Diversifying tastes in music, or: "why you should be listening to good music instead of your music"
Mon, 07 Aug 2023, 07:11:30 PM
Without attempting to feign some claim that I am some sort of hyper-cultured sophisticate who smokes long cigarillos like a leonardo dicaprio wannabe, most music is really really bad. I can’t watch TV, not even a period drama, without there being an Ed Sheeran song playing on the fucking lute. This is a consequence of the conglomerates who own the airwaves also owning most popular musicians, and those musicians losing all cashflow if they write songs that are too interesting to cater to the largest possible audience
Small mock-up of me: an absolute intellectual with always correct opinions and 12 inch flaccid wood
Recently in the news we learned Taylor Swift is an actual fucking collossal cunt. “What does she do”, you may ask? Essentially she gallavants about in her private jet constantly. To me, her music always felt really repetitive. She does nothing mitski cannot do better.
Ed Sheeran triggers my uncanny valley effect. Also he has his own hot sauce and you can tell it was made by him because it is supposedly about as spicy as ketchup.
When I think about popular musicians that I actually like, I first think of Aphex Twin. Really distorted synths and complex slowly developing loops characterise Richard James’ music. Often called ambient, which I don’t really get because ambient is like rainforest noises or like setting up a camera at a pond for 12 hours but again I’m not a linguist.
I love Nirvana, they make amazing t-shirts and I think they used to do music or something. Not going to tell you much about Nirvana because you have already heard them but did you know there’s an entire Kurt Cobain song where he sings about almost having sex with a mentally handicapped girl before trying to kill himself by putting cement blocks on his chest and lying on train tracks. I’d like to write an entire post about how fucked up the whole debacle was.
конец солнечных дней make what some losers online call “shoegaze”. I please petition you to call it alternative indie because no genre should have to endure being named after a shoe. The band is pronounced “konets solnechnykh dney” and it directly translates to “the end of sunny days”. It is not often that you hear music that resonates with you despite not understanding any of the lyrics but the raw emotion that the band produce is pretty unparalleled in the genre (alternative. indie.). They’re pretty niche too, which is important to me because i’m a philistine or something
The Microphones are an experimental project fronted by Phil Elverum, also known for his work with Mount Eerie. All of their works, from beginning to the end, have this ethereal sort of feeling. It kind of reminds me of the existensial dread of Elliot Smith, a remarkably talented songwriter who passed away too young. I enjoy The Microphones for their fast transition from quiet to loud, how the instruments layer, and the crashing drums that appear in a lot of their songs.
LAUSSE THE CAT has been an interesting figure in my life. Not because I’ve ever met him or anything, but just because of how unique his project is and the people I met through my love of his music. Known for his ability to weave French and English in the same verse and for his graffiti all over Leeds and south London. He is a breath of fresh air in the UK scene, which can be really oversaturated with people trying too hard to be more like american rappers. Backing tracks are often gentle drum beats with piano over them as well as random string instruments with the occasional beautiful vocals of Bawhe. One of the best UK projects out there, I hope you listen.
King Krule is another project that will resonate with other people raised in London or big cities in the UK. Archy Marshall is a singer-songwriter and if I was to describe his genre I would be paraphrasing wikipedia because of how unique his sound is. Dissonant vocals accompanied with harsh strums of the guitar characterise many of his songs, but to say that this encapsulates most, if little of his discography would be untrue. It’s something you have to listen to yourself.
I hope you found something you enjoyed here. If you did, let me know at my mastodon at tyler@blobfox.coffee.