AI: Music
By I, like many people, absolutely love music. My musical tastes are somewhat eclectic, but most of the music I listen to could be categorized under folk, electronic, or experimental. And I am thankful to have been simply bombarded with phenomenal new music lately!
Some of the recent releases I’ve been listening to include:
- Ani DiFranco’s ¿Which Side Are You On?
- Laura Gibson’s La Grande
- Sinéad O’Connor’s How About I Be Me (And You Be You)
- Anaïs Mitchell’s Young Man In America
- The Cranberries’ Roses
- Kate Havnevik’s You
And multiple new releases leading up to iamamiwhoami’s highly anticipated album (due out in June). I don’t know if any of you have been following iamamiwhoami, but they started as a series of mysterious teaser music videos over two years ago that blossomed into a fantastic audio-visual experience (all for free on YouTube, though you can purchase the releases via iTunes and Amazon).
Anyway, new music is great, but there are some of those albums that are simply amazing to me that I return to year after year and I never get tired of. Here are my top five all-time favorite albums:
5. Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
4. I Speak Because I Can by Laura Marling
3. Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
2. Is This Desire? by PJ Harvey
1. Ys by Joanna Newsom
My #1 pick is the highest played album on my iTunes playlist, clocking in at nearly 300 plays (for the whole album). The others all average in the hundreds of plays.
What’s some recent new music you’ve been listening to? What are your top five all-time favorite albums? What do you like about them?
The Afternoon Inqueery (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Queereka community. Look for it to appear on every Tuesdays, Thurdays and Sundays, at 3pm ET.
Recent music? Not much. I've found my favourite music tends to be from the late sixties to the mid nineties, with a lot of variety. Excuse the lack of umlauts…
Krautrock, from the late sixties to the mid seventies. Can, Faust, Amon Duul, Neu! and, of course, Kaftwerk, although the latter are more electronica than krautrock proper.
Punk, especially hardcore punk, late seventies until the late eighties. Too many to list, but Bad Brains, Husker Du (I wish I'd known that Grant Hart and Bob Mould are gay when I spent my time at hardcore punk gigs), Dead Kennedys and Big Black desrve a special mention.
Modern psychedelia, mid eighties to, well recent, like Spacemen 3 and Spiritualised.
I could go on for far too long, with eighties independent, like My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain, Stereolab, but these should be enough there to see a "noise" thread forming…
With a couple of thousand records (yes, those large black things with a hole in the middle), It's way too hard to pick a top five, but Psychocandy (Jesus and Mary Chain), Atomizer (Big Black), Pioughd (Butthole Surfers), Let It Come Down (Spiritualised) and Lets Play Domination (World Domination Enterprises, with a corking cover of Funky Town on that album) would be among my top twenty.
As far why? I think I shall have to paraphrase Henry from The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Music to rage at to the world to, because it fucked, and it'll never be fixed.
Not the most positive point of view, but the music really does bring some joy to the rage.
New stuff? Jonathan Coulton's new album Artificial Heart, and in paticular the sweet tune Down Today(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQGs8mw3aq4). That thing is an ear worm and has been stuck in my head for days.
TMBG's new album Join Us! is great, as are all their albums. My Favorite of theirs is either Lincoln or Flood.
I like singer song writters, and artists like Marian Call, Regina Spektor, Yael Naiem, Libby Kirkpatrick, Matt the Electrician, and Nellie McKay are rather frequent options.
Mixed in with various NerdCore tracks and Devo.
My heart has a sweet spot for Mumford and Sons' The Cave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJcvLyoAAnk
Ys is also my #1 album, although my favourite song is Colleen from the EP. I also enjoy some other folk or folk-inspired music (Cesaria Evora, La piva dal carnèr, B.E.V.) and have a soft spot for that 1960s Brasilian jazz.
Otherwise I mainly listen to classical music, favourites including Ravel, Monteverdi, Shostakovich, Malipiero, and Vaughan Williams.
I've been listening to Book of Mormon pretty much non-stop for a few weeks. I have tickets already, but the show isn't until the end of January 2013!