Obscure bands with extensive discographies

Nits - Formed in 1974, Netherlands, 21 albums
The Black Watch - 1987, U.S., 18 albums
Motorpsycho - 1989, Norway, 20 albums
Circle - 1991, Finland, 32 albums

There are plenty of bands that churn out a lot of recordings of wildly inconsistent quality. I'm talking about a band that when you first discover, whatever you heard first is so good that you look into their discography, and are shocked to find another 15+ albums, and gradually learn they're nearly all great. At a time when taking three to five years between albums seems more the norm, this is all the more remarkable.

I'm sticking with rock and pop related, as I'm sure the list could get huge with jazz, modern classical and such (I'd include soul, R&B, hip hop, etc. but I couldn't think of any who are both obscure and prolific).

Ice Dragon seemed well on their way at ten albums since 2010, releasing four in 2012. However they've recently slowed down, with no full-length release in over a year. Are they feverishly working on an epic masterpiece? There's probably several bands like Denmark's Øresund Space Collective who crank out numerous jams. Feel free to make an argument for one, but they can't hold my interest that long.

Acid Mothers Temple are in there...

great thread idea, though I guess I'd want to clarify the idea of "obscure"; Motorpsycho are unheard of here, but they're popular in Norway aren't they?

similarly my first thought here was P-Model. I first discovered them on Mutant Sounds, who made it sound like the group released these two jumpy New Wave discs and then faded away into the ether. It turns out that between the band and the frontman's solo career, there's somewhere between 25-40 albums out there (depending on what you count), and that nearly every single one of them is incredible. apparently he's still quite famous in Japan, so I dunno if "obscure" really counts. in the English-speaking world he definitely is.

In the prog realm I'd name Glass Hammer, who have released 16 albums since 1993, and have been remarkably consistent from their 4th on, to the point where they've made more great albums than any of their idols. And yet they seem to be unheard of outside of the dedictated prog circles.

Motorpsycho are unheard of here, but they're popular in Norway aren't they?

Motorpsycho have a pretty decent and dedicated following in most European countries I'd say, a stretch to call them obscure. Nits though is probably right, even for The Netherlands!

Muslimgauze? Maybe not quite obscure enough...

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Boston psych band that's been around for about 20 years, with a whopping 117 albums listed on discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/artist/324139-Sunburned-Hand-Of-The-Man?limit=500&page=1

ahh, but how many of them are good?

similarly I was thinking about naming James Ferraro here, who has made something like 60 albums in the last eight years, but they're all over the place quality-wise

yeah, I was gonna say, every New Weird America / freak folk band circa 2003 to thread

I was going to say Steven R Smith, but he totally fits that ^^ description. Something like 19 solo albums, plus a whole raft of other monikers and bands he's been a part of. Quality is patchy to excellent.

It's hard for me to tell from the perspective of Europe. I know Motorpsycho are known and respected by people in the fairly tiny psych prog scene, but outside of Europe I can vouch that they are indeed obscure. I feel that Acid Mothers Temple at some point got on the indie hipster radar well over a decade back and are often a go-to band to the exclusion of others, similar to perhaps Boris.

Overall lots of great suggestions, will certainly keep some of us busy during this slow season.

Steven R Smith otm -- fnb you should check out his Ulaan Markhor stuff, I think you might enjoy it.

Tatsuya Yoshida has got to be in there, he's been consistently churning out 2+ albums/year for over two decades now and is in the conversation for greatest living drummer, if his style is up your alley then there's so much great stuff to check out.

18 albums for Blacklight Braille:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/253746-Blacklight-Braille

but yeah freakfolkunderground kinda like the noise world with the endless CDrs and all that.

sunburned are so great right now, by the way. playing so good and their line-up is ridiculous when they have dredd foole and j. mascis and tony pasquarosa playing with them. i really did move to the greatest spot as far as cool people who have put out a million releases go.

R. Stevie Moore

Eugene Chadbourne - 152 albums released according to Discogs, and that probably doesn't include all the tapes and self-bootlegs he used to sell at gigs.

i remember getting some jad fair cd in the mail and it came with a cd-rom that had another 200 songs on it or something like that.

Martin Newell/Cleaners From Venus

lol how could I forget Half Japanese, they've put out like 5 records in the past 2 years

According to Discogs Wesley Willis released 20 albums! I think just the compilation will do for me.

20 albums, and yet only three songs. Impressive!

Billy Childish must've released 150 albums by now, he was on 100 a decade ago I think

Quite a few electronic music artists have extensive discographies. Steve Roach has to be really up there, by my count on his site he has a 164 titles listed and many of these are multiple CD sets. The dude has spent quite a bit of time in the Timeroom.

http://steveroach.com/discography/

I can vouch for the excellence of the entire Black Watch catalog, no duds at all.

Cleaners From Venus is all similarly excellent but Martin Newell's solo albums are rather patchy at best after the first two {Greatest Living Englishman, The White Album}.

Quite a few electronic music artists have extensive discographies

Anyone want to try totting up Conrad Schnitzler's discography? His Contempora Con-tinuous Work series alone lists 830 releases.

Uwe Schmidt and Pete Namlook's various projects really add up too.

Current 93 took more than ten years to really click with me after I first heard them but once it did there was a huge discography to explore. Same with Coil actually.

Another Dutch example is Golden Earring, I know for a lot of non-Europeans they were a bit of a one hit wonder but there's at least two decades worth of world-class 60s/70s psychedelic rock to be found.

Any excuse to post this again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead_discography

I mean, he was in Guns & Roses for a bit, but still... how many people can have heard all of these?

Goddamn it, I just listened to 5 minutes of the most recent one. That was not a constructive use of my time.

No mention of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez yet? The Mars Volta and At The Drive-In are well enough known, but how many people know that Omar put out 12 albums last year - one every two weeks between mid-July and mid-December? That's in addition to his 25 previous solo releases (which used to be on Bandcamp but have since been hidden/taken down).

Has even Buckethead heard all of those 118 albums he released in 2015?
Let's not even think about John Fruscianti either.

Kari Peitsamo, a Finnish rock musician, once said that it took him less time to record his most famous album than what the album actually lasts (because it was all in one take, but some silence was added between the tracks in mixing it). I'm pretty sure the same applies to those 273 Buckethead albums.

Similarly, a big reason why Pete Namlook released 200+ solo and collab albums in 20 years was because he didn't really believe in honing the stuff too much rather than just creating something spontaneously in his studio. According to Mixmaster Morris, the first Dreamfish album he did with Namlook was made in a day. It's still a legendary and awesome ambient record tho.

I guess King Creosote is obscure now?

I thought Sleeve would have mentioned Legendary Pink Dots/Edward Ka-Spel.

Dark Muse.

The Nits really aren't that prolific for a band who've been around that long.

LPD/EKS are not obscure in my world :)

Bill Nelson has a huge solo discography with many fans but I stopped loving it all around 1990.

georgia anne muldrow

oh wait you said no r&b

Nurse with wound somehow not mentioned yet?

Jandek

pretty much every band in that new weird america poll

The Ex

Les Rallizes Denudes

Although arguably they've only put out one, two or perhaps no releases officially, the discography keeps growing. Live '77 used to be the default way in and information in English was scant.

In The Nursery are maybe on the less extreme end of this.

Jute Gyte! Are there many metal bands that prolific?

Graveland

Keji Haino
Merzbow (around 300 albums iirc)

Isn't there a heavy ambient band with "Bull" in there name who put out loads?

Bull of Heaven! Never heard their name outside of RYM, which it seemed like the band existed for. One of their albums lasts 8.5 billion years!

I suppose it's all loops?

Jute Gyte! Are there many metal bands that prolific?

There's a Russian one-man project called Senmuth that managed 163 between 2004-2012 according to RYM. I think some of it's meant to be more experimental/ambient stuff but I haven't heard any of it to be honest.

Njiqahdda (along with their alternate names Njijn and Oaks of Bethel) were very productive for a while, still active but less so now. Some of their stuff's pretty good.

There's Zarach Baal Tharagh who seems to have over 100. What I've heard is pretty shit though.

xp to myself: 163 albums I mean. But that's only as recent as RYM goes, according to metal archives this guy still consistently dumps out a shit-ton of albums every year, including 3 in 2017 already. Doesn't say much for quality control.

I suppose it's all loops?

only one way to find out!!

brb, see u in 8.5 billion years