Indefinable qualities of sound

Day 393

I really love music, but there's a good reason why I stopped using song titles for the names of my blog entries. In a way it started to feel really disingenuous because I wasn't using names of songs I was really digging at the time--just songs that I'd happened to listen to recently. I was running out of music that I really enjoyed. It's been a long time since I've listened to an album that really wowed me. Honestly, not since Cloudkicker's Subsume has a new album really impressed me a lot--and I don't expect to find albums like that every day, but it would be nice to listen to something new that I really really enjoy. The trouble is that I don't particularly know what I'm looking for.

In the past I was really into heavy and extreme music. I'll still listen to music that straddles that line on occasion, but it's definitely not what makes up the better part of my listening patterns. I'd be much more likely to listen to something slow-paced and meditative (while still crushingly heavy) like Isis than listen to really frenetic and aggressive music. I say this without dismissing music that falls under that category because I'm sure there's still some stuff out there like that that I'd really enjoy--but it's not typically what really clicks with me. The problem I've been having is that I've gone through this phase where I'm redefining a lot of different aspects of myself and it makes me wonder just what kind of music really does speak to me. I still have my old favorites and they will probably remain so for a long time. Unfortunately, Isis has been broken up for a number of years and Joanna Newsom hasn't released a new album since 2010's Have One On Me. This was an album I greatly enjoyed but it was a marked departure for 2006's Ys, possibly my favorite album of all time.

Aesop Rock hasn't released an album since Skelethon, which is admittedly more recent than works from the aforementioned artists, having been released only a couple years ago. Still, while it was definitely a great album that I still enjoy to this day, I don't consider it to have nearly the longevity of his best album, Labor Days, released all the way back in 2001. It had a dreamlike sense of fantasy to it, far removed from the crisp precision of None Shall Pass and Skelethon. I'm not opposed to an artist evolving his sound and to be honest I still quite enjoy his work--but I wouldn't mind if he dipped back into production styles more similar to his older material.

I feel like I need to break into an entirely new genre. I've listened to a lot of metal and hip-hop over the years with a fair bit of dabbling in indie rock, folk, and electronic music. I'm not sure where else there is to go from here other than straight up pop music. There's some of that that I really like but most of the stuff I hear on the radio grates on me immensely. I do really enjoy video game music, some of which is relatively straightforward vocal-centric pop. Shoji Meguro's Persona soundtracks immediately spring to mind. These soundtracks are chock full of absurdly catchy and memorable vocal tunes with largely nonsensical English. I don't feel even the slightest bit ashamed to listen and enjoy these songs--but there's only so much of that kind of thing available to me.

I just don't know where else to look.