People, by their very nature, are social animals.  We enjoy getting together in groups, speaking in half-sentences and hand gestures, and trying to figure out who will have sex with us.  Throughout time and across cultures, meals have been a focal point of our congregating (at least in cultures where orgies weren’t the focus).  The modern day equivalent of the medieval feast is the dinner party, put on for capricious reasons and usually not without some sort of empty ceremony.  Maybe you’re simply throwing a wine and cheese party, but the formula is nearly identical: your friends come over, wearing that pair of khakis they rarely take out of the back of the closet, expecting to drink a little bit, eat a little bit without spilling food all over themselves, and bullshit enormously.

There is a tolerance threshold, however, when you are the host of a dinner party.  You’ve probably been drinking longer than anyone else because the quiche almost burning took four glasses of wine to forget about, and as a result you often want everyone to leave sooner than their own instinct tells them to.  Manners and common courtesy dictate that you can’t just ask everyone to go to their damn cars and go home.  And this is true; you usually want to see these people again, so you don’t want to be a big jerk and close the party down.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways of achieving this end, however, using more subtle methods.  Remember, there are two routes to any destination: the direct route, and the indirect route.  What follows is a list of albums that should get people to vacate the premises, by indirectly hinting that (a) the party’s over and (b) things are going to get uncomfortable if they stay around.


1.   Venetian Snares & Hecate – Nymphomatriarch
Nothing says, “Get the hell out of my house,” quite like the sound of two people having rough sex.  In the case of “Nymphomatriarch,” the sound of two people having rough sex is made all the more disturbing by the fact that it’s been edited and chopped up to make it a bit more danceable.  So those “rat-a-tat” beats that sound like snare drums?  Those are ass-slaps.  If you find someone who hasn’t left your place after you put this album on, let’s hope they’re too drunk to stand up.  If they’re dancing to this music, call the police.  Whoever it is, they’re dangerous.

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2.  Liars – Drum’s Not Dead
Falsetto, tribal drumming, and guitar feedback, oh my!  Nobody will dance to it.  Nobody will tap their feet while holding hors d’oeuvres on a little paper plate.  This album provides the perfect ambiance for you to tell everyone about the last time you got out of prison.  What makes it even better is that it doesn’t relent—for nearly the whole record (with the exception of the last song) the music is claustrophobic, uneasy, and dark.

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3.  Autechre – Confield
Mmm, Autechre.  Arrhythmic blips and spastic bloops galore.  This won’t scare anyone out, necessarily, but it sure will annoy them.  Maximum effectiveness can be realized if you turn up your stereo as loud as it can go and duct tape the volume knob.  Make sure nobody epileptic is at your dinner party, though, or this record might cause them to have a seizure.  Unless you really want people to leave, in which case this could be your coup de grace, since everyone will have to move their cars so the paramedics can get in.

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4.  Einstürzende Neubauten – any album
The sound of drills and screaming should ruin an appetite or two, unless all your friends are dentists.  Or sadists.  Or German.  Or even worse, sadistic German dentists.  That’s a triple threat you don’t want to tango with, my friend.

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5.  Britney Spears – Baby One More Time
Unless everybody you know is inexplicably corny, this album should disgust anyone.  Playing this record is sure to make people take back the bottle of wine they brought, against proper etiquette, and glare at you scornfully while they file out of the door.  You won’t notice, though, because you’ll be standing on the couch cushions singing into a hairbrush.

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6.  Mr. Bungle – California
While this album is arguably the greatest thing Mike Patton has ever done, it will nonetheless ruin most peoples’ evening.  The music jumps illogically between genres without warning, and is probably the most schizophrenic (yet somehow palatable) record released by this on-again-off-again group.  If people are slow to make their way out, fast forward to “Ars Moriendi” and run around with a garbage can on your head while banging two pot lids together.  That’ll show ‘em.  What better way to say, “There’s no more brie, and I’m off my meds?”

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The Carpenters – any album
The Carpenters irritate in a slow burn, like athlete’s foot or a fistful of cactus splinters.  Play this if you want everyone gone within the hour.  Nobody can take an entire Carpenters’ CD, no matter how much of a masochist they are.  It’s my opinion that The Carpenters are to blame for the Manson killings, not the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”  Sugary, deluded AM radio songs such as these might induce temporary anorexia, at the least, which should put a damper on things.  This is so utterly 1970’s, it will make everything taste like lukewarm fondue, anyway.

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8.  Excepter – KA
Excepter is guaranteed to make people feel a little sick, as it’s chock full of wobbly, spacey keyboards and drum machines with processed mumbling and yelling threaded through the top layer.  Unless you’re having a séance, this album will be nothing but a buzz-kill.  Since it has the potential to induce nausea, you could combine it with The Carpenters for an effective gastrointestinal one-two punch.

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9.  Bob Dylan – Dylan
This entire record is comprised of Bob Dylan utterly massacring what were already somewhat bad songs.  Take bad songwriting, add the croaking of Dylan’s voice, and you’ve got a stampede on your hands of soccer stadium magnitude.  If they make it through the first few songs, people are sure to bolt once Dylan starts in on “Mr. Bojangles.”  Tell them to make sure they don’t ruin the sprinkler heads during their retreat across the lawn.

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10.  Matmos – A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure
The first song itself is a cut-up of recordings of actual liposuction procedures.  It makes me want gravy and mashed potatoes for some reason.  The rest of the album boasts similarly distasteful surgical noise, and should have the effect of making enough people queasy to ruin everyone’s time.  You thought plastic surgery was gross to watch?  Try listening to it when it’s arranged into songs.  Unless you started a fan club for the sounds of surgical saws, skulls being scraped, and nose cartilage crunching, this is a sure bet.

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You must use your discretion; the idea of this list is for you to be able to take something that nobody else you know enjoys and use this irritating music to your advantage.  If you have a friend who really likes one of these records, they won’t want to leave.  Then you’d have to break out the big guns, like a photo album or that journal of poetry you’ve been writing since eighth grade, to run them off.

Granted, despite this list, most death metal will get people to leave a dinner party, as most people who enjoy death metal are not likely to be the typical attendee of such a gathering.  But if you already own a death metal CD, you probably wouldn’t be putting on a dinner party, anyway.

I’m sure you can think of other albums that would accomplish the same mission; I’ve merely attempted to provide a starter kit.  To subtly construct a mélange of distastefulness is no easy task, and at the very least I hope I’ve set you out on a path which, if you find it necessary to travel, will safely and surely get you to bed earlier so you can wake up the next day and make apologetic phone calls.

No need to say it.  I know.  You’re welcome.