Dead Can Dance, “The Host of Seraphim”

There’s something deeply disturbing about crowds of people sorting through trash at the landfill for goodies — like they’re just milling about at a yard sale — as dump trucks deliver their fly-infested fare almost directly on top of them. It happens every day in India and Nicaragua, where people actually build their homes beside the mountains of garbage, so as to be closer to their “place of employment.” Hell, maybe it’s happening in the good ol’ U.S.A. by now.

When played against Dead Can Dance’s “The Host of Seraphim,” off its 1988 album, “The Serpent’s Egg,” the aforementioned scene takes on a pastoral, nigh-ethereal quality. Which is fitting, because seraphim (a word that can mean either serpent or angel) comes from the Old Testament.

I had already regarded this song by the Australian goth/world music duo (also described as “apocalyptic folk” on Wikipedia) as a masterwork when I experienced it through my eyes in the 1992 cinematic travelogue, “Baraka.” It’s a great example of DCD’s ken for fusing different worlds of expression together — in this case, Bulgarian choral singing is blended with Gregorian opera, and Lisa Gerrard lets it all hang out, climbing within spitting distance of the angels.

Aside from this scene, the “Seraphim” passage counts as the best moment of the film.

The Fiery Furnaces, “In My Little Thatched Hut”

Though the title of the album, “Bitter Tea,” implies that there will be no sugar, we’re firmly rooted in Willy Wonka turf from the get-go on this whizzle hizzle. “In My Thatched Hut” opens the 2006 release by this Brooklyn band named after a cannibalistic passage in The Bible.

I seem to have lost my way and I have an intense bellyache, or is it earache? I’ve met up with my extra-dimensional counterpart and we’ve just returned from the donut shop, satiated and saturated.

I don’t know how my hair turned blue but I kind of like it now. I don’t know how well it will go over in the interview, though. The other applicants are a randy bunch, molesting their lollipops vigorously with sandpaper tongues, displaying soiled panties while doing scissor kicks — but my confidence wavers, inflates and inhales like the throat of a motorized chameleon made out of kiwi-flavored jellybeans warning sweet teeth to stay away.

This music is not for hobbyists.

You’re required to take detailed notes and suspend your disbelief from a coat hanger in the closet. And then wear suspenders. Suspense enders. Wim Wenders hitting the ketchup bottle. This is full throttle. Seemingly recorded in one take at a Star Trek convention. This is the bone of contention. Phoney tension. Puppy lessons.

This is a band that is pickaxing the boundaries of pop music, out on the same limb as Brian Wilson, and bless their souls for that. Soaked in hog fat. Foghat.