Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band‰’s 1969 double album, Trout Mask Replica occupies an interesting artistic niche. Depending on who you ask, the work could be anywhere from one of rock music‰’s crowning achievements or an hour of the most nauseating, untalented sounds put to record.

David Lynch, Matt Groening, and John Lydon all count it amongst their all-time favorites, but I‰’ve yet to find anyone who didn‰’t think it was utterly unbearable on first listen. Regardless of opinion, Trout Mask Replica mix of blues, art rock, and free jazz sounds like nothing that came before or after it.

The situation surrounding its creation seems to allude to the album‰’s simultaneous schizoid nonsense and maverick innovation. Beefheart composed each track on a piano which he knew nothing about and held his musicians captive for eight months to rehearse the songs. Band members were verbally and physically abused, occasionally running into troubles with the law when trying to steal food.

Beefheart‰’s psychological dominance was somewhere between dictator and cult leader. When a bandmate pointed a loaded cross bow at him, Beefheart didn‰’t look up, but said “Get that fucking thing out of here, get out of here and go back to your room,‰” to which the offender complied.

Musically, Trout Mask Replica covers the final ground unoccupied by The Velvet Underground & Nico, playing the ground for math rock, post-punk, and all shades of the avant-garde. Guitars are cutting and angular. There‰’s little semblance of any time signatures, let alone one in 4/4. Instruments ramble about, changing tempo impulsively. Melody and harmony interchange, musical notes sound like they‰’re splattered against a wall.

Beefheart does a wonderful delta blues vocal impression, heavily influenced by the growl of Howlin‰’ Wolf. He occasionally breaks from the style and what comes out in these moments are truly bizarre. “Pena‰” features maniacal childish screaming, while “Hobo Chang Ba‰” is performed in a bloated baritone.

His lyrical subjects jump from sexuality to the Holocaust to idyllic country life and back again. Words are far more concerned with their phonetic textures than meaning. Some choice lines: “Her sedan skims along the floorboard, her two pipes humming carbon cum,‰” “Mama was flattenin‰’ lard with her red enamel rollin‰’ pin when the fish head broke the window, rubber eye erect and precisely detailed.‰Û

Trout Mask Replica is somewhere between insane and beautiful, incoherent and prophetic. It‰’s not something you want to hear all too often, nor something that is immediately appealing.

It takes patience and challenges the listener to an extent all its own. With a little familiarity, Trout Mask Replica will have you star-struck with genius and laughing manically at its sheer indifference to any rules of music, sometimes at the same time. Just looking at the above accompanying artwork or watching the video below with no sound will give you an idea of the world Beefheart‰’s music occupies.