So THIS is where you all are.
 

Hello everyone! I'm an archivist and historian managing an independent music library. Was feeling hopeless about society's apathy towards music history and I'm hoping this forum will give me a greater perspective.

Favorite genres include the following:

(Please pardon the sub-genre redundancies - I'm simply attempting to cover all potential related search terms)

Furniture Music
Process and Chance Music
20th Century and Modern Classical
Avant-Garde / Experimental Music
Ambient, Space, and Drone Music
Electroacoustic / Electronic Music of the 1950s-70s
The Second Viennese School
Kosmische Musik
Free / Avant-Garde Jazz, Bebop, and Modal Jazz
IDM & Glitch
The Canterbury Scene
The Berlin School
Slowcore & Shoegaze Music
Chillwave/glo-Fi/Hypnagogic Pop
Post-Rock
Musique concrète / Tape Music / Noise
Funk
Downtempo (mmm... NinjaTune...)
Outsider Music
and Post-War Minimalism

Top 10 Artists:

So hard to narrow it down, but here's my all-time Top Ten:

- Brian Eno (father of contemporary ambient music and the Long Now Foundation)
- Karl Hyde (founding member of electronic legend, Underworld and head of the Tomato Design Collective)
- Fred Deakin (half of Lemon Jelly and owner of the Airside Design Group)
- Karlheinz Stochkausen
- Luigi Russolo (author of the Futurist Manifesto, The Art of Noises)
- Don Van Vliet of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
- Tom Waits (gravel-throated troubadour extraordinaire)
- Miles Davis (because Miles Davis.)
- The KLF (for their conceptual and Situationist art more than their music)
- and John Cage (for being the most important musical figure of his century)

Top 10 Desert Island LPs:

Brian Eno - Music For Airports (my first encounter with ambient sound)

Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman (the first recording I ever heard which wasn't top 40 radio music)

Lemon Jelly - Lost Horizons (the world's greatest downtempo LP)

The KLF - Chill Out (the sound of driving across the country after a weekend rave)

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (neo-Dadaist masterpiece)

Tom Waits - Raindogs (a perfect album.)

Dr John - Gris Gris (the mad shaman of swampy voodoo music)

Miles Davis - In a Silent Way (because it makes time stand still)

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops 9LP Set (because it makes you forget that time even exists)

and for #10, I'm going to cheat - The Klaus Schulze Ultimate Edition (a 50-disc box set from the grand master of Berlin School ambient synth music... released as a single unit.)

Looking forward to stimulating conversation in the community!

Welcome aboard! Some good stuff on your lists there—which is always nice—and some stuff I'm unfamiliar with—which is even better! :)

Welcome. I love the Disintegration loops. We definitely interpret them differently, though.

Greetings Janszoon! I joined the site when I stumbled upon the Experimental forum, and I'll be happy to discover some deeper cuts I may not had heard of before, and to likewise return the favor for members of the group.

Whoa.
Sup.

I'm from New York too. Po town.

So tell me about Furniture Music. I'm not familiar with that term.

Welcome mate, Beefheart and Cage are two of my all time favorites. Stockhausen, Eno, Waits, Basinski, Dr. John, Russolo, and Davis are all great too.

I think he's referring to the form of background music to complement the furniture or style of a given room or with directions on what is to be on stage with the performer (at least that's my understanding of it) that Erik Satie created. Satie is the only one that I know who makes it though.

Frownland (awesome name) is spot-on. Though I've applied the term to similar "sonic wallpaper" albums and projects.

Eno's 77 Million Paintings and Robert Rich's Somnium both function well for passive-listening as part of the room.

...provided that the room puts you to sleep.

I've just posted a few of my favorite ambient records to the Official Ambient Thread and similarly inspired works in the classical group. I'd love to hear everyone's input if you're a fan of the genre.

yes cool I like this guy

ambient is the god damn bees

Fantastic lists. Welcome to MB.

Lol'd at that #10 LP. You seem very rad, and there is significant overlap in our tastes.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I just spent 20 minutes building a Chonology of Early Electronic Sound (1959-1971) in the Electronica section. I thought users might enjoy a guided tour of early and experimental electronic and computer music.

Unfortunately after embedding all the album art I found that I can't do so until I've posted 15 times, so I'm going to get to work and earn that right so that the post can feature album art with each citation.

I'll throw the text-only version up now. Stay tuned!

Do stick around. We need more people like you.

Cool. Welcome, man/woman. We have a lot of similar interests.

Ladies and Gents, I have a good feeling about Banter and would like to stick around. I'd been searching high and low for a literate music community with an interest in experimental sound.

I have found some wonderful peers via closed/secret international FB vinyl groups, comprising musicians, engineers, etc. But the local branch was mostly 24hrs of AC/DC and Zeppelin. (Nothing wrong with that - just not my bag.)

In a last-ditch effort, I joined a music group on Goodreads, thinking, "They'll surely be filled with literate discussions from fellow music and book enthusiasts!"

I found the group for the site and composed some thoughtful responses to the music-related topics.

Then I scrolled down to read the active threads...

Justin Bieber, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Lorde, Nicki Minaj, Carly Rae Jepsen, Rihanna, Alicia Keys , Selena Gomez, Christina Aguilera, and Miley Cyrus.

I backed out the group slowly, clicked 'LEAVE GROUP' and frantically searched Google for "where the hell do people congregate to have active and informed discussions on 20th century music and the arts?"

And that's how I found MusicBanter. Hello! Nice to be here.

Have you read any of John Cage's writings? Silence changed my whole outlook on how I made my music. I still really want to read for the Birds but I haven't come across a copy yet.

Solid lists even if I'm not a fan of the Disintegration Loops - Schulze, Eno, Waits, Miles, and Dr. John are all pretty great. Welcome.

Wonderful, Frownland. I've got the 50th Anniversary Edition of Silence: Lectures & Writings on my shelf, as well as the follow-up - Empty Words: Writings '73-'78.

I love the dedication -


Other recent reads include:

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (A must-own)
The Art of Noise: Destruction of Music by Futurist Machines
(the first-ever English compilation of the Futurist manifestos)
The 17 by Bill Drummond of the KLF
The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way by the KLF
KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned Pounds by John Higgs
(a book about so much more than the music)
Krautrocksampler by Julian Cope (sadly only a PDF. One day...)
The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia
The Penguin Guide to Jazz (a handy reference text)
Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music
Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century by Alex Sayf Cummings
How Music Works by David Byrne
Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (I absolutely LOVED this)
Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound
American Minimal Music by Wim Mertens
Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry
and Simon Reynold's Retromania (an interesting musico-cultural study)

I'll keep this list in mind after I'm done reading Don Quixote (I only do one novel at a time). You should also read Conversations with Cage, it's fascinating.

And Frown, For the Birds is readily available for ~$12 with free shipping on Abebooks dot com and the hardcover is on Amazon for $14. Jump on that!

I'm in college man, I'm on a budget of zero most of the time. It's been in my cart on Amazon for a while though, but the time will come. I'm spending my money on new instruments/equipment these days (got my eye on some singing bowls).

Oh, and drugs of course.

I've just ordered a copy. Thank you very much for the recommendation. I know I'll enjoy it.

Since Cage is a topic of discussion, have any of you read Kyle Gann's "No Such Thing As Silence"? I think it's an especially good book for anyone who's unfamiliar with a lot of the context that led to the creation of 4'33". Gann was actually a guest lecturer for a symposium at my university about four years ago and I got to see him discuss his own pieces, which are pretty cool if you have any interest in microtonality or Disklavier music. I didn't know anything about his writing career at the time though.

Thanks for the info, Zyrada! I'm not familiar with it, but I'm always looking for good music lit. I'll certainly add it to my to-read list!

I'm going to go out on a limb with this one. I've received a wonderfully warm welcome so far, and I hope to stick around. So I've posted shots of my real-self and my funky, funky 2nd story flat (dubbed, "The Manor") to the http://www.musicbanter.com/introduct...ml#post1549882.

Click the link and check it out!

https://i.imgur.com/rbh495G.jpg

Your avatar looks like it could be Anthony Bourdain. Is it?

It is Karlheinz Stockhausen. One of my heroes.

Right.Proper welcome to you.Welcome to MB brother.

Same here. I searched high and low using different parameters and keywords, and MB is the best of what I could find. Still surprising that as big and culturally relevant as music is, there isn't much in the way of discussion of it in so far as forums go. Kind of odd, although it's encouraging to see a dedicated Electronica section here.

Welcome aboard.

Welcome to the forum. That's great list..

I've finally found your intro thread. I said this in the picture thread, but i'll say it here as well. Happy to see you may stick around. You're an awesome member already and you fit right in.

Welcome! :)

Wh... what is furniture music..?

Styx?

Noticed you mainly seem to be into the avant garde kinda stuff. I've dabbled a bit, but I mostly major in metal, and minor in old school alternative/post-punk/proto-punk/art rock from the mid-sixties up till the nineties (yes I pretty much consider it to be an umbrella sub-genre of rock). Just curious if you ever dabble in the weirder end of the metal spectrum (e.g. experimental black metal, Celtic Frost, weirder drone, Faith No More, etc)? Then we'd probably have a lot more to talk about.

Ladies and gents - stay tuned tonight for a treat. I'm really enjoying all of your musical engagement, (I can't tell you how long I'd been looking for a posse like this,) and I think it would be helpful if I posted something that really gets into my favorite works. Stay tuned around 5:30 tonight!

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/civis/ima...es/rimshot.gif

She's here all week folks. Remember to tip your waitresses and be sure to try the veal.

My humble contribution to your intro thread.

I couldn't agree more with your description of Rain dogs, though I found Franks Wild years a slight disappointment after such a thundering classic.

If you're a Waits fan be sure to check out my review of his entire discography, ongoing in my journal at the moment.

And welcome! I'm not into all the experimental stuff you're into, but it's great to see someone who understands music and is very literate --- not to mention polite --- as well. Like others have said, I reckon you'll find a home here and hopefully stick around.

ETA: Oh, may I also suggest thinking about starting your own journal? It sounds like it would be pretty interesting and you already seem to have potential readers here...

Innerspaceboy's Top 550 Albums of 2014
 

Checking in as promised with something to share with all those interested in digging deeper into my record crates. I take my Music Library seriously - I've well over 13,000 albums in my catalog to date between vinyl, CD, and FLAC, and I publish infographics, quarterly reports, and other related documents to help make sense of it all.

I also have a music blog with 18,000 annual readers and am presently peaking at 180 followers per-day. I'll look around MB to see if there's an appropriate thread in which to share the blog.

And I may be accepting a gig as the head writer for a NYC newsweekly's music column, so stay tuned!

For those interested in exploring my Library I threw together my first attempt at data visualization a few Saturdays ago. This should shed a good deal of light on my principal musical interests (though I am ALWAYS open to try something new!) I'm really looking forward to discovering some great tunes in this community.