Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone is the show, broadcast on Sunday evenings, for those who like their music on the esoteric side. It features all kinds of sonic weirdness, with feedback, distortion, experimentation and general craziness the order of the evening. If you want it even more out there, stay up until midnight and explore the Freakier Zone.
There is a playlist on the 6 Music website that lists some of the bizarre offerings featured on the show. This quiz borrows heavily from there, but not just from there. So, here we go into music’s twilight zone . . .
Answers: here
1 What was the debut solo album by Syd Barrett in 1970? Which legendary rock photographer, then still a relative novice, took the cover shot of Barrett in his Earl’s Court flat?
2 Live at the Witch Trials (1979) was the first of (to date) 30 studio albums by which post-punk band? Their 1988 album I Am Kurious Oranj accompanied what?
3 On which Caravan album did an eight-part suite, Nine Feet Underground, take up the entire second side of vinyl? Who is the band’s singer and guitarist?
4 Who released a series of albums in 1973 and 1974 featuring, among others, Yoni the witch and the Pothead Pixies? Who was the founder member of the band who left in 1975 after a force field ‘refused to let him go on stage’?
5 Brothers Michael and Marcus Eoin Sanderson make up which electronic band? What was their 2013 album, released after a series of cryptic codes were issued via different media opening access to a website trailing the new material?
6 Indie experimentalists Cabaret Voltaire took their name from a Zurich nightclub associated with which artistic movement? Founder member Chris Wilson, is also a sound recordist specialising in which area?
7 David Thomas is the sole constant member and singer of which veteran US arty band? Which of these backing bands has NOT been credited on any of his many side projects: His Legs, Two Pale Boys, the Wooden Birds or the Dirty Carrots?
8 Who has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Robert Fripp and performance artist Russell Mills? With which band did he release five electronic post-punk albums between 1978 and 1981?
9 Robert Fripp first made waves as the guitarist in which band? Who was the former college friend recruited to sing and play bass on their first two albums?
10 Which performance art/rock band have a penchant for eyeball masks? Who is their main singer?
11 In the 1995 single ‘Hyperballad’, what did Björk admit to throwing off the top of a mountain? Earlier in the same year, what cover version gave her her biggest British chart hit?
12 What happened when Spiritualized drummer Kev Bales teamed up with Nottingham-based artist Wolfgang Buttress? (extra point for a bit of detail)
13 Which band sing many of their songs in Vonlenska, a language with no words, only sounds? What is their native tongue?
14 Which actor released a 1968 album called The Transformed Man, including extracts from Shakespeare and recitals of the words of pop songs? What is the Bowie-influenced title of his 2011 offering of songs on a space theme?
15 In 1971, avant-garde composer Gavin Bryars made ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ around a vocal by a singing tramp. What instrument does Bryars play? Which mordant songwriter sang the tramp’s part in a later remake?
16 Which female performance artist had a surprise number two hit in Britain in 1981 with minimalist electronic piece ‘O Superman’? The track’s full title referenced which classical composer, from whose opera Le Cid she borrowed themes for the song?
17 Nico was a German singer and model best remembered for her work with which avant-garde band? Which former bandmate supplied most of the musical arrangements and production for her solo albums?
18 What was the name of Frank Zappa’s backing band? And which creatures ripped his flesh in one of his album titles?
19 Mary Hansen was killed in a cycling accident in London in 2002. Of which alternative nineties band was she a member? What was the land of her birth?
20 Which band set excerpts from public information films to a musical background? Alongside multi-intrumentalist J Willgoose Esq, who is the other permanent member, playing drums and percussion?
21 Which band from Carmarthen released nine studio albums between 1992 and 2003 (the most successful was 1997’s Barafundle) and often sang in Welsh? Who was the band’s singer and keyboard player who has since recorded 11 solo albums?
22 What was Siouxsie Sioux’s side-project, releasing four albums from Feast in 1983 to Hai in 2003? Which other member of the Banshees was her collaborator?
23 What was the name of Faith No More singer Mike Patton’s side-project, also featuring Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn? Which 2012 thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling did Patton write the musical score for?
24 Symphony No 1 was a classical piece that earned a Grammy for which English singer-songwriter and composer? Which technically skilled guitarist, formerly one of Frank Zappa’s bandmates, did he use on the record?
25 Which prog rock band toured with a full orchestra, and Budgie on drums, to promote fourth album Piramida in 2012? Where are they from?
26 Which industrial art-rock band played in North Korea in 2015? Their name is the German name for their home city: which city?
27 Godley & Crème enjoyed success as an experimental duo after leaving which pop-rock band in 1976? In which medium did the duo become active and could claim to be pioneers in the eighties?
28 Which French actress duetted with Serge Gainsbourg on ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ in 1968? Who recorded the saucy ‘Je t’aime . . . moi non plus’ with him the following year and saw it go to number one in the UK despite being banned by the BBC?
29 In 1996, which Chicago post-rock band’s second album was called Millions Now Living Will Never Die? Its title references a belief of followers of which Christian denomination?
30 Which Edgar Allan Poe short story was adapted into a rock opera by Peter Hamill and Chris Judge Smith in 1991, with Lene Lovich in the lead role? What is the name of the prog rock band that Hammill and Judge Smith reformed in 2005?