curious source: music as a map

our music taste doesn't come from a vacuum. if you've heard a song, it's because someone wanted you to listen to it; whether it's a direct link from a friend or a youtube recommendation, there's an undeniable influence in the way you are exposed to music. it's been a bit since i wrote anything, so i thought it'd be neat to catalogue some of the more tangential connections i've made with my music library, and the ways i was exposed to different odd bits and bobs within.

i will try to provide youtube links to these as i go, or, if possible, bandcamp or soundcloud, but i will admit that a lot of this is less indie, but not quite mainstream, so youtube may be the best source...

andreas vollenweider is a talented harpist with a penchant for a rather fantastical, mystical, folksy sound. he's got quite the discography! the first of his compositions i was exposed to was from down to the moon (1986), a decade and change ago when i played flight rising, a pet-sim focused on dragon breeding.

on flight rising, there are monthly week-long celebrations for the different 'flights', or clans/guilds, which the player can join. during the water flight's celebration in 2014 or 2015, i found a thread of people suggesting background music for gathering event currency to. i wish i could remember the username, but someone suggested the aptly-titled track water moon as a potential jumping point. i was immediately enchanted by it. it feels like i am being inducted into a ritual dance or play, with a sense of refinement. it's from here that i jumped to other albums by andreas vollenweider, but i think that this album remains one of his stand-outs.

tony banks is a prog rock artist who specializes at keyboard finagling. my favorite album of his is strictly, inc., but it's not what i was first shown of his work.

a handful of years ago, a post on my tumblr dashboard mentioned the story Flowers For Algernon, which missed me entirely in my teenage years. it's the wikipedia page which tipped me off to A Curious Feeling, a concept album by the aforementioned tony banks that was originally loosely based around the story. in a surprising twist, no, i haven't listened to this one, because i used this article as a jumping point and found myself fascinated with the album art for Strictly, Inc and went on a music dive. i really like An Island In The Darkness, which is rather long but acts as a sort of rock ballad. always an emotional journey to listen to.

at about the same time, i found a neocities website for someone who listed sweet trip as one of their favorite bands. to be totally honest, i thought this person seemed really pretentious, which is not a crime, so i almost wanted to discard their opinion on whatever music taste they had, but i'm an adult and open to changing my mind, so i gave it a listen anyway.

velocity : design : comfort is their most popular album, and for good reason. it's a really delightful poppy electronic album. i liked someone comparing it to "mcdonald's sprite" in the comments. it feels sweet and brisk. i haven't delved past this album all that much, but i did learn a lesson about judging music based on my personal annoyance towards the person exposing it to me!

another odd source of music recommendations - if you can call them that - was via board game online circa 2011. it looked a lot rougher than it does now! as the name suggests, it's a board game... online... and it is full to the brim with internet meme references and weird random events.

i haven't played since the aforementioned year, but when i did, there was a feature where you could all listen to a youtube video together. the game would prompt you with a few random options to pick from, then it would play whatever got voted for the most. sometimes the video would break for copyright or age-restriction reasons, but otherwise would play through the whole song and then, at the end, poll the room for another song to play.

this was a rather significant avenue for music influence for me. of the songs i recall being played that i had not heard before, i can count zammuto's 'my dog's eyes', evan bartholomew's 'birth - becoming', and half life 2's triage at dawn.

zammuto's music is a particular flavor of ambient electronic with distorted vocals. i really enjoyed the rest of the album that 'my dog's eyes' was a part of, but i also really loved anchor as well, which holds a very moody, relaxed energy that i find really intriguing.

evan bartholomew's music was interesting enough, though i mostly have a fondness for the first two tracks off of the same album mentioned. when looking to see what else he makes in recent years, i found out he generates AI music with AI album covers. dumbass. i feel like he had a genuine spark of talent that he's kind of wasted now. i guess the most i can do is count my blessings that he's the only one of these music artists that i've heard about in the same breath as this generated garbage. why listen to music that no one could be bothered to write?

one last shout i want to make before the end of this list is the now-defunct 8tracks, which i would compare to a music playlist creator, not unlike spotify or even youtube... but i mostly used it for its otherkin-themed playlists, having made somewhere around four of my own at the time.

it's hard to track down the tracklists now, of course, due to the nature of dead websites, but of the different playlists i remember...

there was a 'summer '13' playlist which held a lot of indie darlings such as tame impala, vampire weekend, echo & the bunnymen, and... CAKE, for some reason? i think it blends somewhat with another similar playlist that was meant for a more melancholy air.

here's an unordered list of songs i heard on 8tracks:

• twenty dollar nosebleed - fall out boy
• never there - CAKE
• young lion - vampire weekend
• settle - i want to say this was either vampire weekend or tame impala but i cant find it at all
• silver - echo & the bunnymen
• lady godiva's operation - the velvet underground
• last night i dreamt that somebody loved me - the smiths
• okaasan no uta - masakatsu takagi
• forest of light - pikmin 2
• leaf house - animal collective
• gymnopedie - anamanaguchi (cover)

and that's the size of it. i think it's really beautiful how life is a network of connections, regardless of how huge or small, or how familiar we are with each connection. even now, i feel ripples of influence from friends i haven't talked to in over a decade. music is memory, in its own way, and the best way to honor a memory is to share it. thanks for reading.