Shifts in Your Musical Listening
 

I've experienced something of a shift during the past year in what I listen to; twelve months ago my list of favourite LP's, for example, would have contained several by The Fall, Sonic Youth, The Stupids etc amongst instrumental artists. I have found that I now listen mainly to, and much prefer, instrumental pieces.

My current favourite artists (this means for the past year or more) are people like Aphex Twin (in any of his guises), Piratio, Shinra, several classical composers (eg Geminiani, Janacek), Shinra, Horace Silver, Austin Kershaw, Psalm Drummers, Abdullah Ibrahim and many more.

In the cases of people like David Sylvian or Sonic Youth, I find myself still listening regularly, but mainly to their non-vocal compositions. Some of Sonic Youth's SYR stuff (numbers 1, 3 and 6) has taken on a whole new level of meaning, as has Sylvian's Approaching Silence.

I've always rated those people very highly anyway, and many of them would have been on a list of top music, but they don't currently mingle with spoken/vocal pieces in my listening as much as they used to. I'm just not getting what I used to out of 'songs', and nothing new interests me vocally.

Perhaps the trend will change again, who knows.

I think I like the fact that instrumental music is sort of more adaptable, and can mean more to me. Music without vocals lacks the restrictive meaning that lyrics attribute to a piece.

This is probably the biggest change in my listening habits since I first listened to John Peel in 1986.

My taste has changed dramatically over the past year. While I still worship at the alter of Pussy Galore, The Stooges, The Ramones and The Cramps, I've also been getting into a lot of early Rock n Roll and Rockabilly. This may have something to do with the fact that these past couple of years I've been seriously trying to learn guitar.

Can I ask what "early Rock n Roll and Rockabilly" artists you have developed a tatse for?

Well, as I mentioned on the 'recommend me some rockabilly' thread, a lot of what I've been listening has been on those compliations put out by Ace Records. But also more obvious stuff like Buddy Holly (is there really a more exciting sound than the guitar break in 'Peggy Sue'?) In terms of other individual artists, then it'd be people like George Jones - whose song 'Rock It' may actually be that rival to BH's 'Peggy Sue' - and the brilliantly named Sleepy La Beef. Also, more obviously, the Sun stuff recorded by Carl Perkins and, of course, Elvis.

I've never really had a shift or placed a restriction on what I listen to, but I guess I go through certain phases every week, just like everyone... this week I'm on an ambient kick. Last week I was on a free jazz kick, the week before a Venetian Snares kick, the week before a Jandek kick, etc.

When I was 13-15 I was all about classic rock, Led Zeppelin, The Doors (no AC/DC!). Then around 16 I started getting into more alternative stuff, Pixies, The Velvet Underground. In October of that year I bought DDN. I was still heavily into the Doors at this bought. A few months later (December-ish) I bought Loveless and it bought shoegaze to my attention. Also around this time I bought my first punk albums (Ramones, Clash, Sex Pistols). I listened to basically these bands almost exclusively until my senior year of high school when I began to branch out in my directions and delve deeper into shoegaze, other types of punk and other musical styles. Also, during this time I discovered my love for classical music. And for the last 2 years I've been basically discovering new bands all the time and branching out my tastes into dub, acoustic and other genres. I foresee this going on for as long as I can sustain it.

I go through different phases. When I was 14, it was punk (Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash). After that, the Flying Nun record label and Syd Barrett. The most recent ones have been black metal, Pink Floyd and Ed Kuepper.

Story of my life.

Wow, even with all the typos? I should really proofread my long posts.

Even with all the typos.
Though, for me it was Sigur Ros and not MBV.

Ah, Sigur Ros didn't come until later for me. I thought I'd reached the pinnacle of music with Loveless. I was only partially right.

I thought I'd done the same with Sigur Ros.
Now I'm kind of burnt out on them, especially with the disappointment of their latest album.
Now I listen mainly to electronica, post-rock, popular 90s alt bands and wacky indie music.

I get burnt out on electronica every 6 months. I listen to a little 90s electronica and some newer electronic-tinged bands for a week and then I'm done for 6 months. During that week, they're the best thing ever though.

Lately I've been interested in listening to atmospheric Folk music. My favorite record right now is PJ Harvey's White Chalk. For a long time - since Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation turned me off of Hip-Hop in 2003 - I didn't care about artists who put more thought into their lyrics than their instrumentals. But what inspired me to buy White Chalk were the dead-on descriptions of how atmospheric and eerie it is. It isn't the kind of record that I want to listen to all of the time, but at the right time of the day and/or in the "right" mood, I'm totally moved by it. I find myself actually seriously longing to live in a place that isn't so modern and cut off from nature. As a matter of fact, I think I'm through with big cities. I want to live in the kind of place that inspired the music of Mazzy Star.

This woman's LJ, Blog, Flickr page, and YouTube page totally inspire me:

http://oola.livejournal.com/
http://coalblackfilly.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oola/
http://www.youtube.com/profile_favorites?user=oola

1995-1998 Radiohead phase (diehard fandom)
1998- First hearing a Sonic Youth record
1999-2000 Electronica phase (drum and bass, mainly)
2000-2003 the most exciting phase probably (getting into many kinds of unusual music, post-rock, ambient electronica, noise)
2004 First using a yousendit/rapidshare download (a radical point to be honest, which rapidly shortened the time I actually invest in listening to an album)
2004-2006 did not have much time for music during these rather turbulent years
2007-2008 shift of my tastes towards ambient, drone, and textured music in general

emm... I was in a phase of mainstream rock when I was about 8. Listened to that until I was 11/12 when I started listening to metal. And then when I was about 13 my musical direction changed into more alternative music.

my music journey, bizarrely, started with John Steinbeck. I was 13 and reading grapes of wrath, and over the dinner table I asked my dad about something I had read, I said "daaaaad, whats a Levee?". He explained in great length as he always does, and then soon after said, hey, wanna hear a really cool track about Levees? Not beleiving my dad to supply a cool track, I suspiciously said yes, and we pulled an album out the cupboard, blew the dust off it, and put it on. I fell instantly in love with what I heard, and this album, Led Zeppelin IV, was my spring board into music. Over the next couple of years I experienced the joys of Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Genesis, The Beatles. Then gradually, I started hearing more about a guy called Syd Barrett. Eventually I bought his album The Madcap Laughs, and I was truely hooked on music. Then my music tastes took a strange but nonetheless not at all regrettable diversion, a guy at work got me into the world of 90s hip hop, more specifically trip hop actually, Portishead, massive attack, Nightmares on Wax. Gradually I realised you don't have to be black to appreciate rap. So I went into my local record shop, bought two LPs, Common's Ressurection and De La Soul's 3 Feet High, and that was that. Then, a year or so later, I heard a track by a band called my Bloody Valentine, and once again explored rock for the first time in years, specifically Shoegaze. I gradually tired of this, I wanted a band that was both noisy and arty but not exclusively dreamy. Enter Sonic Youth. Thats not the full story, maybe I'll post recent developments later on, but thats the general outline.

I discovered the Ramones when I was 13, when I saw School of Rock, which had My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg) in the soundtrack. This lead to my discovery of punk. Then I heard The Smiths' This Charming Man on the radio, which lead to some indie stuff. I bought Television's Marquee Moon based on what I'd heard and the album cover. I idolised Tom Verlaine, I was going to call my band The Verlaines, but I later found that this name was already taken by a band who would go on to become one of my favourites, leading to my discovery of the Flying Nun scene. I discovered black metal when I was doing research for a speech I was doing for my English class, on musicians dying young. I found Dead and Euronymous on a Wikipedia list.

thats a pretty good story... music started for me when i was a kid and my dad put the sex pistols on in the car outside pizza hut...

My musical taste is like a petrified forest