Recently I've been listening to ...

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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by ofta »

i don't really enjoy sakamoto on his own, can be kinda introvert & so, but i bought this vinyl ep a few years ago, it's a split with sakamoto & david sylvian, pretty new wave-ish, can highly recommend http://www.discogs.com/Sylvian-Sakamoto ... ter/128061
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Lee »

I've been listening to a lot of 90's music for nostalgia. I even have a new favourite track, Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way. Back in the day I never thought that I would one day like Backstreet Boys music. But then I never actually enjoyed listening to music back in the day. Listening to older music is a firm reminder that music today is complete shit (mostly).
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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S Club 7. Anyone remember these guys? I've been listening to them daily. Especially Never Had a Dream Come True.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by kuchitsu »

The Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Always. Can't get enough of this album. Cool guitars, so impressive/emotional lyrics, singing, and even kinda low sound quality adds to the feel I think.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Bludek »

Never thought anyone listens to 90s music like S club 7 these days :) I remember them, the tv series were sub-par but I watched them, cause I was young :) I still kinda like Bring It All Back by them.

on topic: I am still discovering breakcore and japanese music atm.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by kuchitsu »

What do you guys do when a song gets stuck in your head like crazy? For about a week now I keep remembering I'M BLUE DABUDI DABUDA pretty much every single day and it's getting a bit disturbing lol. This is not the first time this happens, I had an even longer period of OPEN THE DOOR GET ON THE FLOOR EVERYBODY WALK THE DINOSAUR, but at least that song was legitemately cool, whereas this is just annoying xd.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Lee »

S Club 7 recently got back together and are still performing.
90's music overall is pretty cool. I was a 90's kid but didn't really like music until my teens, and it's only in this past year that I've been rediscovering all of these awesome songs. I never thought I'd like S Club 7 though. My past self would laugh at me for that.

As for those annoying songs, I usually listen to them over and over until I either drive it out of my head completely or I eventually like it.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Tigro »

Returned from Pohoda festival, listened live to Prodigy, Sigur Rós, Lola Marsh, Nina Kraviz, and many others. Was quite good experience again.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Zero »

Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

I think F#A#infinity is currently my favorite album by the band but since all of their material has been really solid I might think otherwise soon.

I highly recommend checking them out
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Lee »

The Casuals - Jesamine (1968)
Came across this on YouTube by clicking related videos. Haven't heard this song since I was 9 or something. Awesome song. My new favourite (for now).
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Xiphias »

Other Lives - Rituals (whole album)

Otherwise RadioParadise.com, very nice online radio
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by pawq »

Leprous. Brilliant and very original Norge (I think) band. Kinda on the border between prog Rock and heavy post-rock. Check out their album Coal! Sounds like a soundtrack to some dark and creepy underworld fantasy world.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by 8-ball »

Dance with the Dead

Awesome retro 80s sound!
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Hosp »

Been listening a lot to Oasis (now my most listened album ever, the debut, that is)
Also tried out many major Britpop bands and similar, Blur, Suede, Pulp etc (Supergrass, very good debut album)
Other than that since w.cd down not listened to much new music sadly and just listen PF, Porcupine Tree, Beatles, osv that I already have.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Zweq »

8-ball: mega drive is najs 80s retro for my
hosp: pulp has some najs oke
others: nothing
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Xiphias »

Matt Corby - Telluric
Stumbled upon one song of his on some radio and took a listen to his newest album. Very nice.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Bludek »

Recently I found out it is impsy to find anyone between my friends who listens even remotely close to what I listen to. Sad. I like music a lot.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by FinMan »

That might be because there are no people between your friends?

(sorry, i just had to)

On a serious note, I often had the same problem as well.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by pawq »

In my case, all people I know who listen to similar music are >1000km away.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by kuchitsu »

Sometimes I feel like this means that the person is too stuck in a rather specific sort of music and isn't willing enough to explore other things. Like if you only have long haired men with guitars in your favorites then yes, of course it can be difficult to find many comrades. Dunno if that applies to the mans' cases.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Ruben »

kuchitsu wrote:Sometimes I feel like this means that the person is too stuck in a rather specific sort of music and isn't willing enough to explore other things. Like if you only have long haired men with guitars in your favorites then yes, of course it can be difficult to find many comrades. Dunno if that applies to the mans' cases.
It's mostly because everybody I know only listen to what's played on the radio.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by 8-ball »

In my case, my taste slightly overlaps with that of my friends so it's not like we can't find any common ground but regarding most of the artists I REALLY care about? Nope, nobody has heard of them or bothers listening or commenting when I occasionally share some of their music.

Anyway, I'm quite hooked on Shpongle and Ott lately. Just sublime.
Shpongle - Around The World In A Tea Daze (Ott Remix)
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Bjenn »

I really like the original song but I fell in love with this totally!

Maja Francis (feat. Veronica Maggio) - Space Invades My Mind
http://www.deezer.com/track/117167906?u ... medium=web

There is no version of this on Youtube that isn't recorded live with a cellphone but here is a short teaser by VEVO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rQOL02P__w
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Lukazz »

Carbon Based Lifeforms
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Igge »

Discovered Elliot Smith some years ago, but since re-discovering him last summer I can't stop listening to his music. Such hauntingly beautiful melodies, and soul-crushing lyrics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs5wIJlUK1o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2sfwky4RqQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPsf1Wk_g2o&t=1m22s
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Tigro »

Just returned from Pohoda festival, I worked there as hygiene technician.

This year it was as usual - I didn't recognise a single headliner artist, so I just tried to listen and evaluate. Some went better than expected.
Ylvis - Actually those Norge guys are funny. Great show. What does the fox really say?
M.I.A. - Didn't impress me that much. She stopped her performance after first half, just to be cool.
Beardyman's Masters of Distraction - Amazing loop show, 95% improvising, great tunes, crazy crowd. Dude's a genius. Pretty rad.
alt-J - I was too exhausted after 12h shift, but forced myself to go, because I had good recommendations. And it really was breathtaking. Great artistic work of these guys. Prolly the only band/artist I'm gonna start listening because of Pohoda.
Fallgrapp - Slovak band, but imo worth checking for you guys. Too bad that soundmaster on their stage was shit.
The Ills - Another Slovaks, but internationally acclaimed already. Good party.

Good experience.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by John »

Randomly walked into a music store in Stockholm earlier this week. Ofc they hade some random songs playing while I randomly browsed the records (it was all randomly random). One song caught my ears, I Shazamed it and it turned out to be The War On Drugs - Pain. When I got home I listened to it again, as well as some other songs they've made. Yesterday I placed an order on their upcoming album, A Deeper Understanding on vinyl. I'm not even into music that much ( :o ), that's how much I enjoyed the band :)
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by kuchitsu »

I've been thinking about music and how it compares to other art forms. Interesting discovery: there are tons, like literally hundreds and hundreds of songs that I consider pretty much perfect. But this almost never happens with movies, books, or games, for example. I know many masterpieces in these fields, but usually I still see some room for improvement. Why is that?

A simple answer is that these art forms are typically a lot more elaborate. Of course perfecting a book that takes several hours to read is much harder than perfecting a three minute song. But I feel like there is a more important difference between them and music. Music is very abstract compared to them and it doesn't restrict you as much. Typically it's not about what the author wants you to take from it, it's about what you find in it for yourself. A lot of songs are in some way incomplete until you listen to them. It's a double effort: the creator provides you with a playing field, but it's up to you to fill the holes and finish the piece. Of course in the end that will be a lot more satisfying than reading a book where the writer already prepared the answers for all questions and wants you to learn some specific lessons.

I wonder if you guys will agree.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Ruben »

Music is quite a lot less literal than movies and books, which in some ways is more forgiving (a melody, unlike a character, doesn't need agency). However, it is also much harder to get an intricate insight into the finer details of music, which is why I think a lot of people apply some sort of mysticism to it. I see it all the time in Youtube comments, especially for classical music, people will credit God or some other unknown magical power, and think that the music somehow fell into the composer's head from nowhere, already finished. It's bizarre how people don't realize that music is manufactured, just like books or cars. Nobody thinks there is some magical force giving movies their power, everybody knows that it's all in the script, directing and most importantly the acting. Yet the same people who admire a movie director's decisions are blind to the decisions of a composer. They question why a character in a movie did the things they did, but they don't question why the melody in a song did the things it did.

I think the only way to change this (and you might not want to), is to educate yourself on music theory. It pulls back the veil of mystery, so to speak, but that demystification can understandably be very unappealing to many who just want to enjoy music. But if you wish to understand music, there's no way around it. Listen to it intently, look at scores, learn an instrument, try to make a song yourself, and read about the different processes by which music is created. Sometimes it's meticulously crafted on a sheet of paper, sometimes it's a day's worth of jamming in a sweaty garage. But in my experience, no matter the genre, instrumentation or means of composition, it always evolves slowly from a small idea. You plant a musical seed and the rest grows from there. A small motif, a chord or three, a drum beat, a melody.

I would also challenge your idea that other art forms are more elaborate than music. Sure, making a movie is a logistical nightmare, but in the end most movies hit the same beats, confined to its act structure. By the same token, most music also hit the same beats (pun unintended), but since in pop music those beats are so condensed and refined after hundreds of years of musical evolution, all the 3 minute songs start to sound alike and not very complex. But then listen to prog rock or late romantic music (ca. 1900), and you'll find things that are so mind-boggingly complex you'll have to listen to it tens of times before you can even begin to understand it. Does that ever happen in movies or books? (It might, this is a genuine question). Although that being said, complexity isn't always a virture. A lot of it, especially atonal music, is too harrowing even for me, and I listen to a lot of old shite.

TL;DR: To answer your question, no I don't agree. I can find things that I don't like in most music as well as movies and books, and especially games. Most of my favourite games have massive, glaring horrors in them. I mean, I love Gothic 2, but man, those dragons are rough...
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Blanck Mass albums World Eater and Dumb Flesh.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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kuchitsu wrote: 22 Dec 2017, 16:08 I've been thinking about music and how it compares to other art forms. Interesting discovery: there are tons, like literally hundreds and hundreds of songs that I consider pretty much perfect. But this almost never happens with movies, books, or games, for example. I know many masterpieces in these fields, but usually I still see some room for improvement. Why is that?
If you can see improvements it's because you have enough skills or consciousness about the artform, along with creativity, to improve it. It could be related to your talent in the subject and also to how well it flows with your rythm. It's a subjective perspective about you rather than the artform.
kuchitsu wrote: 22 Dec 2017, 16:08 A simple answer is that these art forms are typically a lot more elaborate. Of course perfecting a book that takes several hours to read is much harder than perfecting a three minute song. But I feel like there is a more important difference between them and music. Music is very abstract compared to them and it doesn't restrict you as much. Typically it's not about what the author wants you to take from it, it's about what you find in it for yourself. A lot of songs are in some way incomplete until you listen to them. It's a double effort: the creator provides you with a playing field, but it's up to you to fill the holes and finish the piece. Of course in the end that will be a lot more satisfying than reading a book where the writer already prepared the answers for all questions and wants you to learn some specific lessons.

I wonder if you guys will agree.
To have an overview over a long script is harder than over a three minute song, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's harder to make perfect. Again it's very subjective, not only about the process of creating the works, but also about how skilled you are in taking part of them. Of course there are logistical advantages to a three minute song, where you can rather easily fit it into the right mood and flow of the day, whereas for a book you will have to fit a lot more hours into your flow.

Personally though I don't know if I can think of any perfect song. There are songs I wouldn't know how to improve because of not having enough skills in those genres, but I would still say it's rather narrow minded to think there is no way of improvement. Anything can be improved if you upgrade yourself.

And as you do upgrade yourself you can also learn to take in the spirit of works of art. In that sense you can find perfection in any form if you are lucky enough to find such works.
Ruben wrote: 22 Dec 2017, 20:43 Music is quite a lot less literal than movies and books, which in some ways is more forgiving (a melody, unlike a character, doesn't need agency). However, it is also much harder to get an intricate insight into the finer details of music, which is why I think a lot of people apply some sort of mysticism to it. I see it all the time in Youtube comments, especially for classical music, people will credit God or some other unknown magical power, and think that the music somehow fell into the composer's head from nowhere, already finished. It's bizarre how people don't realize that music is manufactured, just like books or cars. Nobody thinks there is some magical force giving movies their power, everybody knows that it's all in the script, directing and most importantly the acting. Yet the same people who admire a movie director's decisions are blind to the decisions of a composer. They question why a character in a movie did the things they did, but they don't question why the melody in a song did the things it did.
Why would it be harder to get insight into music than other works of art? It might be harder for certain people if they have less talent, but I don't really see why it would be like that generally.

When people credit God it's probably because at that moment they feel connected spiritually through the work of art. The way you write about it makes it sound as if you have missed out on such an experience - which can be truly awesome and wonderful. It's not really related to how well a person's insight into the process of creation is. Just because there is a process behind creation doesn't in any way magically remove a spiritual connection. Also, I definitely question why things happen in music.
Ruben wrote: 22 Dec 2017, 20:43 I think the only way to change this (and you might not want to), is to educate yourself on music theory. It pulls back the veil of mystery, so to speak, but that demystification can understandably be very unappealing to many who just want to enjoy music. But if you wish to understand music, there's no way around it. Listen to it intently, look at scores, learn an instrument, try to make a song yourself, and read about the different processes by which music is created. Sometimes it's meticulously crafted on a sheet of paper, sometimes it's a day's worth of jamming in a sweaty garage. But in my experience, no matter the genre, instrumentation or means of composition, it always evolves slowly from a small idea. You plant a musical seed and the rest grows from there. A small motif, a chord or three, a drum beat, a melody.
I can agree that education pulls back the veil of mystery. What it does is to let your mundane mind get to know the art, and so you are no longer connected to it in a deeper sense, but you have made it part of the mundane and boring part of the world generated by the intellect. Again, this doesn't demystify the spiritual connection, but only those material (or in this case aesthetic) works. If you let education or your process of creation remove the magic of your art you will lose out on magic and also not be able to produce that magic. It is true that magic takes more effort to achieve the more skilled one becomes, but if one gives that up one becomes just another dry technician.

This all is also related to the perfection issue, because the more skilled you become the harder it is to find those perfect works. Yet this is also what makes it beautiful - even what makes life beautiful. And this is also what spirituality is about, if you didn't know. Though the work of art that spirituality deals with is life itself from a greater existential perspective.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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I just don't see why people have to shroud things in mystery and magic in order to enjoy it. I know the process of a composer, but that doesn't diminish my admiration for a piece of music, quite the contrary in fact. Sometimes when I listen to something I hear something that's truly beautiful, not because it's technically advanced, but simply that it sounds nice to my ears. It doesn't have to be magic to sound good. That's also why I can't listen to pop music anymore, they use the same cheap tricks over and over again, and at some point you just get bored of it.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by ribot »

Nobody is arguing that it has to be magic for it to be good. You on the other hand have made no arguments for why you are shielding it off. The only effect of that is that you are missing out on using that part of your brain because you are sticking to that idea.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Does music theory actually give any understand about how/why music works? Imo to get an understanding in that aspect you would want to study the neuroscience of music.

Is music abstract? I don't think there is a definite yes or no answer to this. Some music is abstract, some is not, and it is also subjective. We don't all have the same image in our head for the same sound, so does that make it abstract by definition?

I really hate when people use the word talent about music. Like when someone says 'He is such a talented guitar player' or similar. It underplays all the hard work he has gone through. Also I don't actually care how good you are at playing the guitar. Music for me is not some trick. You could be a really sick skateboarder and make a great trick video and it would only be worth watching once for me. There is no replayability for me in that.

Is music magic? No, there is no such thing as magic. 音 楽 は 魔 法 で は な い (Sorry kuchi)
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

Post by Lukazz »

8-ball wrote: 5 Jan 2018, 13:53 Blanck Mass albums World Eater and Dumb Flesh.
We seem to have quite similar tastes.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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danitah wrote: 7 Jan 2018, 13:14Does music theory actually give any understand about how/why music works?
Yes, very. Music is subjective of course, and nobody knows quite WHY we like it so much, but that's why it's such an interesting topic.

However, HOW it works is extremely well known. Over centuries of musical evolution, there are certain things composers discovered which they liked, and which audiences responded well to, and those things have been almost hardcoded into at least western music. Like how you can use dominant chords to place a tonal center (or even move it around) in a very natural sounding way. Think Bach, Mozart, Louis Armstrong and Backstreet Boys. Then there is modal music which uses conventional chords but don't care about using dominant chords and other tonal conventions "correctly." Think Wagner (and he really was the one to popularise this), Hans Zimmer, Miles Davies, John Coltrane and The Beatles. Then there's also atonal music (Schönberg, Webern, Ives) and sometimes something more in-between (Stravinsky). And that's just talking about tonality. Knowing some music theory and history can give you some pointers to understand the techniques these composers used, and what they were trying to achieve with their music.

That being said, you don't have to understand anything about music theory to make a song; you've already been taught it surreptitiously by listening to it. Tell a western person to write a song, and it'll sound like western music, tell an Indonesian to write a song, it'll sound like Indonesian music, which I'm gonna assume eploys completely different conventons than western music (although I don't actually know this). Their scale of choice might be impossible to play on a piano even, because a piano is just the worst possible compromise ever and probably doesn't have even half of the required notes, as they would fall somewhere between the keys.

I have a lot I want to say about this subject and I'm trying to be brief, but it's hard not to suddenly puke out a wall of text. Sorry about that =D

Anyway, I think the same is true for almost any field of study; you have no way of knowing how deep the rabbit hole really is before you've already jumped in. Music comes very natural to us, and that sometimes makes it seem simple. Yes, sometimes it is simple, but sometimes it's also mind-boggingly complex. There's a five-part invertible counterpoint fugue (with five seperate themes) at the end of Mozart's 41st Symphony. To most people that's just some gibberish words, but to someone who has studied counterpoint (a small subset of music theory) that sounds positively alarming and completely impossible. Indeed, nobody else has even attempted such a fugue, before or since. It is an astonishing feat of musical engineering, one which you have no chance in hell of accomplishing unless you, like Mozart, have a perfect understanding of music theory, ass well as amazing intuition and imagination, and a great ear for melody.

It also sounds bloody fucking brilliant.

From 10:30 to 11:00 in this video, though I emplore you to listen to the whole thing to get it in context. Each theme has it's own shape, which makes it super easy to see what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiX3z_fOR5k
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Sorry for the late reply, I was going to reply to this but forgot.
Ruben wrote: 12 Jan 2018, 08:03Yes, very. Music is subjective of course, and nobody knows quite WHY we like it so much
Actually we do know quite much about it, see wiki:Cognitive neuroscience of music

This was really my point, by 'How does music work' I didn't really mean 'How do you make music'.
Ruben wrote: 12 Jan 2018, 08:03Over centuries of musical evolution, there are certain things composers discovered which they liked, and which audiences responded well to, and those things have been almost hardcoded into at least western music.
While this is true, there's plenty of relatively popular and critically acclaimed music that don't follow these established rules at all.

Your post was a nice read about music theory, thanks.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Breakfast in America - Supertramp

Amazing album, can't believe I haven't heard it before (apart from The Logical Song which I think most people have heard without realising).

https://open.spotify.com/album/1zcm3UvHNHpseYOUfd0pna
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How have you not heard it before 8O

Amazing album :)
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Astral Projection - Chaos (Bizzare Contact Remix)

https://youtu.be/DsTZ1LNykhU
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Juno Reactor - Guardian Angel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZmbGaII1KM
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Secret Garden Dior tribute. Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence

https://youtu.be/Np941_hPJm0
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Dream Traveler - Time https://youtu.be/WLfdTh4u5-0
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Some cool artists I discovered recently:

Shuggie Otis - a prodigy that recorded 3 impressive soul/rock albums by the age of 21 and even was approached by The Rolling Stones, but then suddenly quit music for a few decades (kind of like the Sugar Man). There is a certain smooth feeling in his songs that's perfect for chilling in the evening. Try Aht Uh Mi Hed.

Pharoah Sanders - he used to play with John Coltrane and eventually started making his own albums, taking the idea of spiritual jazz even further. He inserts some really chaotic segments in his works that might seem intimidating at first but with an open mind you can learn to appreciate them, and there are still enough melodic parts to help you maintain sanity. Try The Gathering.

Offering - another project by Christian Vander of the Magma (that otherworldly French progressive rock band with their own language) fame, and I can't believe I'm saying this but I think I love it even more. It focuses on the jazzy and vocal aspects that were my favorite part of Magma, and I like how many songs sound like one long chant. Try A Fiïèh.

Tin Hat Trio - hmm, these guys made me realize that I'm really interested in bands with no drums (which seem surprisingly rare). Not having to listen to dum dum dum all the damn time is so pleasant and refreshing, it results in a completely different experience. Anyway, they make neoclassical/avant-garde kind of music that sounds a bit like something you could hear in a historical movie except it's more complex. Try Waltz of the Skyscraper.
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Re: Recently I've been listening to ...

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Michal Wilczynski (Mickeal) - The Mist Above the Sea

https://youtu.be/BrxwnSeDydw
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