, but I can see it being the type of thing that people could really get into. 

As for "Jane Doe," well, she doesn't make it easy. To save the effort, I'll just paste in the excerpt that explains its merit as well as I could ever hope to. It isn't likely to change your opinion of the music, but it at least provides some insight as to why it's held in such high esteem. It's worth a read.
 

An admission, before anything then: For an album that we’re crowning as the best of the decade, Jane Doe stands as perhaps one of the ugliest works of art to receive any sort of admiration from just about anyone, music critics or not. But we won’t stop there, no, allow us, if you will, to go further and admit – embrace, in fact – that every critic that Jane Doe has ever had is right, that, yes, for all her technical achievement in bringing together metalcore and grind, Jane Doe is grotesque, Jane Doe is vile, Jane Doe is miserable, and let’s get to the crux of it here, raucously inaccessible. So how did this happen? What malin génie could have possibly allowed us to let it creep its way up to the top of our list here? The answer here is more obvious than might be immediately thought – it lies in a name, in the name:Jane Doe, the anonymous dead. Consider the paradox: for a record that unabashedly drowns itself in noise, it is nonetheless condemned to the silence of the dead. No one actually understands what Jacob Bannon is screaming about. Not only can she not speak,  her anonymity allows no one to speak on her behalf.
 
But it’s from this deadlock that Jane Doe gives birth to an entirely new language: for all her muteness, for all her inability to communicate, Jane Doe nevertheless speaks: she speaks in a language entirely of her own, unassimilable to those that came before, and radically redefining the very terms that musical language thought was its own. Converge, in other words, had managed to not simply pioneer a new form of expression, but did it by reinventing everything that came before it. And we’re happy to admit too that for most of us, it took a while to learn it, to grasp what she was saying – but when we did, when it finally clicked, its force was tremendous and its message was familiar: a singular, majestic expression of anger. In her own words, this bitch was Bitter and Then Some. And by Gods what a fury, focused and brilliant, from the crashing dissonance of “Concubine”’s calamitous opening to the evangelically apocalyptic “Jane Doe” and everything in between. Understood or not, Jane Doe’s musical force remains one untouched by any record the decade past, and we’re more the better for it.– Alex Silveri

 

[PastaChief]

Well that just makes me more confused :S
 
I suppose it's a bit like going to an art gallery - the enjoyment or appreciation comes from looking behind it all, and building a story from it. Sure, it might not seem like much in first impressions, but when you keep going back you find more. I think the song I posted is completely unlike that, I just like the groove haha.
 
It comes down to the listener. I struggle to look past surface layers.

 

[EoY]

 
First this was just noise, now it's an overpowering story and a masterpiece.

 

[RushNerd]

Merzbow.

 

[Alondite]

Quote:

 
First this was just noise, now it's an overpowering story and a masterpiece.

That is pretty interesting. Care to elaborate on it a little more?

 

[PokMadui]

Among many, mainly Morbid Angel's Covenant. For a guy who has pretty much only listened to Thrash for the last 1-2 years, this was was pretty inaccessible to me.
Later, it grew to be one of my favorite albums.

 
EDIT: BTW, that description you've wrote about the experience you've had with Jane Doe is spot on. Exactly what I experience with every type of inaccessible music.
 

 

[Alondite]

Judging by your tastes, you should give Jane Doe a listen if you haven't already. You might have a similar experience as the one I had with it.

 

[PokMadui]

Quote:

Judging by your tastes, you should give Jane Doe a listen if you haven't already. You might have a similar experience as the one I had with it.

 
I guess that if I could get myself to start listening to Grindcore, I would bother finding this album.
I did listen to the track you've posted, and wasn't completely surprised by it, as in it wasn't something I haven't heard before. It was quite nice actually.

 

[Alondite]

It's actually a bit of an anomaly, perhaps being the most "grindcore" track on the album. Some other tracks I'd recommend are "Fault And Fracture," "Distance And Meaning," and "The Broken Vow." There's not really a weak song among them, so it's hard to even pick favorites. If you're going to give it a listen, I'd recommend just sticking it out and listening to the whole album; it's better taken as a whole.

 

[Noctus]

 
I hated this the first time I heard it. And the second time, and the third time. But something kept me coming back to it. Now it's one of my favourite albums ever, weird eh?

 

[mrbean667]

I used to hate extreme metal, now I'm a sucker for weird bands or albums that take a long time to warm to. I've never gone from intense hate to love, I tend to be just unimpressed at first.
 
The biggest example in my musical evolution is Meshuggah for me. Years ago I had no idea what all the rage was about. I had a relatively undeveloped taste in metal back then. I listened and listened but it just didn't appeal. Two years ago I went back to them and thought 'this is actually really good stuff.'
 
In terms of the typical 'noisy' inaccessible bands, I liked Blut aus Nord, Strapping Young Lad etc. quite quickly.

 

[PokMadui]

Quote:

I used to hate extreme metal, now I'm a sucker for weird bands or albums that take a long time to warm to. I've never gone from intense hate to love, I tend to be just unimpressed at first.
 
The biggest example in my musical evolution is Meshuggah for me. Years ago I had no idea what all the rage was about. I had a relatively undeveloped taste in metal back then. I listened and listened but it just didn't appeal. Two years ago I went back to them and thought 'this is actually really good stuff.'
 
In terms of the typical 'noisy' inaccessible bands, I liked Blut aus Nord, Strapping Young Lad etc. quite quickly.

 
Yeah, Metal takes a bit of "training" in order to like it. I've many albums that I didn't like at first and after a year or two I came back to them and loved them.

 

[ChoonyFish]

When I heard the first track from Shining's Black Jazz album, I thought: "No one can actually like this, really.  Pretentious."  But I left it running, shaking my head and thought I'd give it until track two.  Which was a real eye-opener!  Really heavy, but catchy and going in lots of directions.  I played that track a few times...  Suffice to say, I like the whole album now, even track one.
 
(Sorry about the ads.)
 
Track One:

 
Track Two:
 

 
 
 
Back in the early 90s someone lent me Swans' Children of God.  Despite a couple of plays, I thought it was boring except I loved the title track right at the end.  I taped the track I liked and returned the album.  Around 2004/5 I tracked down an mp3 of that Swans track I loved (as cassette was long gone) and decided on giving the whole album another go...  Loved it instantly.  In that passing decade or so my tastes had naturally evolved in different directions and that album swiftly became one of my faves.