The Mystery Note

For a few months, I've been collecting music project name ideas in a note on my iPhone. If a cool-sounding name for a project/band would strike me, I'd jot it down so I wouldn't forget it. Within that note, at some point, I had written "Scott Walker- The Drift." I don't remember writing this, but I know me, and I like to do that sort of thing so I can go check it out later when I have more time. So every time I open that note I see that written there but never looked into what it was and I forgot why I wrote it. So today I went to find out what needed to be saved for later.

As I said, I don't remember what made it so special that I had to write it down, but it must been something musical that I wanted to ripoff with my music project. I have done that before with other songs that struck a chord with me. So I assumed that "The Drift" was a song whose melody or structure I wanted to subtly steal.

I copy and pasted the words and headed over to the iTunes app. I chucked on my headphones and pasted those words into the search bar. It came up with not a song, but an album, released in 2006. I hit the ol preview play button on track one.

What is this? This is terrible. What on earth is this?

So I skipped to the next song, which just played some noise before the song kicked in and again, more weird. Track three was more of the same. Why did I write this down? Is this a prank on my future/present self? Did I feel inspiration by this because if this exists, I can have confidence to make my own music, because it can't worse than this?

As I listened on to more previews, it became apparent this was the weirdest, creepiest shit I had ever heard. It's just absolutely strange.

I don't remember why I wrote that down, but I now know this, Scott Walker made some terrible yet strange "music." I mean, at least it's something different, but this is way beyond me. Check it out sometime. I hope this wasn't someone's favorite music ever and I'm ripping it, but seriously, what the hell? It sounds like a high-pitched Elvis singing shoegaze.


Editors note: here's a pic showing that I apparently don't know shit about what's "good music"