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yiannis

Your main genre

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It seems that most of us listen to more than one genre, myself included. The question is, what genre to you consider your "main", the one you think you'll always come back to? For example, I started listening to music consciously with metal, and that was the only genre I listened to for some years. Then I moved on to heavy rock, but I still considered metal my main genre. That changed when I first listened to the Ozrics, after which time I started getting into psychedelic music, from The Beatles to Astral Projection. I considered all kinds of psychedelia my main genre at the time - yes that was very broad but I think we all more or less understand what I looked for in music. Nowadays I think I've finally found "my sound", what I reckon will stay with me as the music I'll probably enjoy the most and always come to for the rest of my years, in most of the different aspects of psychedelic downtempo. It's already been longer than any other genre before that I've enjoyed it. I can still get excited about my metal and goa, but regardless of how long I'll spend listening obsessively to another genre (and it can be months), I'll eventually look for my psychill fix to feel whole again. So is psybient your main genre, or if not, what is? Feel free to tell your musical story if you like.

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Nice topic!

 

I was drawn to electronic music early in my student life, mostly by the sounds of Prodigy. So, for the first couple of years I was consciously listening to that rave/hardcore sound of the early 90s (and a good deal of happy hardcore as well). Then, during high school, a friend of mine randomly bought a couple of compilations, Rave Mission vol. 3 and Behind The Eye vol. 2. What a paradigm shift... I was instantly hooked to the sounds of trance music! So for the next few years I was happily exploring the brand new world of trance, goa and psychedelic music. My new favorites were Hallucinogen, Juno Reactor, Cosmosis, Doof, MFG etc.

Around the year 1998 I was starting to feel a bit nostalgic for the old days of rave and breakbeats. So I was shuffling through vinyls in my favorite record store at the time and the moment a Good Looking Records vinyl touched the needle I knew it... It was love at first listen! I had discovered the lush, spacious sounds of atmposheric drum & bass. What a sound!! From that day till now this aesthetic speaks directly to my inner being. This mellower approach to music influenced my listening habits a lot, so I consciously began to replace psytrance with psychill. First it was Mystery of the Yeti and Shpongle and then quickly diversified to Bluetech, Solar Fields, Saafi Brothers and Makyo, to name a few. Dropping psytrance might have to do with growing older I suppose. Then again, I was never really moved by hard & noisy drum & bass either so I guess my mellower side prevailed early in my life! So, by 2002 I was mainly listening to atmospheric drum & bass and psychill/ambient. I was always curious for artists that would try to merge aspects of these two styles but to no avail (...which eventually led me to try it out myself and thus the One Arc Degree project was born).

Yet another paradigm shift happened around the year 2006. Belatedly, I had discovered the demanding, experimental sounds of Autechre. This much more introverted, artificial kind of sound was tickling my brain in a different way and that felt fresh and original to me. So for the next few years I was discovering old gems form artists like Plaid, Aphex Twin, Alva Noto and others. 

What impresses me today is that the boundaries between styles are gone. You can find daring artists that manage to skillfully blend elements of all these different approaches in an artful way. And that really excites me!

 

PS: One detour I have taken during all these years has to do with a trip I took to Oslo. There I happened to attend a concert by a psychobilly band called Mad Sin. That was a crazy experience, raw energy combined with b-movie/punk aesthetic. That concert urged me to explore the psychobilly sound a bit and from there go back to rockabilly and, more importantly, surf rock. I had never listened to rock music in my life but surf rock won me over!

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I don't have a "main genre" per say, i listen to alot of diferent genres, and i don't think i have one which i can call "favourite". Nowadays what i listen mostly is Hip Hop, Metal/Rock & Psybient, and it really depends on my mood really, one thing is certain is that if i can i always have music on 24/7 :) In my teen years i was all about Metal, but once i got older i started venturing into other genres, i started my electronic journey with "The Prodigy" & "Enigma", then came Hip Hop and so on, i still own alot of Reggae, Ska albums as well, even though i don't listen to it as much as i did back in the day, i'm also a country music fan as well...but by the end of the day those 3 genres are what i end up listening to the most, some of my favourite bands are Tool, The Mars Volta, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle and so on..i'm also a big hip hop fan, for the past days that's what i've been listening to the most, mainly Yelawolf, which is one of my favourite artist out there now

 

 

Right now this is what i'm listening to:

 

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Dirt by Alice in Chains is an amazingly crafted album. The double vocals are peerless in metal. And I still like Tool a lot, some of Lateralus' lyrics are very close to the spiritual values of psychedelia, especially Parabol/Parabola.

AIC was a great band, don't really listen to them anymore, but they do have some great music....Lateralus is my favourite Tool album, very spiritual band in my opinion, and one of the best live bands out there

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I grew up in the UK so acts like the Prodigy and breakbeat/drum & bass genres were my inital gateway out of Rock and into electronic music, but it was only untill around 2000 when Trance/Progressive music came along and changed my life forever.

I am still as in love with it now as I was when I first laid ears on it. Platipus records, HOOJ Choons, Positiva, Anjunabeats, The Global Underground series and loads of Sasha & Digweed mixes... so many good labels releasing such quality music from 1995 - 2005. Trance slowly declined around 2008 and then took a huge hit when the EDM bandwagon came along, but there is still so much good stuff being released today, you just have to look harder.

I'm talking about John 00 Fleming and his JOOF Recordings. Serious Trance music with healthy slabs of techno and face melting psy-trance thrown into the creative process. Thank god for this man! Anyway, I hold Psybient at equal quality to Trance music, and as I get older I move more and more towards the psychedelic sounds, but Trance will always be my number 1 love!

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"Open your mind and heart"

 

Does that include an openness to a broader range of music? Disappointed to read this forum is intended for sub120 music, given that psytrance or even psytechfunk kicks off around 135, it might be that a crucial sweet spot is being ignored. Also, there's a LOT of psychedelic music made outside of accepted 'psybient' genre boundaries. In particular it appears that even permitted psybient producers already make music that does not meet criteria imposed. I have a genuine concern about 'ethno' tokenism too - it might be hugely surreal for a native speaker to hear misunderstood snippets of their culture in amongst a soundtrack. Also, I'm concerned about 'danceable' being perceived as a necessary and desirable feature of the soundtrack for an alternative/chill space - as MixMasterMorris quips, it's also time to lie down and be counted. Besides, who makes the call that a reggae tune is 80bpm, if listeners want to skank along at 160. Music without boundaries please. Genres are soooo 20th century, don't you think?

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oceanz. 

 

most of us like different styles of music. However the idea of this project is to highlight ambient, chillout, psybient, downtempo music.

 

i don't know if you are noticed, but we have special subforum that is called Uptempo and other Music. I invite you to read it :) .

 

As for music in chillout spaces at events, i think that is nice to have variety, to have both meditative music and danceable. In my opinion reggae and dub music can have they place in chill areas.

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and it's wonderful to create a space to share info/build a community etc.  I'm just being negative out of frustration that music/scenes could be different somehow - promoting more unity rather than creating divisions - I worry that establishing a fairly narrow definition of 'psybient' genre that we loose a healthy sprinkle of diversity.  For instance, is it odd that JDilla beats wouldn't generally be considered as psybient - but many artists inspired by underground hip-hop are allowed?  Or what if, in a chill space, the vibe shifts to more danceable activity and there's a response to 120ish house bpms, but our scene has little available music to meet that need?  

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AArexHSyi4 

"our time is a time for crossing barriers, for erasing old categories, for probing around..."

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WUARsxfJyQ

 

I think there's potential, to find a herb-loving community at the heart of such a wide range of tunes eh - together we are strong, unified.  I mean sure, not all listeners/makers toke, but it must be acknowledged that Cannabis is part of much of humanity's connection with music - from musicians of Joujouka, reggae, hip-hop, jungle, the Beatles, stoner rock to Shpongle with their piano length vaporiser bag. 

 

It's a shame a crowd at an event wouldn't get a chance to dig this TomMiddleton remix too (who's out about being a shroomster), just because he doesn't fit in with requirements to be psybient.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hOQTwqNkOo

 

I mean it might make it harder work for selectors to consider a wider range of music, but the alternative of a scene as fixed as psytrance is worth resisting.  David Byrne writes that context is a big part of creativity - so if the gigs for psytrance require a particular bassline, tempo and range of sounds then we get lots of generic genre based music and it would be a shame if 'psybient' becomes similarly restrictive.  I'm sorry to be critical of the scene already but I think it could be less isolated from the rest of the musical landscape.  I'm mindful of not contributing any positivity and heading offline...peace out, d 

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Oceanz, I see where you're coming from and especially your very last argument is absolutely spot on. However, I think that it depends on how you view genres. Scene policing is definitely restrictive, not to mention arbitrarily self-righteous, and applies more to people whose identity lies in their true-to-the-roots loyalty. Personally, I use genres more as general descriptions of what an artist or release sounds like. If it contains elements of a genre that I generally enjoy, I know I'm more likely to find it to my liking; likewise some tags warn me of potential elements that I don't generally appreciate. Now in the vast sea of new releases, I find that really helpful. I am aware of the fact that I might be losing some releases that I could possibly enjoy in this way, but tags are neutral, it is the listener that gives them positive or negative connotations. Therefore, if at some point I find myself enjoying something that I didn't used to, I can use those same tags I avoided in the past to dig deeper into a particular sound.

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