Various Artists: Musik Oblik: Musics in the Margin 2

This has got to be some of the worst music I have ever heard in my life. I’m sorry. I know the whole “outsider music” thing is only supposed to be for the most highfalutin appreciators of sonic art. But as someone who can appreciate and fully listen to some of the weirdest, most out-there music you can get your hands on, the performances featured on the second volume of the Sub Rosa label’s Musics in the Margin series are just way too out there for even myself. Yes, there are some selections here that are somewhat intriguing — namely the 16-minute radio-and-TV transmission sound collage by Jacques Brodier, and the string of short violin passages originally composed by famed outsider painter Adolf Wölfli and reinterpreted here by Baudouin de Jaer. However, they are quickly overshadowed by the sheer irritability of such nonsense as Germany’s Klaus Beyer, whose deconstructionist cover of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” comes off like a bad Colonel Klink skit from Hogan’s Heroes, and a disturbing piece of musique concréte by Baudouin Oosterlynck that exploitatively utilizes the voices of mentally handicapped individuals. Unless you are a hardcore fetishist who can stomach this type of outsider music, steer clear of Musik Oblik: Musics in the Margin 2.