Episode 27: Weird Music, Part One

In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and the opening music to Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, composed by Howard Shore and featuring the inimitable stylings of Ornette Coleman. After teasing out the intrinsic weirdness of music in general, the dialogue soars over a strange country rife with shadows, mad geniuses, and skittering insects. And to top it all off, Phil breaks out the grand piano.

Header image by Bandan, Wikimedia Commons

REFERENCES

Ligeti, Musica Ricercata, 2nd movement
Howard Shore and Ornette Coleman, opening music for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch

Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Suzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique"
Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut
Hitchcock, Psycho
Vulture, "The Evolution of the Movie Trailer" by Granger Willson
Official Trailer for The Shining_vs teaser for _2012
Jan Harlan (director), Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
David Cronenberg, Crash
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Gunther Schuller's interview with Ethan Iverson
Weird Studies, Episode 25: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch
Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus