Deceptively great tracks

[Bosco]

What are some of your favorite songs that start modest and turns out to be an absolute monster of tune!

Here are a few of mine:

Leftfield - Song of Life

Mildly interesting tribal chanting building into some drums. Doesn't seem to be going anywhere until the 2:15 mark but still leaves you scratching your head why they bothered to so boldly title it "Song of Life". And then at 3:28 a thumping acid masterpiece unfolds. The beginning makes perfect sense now, because it's the ritual to summon this absolute beast. 

Ratatat - Nightclub Amnesia

A non-polished grinding synth beat is not exactly an exciting or inviting way to start any track, but you stick around because Ratatat is known to take nothing into something (incredible!). The proverbial, "hold it, let 'em cook" track. A great example that a song doesn't have to end in the same area where it started. Man I love this fucking album.

Daft Punk - Digital Love

So to be fair, Digital Love sounds incredibly great from the get-go. But, it does have a perky pop radio sound that can turn the less tolerant away. For a great deal of the track, it disguises itself from being this epic progressive piece of electropop that it is. One the greatest sound achievements in all of music is the guitar (synth) solo peeking with the bridge at 3:48. I get chills every time the guitar kicks in. Probably my favorite track from them.

[Stefan]

Here's one that immediately comes to mind:

[ThePumisher]

Deftones - Pink Maggit

[Wolkenkrabber]

NB: THE DAILY MOTION VIDEO I ACCIDENTALLY-ISH EMBEDDED FOR LEFTFIELD MIGHT START PLAYING AUTOMATICALLY AFTER A FEW SECONDS, SO YOU MAY WANT TO PAUSE THAT IF YOU'RE PLAYING ANOTHER VIDEO.

songs that start modest and turns out to be an absolute monster of a lovely tune!

Now that you've changed the perameters a bit, this one springs to mind. Though you could argue that the intro isn't that boring.

Lemon Jelly - The Staunton Lick

Going more commercial -it's Faithless. Who fancies some Opera? Don't stop listening before 4:49.
Faithless - Salva Mea (Floating mix)

Even the main Epic mix has 1:24 worth of 'meh' intro before it suddenly takes off
Faithless - Salva Mea (Epic Mix) 1995

I'm sure there are better examples in my personal music collection, but I might have to spend some time mentally or physically going through all that...

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Leftfield - Song of Life
Mildly interesting tribal chanting building into some drums. Doesn't seem to be going anywhere until the 2:15 mark but still leaves you scratching your head why they bothered to so boldly title it "Song of Life". And then at 3:28 a thumping acid masterpiece unfolds. 

The album version isn't the original version, of course. It came out on 12" with a very different intro a couple of years earlier. I understand why they re-worked it for the album. If they hadn't, it probably wouldn't have fit in with the sumptuous level of production on the rest of Leftism. But perhaps they could have re-worked it with a bit more of the original intro riff.

It's almost impossible to find that original A-side 12" version on YouTube etc. It's not in the embedded vids on the Discogs page. The only place I can find it is on Daily Motion (this has embedded which I didn't expect. You may have to unmute it, top left of vid).

In 2022 I had a brief twitter chat with Neil Barnes about this.
He posted a clip of the 12" on his turntable and wrote: "Found this. Promo self Stamped first version of Song Of Life from 1992. Nice memories. ..."
I commented: "It's really hard to find this version on YouTube etc. Any idea why Neil?"
Neil replied: "It's probably because people don't know of it's existence. It's not the album version."
<<Yeah, no shit Neil, but you're expecting other people to upload it? You have your own official channel Neil!>> - Is NOT what I said, but what I thought!

By the time I had seen Neil's reply to me, Hervé had jumped into the convo (THE Hervé) with: "Reminded of the Underworld mix of it you got done, loved that too".
Well Underworld did TWO remixes, but I'm not sure I really agree with the comment. Neil didn't reply to Hervé.

So yeah, I do agree with Mr Barnes that "people don't know of its existence", but I wish they did!

Incidentally somewhere on this forum I posted a YT video of How It Was Made by YouTuber Gyu Beats (-the album version, that is).

Spoiler

And we know(!) that Gyu Beats is good at his deconstructions because in his video for Fatboy's Right Here Right Now, Fatboy himself jumped into the comments to say "very interesting tutorial, my friend. i wish i'd had Ableton when i did it!  . DM me you email address and i'll fill you in the bits you couldn't work out...."

Spoiler

But yeah, I'm going off topic now...

[Ben_j]

Little Simz - Lotus

Royksopp - Royksopp Forever

Air - The Vagabond

M83 - Solitude

Did I understand the assignment ?