Challenging music

Some cool stuff here - I forgot about john zorn and captain beefhart. That naked city album was a staple of mine at uni......somebody nicked it though.
As I said in my original post everybody has a different view of what is challenging. I listened to most types of stuff during my music degree and I have to say that I have a threshold - I can appreciate some really extreme music sitting down thinking, but I do not choose to listen to it whilst I run for example.My wife on the other hand only listens to really crappy radio and finds REM challenging........

I like Bartok - My brother loves bartok and can play some serious mean piano pieces of his.
My beef with Stravinsky mainly stems from having to write two compulsory essays on him, which counted as one fifth of my final years marks - I had to do it and it pissed me off that the lecturer only gave us the one choice to write about - I bet it was great fun for him to check
I went to fantastic concert last year called jazzplayseurope. A bunch of guys standing on stage improvising some really cool noise..

would like to be able to do a music degree also,
glad that someone gets Bartok, cant get past the feeling its horror film music...