We’ve been requested to post a thread about the music we listen to. It’s a tough one, there’s so much good music out there, but not all of what we listen to most is available on YouTube etc, and a lot of it isn’t very well received by most people anyway.
I’ll give it a go, throw in what I can.
For starters, I listen to a lot of hip hop. It’s a totally misunderstood genre, there’s so much more to it than ‘niggers’ and ‘hoes’ or guns and drugs. It’s poetic, it’s about letting go and being true to who you are, but at the same time understanding that who you ‘are’ is temporary and constantly changing. Who knows, maybe I’m mistaken and it’s just people talking about how good they are (well, there is a lot of that actually… you have to know where to look for the good stuff)
My favorite ‘accessible’ hip hop song right now is Mos Def – Auditorium because it’s groovy, funny and powerful. I think the song is about getting past the mundane encounters of every day life and opening your eyes to ‘what it is’. I’m probably projecting horribly onto this, and I don’t really understand Slick Rick’s part of the song, although he’s seemingly opposed to the war in Iraq. Anyway, I’m going to stop trying to convince people of it’s merits, so I’ll leave it at that. If you want me to suggest some more good hip hop, just ask and I’ll send some your way.
Another genre that is so often hated on is noise. OK, like hip hop, the noise music scene is unfortunately full of people who don’t have a clue and think it’s just an easy way to become a ‘musician’ or be different and controversial. There is the good stuff though, but once again you’ve got to look for it. Probably the most prolific noise musician is Masami Akita who created of my favorite pieces of ‘hard noise’ 1930
Once again, I’m not going to to convert you, it’s not for everyone. Noise isn’t necessarily ‘music’, you can look at it like you might with Cage’s 4,33 If you’d like to know more, check out Curtis Roads on YouTube talking about granular synthesis and other cool things, listen to Pan Sonic, read about John Cage and forget about any preconceived notions you might have about what music should be.
Moving back towards what’s considered to be more ‘musical’ is people that integrate ‘noise’ with ‘music’. Another one of my favorite genres is ambience. I can’t find much of his stuff on YouTube, but check out Vladislav Delay. Some of the songs I’ve found include Lumi and Winter Blossom, neither of which are the examples I was looking for, but it will give you a good idea.
More good ambience is Evan Bartholemew, with songs like Between Coming and Secret Entries Into Darkness and Geir Jenssen of Biosphere, probably my favorite artist of all time. You can get some free downloads here or on youtube, The things I tell you, Uva Ursi and Sphere Of No-Form all from Substrata, the most intensely beautiful album ever produced.
This is just the beginning of my interest in music. As far as more well known artists go, I have Bob Marley, Brian Eno, Chopin, David Grey, Joy Division, Kraftwerk, Madeleine Peyroux, Moby, Nick Drake, NIN, Opeth, Paul Horn, Pink Floyd, Placebo, Radiohead, The Specials, Tool and hundreds of other artists in my music collection. I listen to just about everything and could go on forever, but that should get you started.
I’ll get Mel to add something later, she’s busy painting at the moment!
“How easy it is in our life, to miss what’s being offered.” — Paul Haller