Obscure and Lesser-Known Music

[Memory]

Post any obscure and lesser-known music you know in this thread!

For a little challenge (not compulsory, you don't have to follow it!), try to post songs with less than 100,000 views (assuming we are posting songs from YouTube). We can be flexible with this though, depending on when the video was uploaded and if it is the most popular upload of the song. For example, songs uploaded over 10 years ago that might have less than a million views should be fine and I'd still consider those to be "lesser-known".

Here's my first song to get this thread started - "Walk to the Moon" by Persephone's Bees - uploaded 7 years ago with 2,000 views.

[DiffydaDude]

Heres a really good but obscure song
https://invidious.io.lol/latest_version?id=N76B2l4RQfk&itag=22
Tommy Guerrero - Follow None
I remember hearing this on the Skate 1 ost

[wygolvillage]

My favorite band, This Ascension, seems pretty forgotten even among the niche goth audiences that usually like that kind of thing, lol.

All four of their albums are really good and each have their own distinct identity from each other. Tears in Rain (which I own on vinyl) taps in most to the traditional goth sound, Light and Shade is an ethereal evolution from Tears in Rain, Walk Softly, A Dream Lies Here is my personal favorite which leans into a lot of unique and dreamy sounds- I've never heard anything like it. And finally, Sever, which has a much more bombastic style of production. They're amazing! I found them by chance on youtube when one of their songs (Ashes Don't Burn) was recommended to me and I've loved their work ever since.

Here's a track from each album:

"Poor Mortal Lost" from Tears in Rain

"Ave Maris Stella" from Light and Shade

"Angel Light" from Walk Softly, A Dream Lies Here

"Love Lost Years" from Sever

I hope you enjoy their music, I know I do... :)

[urgellx]

Trifouille1er makes great music but isn't that well know.
I've discovered him around two three years ago. 1,852 views when i'm writing this post, some of his songs
have less though, Uraa Bidon and the Puppetmastaz collab have more.


It was my discovery for the start of the COVID pandemic.

"Nostalimbus"

[Kallistero]

This is actually much less of a challenge for people who have been personally involved in local musician communities. It's like that for any type of independent art, really, including the web craft that a lot of us do here. Being a musician, you often also meet a lot of other musicians! 



Here are some musicians you're very unlikely to have heard of:

Cozy surf music, by
Antarcticats (363 views):

Twee acoustic indie-pop, by
The Merry Go Rounds (110 views):

Angsty almost-post-punk, by
Man Up, Yancey (64 views):

Just a girl who found FL studio and started making electronic music,
Carly is Sleepy (48 views):

An already-little-known garage punk band trying out a more bright & ambient music project,
Gasoline Green (26 views):

Now, something interesting about the 4th entry here is that they seem to be a disciple of a musician who calls themselves "AZALI," who runs a community of independent musicians that's not terribly unlike how Melonland is for independent-Web culture!

 

[TheNothingMonster]

Searching my username on the web lead me discovering an album which has the same title as my username, "The Nothing Monster".
This consecutively also lead me to an artist by the name of "Redna Zela". It is extremely hard to find information on them as they have no bios written nor links attached. All of their profiles are scattered around various music stream services. They don't appear to be active anymore either. The albums I could find are rather old, dating all the way back to 2012!

Some of Redna Zela's songs are uploaded on YouTube, the majority having less than 200 views (most are closer to 20-40 to be more exact). Here are some of them:

Here's the artist's bandcamp in case you want to listen to more songs.

[Commodorn]

I've mentioned this one in another thread before (sorry), but this is from a band my dad (might've) bought a record from in Miami, FL during the 1980s. The album cover kind of looks to be Miami, so it's likely that they were a local one.
(I thought I saw something that confirmed that on the record, but I'll have to check again once I'm able to.)

Right now, this particular upload was 13 years ago with 336 views. Slightly more than before!

There's also an entire channel that regularly uploads obscure metal albums. If you want to get deeper into obscure metal bands specifically, you might have some fun going through this archival site as well... I don't really have any recommendations since I'm more of a rock/folk fellow, so go nuts.

[starbreaker]

The only reason I know that in 199X there was a German band called Dark that dropped an album called Seduction was that I had a girlfriend who put this onto a mixtape for me.

And I know about this band from 197X called Legend that did Viking metal before Viking metal was a thing because Eternal Champion dropped a cover of "The Destroyer" a few years back.

[flowers]

sooo i have a pretty big cd collection i haven't had time to get catalog, and if i ever remember to i'll probably post the best ones that are really obscure in this thread. they were given to me and a lot of them are demos and samples so i'm looking forward to look into them! but for today i have this song, it's under 3k views and it's one of my favorite songs

most of the cds i have sound more like the other stuff i've been checking out in this thread so i'll be sure to share it will just be A While

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Kay Gardner was doing feminist chamber music, with a touch of esotericism to it. Hear compositions are great.

Dorian Hills:

[Grimlock]

i got introduced to this band by a friend but one i know is Ideamen! very low views on the youtube uploads and barely 43k listens on spotify for the most popular song (and there's only two songs that have above 10k listens in the top five!)

here's my faves from all four albums that aren't in that top 5 list

An Unreliable Historian

Dead Utopia

Emergency

Straight Shooter

honestly this one won for the western feel and the kazoo making my laugh every time i listen to this song over add one for ideamen songs that are not in the top five because 3/5 songs in progress are in that top 5. i do think vivid is my favorite from progress but it was disqualified because it's the most popular by far

the hardest album to pick from was may you live in interesting times to be honest that one has a lot of favorites for me. but that might be just because i've listened to it a lot due to some of my ocs being heavily associated with them.

[MrsMoe]

I'm not exactly sure HOW obscure they are, but Swans is one of my favorite bands ever and it's absolutely criminal that they aren't more iconic. They're highly experimental and have made some of the most disturbing music I've ever heard. Soundtrack for the Blind, The Seer and To Be Kind are all 10/10 albums in my book.

This is probably the best song to listen to if you wanna see if you dig them or not. Their stuff is VERY dark and VERY intense at times, so they're not really for everyone.

[PurpleHello98]

I really love this song! It's a song by a now-obscure k-pop group called The Grace, and I really love this group's super powerful voices and harmonies! This is the type of song I like to listen to during study hall on a rainy morning to take a break and chillax. They're from a massive company but somehow ended up fading into being a semi-footnote in k-pop history, which gives it even more of a "hidden gem" feeling, and it's such a sweet love song! :)

I don't know whether this next song counts but it feels like it to me. It's the single off the only album ever released by a group called M.I.L.K., under the same company as The Grace, and they disbanded a year or two after this album was released. One member is now an actress (Hyunjin, the girl in the beret) but I don't know what happened to the others. I really like this kind of Y2K pure, fun, happy vibe the song and video give off and I wish there was more music with this kind of vibe and sound today! It's absolute such a good song and I'm so sad it's not better appreciated! :)

[PurpleHello98]

Cozy surf music, by
Antarcticats (363 views):

I really like this song! It reminds me of something that might have been in a mid-00s iPod ad, or at least has the same "indie-ish" (did I describe that well?) sound. I think an indie-type sound and a beach sound make for a really interesting combination! :)

[virtue]

I listen to an absolutely enormous number of extremely obscure bands/artists, often with less than even 100 views per song on youtube. One of the greatest benefits of this is that is extremely easy to get in touch with and make friends with the artists when they don't have a substantial enough audience for it to particularly matter. One of my favorite examples of that is with the band "Sundrowned", who originally didn't have any of their lyrics available anywhere; Curious about this, I shot them a message somewhere asking if they had omitted the lyrics on purpose, only for them to reply quickly that they simply 'forgot and were planning to do it later'. They proceeded to send me the raw text of all the lyrics, probably what they read from in the studio, because it had no punctuation and filled with typos. I proceeded to fetch their artwork and make them a whole page on Genius, setting up the band name, art, photos, bio, records, and fixed all the lyrics they sent me to load onto the site. I mainly only did this for my own benefit, and realized after the fact that maybe they didn't want that done, so I shot them another message letting them know I'd set up a genius page with their branding using the lyrics they provided and stated I would take it down if they wanted. To my great surprise, they replied with an extremely enthusiastic 'thank you', because they were apparently planning on paying someone from the label to do it, yet I did it for free. Even more shockingly, they were so thankful that they provided me with a google drive link to one of the songs from their new EP, which wasn't even going to be announced until three weeks later??? They just said 'we trust you, please don't show anyone'! Imagine my surprise and excitement! Probably one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had interacting with artists I love and admire. I've had a lot of other delightful experiences chatting with obscure artists I listen to, namely Asian Death Crustacean, Defsharp, and JC Foster. JC Foster in particular I actually helped a little bit with changing the lyrics on one of his songs that he was worried would come off wrong in the original version! I've been ranting for too long; I'll link some songs from my favorite obscure artists, including the ones I've mentioned in this reply!

- "Echoes Follow" by Alon Mor; (42,000 views) From my #1 best record of all time. In my honest to god opinion, Alon Mor is the greatest musician to ever live. This is the second track (following the brief album intro) to the absolute best album I've ever heard in my life, and I and most people I've showed the album to agree that it is nothing short of life-changing-ly incredible. It is also completely and utterly indescribable. This album combines everything from electronic to orchestral to rock to outright noise music into the most cohesive form one could never imagine. If you like the way this song songs, PLEASE for your own benefit, go listen to the entire album Lands of Delight, and then listen to his prior album Long Awaited Journey.
- "Sinkholes" by Defsharp; (1,100 views) This artist could hardly be described in any normal fashion, but they're clearly some kind of experimental/indie rock. They used to be an EDM producer, and an absolutely incredible one at that! I've followed their work since long before they shifted to rock, and have loved every second I spent listening to their work! In general, their work is extremely dramatic and progressive, with powerful crescendos and bizarre yet beautiful electronic backing that creates a truly one-of-a-kind sound. Sometimes they do much more consistently mellow songs, but you can probably tell which style I prefer!
- "Kobe" by Bossk; (5,200 views) From my #2 best record of all time. There is little I can do to describe this band. If you like post-rock, post-metal, post-punk... this band is called "post-everything". It is by leaps and bounds the greatest rock project I've ever heard. If you love shoegaze and post rock, or frankly anything that pursues a greater cohesive aesthetic and experience over traditional structure, you absolutely MUST listen to this song, and perhaps the entire album as well if it sounds up your alley. This is their most popular and most approachable project as well; their debut I & II are far more in line with post-rock's conventions.
- "Magic" by Shurk; (2,200 views) From my #4 best record of all time. Shurk is probably best known for making the dubstep song "Haunted" several years ago, because Markiplier used it as his outro for his horror videos so long ago. But despite that extremely conventional sound that most are familiar with them for, their 2019 album "Per Form" is one of the most mind-bending and unconventional electronic music projects I've ever heard. Pounding drums and constant crescendos, haunting and otherworldly backing "melodies". This album sounds like aliens communicating, in the coolest way possible.
- "Babel" by Sundrowned; (2,800 views) From my #3 best record of all time. This is a 'blackgaze' band, a relatively obscure genre combo of black metal and shoegaze! It is from their debut record Become Ethereal, and it absolutely fits the title. This song and the album as a whole truly makes you feel like you've ascended, like you're floating, intangible, impossible for the world to affect you.
- "kopkaT-T<3" by Lonemoon; (4,400 views) lonemoon is a very eccentric rapper and producer, one of the very few transgender rappers I'm personally aware of! She has an extremely broad back catalogue, ranging from extremely traditional and widely enjoyable R&B style music like in her project better luck next time! to my absolute favorite of her work, which this song is from. It is a blend of electronic sounds and samplemashing like you've never heard, creating an extremely uplifting and exciting, somehow 'cute' , experimental sound that makes me feel better about self every time I put it on. Also the music video I linked has her cat in it, and her cat is very cute, go look at the cat.
- "Baikal II" by Asian Death Crustacean; (4,600 views) This band self-describes their work as "ambient jazz-metal", which certainly sounds strange to imagine, but trust me, it will make sense after you give it a listen! Some of the songs, including this one, definitely derive less from the 'jazz' aspect than others, but its still a thoroughly interesting experience. This song is from their debut, and currently only record, Baikal.
- "Pr" by JC Foster; (800 views) JC Foster, also known by his other music project "Executive Tire Swing Club" or his youtube channel "JC Foster Takes It To The Moon" is an indie pop artist and rapper. His earlier work on his other music project is more the sort of thing you would expect to come out of an artist like Jack Stauber, but lately he has been branching into sample-based rap and R&B, and the products have been absolutely stunning! While his mixing is still a little bit rough around the edges compared to the other artists I've recommended here, his performance and talent as a producer is absolutely undeniable, and his flow is impeccable. By the way, its possible you've seen his youtube channel through an older viral video of his where he sings Boulevard of Broken Dreams as "I walk to burger king, then I walk back home from burger king". If you enjoy that kind of stupid shitpost, his channel is an absolute comedy goldmine.

I have an obscene quantity of other extremely niche artists I would love to recommend here, but this reply is already ABSURDLY long, so I'm going to leave it at this for the benefit of you all. Sorry for going on for so long, I just absolutely LOVE MUSIC! I really hope you enjoy some of it! Feel free to only listen to what I manage to sell you on with my little pitches. To close off, I'll list all the other artists I really desperately want to talk about but couldn't bring myself to lengthen the post even further with; all of these are good enough and I listen to frequently enough for me to keep them in my personal digital collection on my computer: drumcorps, frontierer, holy fawn, lop abuse on somebody, memorist, pijn, noltem, stone healer, part chimp, secret fun club, acloudyskye, all under heaven, antisonisk, cursetheknife, dan larkin, kollapse