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I have, and have had, many hobbies throughout my life. To name a few, I once collected rocks and gems, did world-building and creative writing, and I still enjoy skiing, tasting fine spirits, and solving Rubik's cubes. With all of that said, however, I think my favourite and most important hobby is listening to, playing, and making music. Explaining why music is so important is beyond the scope of this post, but I believe everyone should be listening to as many different pieces of music as they can.
I consider myself to have a reasonably broad, yet eccentric taste in music. I listen to a handful of electronic music genres, a fair variety of rock and metal music, a LOT of video game OSTs (as well as some film scores), and a smattering of classical, pop, and jazz thrown in for good measure. The one thing that unites all of these for me, however, is that I tend to prefer music that isn't afraid to do something weird.
In this post, I will be recounting what I roughly consider my top-ten favourite albums/EPs. This list does not contain any film or video game OSTs (I might make that list another time), nor licensed soundtracks or compilation albums. I have also limited this list to one release per artist. I will also be linking to DRM-free ways to obtain these albums where I can. (They're all over HTTP, but what can you do?) Finally, you will probably not like half of the records on this list. That's fine, a lot of these releases are aimed at a specific niche of listener and could be described as 'acquired tastes'.
So, take my opinions with a grain of salt and let's dive in!
If you like house or electro, you need to listen to this. I've been an enjoyer of deadmau5 since I first listened through Random Album Title a few years ago. I highly enjoy that album, as well as while(1<2). Random Album Title has an excellent selection of tracks (including my favourite deadmau5 song, Brazil) and while(1<2) flows well as a full experience. For Lack of a Better Name, however, does both.
This albums starts off with a fairly high intensity, then winds its way back down halfway through before slowly ramping back up to the ending. The notable tracks on this album for me include Ghosts n Stuff, Strobe, The 16th Hour, and Soma. I think Soma is a super underrated cut from this album, with the atmosphere it creates being mysterious and almost melancholy and mournful. The 16th Hour acts perfectly as a bridge between Lack of a Better Name and Strobe along with being a great track in its own right. The first two tracks I mentioned get a lot of coverage already so I won't go into too much detail on those.
This is the first album on this list that I expect to turn people away, because it's abrasive, bizarre, and quite frankly ridiculous. With that said, you should give it a try anyway because it's such a fun listen. Try to imagine grindcore, drum and bass, jazz, and dubstep got thrown in a wood chipper and came out the other side wearing clown masks and honking clown horns in your face for twenty minutes.
As stupid as I just made it sound, there is some seriously good music here. The title track probably gives the best overall impression of the record, with fast, synchronised drums and sax, growling and screeching synths, perfectly timed and executed comedic breaks and an epic sax solo near the end. Meanwhile the next track, google your own death, has a surprisingly sombre start and end, separated by a mid section with inspiring synth patches and a pounding kick drum. Every single track here has something interesting to offer and it keeps pulling the rug from under your feet. I can't get enough of this thing.
As I said above, I enjoy music that isn't afraid to be weird or different. One such corner of music is noise. This kind of music is not easy to get into for most people, as the whole point is that it tries to distance itself from more conventional genres. For this reason, I believe one of the best ways to start in noise is to listen to 'normal' music with noise elements added in, so you can have the contrast to better understand your attitudes towards it. There are many different starting points I could suggest based on your background, but for now I'll just stick to this one.
Full of Hell is my favourite grindcore band, although they also incorporate sludge metal into their sound, as well as noise. grindcore is a very chaotic and lo-fi genre of metal, which is why I find that incorporating elements of noise music work particularly well in this context. Full of Hell are no strangers to this concept, having done it since their beginnings, so who better to collaborate with than the king of Japanoise, Merzbow? The production is next-level, the riffs on tracks like Burst Synapse and Thrum In The Deep make me want to headbang until my neck snaps, and the vocal performances never disappoint. These tracks are among the heaviest, most face-melting music you will ever hear.
If you're a music hipster, you've probably known about Death Grips for a while now. I only really started listening to them last year, but they quickly rose up my personal rankings. Their brand of harsh, punky, industrial, and experimental hip-hop has highly appealing to their cult following since their debut in 2011. I would consider Exmilitary (their first full-length release) my second favourite record of theirs, but as for my number one, I have to go with Money Store.
This whole record has so much going on that you really need to listen to it more than once, read the lyrics, and then listen again. The wordplay, verses, and hooks on every track are all insanely high-quality. The production is so bizarre and yet so well executed. The sample choices work beautifully and the beats are top-notch, ranging from atmospheric and colourful to grating and ear-pounding. Tracks like Get Got, The Fever, I've Seen Footage, and Hacker would go on to become iconic for not just the group, but for industrial hip-hop as a whole. This was one of the most significant music releases of the previous decade.
And now for something completely different.
There are many great prog-rock bands out there: Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard just to name a few. They may all be great, but my personal favourite is Rush. There's a lot of high points in the band's discography, with some of my preferred records being 2112 and Fly by Night. I think all of their releases are good, but they all still have a few tracks I tend to skip through when re-listening. All of them except for Moving Pictures.
Rush's most important release may have been 2112, but Moving Pictures is by far their highest-quality. The tracklist is flawless, proudly boasting the classics Tom Sawyer and YYZ. The songwriting is good at telling stories in tracks like Red Barchetta, The Camera Eye, and Witch Hunt. Finally, this album features my favourite Alex Lifeson guitar solo in my favourite Rush song (and possibly favourite prog-rock song): Limelight. I don't see enough people talking about this song and that is a tragedy. Seriously, if you have never heard it, stop reading this and go listen to it.
OK, back to the weird stuff.
SUNN O))) (pronounced 'sun') is a drone metal duo known for their absurdly loud live shows and for releasing 20+ minute songs of occasionally strumming power chords. I jest, but their music truly is an experience. I highly recommend anyone reading this to grab some good headphones, turn off all the lights, close your eyes, and listen to any of their records. I'm personally quite fond of Life Metal, White2, ØØVOID, and as was already given away by the heading, Black One.
Each of SUNN's O))) (seriously, how do you pluralise that?) go in slightly different directions on top of the usual droning and all-enveloping guitars. In this case, Black One incorporates elements of black metal and noise into the abyssal soundscapes. The black metal influences pervade the whole project while the noise is mostly concentrated on the track Cursed Realms (Of the Winterdemons). The entire record is probably SUNN O)))'s (is that better?) darkest-sounding album, with tracks that sound unrelentingly oppressive and others that sound much more melancholic. The atmosphere drips from every pore on this project, just waiting to consume you.
This EP makes me sad. Not because the music sounds sad, but because 憂鬱 (pronounced 'yu-utsu', for the benefit of those who don't speak Japanese) took this EP off their official release pages, meaning that there is no official release for it. The tracks Clear and Slow got remixes on their self-titled EP, but I think they don't sound as good as the originals. This all makes me sad because I / O is some of the best chillwave I have ever heard, and will ever hear, in my life.
Others who listen to genres like chillwave or vaporwave will already be familiar with the 'vibe' such songs usually possess. Sometimes it comes across as comedic, and other times it's genuine. If I could only pick one set of songs to show someone what that vibe is, it would be this. If I could only pick ONE song, it would be the third track, Slow. 5 tracks and 20 minutes may not be long enough to some people, but that only makes this EP a superb example of quality over quantity. It's still floating around in cyberspace, listen to it while it's still there.
Still an EP, still only about 20 minutes, but this one DOES triy to be sad. Haunted is a solo black metal project with a very particular blend of genres that produces a distinctly sad and ghostly sound. Haunted combines elements of post-black metal, atmospheric black metal, DSBM, and blackgaze, along with vocals that sound like a ghost whispering as loud as it can at you from the other side of a room. The atmosphere it creates truly does sound like it's Haunted.
Haunted has multiple EPs available, but this one stands above the rest for being the first to truly capture the sound that I love. The production sounds similar to other black metal records with a lo-fi angle, but this one sounds much softer. The guitar lines and harmonies sound beautifully sad and sorrowful, with the reverb-drenched vocals sounding like a lamenting call from beyond the grave. This release is truly a unique gem in the world of black metal.
The last two albums in this list will seem very tame compared to what preceded them. At least, they will in terms of intensity, because this record fits into a fairly novel genre. Midwest emo is essentially a fusion between emo and math rock, containing all the angst of the former as well as the intricacies and subtlety of the latter. All of this is just a preface to me stating that this is the quintessential Midwest emo record.
Most people who know about this album know it through the iconic song Never Meant. I find that somewhat funny, as I don't think it's even close to being the best song on the record. (If you ask me, it's Honestly?) If you like Never Meant, you will love the rest of this record. When you need it, this album is the one to play when you need to curl up in bed a have a nice, long cry. I've never felt so much warmth, and so many chills at the same time.
Despite all the strangeness I have admitted to liking so far, my favourite music genre of all time is pop-punk. It may not be as subtle or strange or thought-provoking as other genres, but at the end of the day, it's what I enjoy listening to the most. One way to think of pop-punk is that it conveys the feeling of being a happy teenager. I suppose that would make metalcore something that conveys the feeling of being an unhappy teenager. If so, then the band A Day To Remember conveys the feeling of being happy AND unhappy as a teenager, which was exactly how I felt as a teenager listening to them for the first time.
Can you see where this is going?
A Day To Remember is my favourite band of all time, and probably always will be. Homesick is my favourite album from this band, so it's only natural that it would be my favourite album of all time. The pop-punk moments are full of energy and positivity and the metalcore moments are full of energy and negativity. This record contains some of the most iconic songs in both metalcore AND pop-punk. There isn't a single track on this record I don't love to death and can't sing/scream along to from memory. The entire album flows perfectly from start to finish, with every track still able to stir up the same feelings I felt when i first heard them. I really can't do it justice. I will love this album forever.
Those are my ten favourite music releases of all time. If any of these change, I'll make another post about it. Hopefully my other posts won't end up as long as this because I AM VERY TIRED.