The Modern Dance

Complete garbage. Nasty, screechy, plinky plonk, faux-experimental post-punk. At its best the songs sound like an inferior version of Television. At its worst it sounds like someone dropped a music junkyard off a Looney Tunes cliff. I couldn’t tell if the vocals were Peter Griffin, a brainslugged David Byrne from Talking Heads or a screeching Beaker from the Muppets. There’s a funny haywire moment on Life Stinks where it goes up an extra notch in intensity almost as if it was putting itself through a wood chipper. The ultimate nadir is probably Sentimental Journey which is like Joy Division’s I Remember Nothing but graced by the mumbly narration of Mr Plinkett and a thousand extra glass bottles and windows being smashed up.

This is just not it.

An utter slab of shit. Actual money was spent to record this. It really makes you think.

The random sounds didn't feel necessary, the first track was almost unlistenable. Not for me.

Honestly stunned that this doesn’t have a lower rating. Bollocks cacophony

Shite

not that into it.

Not for me. 1/5

This is throwing shit against the wall and nothing sticking. At least half this band was disgusted by what they were playing. But that's the cost of trying to do something new - it might be ground breaking but likely it's going to sound terrible. (I was too easy on Dylan and I'm taking it out on Pere Ubu)

This is some challenging stuff. It’s objectively annoying to listen to (the vocals on the title track and the intentionally shitty sounding instrumentals on ‘Laughing’ are good examples). Only got 4 songs in before I had to pull the ripcord, so someone please tell me if the back half really picks up. I liked reading their wikipedia page more than I liked listening to their music, which is always a bad sign. “Describing their sound as "avant-garage," Pere Ubu's work drew inspiration from sources such as musique concrète, 60s rock, performance art, and the industrial environments of the American Midwest.” I don’t know what any of this really means

2/10 Really bad Favourite Song=Non-Alignment Pact Least Favourite Song=Sentimental Journey

This album sucked ass. I would genuinely like to discuss this with someone who is a fan. It just wasn't for me.

If you didn’t like the first 20 seconds, you won’t like the rest. I hated the first 20 seconds.

The first song turned me off the rest of listening. Why would they start an album with high pitched feedback? What the actual is this?

Awful

What a sad day to get another Pere Ubu album. As if one wasn't bad enough. This album sucks

This one didn't do much for me. It was more digestible punk than other pink bands I think, but it just didn't grab me.

Yea, I hated pretty much every second of this. Fuck your atonal meandering saxophone most of all.

Welja, de eerste paar seconden gaan al meteen door merg en been. Ergste begin van een plaat tot nu toe, die achterlijke hoge toon. Ze willen je gewoon pesten, tot het uiterste tergen, er is gewoon geen andere verklaring. 'Wat, zijn er nou nog steeds mensen die onze platen kopen? We zullen ze leren!' Op de rest van de plaat wordt er op de vertrouwde wijze met de pet naar gegooid. Verder hoef ik er geen woorden aan vuil te maken.

Het andere album van Pere Ubu was in mijn herinnering één van de ergere uit de lijst. En nu moeten we er nog één. Lekker dan... En ja hoor...huilende snaren, een 'zanger' buiten adem, en vooral veel slecht passende bijgeluiden. Ten opzichte van de eerdere plaat, is dit wel wat muzikaler. (In mijn herinnering. Ik ga het natuurlijk niet checken.) Dus ik waardeer dit album iets hoger. Kom ik afgerond uit op...nog steeds één ster. Zegt wat over het andere album...

I went about 200 or 300 albums in a row without giving a 1 rating for an album. The opening track was difficult to listen to as it was loud annoying noises and terrible vocals. I made it four songs in before I had to turn this one off. This was absolutely garbage.

Some of these songs could be fine, but whose idea was it to add all these obnoxious sounds and effects all over the damn place. Kills it for me. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this one

This is actual noise slop I understand it’s unique and different but it’s massively boring. This is like early ska music and like party rock like Andrew W.k and Jeff rosenstock it’s mosh pit slop jazz fusion and it’s interesting sure but not in a critique way more in a you can really make anything kinda way. There is no highlight it all blends together in a mush like a meal against the Geneva convention. It is art I understand that just what noise can we put in here to keep a rhythm with a guitar it’s extending the definition of music for sure sentimental journey being the thesis of this all. A carefree song about nothing but destruction a literal deconstruction of music the drums coming in that trumpet thing. it’s hard to listen to this on purpose it’s death grips kinda it’s self aware it’s just a joke man humor me is a true full circle telling the audience in the final song this is not legit. By this point it’s too late I’ve bought in and you wasted my time by not doubling down terrible. May nobody ever find this record ever I can’t wait to listen to stuff I like now.

Sweet! Pure chaos meets anxiety attck.

Well, that was weird. Not Trump/Vance weird. Those guys are weird, but Pere Ubu is a different kind of weird. A "let's take experimentation to the breaking point" kind of weird. I tried to go along on the ride, but my breaking point was the six minutes of breaking glass on "Sentimental Journey."

The third track is incorrectly listed as Laughing. I dug deep and found the original name, Laughing (At The Listener).

Paska levy

Everything was too out there for me to enjoy. The moment I got to a song I could convince myself to like they’d add some element to it that ruined it.

Awful

p396. 1978. 1 star. Unpleasant, pointless abstract noodling. Absolutely no reason for anyone to waste time on this. On the plus side, it's short.

The actual music isn’t bad, there are just too many weird noises interspersed to make this album even remotely listenable.

Starts off with a high pitched dentist drill to the more sensitive crevasses of your brain and really goes downhill from there

Noisy nonsense. Shite.

I kept looking for a reason to give this album a score higher than a 1 but I couldn't find one.

Avant garde trash.

No

There is some good elements here an there, but overall i miss the red thread, and i don't really like the switches in genres during a song. Not my favorit album....

This one is a tough one... Normally I often enjoy weird music, but this ain't it. I think that the highest praise I can give the music(?) on this album is that it's very hard to ignore/tune out, and it's never boring. I wasn't even really sure how to describe the genre, because I'd never heard of art punk before. Now that I've learned what that is I do think it's a good descriptor though. And otherwise I think another review here describes it as "It sounds like the result of leaving a group of school children unsupervised in a music classroom" Standouts Over My Head 1/5

1977 was the Golden Age for Punk, producing titans like Iggy Pop, Generation X, and Sex Pistols, all of which are remembered today. I had never heard of Pere Ubu, and listening to it makes me understand why. For me, their avante garde style of punk is the equivalent of a shot of single malt whiskey mixed with Drano and used in a razor-studded suppository. I might have played this to annoy my parents for a few minutes when I was a kid. Sadly, I hear potential in there for a solid punk experience. All I am experience now is indigestion…

This one is not good. Imagine Frank Zappa, but shitty.

Ugh!

Didn’t enjoy it.

Not good.

The best thing about this is that it is just 36 minutes long. The worst thing are those 36 minutes. Total waste of time.

Art punk album with nothing for me. Can’t connect to the music, singing or rhythm. 1/5

At this point I’m convinced this list is a gag to see what ridiculous things people will say about albums that are actually bad. This was stupid and has no point in being on this list. Replace this with actual music.0.5/10

"You know, your uncle made an album with his friends" "..okey, the one who always drinks to much at family gatherings?" -The album Reminds me of modest mouse but bad. I don't listen to punk that much, but allot feels out of scope for punk and feels more like avant garde at some points. The voices are terrible but it might be the point to make the instruments seem like Mozart in comparison. If you like it, it is fine. For me personally i don't see any significant, revolutionary or important with this album. Sometimes it feels like 1001 is comprised of allot of albums from the authors personal collection, what was a good album in some magazine and the albums everbody should know. i'm starting to think that there really aren't 1001 albums you NEED to hear (closer to 200-500)

Just strange... a few songs that hit ok, but lots of just random noise.. not sure.

That was okay, kind of irritating at times.

This shitty music must have influenced a lot of other shitty music to get included on this list. 1.

Why does every song have an incredibly shrill noise in it somewhere? Worst album in awhile.

Interesting. Not something I'd have on rotation though.

DNF. They’ve gotta knock it off with these strange albums. A good album should not open with tinnitus.

The Modern Dance is bad. Not as bad as some of the worst stuff we've had, but it's definitely not good, incomprehensible mumbled vocals, insufferable high-pitched screeching that sounds either like an animal in distress or some faulty machinery, and really nothing to take away from it other than the fact the bass player is talented and the production highlights their work. It's a 1 from me.

This was not good at all. Starts out tolerable - the first two tracks are jarring and not particularly good, but listenable, and then it goes downhill from there. One of the reviews on the site suggests we've got another Pere Ubu album, to come, I really hope that we don't... 1/5. 

I didn't care for this one. Lots of squeaking and random noises that annoyed me. 1.5/5

Absolutely insufferable

Yeah, wow. If you can appreciate the sounds of seagulls, whales, breaking glass, human seizures, and an out-of-tune bagpipe with a first time player, this is for you. I get punk. I get avant-guarde. I get the anti-establishment overlap and the relation to underground music and sound collage. I just don't want to listen to noise and nonsense. I like my ability to hear too much.

Random noise

Still reeling from Dub Housing, the volume remained very low.

Obscure, shrill, deafening, "The Modern Dance" is an avant-garde debut album by American rock band Pere Ubu. If anything, this album could be a possible precursor to some of the new wave of the 80s. While not the worst album, it is just really bad; this album is so bad that its almost amusing.

I know "unconventional" does not imply "bad," but in this case it does. Strange sounds are frequently employed, never to good effect. The vocalist sounds like he's being annoying on purpose. One song had such (deliberately) terrible instrumentals that I started laughing to myself, only to check the name of the song and see that it was in fact titled, "Laughing." So they nailed that one I guess.

Not a fan, a quick pass!

There's flickers of what could be goodness, maybe even greatness, but the constant reliance on screeching and over high-pitched noises makes for an altogether unpleasant and, at times, frustrating listen.

Think I liked this even less than Bjork! First 20-30 seconds of the first track had an ear splitting noise. Then the songs just weren't very good!

Shit was ass

This was absolute trash. I hated it. My first 1 star.

If there’s a hidden gem here, I won’t find it. Absolutely painful.

I just couldn’t get into it

Jeg bryder mig ikke rigtig om de lyde der kommer ud af min højtaler

Not for me

Ugh

A few cool vibes in here, but overall not my style at all. Too random and just doesnt feel good on my ears lol

Auffallen um jeden Preis. Grässliches Gejaule! 0/5

i lOve AvaNt gArdE

My right ear hurts. An atonal mess of an album, with no redeeming tracks. Screeching, tinnitus-inducing effects layered over below-mediocre guitar, sung by a goofy, mumbling horse-man. Bass and drums are adept, but every other instrument sounds like it’s being played for the first time by the horse-man. Samples of cheering crowds are interspersed throughout the record, presumably so the band can pretend people like their music. I’m all for experimental rock, but it requires the rock to actually be good to balance out the weird stuff. Pere Ubu, when they are actually playing music in earnest, sound slightly worse than the stock rock tracks included on MIDI keyboards. By the end of the album, I was laughing along to what I thought might have been a great spoof, or some satirical effort, but I think they might have been serious. This album would be perfect for some sort of a pain tolerance challenge. Stand out tracks include when the album stopped playing.

Some songs are ok but generally not my kind of music. The voice takes some getting used to.

More lo fi post punk. This one is not at the melodic or enjoyable end of the scale. It gets worse as it goes on. In fact, by the end it's just noise. Rating: 1.5/5 Playlist track: Modern Dance Date listened: 21/02/24

I hate this album so much. The song “Life Stinks” sums up my entire experience listening to this. Most Least Favorite Track: Street Waves

Some of the songs are genuinely annoying. 'Laughing' in particular. There are glimpses of good music here and there but just not an enjoyable listen.

I didn’t like this album. I give it 1 star.

This album was so horrible even my dog was mad that I was playing it. She didn't like the shrieking horns. 0.5 stars should be an option.

Ah the streak of the bottom of the barrel continues. Feels like I'm making up for lost time. The other Pere Ubu album was my first 1 star and compared to that one, this is certainly better, but that's really not saying a whole bunch. Like this piece of shit is less smelly than another piece of shit. Still absolute garbage.

Well this was the weirdest album ever. Weird is usually good - but not always.

I had a tough time choosing between a 1 and a 2 for this album. For me, a 1 is "absolutely no redeeming value, I hope to never hear this album again." A 2 is "I dislike a lot of it, but there's some redeeming value." Pere Ubu managed to kill almost every song with awful sounds - piercing shrieking noises, bizarre instruments, etc. Sadly, without that crap I think I would have liked this album. Most of the underlying songs sound good. David Thomas's singing is interesting and both he and the band are clearly a pre-cursor of the Pixies, 10 years in advance. But the sounds are such a killer that I'm not sure I can give it a 2. Is it enough that some songs are potentially good, and maybe a couple are actually good? Is it worth rounding up to a 2 because they influenced other acts I like (e.g., Pixies, Joy Division)? I'm going to go with no, and give it my first 1 rating. It only took 297 reviews for me to get here, so I guess that's a good thing. LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Non-Alignment Pact, Laughing, Life Stinks (a great example of an underlying song that could have been cool, but then has absurd noise - what the heck is happening in the middle of this song??), Sentimental Journey (absolutely horrendous). Songs that I could see myself liking, if I could get past the noise: Street Waves (a pretty good song, but with just a horrible grating synth noise under much of it), Chinese Radiation (first half was good, and then it gets insane, then ends nicely. Go figure), Real World (Talking Heads-ish, with weird grating sounds), Over My Head, Humor Me. Song I actually liked, but not enough to overcome my dislike of the other tracks: Modern Dance (very Pixies-ish, again 10 years before the Pixies).

Awful album

Garbage and there's 2 albums !!!!

40% music I might enjoy listening to, 60% 1920s experimental music where the squeak of a ladder being dragged across a concrete floor might be considered percussion. Sentimental journey was a journey of pain. A high 1.

This album is so terrible that it could be used in psychological warfare. I had a headache after the 3rd song.

Kann weg. Lärm.

Wtf

Started as 'variable' and a 2* review. But by the end, it's 1* as some of the tracks were just complete dross.

Zuerst habe ja gedacht, das ist mal was anderes. Aber tut mir leid, aber das halte ich nicht aus ... Vote 1

NON SE PODE POÑER UN 0? Meter ruido e acordes, non é facer música, ate me puxo de mala ostia

“What the hell” said like Tim Robinson

I'm afraid I didn't listen past track 3. This was not for me.

I haven't been so scared listening to music in a while. 'Laughing' - what am I even listening to? Like, it's as though they just decided to invite everyone in off the street 😂 Very experimental I suppose, but just too weird

Didn't listen properly but erm yeah, what was that?!

I went to apologise to my neighbours after listening to this, but they'd already moved out.

Yeah this one was definitely weird. Strange that the album would be called the modern dance and feel a decade late

Interesting at first but got pretty irritating by the time I was halfway through. Also incredibly repetitive. Relieved to finish it.

Day 28 I was beginning to think I would not give any album 1 star, I was wrong. Very, very wrong. This was honestly painful to get through. No clue why this was on the list. I listened to it without checking ratings first and was very relieved to realize I didn't miss anything.

Not good

Zu wild, zu wirr, gefällt mir nicht

Sorry, maar dit soort avant-gardistisch geneuzel trek ik slecht.

En dan in het laatste nummer van dit album ineens komen met "It's just a joke man!". Goh, echt?

Delicately traverses the borderline between noise and awful music.

Fuck this man

Didn’t enjoy the hat at all 1*

Disappointed honestly, felt like a collection of noises and annoyances. Genuinely surprised how many of these albums have made it onto this list. 1/5.

Deeply annoying. Not a redeeming song on the whole album.

Nope. Quite frankly I'm tired of all the post punk experimental/noise rock that's been showing up. FFS, there are different genres, and if I'm being honest, better genres.

Absolutely awful, 0 stars, couldn't even finish.

This was bad.

Punk with an experimental sound, that quite often was just noise that could induce anxiety.

sounds like local bands trying to make it. i appreciate these bands exist, but meh

I'm all for experimental music and the usage of unusual sounds in music, but..... There's got to be the music there to back it up. And in this case, for me, there just wasn't. Sorry 1

Complete nonsense.

Unable to stream

Hard to listen to

What a shocking waste of time

It's proto-punk, very much in the style of The Stooges or Dead Kennedys. Too discordant for me, a really difficult listen.

Horrible

Geeze. What a trainwreck of an album. Just awful. The musicianship is rudimentary, the production values are non-existent, and the writing is primitive. There's literally nothing redeeming in this garbage fire of an album. No. Take this off the list. It's trash and deserves to be forgotten.

Wtf.

Not these idiots again... It is completely fucked that Pere Ubu gets at least 2 albums on this list, while many more deserving bands didn't even get recognized. Whoever made this list needs to get their priorities straight. Is dude singing in English?!? The track "Laughing" sounds like noises coming from a Kindergarten music class. Fuck Pere Ubu. Absolute garbage. Came close to turning this record off. No redeeming qualities. This influences nothing. These tools should pay fines for every set of ears they make bleed with their shitty music. Favourite songs: Street Waves is the least annoying of the lot, but still sucks ass Least favourite songs: Sentimental Journey, Laughing, and the rest of this bullshit album. Why is breaking glass sounds, and recorders shoved up peoples arses considered music?? 1/5

noise

Irredeemable. Beneath my contempt

literally begins so egregiously with that high pitched squeal i cannot give it anything but

I was hoping to pass this off a amateurish and give it 2 starts, but no, it’s fucking annoying.

What a weird album. Some parts were actually listenable. Other parts were really bad such as instrument being played off key. Then it became just random noises. The lyrics are meh if they can be called that. I have no desire to revisit it. I will round down

Got half way through. That was fucking awful.

Second album by this guy, second load of shit. 1/5.

Cool instrumentals like 25% of the time, purposefully, irritatingly bad vocals 100% of the time and instrumentals 75% of the time. Get out of my life.

I begin to get really irritated at the recommendations for 40 minutes of nonsensical noise.

purposely bad. fuck off.