What has been the evolvement of your taste in music and listening habits in 05/06?

me too! not onto the hardcore stuff yet but an old friend from grade school does this one-man-band chapman stick stuff (Jon Edmunds, it's on iTunes if you wanna hear samples) - album called "Subzerosonic" keeps me nice and relaxed, which is kind of a priority for me in listening lately: I dig me some Jake Shimabukura, too, what can I tell you, I need to mellow out as much as possible

I'm taking a Yoga class once a week, which I enjoy, except about half the time our instructor plays this horrible music towards the end of class, which consists of lyrics about a "sacred place within your heart," sung by what appears to be a chorus of wood nymphs accompanied by bamboo flute and (incongruously) a variety of cheesy DX7 presets. This has clarified, for me, a division of new age music into good and bad.

Also, dubstep & electrohouse. But those are more of a continuum from my usual tastes.

that being said, i am still more obsessed with music than is probably healthy.

Tell me about it. Who are these bands?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyD98eilvw4&search=tyr

(i have no idea if this is evolution or not. could be!)

But nowadays, just when I think I've heard it all, the plates shift and an entire universe of music reveals itself.

Lately, I've been gravitating towards:

Anything Brazilian. Tropicalia is great and all, but there's so much more. I've been digging Joyce, Chico Buarque (especially his collab with Ennio Morricone), Francis Hime, Hyldon, Adrianna Calcanhotto, Clara Nunes, etc. Can never get enough of Joao Gilberto or Caetano Veloso.

Pop. Cheap Trick, Db's, Bongos, Field Music, Big Star's Radio City (constant rotation for 15 years), early Bee Gees (Horizontal & Odessa).

Psych. Erkin Koray. Electronic Hole/Beat Of The Earth/Our Three Minute Standard Tune. New Comets On Fire.

And I grab an awful lot of CD-R releases off of Soulseek in the Free Folk, Volcanic Tongue-endorsed music spectrum.

Now that mainstream R&B crap makes up probably half my listening. Rap makes up a quarter or so, and the rest is pretty random. In any event, I'm a lot more open to whatever.

Anyway, as for me...more a focusing of specific tendencies of listening, I'd say. So for instance I've become a dedicated purchaser of nearly everything on Time-Lag and Foxy Digitalis, in large part because their approach and aesthetic fits a lot of what I like. But that's more 'active' purchasing, as opposed to evolution of taste, which as far as I can tell remains a combination of random 'oh that's nice' about a slew of stuff that charts and more thorough contemplation of long-established favorites, plus enjoying all sorts of this and that that I end up with thanks to all them promos. So far my favorite album of the year is by Tool and I am not surprised at all.

Ben Harper, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams - all mostly because I finally decided to learn to play guitar.

My long running interest in the blues continues to increase, same for The Band, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson.

P!nk: I think I'm in love. Such a straight-shooter.

Songwriters from all genres.

ILM turned me on to Scott Walker. Thankyou!

Otherwise mainly "devolving", I guess? Listening to much of the same musics I've always loved with greater frequency though no time or interest for indie rock. Completely out of touch with current hip hop/r&b. Those old Cure records never sounded better.

I don't really know his music, but I've been meaning to check it out -- you're not the first to recommend it. In fact, there's a Steve Roach and Robert Rich collaboration I've been thinking would be a good place to start (even though I started an ILM thread a while back to express my dismay at the terrible, terrible AMG review).

Delayed reply to RS re: Singing Yoga Instructor... Yaargh!

Oh and not my writing about them, eh? THE NERVE. ;-)

being exposed to accompanying ILM dance vet burnoutism

I read that as 'burritoism,' which seems sensible enough.

I never have as much fun listening to my ipod as I do listening to chicago radio (when its a DJ like boolumaster or dj lil john or dj kid scratch or...pretty much anyone they get on weekends/evenings on 92.3 or 107.5 and sometimes even 96.3. I also like '100.3 Love FM' for a pretty solid mix of 70s dance/soul music) or going to (certain) clubs. I'm afraid I'm getting less interested in albums or mp3s as my engagement with this shit goes.

I have been listening to orange juice-haircut 100-vic godard and the subway sect-scritti politti-human league-prince-feelies etc esp. while doing dishes, but that type of thing has been going on for about 2 years now (not indie is it?). Lately i;ve had bass music, speed limit comps and killer techno tapes in the car (not much radio to speak of). Lfo, 808 state, "done in by the forces of nature", "3 feet high and rising", a guy called gerald peel session, "loaded"/"come together" and pills thrills and bellyaches - that summery blissy vibe. I hear a fair amount of new country and/or soul/sixties pop/ac while working at a radio station.

Besides listening while doing the dishes or cooking i listen stuff to stuff walking to class or around town on the ipod. I have a music room for more serious, focused listening w/records and cds. If i listen to records its usually something mellow like the carpenters, durutti culumn, willie nelson or some old country.

I still tend to download more music than I'll ever need and forget about it after a week or two (world domination enterprises anyone?).

I just finished "love saves the day" and have been thinking about delving into more disco beyond stray mp3s and a couple of records.

I have been buying a lot of old Detroit house that I ignored when it was new. I went dancing to it, but I did not buy the records. I have been getting into old Rick Wade, Theo Parrish, Rick Wilhite, and KDJ stuff. I learned that Black Riot/Day In The Life by Todd Terry is a godlike 12". I have been buying reissue disco stuff on Westend and other 70's bootleg disco records. I managed to get ahold of a decent clutch of early chi house records. 70's Patrick Cowley is tits. Deodato is fantastic, as is Irakere. I have been listening to a couple old 60's R&B comps, various jazz records. 70's Soul. I have also been getting into hip hop quite a bit. De La, Biz Markey, Schooley D, Son Of Bazerk, Ultramagnetic MC's, Nas, J. Rocc... I am bananas for that J Dilla Donuts record.

It isn't like I am discovering this whole new world of music. Music seems like a pretty dead end to me. I feel like I have figured out the big picture of music and now I am filling in the outlines with specific examples. At this point I do not think that there are very many western genres that I have not heard. I would like to know more about traditional Japanese music, weird 70's space moog jazz and African music, but that is about it.

I am much more interested in film and visual art at the moment.

I've also been listening to a lot of Split Enz, having finally listened beyond True Colours and History Never Repeats. Although there's no real reason to call it nostalgia -- it's totally new to me, and it's not like, say, Jack White is breaking new ground -- I do feel like we're going through a relatively fallow period. Not to say that I don't still get excited, but it seems to be more of the d/l era way: random singles that come and go pretty quickly.

Oh - and after reading the latest Wax Poetics I've decided to give Jay Dee another listen - mainly his instrumental work. Really want to hear the comps of demos he did and will probaby buy Donuts this week.

Nothing too much has changed for me regarding salsa, although this has been a good year for salsa CDs, at least partly due to the fact that Michael Stuart's Back to da Barrio was released (my pick for the best new salsa album to come out since I started listening in 1997). I have a pretty good idea of what sub-variants I like and don't like, so I don't have the same sense of having large blocks of music I want to hear just to get oriented in the genre. Salsa has a privileged position for me, because of my dance connection to it (even though that's been very on again off again in recent years) and I like keeping relatively close tabs on at least one genre.

In general I don't have much interest in difficult listening. I like hearing virtuosity (or at least some recognizable skill)in the service of good writing or good improvisational ideas. (Yes, I know that is vague to the point of almost being meaningless.)

Heheh, I tease sir. And Byron's a better writer than I. Most of what I've written is on the AMG, and is somewhat scattershot. I need to update the biography!

This is my chance to second that emotion. and not just guitar chops either. all kinds of chops. i'm just really enjoying the whole virtuoso thang right now. must be all that power metal i listen to.

oh, and one more thing i am digging lately: silence! (this is where ned comes in and sez: ah, very wise, grasshopper.) but my new job is music-free (for the most part), the first job i have ever had that was music-free, and i'm enjoying it. right now anyway. (course at home i've got the fam all around me in our little house all the time, so i might just be enjoying the opportunity to think a little on my own. don't tell the fam that though.)

I also continue to find myself more and more amazed by the richness and variety of Brazillian music and I generally really like the aesthetic of a lot of it.

Oh yeah, I'm also getting more into super dramatic soul like the Stylistics and the Delfonics and all those other -ics bands.

I generally find myself cycling between preferring heavier and lighter sounds, both in playing music and listening. And also I do increasingly appreciate silence, like a few other people have said.

Quite right. It's addicting.

Without trying to figure out these percentages right now, I think this is basically my situation too. Factor in 'inexpensive hardcore punk when I get round to buying it off people' and the fact that the Pearls And Brass album is STILL my fave LP of 2006, six months after I heard it...

i can't think of a single rock band that i'd want to listen to. it's the first time in my life (okay, since fourth grade) that that's happened.

thanks to the dump, i am now a Brand X fan. though they were proggy, not really fusiony. Moroccan Roll is a really good album. Apparently, there is, like, a three year period where i can really dig phil collins. cuz wind & wuthering and trick of the tail are from around then too, and they are the only genesis albums that i enjoy listening to.

I may be misunderstanding this, but I have not been getting back into fusion. Unless you've heard Tokyo Jihen and consider them kind of fusion, which wouldn't be unreasonable, since they do take a lot from jazz (though often with more funk/disco than I remember hearing in fusion), and there's one song ("Blackout") where the guitar reminds me of Caravan.

x-post:

Hmmmm. Will have to maybe look into that. (Very definite there.)

also, I like the Jane Birkin covers record. So i guess I'm old.

Also I've been really getting into performing, so I haven't felt the need to scratch my musical itches with other people's recordings. What with doing opera choruses, singing in a professional church choir, and doing a 90s modern rock cover band with some coworkers, I almost don't have time to listen to other people's musical endeavors.

(Obviously there are exceptions, like Gnarls Barkley.)

Very much ditto. (I'm talking about other stuff I listen to besides Afro-Latin, Arabic, and Greek, where I don't feel so much the dilettante.)

Rap, I listen to albums for a week and then get bored of them. The only ones I really liked much this year were "The snap movement" and "King" but even they couldn't sustain interest beyond that one week threshold.

Man last year I listened to so much Stylistics - have you got Fabulous, their toes-in-the-water-of-disco album? Totally, totally wonderful

To the guy above who was just starting to love Erkin Koray, check out Baris Manchao (I'm not sure if it's spelled that way, but that's how it's pronounced). Also psych-Turk stuff that's really good. I'm looking for more stuff like that, but I've had a hard time finding any that's as good. There's a lot of crappy Turkish music out there...

It is funny how the zeitgeist seems to have turned, possibly because of the giant number of sharity blogs, to Brazil, psych and early electronic.

Oh, and through ILM I've come to love all sorts of stupid pop that I would have dismissed out of hand before.

As for jazz, coming from always loving the mid-60s through mid-70s jazz of nearly all stripes (afro, free, electric, fusion), I've found myself wandering back to things that I always thought were too square, like Dizzy and Armstrong... Maybe I'll dig into '80s jazz next, having always kinda dismissed it as an empty period...

Kinda like the delta at a river, I think my tastes are just getting broader and broader.

since 2005 my newfound love for stuff like Fannypack and Lady Sovereign has been surprising some people who know me.

the torrent world has led me to listen to a much higher percentage of live shows and outtakes as well.

I agree. Some Seyfeten Sucu (sp?) is pretty good.

Minimalism and maximalism.

Also rediscovering the hardcore (Black Flag etc..) of my youth. Poppy punk from my youth is making a big comeback with me.

Sabbath love is still going strong and an infatuation with the new Boris album without analyzing it too much.

So yeah, evolve w/Adriana C. Me I've been listening to Vinicius Cantuaria, who treads so closely to smooth jazz it feels downright dangerous. Horse and Fish especially good.

fairly disenchanted w/ nu r'n'b-pop etc after the glory days of missy, aaliyah, destiny's child etc - 'one thing' seemed like the last of it's kind, a sweet endpoint. most of the chart music i hear these days seems to me totally undistinguished - no, downright BAD - British indie-rock - yer razorlights, and zutons, and killers, and editors etc. - just the most piss-weak watery mung. hehe xpost - like the trend-hopping indie kids i'm just starting to get down w/ doom-metal-sludgerock etc - been listening to 'dopesmoker', lots of sunno))), the new boris rec which i love. i'm totally into ppl biting sabbath in any/all directions.

after working in a jazz rec for three years or more, I kind've swore off the jazz for a while, but recently i've been re-digging some old faves - peter brotzmann esp.