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Exile on Mainstreet by the Rolling Stones was recorded in a mansion in the South of France that used to be a Nazi outpost.

Keith was shooting up 40 year old morphine in a basement, while Mick was shagging (everyone) and hosting lavish parties. You had movers and shakers from the era all clamoring to go to the parties hosted in that Villa Nellcôte, while simultaneously having to kick people out to record an album. This all stemmed from being kicked out of the UK for tax reasons.

While the debauchery continued in the mansion, during the quieter hours many visitors reported supernatural events like mirrors and pictures flying off of the walls. Despite the damp conditions placed on the producers with faulty wiring, many of the rooms captured some one of a kind sounds in that place. The whole album sounds like the roaring times that place went through in the early 70’s. The most badass and interesting stuff about the recording process is in this book I read in high school.

What you're describing sounds like what RYM simply calls Singer/Songwriter. You'll notice it has some pretty esoteric sub-genres but it doesn't have a parent genre (as in: Rock -> Progressive Rock)

So I'd say that it does deserve recognition as a genre and it's a style that can also appear in any genre. You usually see it paired with stuff like Folk Rock but like you said an R&B artist could put out something like that too.

The hate towards it makes sense if people feel like the market is over-saturated with it. Not all poppy 80s metal was bad, but it sure had a shitty reputation by the time grunge came around. Then the wave of lazy Vedder-soundalike bands came along till all the "The" bands came along around 2002 with the Post-Punk / Garage Rock Revival thing. Then that got stale. And so on.

RYM is my main new music source for almost a decade (user for +11 years). Lists, charts, boards -- all great sources.

I understand what you are saying about the ratings and charts in general, that's why I encourage you to find some user-curated lists. For example, I recently found The Dark Side of Techno list, which introduced me to some really great tunes, which aren't highly rated and/or popular otherwise.

Charts are also good source, especially genre-specific. For example, if you want to know gothic country, you can get ten first albums and most of the time you won't be disappointed.

I tried using AllMusic, Last.fm, Discogs, but none of those services are even close to what I got out of RYM.

I think Talk Talk’s last two or three albums are really fascinating. They essentially improvised the whole thing and pieced together songs out of it. Mark Hollis (the singer) is a super obsessive guy and went to pretty ridiculous lengths to get what he wanted. I think they spent two weeks in the studio just placing the drums in the room before they even set up a microphone. He wanted to record real moments the first time they are realized because he believed that’s where the best music is at. A lot of it was also trying to manufacture the moments he wanted so he had some other weird rules like the studio could only be lit by oil lamps and other stuff like that. There is a book called “are we still rolling” that has a ton of stories like this which might be helpful to you. https://www.amazon.com/Are-We-Still-Rolling-Recording/dp/0977990311/ref=nodl_

I’ve also heard that My Bloody Valentines “Loveless” had a pretty crazy story and process. From what I remember they spent so much money on guitar sounds that it basically bankrupt their label.

Most recently... I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside and especially Solace by Earl Sweatshirt. His music is achingly sad but in a hollow sort of way and it took next to no effort to get extremely invested.

Funk is a subgenre of R&B, so that's why you might be running into difficulty classifying or delineating individual tracks. Take a look at this chart. Maybe it can help you out.

Controversial opinion: Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips. Now this is obviously the perfect definition of an album that bridged the gap between two very different musical styles (and periods) for an artist, however the question is whether it is a great album.

When it was originally released it was widely talked about, not for its music, but instead the format it took, in which songs were separated into 4 CDs, which had to be timed and played at the same time. Obviously, this pissed of certain people (Pitchfork originally gave it a 0.0 given the format: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/VelvetDarkness/every_album_to_be_rated_0_0_by_pitchfork_media/).

What was missed however was how great the music was. This is the perfect transition album between The Clouds Taste Metallic and The Soft Bulletin, one being an goofy alternative rock album, while the later is an operatic indie pop masterpiece. In between those, Zaireeka was this odd experimental album, not just in format, but in the actual music made. The songs have prolonged, non-rock instrumentals, in which Steve Drodz and Michael Ivans take a bigger role in the absence of Ronald Jones. No longer are they making off kilter rock songs, but instead working more towards soundscapes, and exploring other genres.

The goofiness, experimentations, and edge of The Clouds Taste Metallic can still be seen Zaireeka, while some of the more thoughtful elements, and the complete change in style starts taking its roots here. They are well worth a listen, and are easily as good (if not better) than the 7 Skies H3 work that came from the 24 hour song. I would argue that he album is well worth a listen in its combined format, and is more than just an experimental music format, but is a great set of music on its own.

With that in mind, if you have 3 other friends bring their laptops (or phones with speakers) doing the experiment is tremendous experience, and makes for a great group experience

Not Station to Station, but Bowie recorded Low after that - still deep into cocaine, milk, red peppers and witchcraft – and there's a great book in the 33 1/3 series that I'd strongly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LXV75C6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I think Bob Dylan is an artist who radically changed his sound. His first four albums, Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin', and Another Side of Bob Dylan are all acoustic records. On those first four albums I don't think there was a single electric guitar on any of the songs. Then with Bringing It All Back Home it starts off with Subterranean Homesick Blues which was a radical change in Bob's sound at the time.

Go here for main genres, and click any of the links to fall into subgenre rabbit holes! I've spent way too much time looking at albums in niche genres. Hope this helps you make sense of your collection. :)

That word is one of my biggest pet peeves, because people tend to use it for anything they don't understand. Instead of saying "I don't understand this." they say "I'm too smart to fall for that." That whole attitude just jangles my nerves.

Here's the Cambridge definition: "Trying to appear or sound more important or clever than you are, especially in matters of art and literature". It's trying to appear smart and failing miserably. And of course that's a thing in music, most prominently in lyrics writing. When someone who's clearly not a good writer throws in an obscure quote from a Shakespeare play. Or if someone who's clearly not a competent musician incorporates some Persian scale in the oddest time signature. But the key word here is "clearly". I wouldn't pronounce that sentence on anyone who doesn't clearly suck at what he does. Because more likely than not, the artist did mean something by that thing he did, even if I don't get it.

I think it can and it has, the problem is that much like a lot of other Rock genres, very little thinking outside the box is currently going on within the genre. I find that a lot of the newer bands (Whirr included; see below) often just try to "transcend" the genre merely by dialing things up to 11 in an attempt to outdo the original acts (read: MBV) and in the end don't really do anything new. My guess/hope is that once the nostalgia wears off a bit (which probably won't happen for a while), we might see more of the stuff I linked (or more likely, the definition of the genre will change to "any band that uses a guitar and a pedal.")

I wouldn't pick Whirr as an example of a band pushing things forward though. They're a bit less up-their-own-ass in ethereality like a lot of the current crop of bands, but they still seem rather stuck in creating music that really isn't that far off from some of the heavier tracks the original wave and don't really bring in any new ideas otherwise.

edit: wording

> Are albums like Loveless or In the Aeroplane considered classic by general western society

I've never met anyone in real life who has heard or heard of these two albums, and I've talked to people who are more into music than the average bear (still not that much, though, in my opinion, for never having heard of these two giants). But that's just it: they are giants in my mind and in the minds of those music nerds I'm friends with on the internet.

There is a modern music canon, but what it includes will vary from person to person, and of course there will be more or less overlap depending on how closely two people's tastes align. For me, canon is, for the most part, what's bolded on RYM. Of course I think there are some bolded albums that are crap and don't deserve to be so highly recognized and praised, and there are non-bolded albums that I think deserve to be included.

Every time Kanye is mentioned here there are quite a bit of downvotes, it's kind of annoying. I'm not sure if this is the result of people honestly disliking his music, or just "hurr durr Kanye's the biggest douche of all time lloooll GAY FISH". I don't necessarily like the generic "dadrock" that is so well loved here and elsewhere on reddit, but I don't go around downvoting those posts. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the past decade, you don't have to like it, but it's true. He's simply an incredible artist. The production on that album is amazing, I've yet to find a hip hop album that has felt as raw, with such grandiose and powerful, orchestral arrangements. Honestly, he's just a messiah in modern popular music, and the music critic community, by and large, regards him as such.

For the uninitiated: do not read Helter Skelter, read Chaos by Tom O'Neill instead. In Chaos, Tom O'Neill proves that a bunch of Helter Skelter is inaccurate.

For something kinda recent, I pick Undercurrent by Matisyahu. It's his best album in quite a while, but that cover just looks like amateur Photoshop filter madness. Even without that, is this supposed to be a super hero team or something?

I agree with what /u/FalseWait7 wrote, especially regarding the genre-specific lists. They are a goldmine. I never look at the general charts but always look at a specific subgenre and then dive into the charts and see what's there. For example, I'm really into dark folk, so being able to use this chart is very helpful. Before I'd used it, I'd only heard of Wardruna, but the list helped me to discover Tenhi, Vàli, Ulver, Empyrium, Nest, Forseti, and Neun Welten. I took not only those top albums but dove into each band's discography, so now my dark folk collection is quite large.

Hey, Mac's brother Hank here. Been listening to his stuff since he was in high school, and I gotta say that it's just getting better and better. Wasn't really a fan at first, but when I got to see him live in Calgary last year he changed my mind. Also wanted to say that he is, has been, and always will be that weird person you see on stage, but all the time.

This is his joke band from high school called The Sound Of Love. Way different from his current sound, but the songs are catchy in their own gross and hilarious ways.

One of my favorite Cohen stories is his performance at the Isle of Wight in 1970, where he went out in front of an angry crowd of over half a million who apparently had been on the brink of riots for days, and he told a story about how his father used to take him to the circus. And then played a quiet, sad and acoustic set, after Jimi Hendrix had just about burned down the stage in the previous act. In the words of Kris Kristofferson, he "did the damndest thing you ever saw: he Charmed the Beast. A lone sorrowful voice did what some of the best rockers in the world had tried for three days and failed."

So I guess if someone wants a start to Cohen, I recommend the Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 which was finally released a couple of years ago, even on record it's about as close to magic as a concert can get.

Because when Green Day tries to be political, the lyrics and music are plain, obvious, and unsubtle. That may be a positive or negative, depending on your taste. The Clash were usually more ambiguous or wrote about more elaborate topics. Compare "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" to "American Idiot" - I personally find the former to be a landmark of punk rock music, and the latter a droll, dry slice of bubblegum punk. That's not to say Green Day didn't have their moments, but their attempts at being "political", in my view, fell laughably short.

As for the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten wrote a hilarious but serious letter rejecting their induction into the rock n' roll hall of fame: http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/john-rottens-cordial-letter-to-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame.html - love him or hate him, the man has, in many ways, continued to embody many of the original punk ideals. Green Day slobbered and sobbed during their induction. Which was more "punk"?

A good example of the 80's post-hardcore scene that kinda started emo is Rites of Spring. Another favorite record of mine is Embrace, a side-project of Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye.

It's interesting to listen to emo's roots and compare them to the more commercialized bands of the late 90's/early '00s. Personally, I like the older records a lot better because of the unpolished sound and rawness of the vocals. Also, the lyrics aren't as cringe-inducing as some of the more obnoxious emo bands.

I think the biggest thing all emo bands have in common is simply a point-blank appeal to teenage angst. At first, this started as a pop-punk thing, but it turned into a sort of genre-chameleon in the early 2000's, making it harder to pin down as an actual genre in itself. You have bands like Bright Eyes who adapted emo to folk, or the Postal Service adapting it to electro-pop, or Jesu adapting it to metal. You also have bands like At the Drive-In, bringing it back to its no-wave/post-hardcore roots. Now it's really become more of a descriptor than an actual genre. Of course, there are still your typical Hot Topic bands that churn out formulaic pop-punk/emo records, but you also have bands like Cloud Nothings who follow a similar formula with much more genuine affect.

Yeah... thats definitely some harrowing information. I sometimes forget that it is owned by CBS interactive.

I doubt that they will be able to think of anything that will keep them going. Even if they played like myspace and did a full site redesign and repurpose, I think they just have absolutely no relevancy to the majority of internet users nowadays.

I've been keeping an eye on Libre.fm for when last.fm is no more.

I feel what you are saying. And part of it is in the vocals for me. When I started really feeling it I went back and started listening to Nirvana again for the first time since childhood and immediately felt connected to how raw and real Kurt's songs were. That led me into heavier 80s and 90s albums that used to be too heavy for me. (finally realized what a masterpiece Goat by The Jesus Lizard is) On one level there are some "balls" missing from modern indie music. Most of it isn't demanding my attention. It just floats by almost feeling uncommitted or too washed together (thinking new grizzly bear here as an example) I'm not sure quite how to pinpoint what the issue is but it does come down to I'm not being grabbed by the song which isn't just a "balls" issue. I've been listening to a lot of rockabilly and Elvis and platters recently and that kind of music immediately stops the world and the only thing that exists is the song.

When I started looking at my favorite albums lists its rare I add anything after about 2003. Nothing seems to have the lasting power of the ones from decades before other than a small handful.

Obligatory list! https://rateyourmusic.com/list/thesmokingpants/top_essential_albums/

This happens to be one of my favourite records of all time. There's something very, very special about it. Being a bit of a musical simpleton, I put it's brilliance down to two possible reasons, it's incredibly diverse, like most of Eno's pre-ambient solo work, this diversity exists not just between tracks but every track seems to evolve and twist across perfectly peculiar tangents, very rewarding to listen to. Secondly, I think you summed it up with "no one is trying to sound "good"". There is an experimental complexity (a pop driven one) that is unpretentious and raw. From what I understand Eno allowed the featured musicians (of which there were quite a few! album credits link below) a lot of headroom and creative control. Maybe this is the just the result of a musical genius, surrounded by other musical geniuses in a studio where the vibes were just right :) http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/here-come-the-warm-jets-mr0000570074/credits

Yes

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hemorrhoids/symptoms-causes/syc-20360268

(Look under causes)

Basically sitting on the toilet for a long time puts strain on the blood vessels in your butthole and also cuts off the circulation around the area. You should try to only be on the toilet as long as you absolutely need to. Trust me, hemorrhoids are not something you want to get. No fun at all.

theres a few websites that are good for this.

https://radiooooo.com/ has an interactive map of the globe where you can click around and change decades and stuff. mostly user uploaded tracks that are sorted by country and decade.

radio.garden has a similar interface but allows you to listen to radio stations across the world instead of songs.

Those aren't pageviews those are likes within Feedly (which I had never heard of before until you mentioned it)

Kendrick was on the front page of rollingstone.com in two places, one of those being the review of UU, two days after the album came out. There is no way in hell that only 2,000 people clicked on that link. Rolling stone is the 800th most viewed website in the world.

Jim Croce has six studio albums, seven if you count the archival one, too. I'm pointing this out not to be argumentative. I just want to point this out in case you didn't know, so you can enjoy more of his music!

> Why is it necessary to have to super deep just to find something decent?

You don’t have to dig that deep. There’s plenty of relatively popular, even mainstream, artists that make great hip-hop music, such as Kendrick Lamar.

> Also, I only wanted an answer to why people like mumble rap, that’s all :)

No you didn’t. You were also looking for sympathy and confirmation. People who want to understand something don’t start by shitting on it.

As for why people like trap/mumble rap? Because it’s fun, energetic, catchy and/or straight forward. The bass also sounds good on club systems. ThorvaldsonMusic also cover some good grounds on one of his posts.

> There /are/ songs that could be classified as rap that I like and aren’t absolute garbage.

What songs are we talking about here? Are they non-hip-hop songs that feature rapping? Like Rage Against the Machine? The whole “could be classified as rap” confuses me.

You make it pretty clear that your exposure to hip-hop is limited and I guarantee you that there are hip-hop ALBUMS that you would like. Start exploring with this. While this chart (and the website in general) is not the be-all and end-all of the best hip-hop albums of all time, it is a great starting point.

My personal favorite way to explore music is to browse around http://www.allmusic.com/. They have a TON of album reviews, all organized by genre/sub-genre, as well as by more vague mood adjectives. There are also suggested artists and albums for each individual review you're looking at. This opens up a ton of ways for you to explore.

For example, They Might Be Giants have a laundry lists of moods like "campy", "cheerful", "confident", and "humorous". If I just listened to one of their albums and really liked the band for their humor, I might click on "humorous" and see what other bands pop up. Or, if I really just liked the album as a whole, I could click on one of the related artists/albums that pop up on the review page. Or, maybe the band belongs to a weird sub-genre you didn't really think was a thing, like the tag "College Pop-Rock".

Tons of options for exploring, the only problem is you need a good source for the actual music, as you can usually only sample pieces of tracks here and there. I think spotify is probably the best legal service for exploring music. I would say about 7/10 albums I look for on allmusic show up on spotify, which is not bad if you think about the insane amount of music that is cataloged on allmusic.

Check out this website: http://everynoise.com/

It is a curated list of every possible genre you can think of, with samples on Spotify. It is great for discovering music that is off the beaten path. Also if you are interested in great funk/rock/jazz music you should check out Analog Africa, Strut, or Ostinato Recors. They have high-quality eclectic collections of music from all kinds of Asian and African countries.

I mentioned in the other discussion that right now my prerogative is keeping up to snuff with new music as it is released. Getting 5 new albums a week until my budget can't handle it. Every Tuesday I go to AllMusic and Bandcamp to see the new releases for the week and I go down the list looking for anything that grabs me. For the most part new releases on AllMusic's listing has some way to test out the goods (youtube mostly), so I go down the list sampling them.

I like to go into anything mostly blind, whether movies, games, or music so I usually just try out one song. If I need a little extra convincing I might try one more. I don't even necessarily have to be in love with whatever I sample but if I decide there's enough there that I could see the album being good then I'll write the artist/album name down. Once I've collected all the stuff I'm interested in then I figure out a top 5 among them, which I'll then purchase in whatever way seems most beneficial to the band. iTunes is my last resort, I look at the band's website first, then if not that I check if they have a Bandcamp page, failing that, iTunes. Some weeks if I find that not enough's grabbing me to fill out the 5 then I'll use the vacancies to look into more personal interests (currently chipping away at John Foxx & R. Stevie Moore's discography).

As for what I'm looking for I think I'm fairly open. I have a safety zone for sure (I'm partial to psychedelic rock) but I'm trying to keep my intake fairly diverse. It's rewarding in the sense that I don't recall ever branching out to the degree I have been lately but at the same time it can also feel really unfocused to be taking in such a variety of music at once without really honing in on any particular thing. I figure I'll reach a point where I might use the same method as above but apply it to more specific genres or artists.

You need to inject RYM into your veins and understand its goodness. There simply isn't a better resource for getting information about new releases. It's not really "news", but it's got reviews and dates and whatnot about new releases.

Radiooooo.com is a great way to explore and get familiar with music from other countries. You enter a time period, any time from 1900- present day, then you click on a country and it will play music that was/is popular on the radio at that time/place.

Not quite reading but Foo Fighters: Back and Forth is a great documentary about how Dave Grohl formed the Foo Fighters following the death of Kurt Cobain. Plus it is now free on Hulu.

I'm been working through my Underrated or Obscure list, so it's been a pretty wild ride this week. Revisiting Alamaailman Vasarat (sample) has been a real treat! They're a Finnish avant-prog band formed in 1997, and their first two albums, Vasaraasia (2000) and Käärmelautakunta (2003), are killer.

Käärmelautakunta has got a mix of European folk, jazz, metal, and even a little known genre called klezmer, the traditional music of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe, giving this album a strong ethnic underpinning, allowing the metal and jazz elements to explore what the folk has to offer at its core. I cannot be unhappy when the energy of the faster tracks overwhelms me, and in the album's slower bits, I feel like a force is spinning me slowly and deliberately in a circle. Perhaps that's the Jewish element.

Vasaraasia is another wonderful spin on the avant-prog klezmer carousel.

I recommend listening to their first seven albums in a row and see what you think. You may or may not want to go further, depending on your fortitude. The journey will take you from 1974 through 1980.

Their first, fourth, and fifth albums are canon on RYM.

You got a RateYourMusic.com account? It's basically, at least that's how I usually describe it to people who don't know it, the IMDb (I'm hoping you do know that one) of music (although you can also rate films on this site if you want to).

You can rate albums on a scale from 0.5* to 5*. I guess this is the main feature of the site. Apart from that there's a chart of the highest rated albums of all time on RYM. Above you can also change certain things to for instance only include one specific genre or albums from one specific year.

Then there's the possibility to make list of basically anything. Your favourite albums of a specific year, your favourite artists with a moustache, whatever. You can also befriend others to see their taste. You can write reviews of albums, and read reviews of others.

So there's a lot to explore. When I just started exploring I just pushed every button on the site and I guess I know my way around by now.

If you have any further questions or if I totally misunderstood your question in the first place and this was all just gibberish let me know.

Enjoy!

I can relate very much, and often find myself thinking the same thing.

Even within genres you'll have variations on key characteristics, and different approaches/influences. This is what might distinguish certain key acts from one another. People are also influenced by many different types of music, artists, styles... and they inject their own preferences within a genre. I think it's best to view genres more-so as general guidelines than anything necessarily definitive. Genres may also become more ambiguous with time.

I typically ask myself "What general key characteristics do I like in music? What qualities do I like in music?" Once I get an idea, I usually check out sites like musicmap and everynoiseatonce and identify some genres that might appeal to me. I'll also check out genres that are related to ones I already like on everynoiseatonce.

So, for example, since I like heaviness in music, and noise as an element, I notice that musicmap groups a few parent genres together under that category (if you zoom in very closely at the bottom) -- Industrial/Goth, Metal, Hardcore Punk. I'll take those broad categories, learn more about them and their subgenres (Wikipedia, RateYourMusic), and then I'll go on everynoiseatonce, and check out related genres to the ones listed above. Then, I pretty much have a bunch of genres I explore. Honestly, at this point I feel it's very much hit-and-miss... you'll find, say, some black metal that totally blows your mind, and others that completely underwhelm you. It's just part of the music discovery process.

For albums I really like, I often check out the genres that are predominantly featured on that album, as well as any minor influences. You can do this through RateYourMusic. For example, since old-school Industrial music also appears alongside Minimal Synth and Experimental music, I may like those genres as well... and can explore them.

I must admit that I don't really use music discovery services anymore ever since I made a Spotify account. I used Last.fm for a very long period of time but when Spotify introduced their recommendations system those services became obsolete for me, although I liked the statistical aspect of Last.fm. The kiss of death came with Last.fm's re-lunch, since then I use the Spotify recommendations, RYM, everynoise.com, Reddit and music blogs for new music.

But I'll try those services out in the next couple of days, because I'm interested to see how much music discovery services changed over the years and hey! Maybe they have a superior system.

I have my own brief review I wrote here. I'll paste it below: let me know if you think anything's actually bad about it...I've gotten mixed responses.

>Call it his Stankonia. Call it his Fear of a Black Planet. But these comparisons are of course easy to make. These albums were stellar left-hooks to already impressive uppercuts. Whether or not they were superior to their predecessors is irrelevant: the beauty comes in the fact that they're at least as good as them. And let's just roll with that for Kendrick.

>The lyrics are personal, yet universal. Kendrick consistently darts the line between introspective reflection and extroverted demagoguery. It never feels forced, even when he sobs as on "u". Perhaps this is the greatest strength of the album: it's full, frontal honesty. Kendrick's come down to talk to us.

>But even more impressive than his already-established-as-great lyricism is the production. Jazz and Funk influences are obvious, but more importantly DYNAMIC production that adapts to the track and the moods. The music knows Kendrick, and he knows the music. This forms a beautiful harmony that is the crux of To Pimp a Butterfly: Kendrick knows himself. He knows what is expected of him. And he fills that role spectacularly.

My New Year's resolution was to listen to, and hopefully review, one album per day for 2015. I listened to a lot of albums last year, but I definitely couldn't coherently talk about all of them if I was asked. For a lot of them I probably would just say "Eh, it's all right." Hopefully, this will work out! I wrote my first review today of a Noise record. You can read it hear if you'd like to: https://rateyourmusic.com/collection/boldfaure/rating65852288

Also, while I'm by no means a reviewer by profession, any tips would be appreciated!

Wow, I had never heard of The Echo Nest, last.fm really missed an opportunity by not doing something like that. Last.fm is used extensively in a lot of software for artist bios and such since the data is basically free, so they don't really profit off of that. The most recent news about the site was that they were kind of pairing up with Spotify to provide extra info, so they may just start selling that API access, who knows.

I'm the same way about scrobbling, I have been checking my page less and less as I find better places to discover music, but not being able to scrobble is still an instant deal breaker for me.

I would like think that a lot of people will be able to move on from last.fm pretty easily if it goes since there are things like Libre.fm which can serve as a data gathering tool, but it is a bit rudimentary.

This book by John Seabrook is a really good read about this and reveals a few ‘secrets’

The Song Machine: How to Make a Hit https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/009959045X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabc_7ETTFbE8PXW6N

I’m going to suggest the highly acclaimed 4 jazz albums from 1959. it’s great music but may take some time to develop an appreciation. But don’t hurry you have all summer ! Also check out psychedelic rock from 1967 ... or anything from 1967. it was a delicious year for rock and soul .

But it really depends on what you like in music . Is it entertaining? Or transformational? Because there is new cool new R&B

Or you can get into Any genre of music and experience new unexplored blue grass ?

RateYourMusic. Users rate albums, and it can be a great way to discover music by looking at the charts by year, genre, etc... It may also be beneficial to make an account and start rating stuff there that you've listened to already too.

Here are the charts for 1986.

I haven't yet thought about which album is my current favorite, but if I had to select one for the sake of this post it'd have to be Esoteric Malacology by Slugdge. It's the prog/technical death metal band's fourth release, my first exposure to them, and absolutely incredible. I'm rather picky when it comes to the genre but this album layers itself so impressively that its execution is damn near flawless. I wish more prog death metal sounded like this. The songwriting is captivating. Take a listen here.

Van Dyke Parks is a good example:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/song-cycle-mw0000201256

He's best known for co-writing the Beach Boys Smile album, but his debut, Song Cycle, is a great mixing of genres. It is attempt to compress all of 20th American music onto one album. It is not for everyone, but it is a good example.

Another good example is Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America--as a bit of trivia, this is Catherine O'Hara's sister. Great album that mixes country and jazz with a little Patti Smith punk.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/miss-america-mw0000205701

Another poster mentioned fusion, but of a similar period you have producers like Norman Whitfield and bands like a Sly and the Family Stone that mixed r and b with psychedelic rock to create psychedelic soul.

The sample he uses is actually of the Marlena Shaw cover of Etta James' Waiting for Charlie to Come Home.

The term "indie" originated not as a definition of genre but rather a way of understanding label and distribution. Indie artists were on independent labels, and they were able to gather a following as an alternative to music on major labels. That sound developed into the rather vaguely-defined genre we have now.

Indie is like any other genre: there's going to be a bandwagon effect, especially as a genre gains a foothold. I guess it would be better, OP, to look at sub-genres of indie to hear differentiation, such as indie rock, indie folk, indie pop. Those three sub-genres don't sound anything alike.

Anyway, you might enjoy this screed.

> I agree, but who has followed their lead?

Many. Just because they have a varied catalog, doesn't mean that certain albums didn't inspire certain artists to stick to a certain genre. Maybe a band like Doves just wants to sound like The Bends, Muse wants to sound like OK Computer, M83 like Kid A.

This reminds me that I came across an album on RateYourMusic that has one of the lowest ratings on the site, Apator's <em>Masturbate In Praise of Black Satan</em>, a spoken word (kind of) album that is extremely vulgar and poorly recorded. Apparently this Dutch dude recorded a series of lo-fi spoken/shrieked word bits that are Satanic, homophobic, and extremely edgy. I think you can find bits of it on YouTube.

But I like bits of spoken word in my music! I think if you're into La Dispute, you might enjoy mewithoutYou, Wreck and Reference, and Lift to Experience.

Does Cake technically count? I feel like all their songs are spoken word, but I don't think I've ever really delved into their music beyond their hits.

I can do better than a few albums, I can give you ALL the albums:

https://rateyourmusic.com/collection/heidavey/recent/

Some highly rated (4.5/5) albums this month (since Dec 10th):

• Eivind Aarset - I.E. (2015)
• Secret Chiefs 3 - Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws: Hurqalya (1998)
• Secret Chiefs 3 - First Grand Constitution and Bylaws (1996)
• Ideamen - Progress (2007)
• The Crocketts - We May Be Skinny & Wirey (1998)
• The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (1968)
• John Coltrane - The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording (2001)
• Fennesz - Endless Summer (2001)
• Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting in a Room (1981)
• Alain Goraguer - La planète sauvage (1973)
• Sexwitch - Sexwitch (2015)

In bold were first listens.

Actually this is, that's a much better representation.

How this probably went, in one of their heads the I Won't Back Down melody got stuck, but they can't place it or think of words to it in order to look it up, so they write a new song to it with thinking that they maybe did write it, song is released, someone goes that's I won't back down, they're like fuck it is.

Alternatively someone is playing around with their instrument and accidentally a writes the track that feels like they've heard it before, but they can't place it. Or one of them learned the song before, they forgot they learned it and though it was original when they remembered it later.

Take this from someone who has accidentally written I'll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground a few times, Van Diemen's Land by U2, a few motown tracks, and multiple others before and not noticed it until much later.

Similarly, he also composed a set of stock ringtones for the Nokia 8800 back in the day. http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/hear-brian-enos-ringtones-composed-nokia-2007.html

I should say it's like 1 in 50 recs from friends that I end up really liking. Not a super reliable method lol.

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Really what it goes something like this for me: I spend a lot of time on rateyourmusic.com because I think it's an excellent catalog and I'm a dork. I'll look at (for example) Doseone who has been in 17 groups (all of who have their own separate profile with links to other band members) and has 2 collaborate albums with other people. I'll branch from there and just look at members of other groups he's been in that I particularly like, and say who produced their best album.

It plays like going down a youtube hole kind of. You've got to be curious first.

Have you listened much to aussie hip hop? As an american that's that only area of australian music I've had a chance to explore. I don't listen to it so much nowadays but my two favorite albums were Vents - Marked For Death (which has a whopping 2 ratings) and Hilltop Hoods - Drinking from the Sun. The main flaw i've found with australian hip hop is how a decent amount of it doesn't really push any boundaries; a lot of it feels like it could have been made 5-10 years before it was. The result is that a lot of it is pretty high quality but sometimes a bit forgettable or even nearing on indistinguishable from the work of their label-mates.

This is probably my favourite ridiculous review. The silliest bit:

>There is nowhere left for the music to go; even scaling back the swell of instruments doesn't succeed in relieving the tension or stop the frenetic energy; the music has entered oblivion; shelter from the storm is only unnecessary because it is impossible. The conclusion of Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is, as musically foretold on F# A# (Infinity) in 1998, the undoing of a world. The process of evolution is destruction. In GY!BE's musical universe, everything has already passed over the margin and returned to the void from whence it came. What can be left but silence?

Sounds pretty intense, right? Pretty life changing for the reviewer, or at least one of their top picks of the year? What rating did it get?!

3.5/5

It is a good album though, imo.

Go to rateyourmusic.com charts section, include only jazz for genre, go through the lists year by year. That is gonna be thousands of highly-rated albums to listen to.

Edit: also, check this and bookmark it, it's phenomenal.

This chart is my first stop. The great thing about it for me is that the top albums aren't going to conform to any other chart you know, and also it is customizable. For example, if you don't like hip hop, you can filter it out. Want to search just for metal? Great! You can do that, too.

I agree with /u/animal_crackers. All music evolves, changes, and/or grows. Music is like language. Any language that stops evolving dies, because it is, like music, a living thing. We cannot expect all genres to remain as they always have forever.

> are there exciting new bands that I'm not aware of?

There's a new Spanish band called Exquirla. Their 2017 post-rock album, <em>Para quienes aún viven</em>, blends the genre with Flamenco nuevo. This is very exciting music that engages my interest.

>John Cage - assuming he's not just a troll

Come on, dude, he wasn't :(

I recommend you to check out this guide on him to see from where he was coming from when he wrote 4'33" and his other "trollish" pieces.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/zoot_allures/john_cage__a_guide/

I just love the fact that he did 4'33".

By the way, some popular musicians have already explored the most extreme examples of "simple music" (they even managed to beat Cage in his own game). Napalm Death have a one second long song (You Suffer), Sly & The Family Song have a song with no duration (There's a Riot Goin' On), Gerogerigegege made an EP with no duration either (0 Songs EP), Sachiko M made the most minimalist music ever possible with Bar (if we define music as changes in timbre, rhythm, melody and harmony), and finally, Bull of Heaven, being the masters of (anti?) music, invented music with NEGATIVE duration (With Muffled Sound Obliterating Everything).

I actually made a list of the most minimal music ever (4'33" takes the 9th place), you can check it out here: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/YellowJelly/the-ten-greatest-recordings-of-music-ever-made/

John Cage, Gerogerigegege and Bull of Heaven are the Father, Son & Holy Spirit Trinity of (anti?) music.

This is a fantastic album! Very challenging material indeed, even after hearing a lot of Ra's catalog, the interlocking lines of the arrangement in the title track can be a surprise. Ra was always looking for new compositional directions.

Just to avoid confusion there's two albums from this time period named "Space is the Place". The album mentioned by the OP and the soundtrack to the movie . The soundtrack acts almost like a greatest hits collection as the band runs though a selection of tunes from Ra's career up to that point. On both records, the band plays very well, the recording quality is excellent. Definitely one of several peaks in Ra's long career. I highly recommend it for those willing to look it up. Also check out the movie, it's a must see for any one into Ra's music.

This is true. The lyrics are

>I feel like YouTube is the biggest culprit

>Them niggas pay you a tenth of what you supposed to get

http://genius.com/Jay-z-tidal-freestyle-stream-of-consciousness-lyrics/

I know this may sound weird but I often use that list and other lists in conjunction with random number generators when I want something new to listen to. I find this can be a better way of digesting those lists because often when you try to work them in order it often can become cumbersome, so this way you can still listen to albums from the list when you like without it seeming like a task, for example I would open up random.org and set the parameters between 1 and 1001, generate a number and listen to that album in the list. That way I am not just gorging on 50s records but getting a healthy mix of all time periods and genres. Just my two cents, its often fun to see what the lottery comes up with and can make them more memorable and stand out.

Also, subscribe to last.fm as you seem to be listening to albums once and then discarding them. As last.fm catalogues your music and generates radio stations from them it can help to familiarise yourself with bands that you have only listened to in passing, enjoyed but never thought to put on again because of the sheer amount of music you like to consume. I personally recommend their "mix" station, as it plays a mix of the library you catalogue and recommended tracks based on what you have been listening to recently. Their "Neighbours Library" station is also pretty good as it plays the libraries of those with a similar taste in music, so often I find I like a lot of the music that these other people are listening to as our tastes overlap.

> Shoegaze came -after- Dream Pop.

Shoegaze as a term came after Dream Pop, but it was called Dream Pop first, with AR Kane being the one to coin the term. It is essentially a blending of Post-Punk (The Cure, JAMC, Cocteau Twins, etc.) and Neo-Psychedelic (Spacemen 3, Loop, etc.)

At the very least, mixing 3 brands of closely related psychedelia is... psychedelic. To keep it shoegaze related, what you're arguing is basically that a mix of JAMC, MBV, and Slowdive is technically a different beast than the other 3, but since they're all related (each begat the next), the end result is really just generic "Shoegaze." So if Tame Impala is a mix of "psychedelic pop/rock, neo psychedelia and dream pop" you're essentially arguing that Tame Impala is... generically psychedelic.

All that aside, Tame Impala still aren't the first to do what they do.

edit: added stuff

I wouldn't say this is one the critics have "gotten wrong" as it hasn't really had any dramatic re-evaluation. At best its status is akin to Pink Floyd's The Final Cut.

> I think it mostly got panned so hard because of critics expecting something in the vein of Metallica's last record

maybe Metallica fans were expecting this, but I'd assume most critics worth their salt knew who Lou Reed was and assumed (rightly) that it would be jarring team-up of two artists well past their prime who never really mesh. To be honest, the final product sounded exactly how I imagined it would when it was announced, but even more unintentionally hilarious.

>it's unlike anything I've ever heard before.

and here's part of why there will never really be a turnaround in consensus on the album: Avant Garde Metal was already a thing before this album. Lulu may not be quite the same thing, but being that there are already some reasonably well-known artists who did similar things better and earlier, why should we really care about an album that completely falls on its face and doesn't even have the benefit of being a pioneer? edit: not that the album won't be better received later (since it pretty much has nowhere else to go but up), but I don't see it gaining much more than a niche following.

FWIW, my roommate in college (this would have been 2003-2004) was self-identified goth and mostly listened to VNV Nation, DCD and The Crüxshadows.

Only the latter of which AllMusic identifies under the "Goth Rock" banner (http://www.allmusic.com/style/goth-rock-ma0000002623), but it seems to be as much about style as it is substance (at least in terms of the modern goth cliche, not the movement in general), suppose it's mostly in the ear of the beholder of what qualifies or not.

https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart

>If Kendrick Lamar is really at 22 that just shows the website has a bunch of teenage fans jumping in and 5-staring his shit imo

I feel the opposite honestly. I think there is a bias against recent albums because of the way their system works so it is a testament to how highly regarded that album is. I really enjoyed TPAB but that also isn't necessarily exclusive from the sentiment that it's nowhere close to the 22nd best album ever as you say

>RYM has a large sample size, but what else? Anyone who feels like it, no matter how uninformed their opinion is, can vote. I’d put more weight on a single, or collection of a few trustworthy sources than a thousand randos.

this is true, but I think since most of the people that know about it are pretty big music fans the album listing is heavily influenced by prominent critical opinions. There are definite shortcomings in the community though. IMO they're biased towards rock and they don't have a particular good knowledge of hip hop. I think Lil Ugly Mane has the second best rated memphis hip hop album ever by RYM standards. Nothing against LUM, but I find that hard to believe

I don't know about that. There are some pretty fringe lists out there, but yeah, I get what you're saying. I certainly can become an echo chamber after a while.

That's why my underrated and obscure list has things like American Idiot and Taylor Swift's Red right there alongside obscure jazz fusion and avant-prog. Because I try to listen with my ears, not my head, and just like what I like without apologies.

Use RYM’s charts. Determined by user rankings, and the user base is extremely diverse.

One of the weights is number of ratings. And so for that reason, most of the top 100 are English albums, since there are few foreign albums with 15,000+ ratings. But after that, it gets pretty wild and diverse.

Someone compiled a list of foreign language albums in the top 10,000. here it is. It has 903 albums, so 9%, which is decently but not exceptionally diverse. But the list excludes foreign artists that sing in English (Like ABBA or Jens Lekmen) and all instrumental music (Including classical, soundtracks, a lot of traditional music, etc).

I like Downward quite a bit, though I think it slows down a little too much towards the end; The Scientists makes it worth the while otherwise.

I had heard Stars when it came out, though I didn't hear the album until relatively recently. I like it overall, but it's kind of unremarkable to me outside I'd Like Your Hair Long. Sort of samey, and a bit overcooked. I haven't heard Electra 2000 before, but it sounds a bit more interesting. Sort of post-rocky in part, sort of like a less Prog-y Smashing Pumpkins.

Not sure about them being Post-Hardcore, but they always seemed to be at least a little bit on the more overtly punk end of Alternative.

edit: finished Electra. I think I might like it almost as much as DiH. Some of the more punkish vocals are slightly off-putting, but they're not frequent enough for me to really care. Kinda wondering what the hell AMG is talking about in their review of the album involving the drum mixing. The toms seems a little louder in the mix than usual, but I'm not sure that would've occurred to me had I not read the review.

<strong>Dark folk</strong> is a goldmine genre. Tenhi is pretty much my favorite dark folk group. As for Wardruna, Einar Selvik just released a collaborative project with Ivar Bjørnson, and it's my 2018 AOTY so far.

-Virtue - The Voidz : This is the album that's been blowing me away the past week, I put off listening to this gem because I was kind of off put by Julian being the front-man as I never really liked the sound of The Strokes. That being said Virtue has blown me away blending grand pop sounds with the ominous angry threatening electronic and rock melodies such an exciting listen. Also QYURRYUS is I think the best new song I heard this year, my mouth dropped when I first heard it.

-I was here for a moment then I was gone - Maybeshewill: I've been listening to this album and it's a very refreshing math rock concept, I enjoy it quite a bit and recommend it because it is quite unique I need a few more listens to register how I fully feel about this album.

-Dopethrone - Electric Wizard : I don't usually like Metal because I hate the vocals on alot of the "classic" metal albums but this project has impressed me enough to look back into metal as a whole and see if I can find some gems

• Girl who cried Red - Princess Nokia: This project really really really let me down I was highly anticipating this project and was let down by a transition into Lil Peep beats and vocals that are out of leftfield compared to Nokia's work in 1992 I hope it's just a phase

-Tame Impala's discography:... Tame Impala is one of those groups I should really enjoy on paper and one that I really want to enjoy but I just can't get into their music This is probably the third and final time i'm gonna re-listen to them but i'm not feeling it atm

Dropping my RYM here if anyone wants to check it out recommend me stuff if you have suggestions, I've been in the middle of updating my RYM library with stuff that i've listened to but never cataloged or have forgot too so probably wrapping that up Friday https://rateyourmusic.com/~Jakobpablo

I think it could be said that both The Grateful Dead and the 13th Floor Elevators were inspired by skiffle music, to some extent, being amplified jug band music, basically. And of course The Beatles started out as a skiffle band, The Quarrymen, so there's that. Van Morrison made a skiffle album a little while back. I know who Lonnie Donegan is, for what it's worth, and i'm neither British nor old, so there's that.

It is an accepted and wide use of the term. Has been for ages. That's all there is to it. People have been using for generations without being confused, just like the term "sports car" has a widely used meaning but also a far more specific one in racing terms. And it's not a subgenre, it's a period of time.

Edit: This is why you have radio stations called "Classic FM", why you have sections in record stores called "Classical music", why you have a million books with titles like this, why Yale has a course called &quot;Introduction to Classical Music&quot; that starts with the Renaissance and extends to post modernist classical.

> is there more to it than that?

I really don't think there is. When you're 16 you are able to love something irrationally. It hits your emotional gut and you take the punch without being critical because it feels so awesome.

> Now it seems like all you hear about is rappers or pop singer girls.

That is the surface noise of 2012. It's on commerical radio stations and in shopping centres and whatever. It is not representative of today's music and it never will be. True, there's an argument to be made that a truly 'great' unifying generational artist might never happen again, because everyone's on the internet listening to their 'own' stuff, but that doesn't mean your own stuff isn't out there. Just means when you go see them they are playing to 100 people and not 20,000.

As others have pointed out the fact that song has a sax does not make it jazz. That song leans more towards indie folk/dreampop or something like that. If you're interested in this kind of mix between sax and pop music I really recommended checking out Morphine.

It’s choral music! Here’s a list of top choral music recordings. Let me know if you’re looking for something more specific.

I checked out <em>Big Games</em> this week, the second album by Japanese jam/psych-rock band Coil (not to be confused with the more popular electronic act (or the other Japanese band named Coil)). What strikes me about these guys is how well-rounded they are as a group. There are a lot of sections focused on the guitarist, but the bassist leads the band on "Land" and the drummer really carries the title track with a heavy tom groove. It's definitely carrying over the style from their debut, Get the Coil, but bringing in some more western elements and compositions and experimenting with shorter, more structured songs - they'd later go the other way on Coil 3.

I can't find any streaming links for this (not sure how to check Spotify), but it shouldn't be too hard to find something out there. Definitely recommended.

>The melody that stands out are the same, but the chord as a whole sounds different.

If you're choosing chords based solely on the melody their root notes create, your likely going to have a bad time*. Sure, power chords still have that melody, and that melody transposed up a fifth. But music needs melody, it needs harmony, and power chords contribute none on their own.

Don't get me wrong, power chords are great when combined with interesting melodies, use of counterpoint, or rhythmic diversity. But chances are if you're the type of songwriter who relies on power chords, you are going lazy in other aspects of songwriting as well.

Note An exception that proves the above rule. People may intentionally write ascending or descending basslines, like so. But if you played this chord progression with power chords, it wouldn't sound very good. The harmonic progression complements the melodic progression of the bass note.

You might like looking into dark trap. It's a style of hip-hop production that is "earrape", but played unironically and often to evoke the timbres of extreme metal (just as electric guitar distortion was initially unintentional "earrape" that some musicians found to sound cool when used artistically). Ghostemane for instance started out as a metal musician and his work is full of black metal and doom metal references.

I think the classic term for this kind of music is probably something between Latin Jazz / Samba, with a bit of a brass / big band turn to it. It's hard for me to place anything more meaningful than that because the vocals are putting me off.

I looked up a 'genre map' where you can click on the name of each genre to hear an embodiment of it, and if it sounds right the » should take you to a map of artists.

I'm thinking that the most likely genres you should check on that page are Salsa / Salsa International, Samba, Latin Jazz, potentially Jazz Brass and Stride, see if you can locate any artists that are a crossover between some (or in an extremely niche occurrence, all) of these genres.

Since Pandora first hit, their speil has included the Music Genome Project nonsense where songs are assigned certain characteristics by "trained music analysts".

I have to giggle when I imagine a bunch of twenty-somethings with their Bachelor's in Music Theory sitting in an office with headphones on filling out rubrics one song after another. "See Dad! I told you I would get a job with this degree!"

But if such care is taken, then why the hell are the stations so hit-and-miss? I suspect no subjective human analysis of the music could ever rival suggestions based on user listening metrics.

> I’m personally more excited for Glitchwave, since the video game community doesn’t have anything like it (as far as I know) at the moment.

MobyGames comes to mind, as does GameFAQs (although the latter doesn't really have anything for keeping track of your own collection, as far as I know). Still, I like the idea of having a site to keep track of all my music, games, and movies, especially as I've been using RYM regularly for the past six years or so. I really hope someday they decide to integrate books as well...I would be sooooo happy.

A new guy started teaching at my university this year, and we became friends pretty quickly when we discovered how much the other one loves music. Now that's all we talk about (of course), and he, being a hardcore vinyl and cassette collector from the 80s onward (and also being a bit of a Luddite), asked me to burn some CDs for him so he won't wear out his vinyl and cassettes. Here's a list of all the things I've burned so far...and this list is only going to grow from here on out!

Does anyone know or enjoy anything from this list? The only name I recognize so far is Merzbow, and I can't stand him. I respect my coworker, though, for his devotion to his collection, so I'm more than happy to help him out in this.

This one for sure

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/清水靖晃/kakashi/

The United States of America - s/t

Can - Ege Bamyasi

Pere Ubu - dub housing

Paavoharju - laulu laakson kukista

Lovesliescrushing - bloweyelashwish

Ben frost - theory of machines

Liars - drums not dead

Shining - Grindstone

Mr bungle - California

Braniac - hissing prigs in static couture

Supersilent - 6

Fire orchestra! - exit

Lucio battisti - Anima Latina

A certain ratio - sextet

Funkadelic - maggot brain, standing on the Verge of Getting it on

Paul jebanasam - continuum

Julia Holter - loud city song, have you in my Wildness

The dead c - armed courage

Brother sun sister moon - brother sun sister moon

Grouper - alien observer

Swans - to be kind

The Jesus lizard - goat

Glenn branca - the ascension

Magazine - secondhand daylight

Can - soon over babaluma

Faust - so far, IV

Neu! - 75

Serge Gainsbourg - historie de melody Nelson

Exuma - Exuma

Anna von hausswolff - dead magic

Thinking fellers union local 282 - admonishing the bishops

The mahavishnu orchestra - the Inner Mounting Flame

Sparks - kimono my house

Oh, this is a neat thread. How about you try to choose music based on your predominant mood and go for genres associated with that? Or think about how you want to listen to the music - you want something energetic go for punk, something catchy go for synthpop, or if you want to chill in your bed go for classical or post-rock or something. You can go on https://rateyourmusic.com/, check the top releases for each genre and go from there. Hop on any streaming service and see if it's available for free (many are ie. Spotify). Welcome back my man.

> Perhaps it is the curse of being the only album by a band.

That's a feature for me. I seek out bands that have only one album.

It's terrific for a lot of genres, even obscure ones.

There are over one thousand genres on here, with album rankings included for each genre.

https://rateyourmusic.com/rgenre/

Go nuts.

I recommend checking the "Everything" instead of "Albums" option on the charts though.

> Everyone has the friend whose music tastes haven't matured since age 16. It will kill me to become that person.

I feel you. I'm old, too, but I've found that if I have a listening project, I can stay abreast of new releases. Hence, my annual AOTY lists.

> I'm not sure how large to make the list initially so would you maybe start with the top 10, 20 or 30? I have found sources that give me the top 50 so I could even do that.

This is just me, and I know it's probably a weird, random number, but I'd go with the top 40.

> Please feel free to give some advice or tips or ideas that you think would make this better.

If you don't already have an RYM account, make one. Go from there!

I rate every album I've heard on AllMusic, cataloging stuff (probably transporting to rateyourmusic soon) - so is that Ultimate Lessons we mean?

MUST read or better, listen to the author read (Never a Dull Moment] (https://www.audible.com/pd/Never-a-Dull-Moment-Audiobook(/B01GEZCCXC?qid=1544047420&amp;sr=sr_1_1&amp;ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&amp;pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&amp;pf_rd_r=PJBGP24XKPH54FQSNKQ0&amp;) I never wanted an entire chapter on Big Star, but it is in there, their music, their recording sessions, their few shows, their own aversion to fame, in the context of the time when it was made.

Michel Gondry is my fav. Eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind is a masterpiece. Here's another great video in the similar vein that was released recently. It takes a while to build but it's interesting when you see where it's going. https://vimeo.com/62075663

Those are really unique videos. I do love it when they incorporate animation and live action into a video. You really need exquisite craftsmanship to pull that off.

For my video, the last one take shot with the skaters coming together in sync with the music was my so called "money shot", that's when I felt like the video really make together.

If you like unique videos, tell me what you think of these videos which I love: Nobody Beats the Drum - Grindin (all done in stop motion) https://vimeo.com/9625370

Flying Lotus - Tiny Tortures https://vimeo.com/54585743

You're very wrong.

First off why would Jamie get production or writing credits for a song that was not his in the first place nor was the version that was sampled by Drake even remixed by him? He covered it wtf, did I miss something here?

Also is it really that unheard of for Drake or any of his producers to have heard this? It's not even my job to make beats and I listen to tons of stuff more obscure than this.

http://www.whosampled.com/Timmy-Thomas/Why-Can%27t-We-Live-Together/sampled

A quick search on whosampled shows us A LOT of people who have sampled and covered Why Can't We Be Together. It's also not even Jamie's song! It's a fairly popular cult hit! And an easy DJ tool!

It really just seems like you really love Jamie xx and were very quick to make assumptions about this. Your mention of Thug and Popcaan, who are both incredibly popular and oft-featured artists, really speaks volumes.

You can look at my automatic recommendations if you want to see how it works in practice. Of course you don't know what kind of music I listen to so you don't have much of a reference point, but it should give you some idea of what to expect. The system gives you two separate lists, the first one based upon all of your ratings, but also with the option of generating one based on your latest 100 ratings

https://rateyourmusic.com/recs/auto/azkeaa

https://rateyourmusic.com/recs/auto/azkeaa|latest

Here you can see in the top which genres are most prominent in the list, which is apparently "experimental rock" in my case. In the second list the genres are very different, with "ambient" being most prominently featured. Here you can see some of the strengths and the weaknesses of the system. The first five recommendations are solid, although I've listened to two of these albums already but not rated them. The sixth recommendation however, is Coil's Colour Sound Oblivion box set, which is a big and very rare collector's box featuring 15 or so videos of various live performances. It's not something that is possible to attain due to price and rarity and the best you can do is to watch the recordings on YouTube. It's not something that's simple or easy to listen to and it's definitely not something that can be boiled down to a simple x/10 rating considering the magnitude of material involved in this release, so it's very out of place in this list.

The system does let you delete recommendations though, but it would've been nice to get some sort of system to keep these sort of releases from clogging up my list.

I don't want this comment to turn into a long list, so I recommend you take a look at my non-English language albums list and see if anything on that list strikes your fancy. YouTube links are provided for either full albums or highlights. Enjoy!