So, a recent chapter of Bocchi the Rock's Hiroi Kikuri / Sick Hack spinoff manga has the members of the band talking a little about their influences. They mention that their guitarist, Eliza Shimizu likes to listen to weird music like denpa, and less popular stuff like jazz. There's a running joke about the members of the band members being completely at-odds with each other stylistically and in terms of personality, but I wanted to think about this in a way that took the claims seriously and thought about why exactly she would find being in the band compelling, what with her apparent goal of being in a denpa anisong band instead.
I decided to express this thought in a playlist -- songs that I would believe that would explain Eliza Shimizu's influences, and speak to her interests as a prog-psych sort of guitarist. I can't claim that this is an exhaustive potential list of songs someone like Eliza would listen to because, well, obviously they're filtered by my experience. For example, I suspect we'd have a few Was (not Was) and Death Grips songs on the list, but I'm far less familiar with either band's output than I probably ought to be, and so can't speak to their inclusion in a list like this.
My criteria for songs on the list:
Jazz was explicitly cited as something she likes, so I included a number of jazz musicians. I felt like the iconic answer here might be Pat Martino, since he marries technical proficiency with a tendency to find compelling melodic loops that communicate a manic, frenzied approach to the material he played, and other musicians like Hiromi Uehara whose intense play carries forth a spiritualistic sense. John McLaughlin seemed like another obvious choice, especially because he was working with Miles Davis during the period when Davis and Teo Macero were most interested in their musique concrete experimentation.
Denpa songs were also cited, so of course I had to include several examples1. Higurashi's nanodesu song was the obvious choice to my mind. In the process of looking up more examples of denpa songs I learned that Momoiro Clover Z had done a collaboration with KISS, which strikes me as being the sort of peak of the kind of song that would both be a direct hit on Eliza's interests and still match well with the energy and interests of the band. Sick Hack might be a more serious and dramatic band, but I could definitely see them opening up an encore with a momokuro cover, playful yet still based around ideas from Japanese traditional music.
Similarly, Eliza is noted as being very tied into doujin culture, so she'd probably be pretty plugged into Vocaloid stuff, and a lot of the more famous Vocaloid songs are basically denpa anyway.
I also picked a lot of stuff that was trying to combine the sort of motivations of profoundly weird of denpa with stuff more technically proficient and steeped in jazz idioms. Zappa in particular was the obvious choice here. Some of Steely Dan could qualify, And there was other stuff like The Residents and They Might Be Giants. Generally I wanted stuff that was in English and that I felt reflected a certain sense of humor, the sort of stuff Ike Turner would listen to in the studio and think "what the fuck is this", like, for example, Montana.
I've made the playlist without too much concern for the track order, though I've picked a few tracks' ordering to be humorous in context with each other.
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If you're not familiar with the genre, imagine the weirdest guy you know having written lyrics for an EDM song, many of which will be delivered like hype chants. I didn't go for tunes that were quite that weird but you absolutely can find stuff on the scourgey "I want to drink my sister's breast milk" side of things, in case you're wanting a more concrete example. Ultimately, I felt that fell outside the spirit of the source manga.