Music. Must. Go on!

[Malcador]

 

Police scanner chatter goes well with techno.

[algroth]

Just created a list of my 200 all-time favorite albums:

 

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/algroth_89/top-200-albums/

[Bartimaeus]

I might've missed something, but I believe I've listened to exactly one album out of those 200, and it's the one The Residents album, .

[majestic]

I have to admit that I sometimes wish my musical preference was this varied.

 

Alas, it's not, and in addition to that I have this somewhat annoying fixation on vocals. I can live with the worst hacks on the guitar or drums if the vocalist is good enough, but vice versa... for me a vocalist can carry a band but there's no way a band can carry a vocalist.

 

Point in case would be Manilla Road. The only track of theirs where I like Mark Shelton is Cage of Mirros:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKog5u9dX-8

 

Which I consider pretty sad. Cage of Mirrors is if course awesome but they made a lot of tracks that I can objectively recognize as musically excellent but subjectively can't stand at all.

 

Anyway, time for some Morten Veland goodness to chase away the Eurovision Song Contest that I just watched:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWq27WOSzVE

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, vocalists are the most important thing for me, too. And unfortunately, I just straight up don't like the majority of vocalists, and so I don't like the majority of music.

[algroth]

I might've missed something, but I believe I've listened to exactly one album out of those 200, and it's the one The Residents album, .

That's something at least! :D

 

But it's not really that obscure a list all in all - yes, there are obscure albums, but so are there albums by Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, Hendrix, King Crimson, the Mothers of Invention, Genesis et al., as well as some pretty popular classical and jazz artists, and Piazzolla of course.

 

With regards to vocalists I am a bit weird personally: I do take issue with a bad vocalist but what constitutes a good or bad vocalist is pretty different to most people's definition of the same. Usually I ask their delivery to be either interesting or authentic, or both - I value that over any amount of vocal gymnastics or "clarity" to their voice, and hence also why I would much rather listen to Captain Beefheart or Peter Hammill over the likes of Freddie Mercury or Bono. With regards to the two examples posted above I can safely say neither vocalist does anything for me. Sorry.

 

And of course I do appreciate a skilled and clear singer as well - Scott Walker, who makes several appearances in the list, is a case in point.

 

Edited May 14, 2017 by algroth

[Bartimaeus]

Well, like I said, I just plain don't like the majority of vocalists. Nothing to do with any sort of "quality" or the lack thereof - I just have an irrational hatred for most singing voices (misophonia). When I hear a singing voice that I like, it's a pretty huge deal to me - I ALWAYS check out a decent portion of the rest of their music to determine whether they'll become one of my "favorite" artists. It's not always meant to be, but I can forgive (or acquire a taste for) a lot if they're a singer that I like. The reason I haven't checked out the rest of those more "known"/popular artists is, sure, I know of them and have heard a few songs, but I didn't really care for what I heard, so yeah, I haven't listened to their albums.

 

For most of my life, I really have not liked music much at all. I liked just a little bluegrass (think I'll Fly Away by the Kossoy Sisters) (e: and a little swing like the Andrew Sisters, now that I think of it) that my mom would play to put me to sleep as a baby/toddler, and some classical music (probably thanks to watching Disney movies like Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty many times, again, as a baby/toddler...), and of course, video game music - note that these last two don't really have much singing in them: that's not happenstance. It was only in my late teens that I finally found a singer that I liked. Nowadays, I have probably about 5 singers that I really like, and maybe 10-15 more whom I'm 'just' fine with...while I actively dislike the majority of everyone else. It sucks to be this picky, as majestic said,

Edited May 14, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[algroth]

What of instrumental (or non-sung) music? Also, which are the vocalists you happen to like?

Edited May 14, 2017 by algroth

[Valsuelm]

[Bartimaeus]

What of instrumental (or non-sung) music? Also, which are the vocalists you happen to like?

 

The bigger names that are my favorite vocalists: Emiliana Torrini(!), China Forbes (of Pink Martini), Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), and...um, hmm, David Byrne (of Talking Heads/himself). I guess it's a little more than just five or so, really, as there's also a few smaller names, too, though, from artists most nobody has ever heard of and that you can't really listen to unless you actually physically own their stuff (->me). Most of the artists that I listen to I'm actually just merely "okay" with - VNV Nation, Weird Al, Tom Lehrer, They Might Be Giants, Depeche Mode, etc. It's more that their voices don't actively bother me than that I really like them all that much.

 

Instrumental music is mostly fine - definitely subject to less arbitrary dislike than music with vocals. There are a few things that still bother me, though, and the usual suspects are brass instruments and electric guitars - however, the latter is obviously extremely varied in its usage, and so that's kind of hit or miss, too.

[algroth]

 

What of instrumental (or non-sung) music? Also, which are the vocalists you happen to like?

 

The bigger names that are my favorite vocalists: Emiliana Torrini(!), China Forbes (of Pink Martini), Beth Gibbons (of Portishead), and...um, hmm, David Byrne (of Talking Heads/himself). I guess it's a little more than just five or so, really, as there's also a few smaller names, too, though, from artists most nobody has ever heard of and that you can't really listen to unless you actually physically own their stuff (->me). Most of the artists that I listen to I'm actually just merely "okay" with - VNV Nation, Weird Al, Tom Lehrer, They Might Be Giants, Depeche Mode, etc. It's more that their voices don't actively bother me than that I really like them all that much.

 

Instrumental music is mostly fine - definitely subject to less arbitrary dislike than music with vocals. There are a few things that still bother me, though, and the usual suspects are brass instruments and electric guitars - however, the latter is obviously extremely varied in its usage, and so that's kind of hit or miss, too.

 

Ohh... I believe we had spoken about this earlier. I wasn't sure if it had been you or majestic with whom I'd spoken about vocalists and so on. Interesting that you should list David Byrne and Dave Gahan as two vocalists you like (on that matter I did include a Talking Heads album in the list - The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads). There's a number of albums in the list above that are either purely or mostly instrumental, with varying presence of guitar though usually used in ways other than the traditional rock forms. Plenty of brass though, in great part due to my love for jazz - but again, these can also be very varied in their use depending on what you hear.

[Bartimaeus]

Yep, see, I knew I probably missed something - 200 titles is a lot to skim and not miss something, . And yeah, I'm sure there's probably stuff in there that I could appreciate...I mean, with 200 albums of varied tastes, it'd be hard not to, right?

 

Yeah, it was me. But now you know even MORE about my musical tastes! Fancy that, huh? But yeah...men vocalists I generally feel less extreme about than women vocalists - positively and negatively. Women vocalists I don't like will drive me utterly mad, while male vocalists will generally just reach the level of "I don't like this very much and would prefer to stop listening to it"...but the women vocalists that I do like I tend to like a lot.

[Valsuelm]

[redneckdevil]

As much as I love the Beatles, this is one of the few times I enjoyed a cover more than the original.

 

 

The other cover that comes to mind is

 

https://youtu.be/ZVAx9uWPo-Y

[majestic]

With regards to the two examples posted above I can safely say neither vocalist does anything for me. Sorry.

 

Well that's perfectly fine. I don't like Mark Shelton either, as I said, and to be honest I don't expect people to like Sirenia when I link it. Extremely distorted guitars, black metal rasps, death metal growls and a french choir against a gothic metal backdrop is not very compatible in my experience - and certainly not for anyone that isn't a fan of the genre to begin with.

 

If anyone's interested Leaves' Eyes would serve as a much better introduction. Many of the typical gothic metal elements are present but they're arranged in a way that is much easier to get into.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfnrxM3svs

 

Captain Beefheart is aural torture for me. But that's not only beause of his vocals, some instruments featured in his music (and alas, much of Jazz in general) have the nails on chalkboard effect on me. Yeah, talking about that brass here.

 

One of the more interesting female vocalists I happened across was Carmen Elise Espenæs - younger sister of Liv Kristine Espenæs, vocalist in the above linked Leaves' Eyes piece:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sBglB6vQRw

Edited May 15, 2017 by majestic

[majestic]

Aaaand to contribute something to the thread that isn't depressing, here's a piece of my secret love affair with Eurodance/Europop trash:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuJPviMC43o

[algroth]

 

With regards to the two examples posted above I can safely say neither vocalist does anything for me. Sorry.

 

Well that's perfectly fine. I don't like Mark Shelton either, as I said, and to be honest I don't expect people to like Sirenia when I link it. Extremely distorted guitars, black metal rasps, death metal growls and a french choir against a gothic metal backdrop is not very compatible in my experience - and certainly not for anyone that isn't a fan of the genre to begin with.

 

 

At the risk of sounding pretty pretentious or whatnot, to me the issue with most black metal - and metal in general for that matter - is less so the likes of distorted guitars or growling but rather its usual employment to extremely pedestrian or tacky effect. I do enjoy the tone of extremely distorted guitars, though more often when the instrument is approached in unconventional fashion, be it when making use of dissonant chords and scales, used for clusters and feedback and so on. I'm not saying there are no metal bands that do these things but they are usually the exceptions that I like. When it comes to vocals I find the growling in the context of something 'dark', 'heavy' or 'gothic' to be silly, practically all of the time.

Edited May 16, 2017 by algroth

[Tel Aviv]

[Valsuelm]

Just ten more days!!!

 

 

 

WTB a Michael Bolton cameo in the movie!

 

[Agiel]

In memory of Chris Cornell:

 

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by Agiel

[rjshae]

Very sad news about Chris Cornell.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/18/soundgarden-frontman-chris-cornell-dead-at-52/

 

Fame is overrated -- sounds like he was pretty lonely, even with a wife and kids.

[majestic]

At the risk of sounding pretty pretentious or whatnot, to me the issue with most black metal - and metal in general for that matter - is less so the likes of distorted guitars or growling but rather its usual employment to extremely pedestrian or tacky effect. I do enjoy the tone of extremely distorted guitars, though more often when the instrument is approached in unconventional fashion, be it when making use of dissonant chords and scales, used for clusters and feedback and so on. I'm not saying there are no metal bands that do these things but they are usually the exceptions that I like. When it comes to vocals I find the growling in the context of something 'dark', 'heavy' or 'gothic' to be silly, practically all of the time.

 

Nah, don't worry. I'd argue that most music is pretty pedestrian, just because it's from a niche genre doesn't automatically make it more sophisticated. I generally don't mind if it's simple. I mean... I do have a full set of Hammerfall albums here that I enjoy(d) a lot, and they're the Katy Perry of power metal.

[Orogun01]

[Tel Aviv]

 

From something quite poignant to...

 

[Azdeus]

Nah, don't worry. I'd argue that most music is pretty pedestrian, just because it's from a niche genre doesn't automatically make it more sophisticated. I generally don't mind if it's simple. I mean... I do have a full set of Hammerfall albums here that I enjoy(d) a lot, and they're the Katy Perry of power metal.

*Hides all Hammerfall T-shirts*