Albums that mix genres?

horse

I'm interested in albums where different tracks have quite different genres, but it still works well. Not mixing genres within a single track, but say some electronic and some rock tracks on the same album for example. Any ideas?

BloodEagle

Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

Ween - The Mollusk

fandango

Frank Zappa - Broadway the Hardway

But you could add almost any live Zappa album.

Philly_Q

Big Chief - Mack Avenue Skullgame

Big Chief - Platinum Jive

They were on Sub Pop records during the grunge era, but the albums are a weird mix of punk, funk, hard rock, a bit of lounge music... all with a strong influence from 1970s blaxploitation movies.

thecolourbox

I would suggest this as a fan boi, but Jack White's Boarding House reach has some garagey blues rock, some hip hop, some synthy bits, jazz, and even an electro-country ditty

viz

Any country and western album

thecolourbox

viz said:

Any country and western album

Both types of music on those!

blobb

fandango said:

Frank Zappa - Broadway the Hardway

First thing I thought of.

Stuckfast

Neil Young does this a lot. There's a rather wonderful album called Trans which is a mixture of laid-back country-rock and weird electronica. Even the well-known albums like Harvest are surprisingly diverse -- it's got orchestral piano ballads, country-pop, acoustic and some hairier rock stuff.

MagicPigDetective

LCD Soundsystem’s albums all have a good mid of funk, electronic, rockier songs with guitars. 

not_the_dj

Gary Clark Jnr. 

You’ll get a straight ahead blues rock guitar track then an r&b track. 

MagicPigDetective

Public Service Broadcasting; three albums with a mix of post rock, indie, electronic and atmospheric tunes, using samples intead of vocals. Excellent too. 

octatonic

I guess there is a difference between genre blending (FNM's Rap/Metal for instance) and genre hopping (Zappa doing... well kinda everything).

UnclePsychosis

MagicPigDetective said:

Public Service Broadcasting; three albums with a mix of post rock, indie, electronic and atmospheric tunes, using samples intead of vocals. Excellent too. 

I like PSB but honestly they're about as diverse as a rotary club meeting. 

horse

octatonic said:

I guess there is a difference between genre blending (FNM's Rap/Metal for instance) and genre hopping (Zappa doing... well kinda everything).

It is the latter I'm thinking about, although I've always thought of Zappa as his own genre.

I'll take a listen through the suggestions thanks guys, although I think some of them might seem more like the natural variations you find within a single genre.

The reason I'm thinking about it is Ive been working on 2 different little projects of my own material, which I had thought of as totally separate, but when listening back to mixes I by chance played a 10 minute mellow ambient synth instrumental track followed by a melancholy slowish guitar rock song, and it felt like the first set up the second really well. So maybe I could think about combining the 2.

MagicPigDetective

UnclePsychosis said:

MagicPigDetective said:

Public Service Broadcasting; three albums with a mix of post rock, indie, electronic and atmospheric tunes, using samples intead of vocals. Excellent too. 

I like PSB but honestly they're about as diverse as a rotary club meeting. 

Ok maybe that's an epic fail! I was thinking of the contrast between Gagarin and the more atmospheric tracks.

It's difficult to think of examples. Whilst Screamadelica goes from Rock to dub to country to gospel to rave, it all sounds like one entity.

Going by what @horse states on his last post, perhaps Nine Inch Nails might be a better suggestion? Trent Reznor often includes some mellow ambient piano led songs amongst the hard industrial tracks, but they all merge together nicely.

EricTheWeary

To some extent it was typical of classic rock albums to have at least a couple of contrasting tracks thrown in.

 Toward the end of that era Diver Down by Van Halen which mixes rock tracks with trad jazz, pop rock, ambient instrumental, flamenco. 

viz said:

Any country and western album

Reminded me of Play by Brad Paisley which has a country core but also surf, rock instrumental, gospel, blues. 

Fretwired

EricTheWeary said:

To some extent it was typical of classic rock albums to have at least a couple of contrasting tracks thrown in.

Agree .. bands like Led Zep would go from hard rock to folk and acoustic

Stuckfast

Come to think of it, most of the Beatles' albums are pretty diverse.

ToneControl

Stuckfast said:

Neil Young does this a lot. There's a rather wonderful album called Trans which is a mixture of laid-back country-rock and weird electronica. Even the well-known albums like Harvest are surprisingly diverse -- it's got orchestral piano ballads, country-pop, acoustic and some hairier rock stuff.

that's the chap I thought of
Hawks and Doves, Rust never sleeps, there are loads of them

EricTheWeary

Fretwired said:

EricTheWeary said:

To some extent it was typical of classic rock albums to have at least a couple of contrasting tracks thrown in.

Agree .. bands like Led Zep would go from hard rock to folk and acoustic

Led Zeppelin good example but even Sabbath, Aerosmith,etc,etc, would throw in all sorts of musical weirdness within the context of an album. The depth of influences on Queen's Night at the Opera for example whereas by the 80s they'd gone more down the line of every song is a potential single.