Music
I have a strange taste in music. It mostly consists of synthwave, electronic, ambient, and indie rock. I remember being adverse to listening to any music with lyrics in it. I would strictly listen to music posted on the YouTube channel . This is when I was exposed to the likes of HOME and Hello Meteor. My tastes have evolved, but I have never really moved on from my original favorites.
About 70% of my music files on my computer were created by two artists: Macroblank and Oblique Occasions. Their music falls into a category between synthwave and ambient. It's really good music to listen to while driving because it's usually passive and atmospheric. It serves mostly as white noise, but when I tune into it, I still enjoy it. On top of that, both of these artists have made so many tracks that it's rare to listen to the same track more than a few times. Further, a lot of their music is made up of samples from other pieces of music. I enjoy that aspect alone because it speaks to my inner pirate. Macroblank's description on their Bandcamp page says: "i take no credit. everything is plundered."
One of my other favorite synthwave artists is Hello Meteor. This music reminds me a lot of the Minecraft soundtrack in some instances. What I like the most about Hello Meteor's albums, however, is the uniformity of the art and story behind each album. The titles of each track from each album follow a consistent theme that I can best describe as ecological obliqueness. On Bandcamp, you can read an anecdote on each album that gives it a little extra flavor. Those tidbits of stories tend to give more meaning to the track titles.
There's a very little-known artist called The Installation. I only know of them thanks to the YouTube recommendation algorithm (which I have since utilized an extension to remove). I wish I could have found them in a more organic way, but I digress. Their music sits in a strange spot in regards to genre, but they identify it as krautrock. Their name, along with their music, reminds me a lot of the game CONTROL and the online fiction series SCP. Overall, The Installation's music has a synth-heavy, mysterious style to it that I have never really heard anywhere else.
Once, I was sitting in the dining hall on campus. There's an app available to the students to request music to play on the speakers. This is when I was introduced to Beach House, one of my favorite artists. When I first heard Myth playing, I knew I had to check the app to find out what the song was. There's some stranger on campus that does not know how I grateful I am that they requested that song (or it was just played randomly). The soft vocals always lull me into a state of relaxation and dreaminess.
Their latest album, Once Twice Melody is my favorite as, in my opinion, it embodies everything that Beach House means to me. Bloom and Depression Cherry are their most well-known albums, and I certainly have a lot of favorite tracks from those. But in OTM, there are so many tracks that stand out on their own for how inventive they are. You can tell just by listening to them that the artists were enjoying their time exploring different ways to create a song.
There's another artist, Metric, that leans a lot more into the rock aspect of the indie rock genre. The female vocals are similar to those of Beach House, but the music itself is a lot more intense. It's a lot more helpful when I want to focus on getting something done, rather than slowly drifting from thought to thought. I avidly listen to music to help myself focus, and depending on how I am feeling, I'll select a certain artist. I once had a discrete mathematics class, and the only way that I could get homework done for it was to listen to Keygen Church simultaneously. Instead of homework, I now listen to those glorious digital pipe organs while working out at the gym.
While this certainly isn't a complete overview of all the music that I enjoy listening to, I think it offers it good range of my current musical tastes. I encourage you to listen to some of the artists I've mentioned here, and if you find yourself to be a new fan of one of them, send me a message on Bluesky or Mastodon! Perhaps you'll have a few recommendations for me, too.
Some honorable mentions, in no particular order: