![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And now, the single hardest entry: Music.
For me, when the question is “Music?”, the answer is always: Yes, please. I like almost everything, though always as evaluated on a song-by-song basis; going through my iTunes library, let alone my CD collection, you’ll find examples of everything from extreme crunchy to extreme pop-y, hip-hop (old-school to gangsta), punk, dance, trance/ambient, soundtracks, singer/songwriter stuff of all descriptions. Though I’ve recently noticed that my baseline really does seem to skew fairly specifically towards roots music—folk, country, anything with a wail and a whine to it.
What changed in 2009 is that this was the year I got high-speed Internet, and therefore the year I discovered I could search for/download shared stuff. Over the last couple of years, I’d already gotten into the habit of assembling mixes piecemeal, buying single tracks from iTunes rather than whole albums, etc.; my most reliable way of appreciating music was in transit or while working out, via my iPod. This year, however, I spent a considerably larger chunk of my time stationary in front of my computer, doing genuine work and listening to music which either aided or distracted me from this process. Fanmixes became a staple way to find new material. Sometimes friends responded to stuff I sent them by recommending music they thought would interact well with it, thus opening up new paths of inspiration, and I came to absolutely love that type of conversation. Technology! New, possibly bad, habits! That’s 2009 in a nutshell, for me.
On way or the other, therefore, while saving myself a heck of a lot of money overall, I still think I may well have increased my musical library by a third this year, which makes for a lot of artists and/or tracks to sift through. So this is a sampler, the things which spring most immdiately to mind, mostly reckoned by how often I seem to have played them. Without further ado, then, stuff that’s new (for me):
16 Horsepower and Wovenhand—Cloggin’ foolishness, with a side of Nazarene damnation/salvation porn. Also very good for my characters, especially those who either routinely quote the Bible, or hang around with them as do.
Voltaire—Listed under Industrial at HMV, for some insane reason. Actually it’s the Goth equivalent of Tom Lehrer or Jonathan Coulton, with pitch-black cabaret, mariachi and klezmer elements. My obsession started with “When You’re Evil”, but I’ve liked almost everything I’ve heard since.
Tom McRae and Thea Gilmore—Singer-songwriters of the vaguely folk, vaguely rock and all storytelling school. As a place to start, I’d recommend “Mainstream” and “Water to Sky” for the former, “Alphabet of Hurricanes” and “Mermaid Blues” for the latter. But almost anything will do…
Vitamin String Quartet—Elevator music with a purpose! This general trend of string quartets reinterpreting rock and alternative often seems weak or silly (what, you couldn’t listen to a non-muzak version of freakin’ Coldplay?), but the results here are just so gorgeous; far more Apocalyptica than K-Mart.
Tom Waits and Sting—Not like I ever stopped loving either of them, of course. But with Alice and Blood Money, If on a Winter’s Night and Songs from the Labyrinth, both reinvent or refine themselves: Stripped-down, older, sometimes sadder (Sting, doing Dowland and carols like blues, his own unfamiliarity with new instruments rendering the songs themselves new), sometimes angry and pure as lit gasoline (Waits, doing Noirish small band “standards” and Weimar cabaret with Dada implications).
Tim Eriksen—Things go better with Shape-note Man. This is simply true. I would listen to Eriksen keen the phonebook even if it was a recent version rather than an antiquated one, turning every name and number into a desperate hymn.
Rob Dougan—Best known internationally as “the guy who wrote that cool-ass track in The Matrix” (“Clubbed to Death”, if you’re wondering), this dude is not only also responsible for all the other coolest-ass tracks in that franchise (“Furious Angels”, for example) but also for many other examples of how electronica/house can elevate the dancefloor into an almost ecstatic realm.
Richard Cheese—And on the other hand…here we have a man who takes contemporary tracks of all descriptions and turns them into mordantly jolly lounge songs. Remember the sequence in Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead which was scored to a finger-poppin’ hipster interpretation of Disturbed “Down with the Sickness”? “Oh shit…ooh, ah ha ha ha…you’re gonna DIE!” Yeah. This is that guy. So fucking good.
Florence + the Machine, Imogen Heap, Regina Specktor, Rasputina, The Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer, Jill Tracy and Emilie Autumn—There’s a very particular female vocal range which all of these ladies fit into, to one degree or another. Rasputina and the Dresden Dolls add cellos (always a plus), while Palmer, Specktor and Tracy are piano chanteuses whose touch veers from slammin’ to wispy; Heap does electronica calesthetics, Autumn’s Miss self-elected Goth Immemorial, and Florence + the Machine can occasionally get loud enough to almost put themselves in competition with Faith & the Muse. All provided essential songs for this year.
Patrick Wolf—At his most reduced, meanwhile, Wolf comes across as the male version of any or all of the ladies listed above: Eccentric to a fault, an ambiguously sexual sprite armed with a fiddle and a pantheistic sense that everything around him exists to support his own personalized narrative, whether natural or un-. “Damaris” is still one of this year’s most pure pleasures, for me, however—a seven-minute tragic opera about moles, moors and corpse-love, driven by the relentless beat of rain and thunder.
Murder by Death—Again, a late entry from last year, when their song “Ash” mirrored my story “Sown from Salt” so specifically it was scary. But since everything else I’ve heard from them is equally brilliant, they remain a mainstay—crunchy, powerful cowboy Apocalypse rock.
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer—Similarly, this country-folk duo are pretty much assured gold, no matter where you begin. Fiddle, picking, vocals, Bluegrass and hollerin’, they can prove dancing, musing, a reverie. Gorgeous.
The Supernatural players: Various mullet/metal bands from the 1970s and 80s, plus occasional 90s/’noughties alt-emo—Here’s where fanmixes really come in handy: No way would I really want more Foreigner in my life than the double sucker-punch of “Long, Long Way from Home” and “Urgent”, but these tracks really do seem to fill a void, especially now that I don’t have “a fandom” per se (and am engrossed in trying to create my own).
Adam Lambert—People may recall that while he was competing for the American Idol crown, his rabid fanbase quickly shoved young Mr L. so far up my nose that I became default annoyed with him just on principle. Well, no more. The guy’s got good taste, a great instrument, and his post-Idol product is catchy like flu. Also, it’s just extraordinarily nice to see somebody presenting themselves as proudly gay “out the box” for once, considering the date.
All right—I’m running out of steam again. But here’s the rest of my current faves, grouped somewhat due to aural resemblance:
Peter Belalmy, and other interpreters of Rudyard Kipling songs
Two Steps from Hell, Explosions in the Sky, God is an Astronaut
Sufjan Stevens, Timber Timbre
Stars, Snow Patrol, She Wants Revenge, The Gutter Twins, TV on the Radio
The Decemberists, The Mountain Goats, Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes
Muse, Fall Out Boy, Death Cab for Cutie
The Dead Weather, Crooked Still, Jeffrey Foucault, Otis Taylor, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Cradle of Filth, Altan Urag and Peste Noire
Crunchy, folky, LOUD, popular-yet-neat, obscure, exotic: A cabinet of curiosities. Here’s hoping 2010 provides me with more, or at least more of the same.
For me, when the question is “Music?”, the answer is always: Yes, please. I like almost everything, though always as evaluated on a song-by-song basis; going through my iTunes library, let alone my CD collection, you’ll find examples of everything from extreme crunchy to extreme pop-y, hip-hop (old-school to gangsta), punk, dance, trance/ambient, soundtracks, singer/songwriter stuff of all descriptions. Though I’ve recently noticed that my baseline really does seem to skew fairly specifically towards roots music—folk, country, anything with a wail and a whine to it.
What changed in 2009 is that this was the year I got high-speed Internet, and therefore the year I discovered I could search for/download shared stuff. Over the last couple of years, I’d already gotten into the habit of assembling mixes piecemeal, buying single tracks from iTunes rather than whole albums, etc.; my most reliable way of appreciating music was in transit or while working out, via my iPod. This year, however, I spent a considerably larger chunk of my time stationary in front of my computer, doing genuine work and listening to music which either aided or distracted me from this process. Fanmixes became a staple way to find new material. Sometimes friends responded to stuff I sent them by recommending music they thought would interact well with it, thus opening up new paths of inspiration, and I came to absolutely love that type of conversation. Technology! New, possibly bad, habits! That’s 2009 in a nutshell, for me.
On way or the other, therefore, while saving myself a heck of a lot of money overall, I still think I may well have increased my musical library by a third this year, which makes for a lot of artists and/or tracks to sift through. So this is a sampler, the things which spring most immdiately to mind, mostly reckoned by how often I seem to have played them. Without further ado, then, stuff that’s new (for me):
16 Horsepower and Wovenhand—Cloggin’ foolishness, with a side of Nazarene damnation/salvation porn. Also very good for my characters, especially those who either routinely quote the Bible, or hang around with them as do.
Voltaire—Listed under Industrial at HMV, for some insane reason. Actually it’s the Goth equivalent of Tom Lehrer or Jonathan Coulton, with pitch-black cabaret, mariachi and klezmer elements. My obsession started with “When You’re Evil”, but I’ve liked almost everything I’ve heard since.
Tom McRae and Thea Gilmore—Singer-songwriters of the vaguely folk, vaguely rock and all storytelling school. As a place to start, I’d recommend “Mainstream” and “Water to Sky” for the former, “Alphabet of Hurricanes” and “Mermaid Blues” for the latter. But almost anything will do…
Vitamin String Quartet—Elevator music with a purpose! This general trend of string quartets reinterpreting rock and alternative often seems weak or silly (what, you couldn’t listen to a non-muzak version of freakin’ Coldplay?), but the results here are just so gorgeous; far more Apocalyptica than K-Mart.
Tom Waits and Sting—Not like I ever stopped loving either of them, of course. But with Alice and Blood Money, If on a Winter’s Night and Songs from the Labyrinth, both reinvent or refine themselves: Stripped-down, older, sometimes sadder (Sting, doing Dowland and carols like blues, his own unfamiliarity with new instruments rendering the songs themselves new), sometimes angry and pure as lit gasoline (Waits, doing Noirish small band “standards” and Weimar cabaret with Dada implications).
Tim Eriksen—Things go better with Shape-note Man. This is simply true. I would listen to Eriksen keen the phonebook even if it was a recent version rather than an antiquated one, turning every name and number into a desperate hymn.
Rob Dougan—Best known internationally as “the guy who wrote that cool-ass track in The Matrix” (“Clubbed to Death”, if you’re wondering), this dude is not only also responsible for all the other coolest-ass tracks in that franchise (“Furious Angels”, for example) but also for many other examples of how electronica/house can elevate the dancefloor into an almost ecstatic realm.
Richard Cheese—And on the other hand…here we have a man who takes contemporary tracks of all descriptions and turns them into mordantly jolly lounge songs. Remember the sequence in Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead which was scored to a finger-poppin’ hipster interpretation of Disturbed “Down with the Sickness”? “Oh shit…ooh, ah ha ha ha…you’re gonna DIE!” Yeah. This is that guy. So fucking good.
Florence + the Machine, Imogen Heap, Regina Specktor, Rasputina, The Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer, Jill Tracy and Emilie Autumn—There’s a very particular female vocal range which all of these ladies fit into, to one degree or another. Rasputina and the Dresden Dolls add cellos (always a plus), while Palmer, Specktor and Tracy are piano chanteuses whose touch veers from slammin’ to wispy; Heap does electronica calesthetics, Autumn’s Miss self-elected Goth Immemorial, and Florence + the Machine can occasionally get loud enough to almost put themselves in competition with Faith & the Muse. All provided essential songs for this year.
Patrick Wolf—At his most reduced, meanwhile, Wolf comes across as the male version of any or all of the ladies listed above: Eccentric to a fault, an ambiguously sexual sprite armed with a fiddle and a pantheistic sense that everything around him exists to support his own personalized narrative, whether natural or un-. “Damaris” is still one of this year’s most pure pleasures, for me, however—a seven-minute tragic opera about moles, moors and corpse-love, driven by the relentless beat of rain and thunder.
Murder by Death—Again, a late entry from last year, when their song “Ash” mirrored my story “Sown from Salt” so specifically it was scary. But since everything else I’ve heard from them is equally brilliant, they remain a mainstay—crunchy, powerful cowboy Apocalypse rock.
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer—Similarly, this country-folk duo are pretty much assured gold, no matter where you begin. Fiddle, picking, vocals, Bluegrass and hollerin’, they can prove dancing, musing, a reverie. Gorgeous.
The Supernatural players: Various mullet/metal bands from the 1970s and 80s, plus occasional 90s/’noughties alt-emo—Here’s where fanmixes really come in handy: No way would I really want more Foreigner in my life than the double sucker-punch of “Long, Long Way from Home” and “Urgent”, but these tracks really do seem to fill a void, especially now that I don’t have “a fandom” per se (and am engrossed in trying to create my own).
Adam Lambert—People may recall that while he was competing for the American Idol crown, his rabid fanbase quickly shoved young Mr L. so far up my nose that I became default annoyed with him just on principle. Well, no more. The guy’s got good taste, a great instrument, and his post-Idol product is catchy like flu. Also, it’s just extraordinarily nice to see somebody presenting themselves as proudly gay “out the box” for once, considering the date.
All right—I’m running out of steam again. But here’s the rest of my current faves, grouped somewhat due to aural resemblance:
Peter Belalmy, and other interpreters of Rudyard Kipling songs
Two Steps from Hell, Explosions in the Sky, God is an Astronaut
Sufjan Stevens, Timber Timbre
Stars, Snow Patrol, She Wants Revenge, The Gutter Twins, TV on the Radio
The Decemberists, The Mountain Goats, Iron & Wine and Fleet Foxes
Muse, Fall Out Boy, Death Cab for Cutie
The Dead Weather, Crooked Still, Jeffrey Foucault, Otis Taylor, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Cradle of Filth, Altan Urag and Peste Noire
Crunchy, folky, LOUD, popular-yet-neat, obscure, exotic: A cabinet of curiosities. Here’s hoping 2010 provides me with more, or at least more of the same.
