Post
by SethAbare » Sun Jul 24, 2005 8:38 pm
Being musically diverse (I really hate that phrase, because people think that being musically diverse just means listening to both rap, and hip hop, more often than not I find people who are "diverse" to be actually just ignorant). I have a backround in classical music, Choral/stage preformance, My mother was a classical violinist for 30 years before quitting and started playing folk music in Alaska.
Growing up, Greatful Dead, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon (graceland), TONS of classical music on the CBC; Later in life my HS friend Chris got me into a lot of Goth, and industrial, NiN, Bauhaus, Front242, some alt rock; Adam Ant, TMBG, basically anything on 120 min and Alternative Nation. I developed a fetish for whiney male singers in my later teens and listened to a lot of REM, and U2, thankfully my friend Chris was a bit more explorative in music and turned me onto orbital. I really picked up a lot of Eltronic Music then, prodigy (before "fat of the land"), Moby, some one hit wonder Rocktronica acts, and tons of remixes of my favorite bands by djs.
Then I joined the army, I was pretty much unprepared for rap/hip hop, having come from communities with very low black/hispanic populations. First rap song I really listened to the words of was "master P's, Jungle n*ggah (yea I censored myself, I don't like that word; I think it should be replaced by something less degrading) Can't say I was very impressed with rap music in general. Then a friend who was also in the army turned me onto some good hip hop, tribe, de la sol, Nas, and a lot of west coast stuff in general.
I spent the next few years in a general slump with music, I was DJing for a production company, but I couldn't find a voice in the music I was playing, it just seemed all a bit shallow to me. Then again I was playing a lot of tunes off of IHR, and other sort of cheesy house labels... I started to see the light later in my "DJ career" and was listening to a lot of detroit, and european techno, but unfortunatly it was too late. The DJ boom ended, and the music that was coming out was getting more and more amature. I guess thats when I started making music, at first with acidpro 2,0 (during my djing career). Mostly just loops and filters. Nothing really special or creative. About 1999 I started using reason, and went off on a bunch of masturbatory projects (mostly junky sounding house, nasty ugly amature with a big ego sort of stuff) Junk.
Then about 2 years ago I went through a bad breakup, got drunk every day and wrote tracks. I think the expressiveness of those tracks drove me to learn more about making them sound better, and since then I spend 3-8 hours a day working on some project.
I'd say what I make is considered "techhouse" or "detroittechno" by most. However I think the label limits the music.
I don't listen to very much music, I feel that if I listen to a lot of "techno" I would end up trying to imitate rather than find my own voice.
So currently the music on my computer is very minimal.
Eels - (discography) nice relaxing band with songs about how crappy life is, but somehow still make u feel good.
Brahms - (Ein Deutches Requiem) More songs about death, and in my opinion one of the best works of music that explores dramatic shifts in mood.
Soul Coughing - (discongraphy) Because this band had one hit, and a bunch of really good songs. The singer is a great poet, not a very good musician, but really has a nack for saying things that creep you out. Very New York (in my opinion)
Ben Folds Five - (discograpgy) A throwback to my whiney white singers, But actually this dude is a really good pianist, prolly one of the best musicians in the "alt-rock" genre.
wow I wrote a lot of crap, I didn't edit for spelling mistakes or stupidity, so take it as you will.
splashtunes.com
Either way, Godflesh truly is a Godlike wall of sound.