Me & Music in 2019

I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the kind of music that I’m into nowadays.

Well, interesting to me, perhaps – I’m not under any illusions that people are especially interested in my music tastes, bar a handful.

I listen to a lot of minimal still, especially of the hypnotic Romanian variety – though I feel the peak of creativity has passed, and it has started to become oversaturated with averageness – as most successul music scenes do.

The scene that I find most exciting at the moment is the “offbeat techno” scene, almost owned by Hessle Audio label, with producers/DJs like Pearson Sound, Batu and Pangaea. This track perfectly embodies the sound – though it is quite a broad range of styles.

I’m really not sure what to call this crossbreed of post-dubstep, bass and techno, and despite saying it is the most exciting music at the moment, I don’t listen to it anywhere near as much as minimal.

I am SO bored of techno. The whole business techno thing – Amelie Lens, Drumcode – oh yawn me another river.

There are a few people I still find producing interesting techno, often harder and faster than I may have enjoyed when I was in my techno prime, like Randomer.

Also on the tougher and more abrasive style, I quite enjoy some of the EBM (definitely don’t confuse it with EDM!) and industrial music out there. Quite a bit of it is really old, such as Front 242 – but there are also people making newer EBM like Terence Fixmer and Phase Fatale. I certainly couldn’t go clubbing to it, but it is great for when the Metropolitan line is suspended and I want to stomp my feet in anger.

House music is still a thing for me, but I guess I end up discovering or rediscovering older house tracks at the moment – it is quite difficult to find new, exciting house music.

Like this for example, I think from the early 1990’s and I never knew it existed prior to recently:

Yeah it has also has a fat bassline – there is a definite theme going here!

Two other styles of music feature a lot in my world at the moment, more than in recent years. Firstly electro – there is quite a lot of this around at the moment and there has been in the last couple of years – some really quite exciting tracks.

Some of it is old and I am only just discovering:

Other more modern productions of electro are perhaps a little more on the house-side, such as this wonderful edit. If I were to start my own night up (I won’t be) then it would likely be more on the electro side.

Finally (did you make it this far?), I am really into the kind of beach-like disco or sythn-pop that the likes of Antal plays. Again, often old music but shows just how much good music there is undiscovered. Or maybe that my tastes have just got more weird.

This is the genres I attributed to the music I downloaded last year:

• Minimal – 136 tracks
• House – 78
• Electro – 48
• Techno – 35
• Disco – 28
• Bass – 21
• Deep House – 21
• Offbeat Techno – 20
• Underground house – 19
• Garage – 19
• Italo – 8
• Dub Techno – 7
• EBM – 7
• Rave – 7
• Synth-pop – 7
• Trance – 5
• World music – 5
• Breaks – 4
• Funk – 4
• Slow Techno – 4
• Electronic – 3
• Hardcore – 3
• Hardstyle – 2
• Darkness – 2
• Dub Reggae – 2
• Funky House – 2
• Jungle – 2
• Latin – 2
• Tech-house – 2
• Ambient – 1
• Dance – 1
• Downtempo -1
• Drone – 1
• Hi-NRG – 1
• Hip-hop – 1
• Industrial – 1
• Other – 1
• Progressive House – 1
• Reggae – 1
• Slow House – 1
• Soulful House – 1
• Space Disco – 1
• Steel Band – 1

If you are really interested in what music I’m into, I have a “top tunes” blog, a favourite DJ mixes blog, and a YouTube channel where I do playlists of my 10 favourite tracks every month (though it needs updating!). I don’t really promote them and don’t update as often as I should…but I try to!

The search for music that excites me and can soundtrack my life is never-ending.