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Music is probably one of my favorite things. I like a lot of different types, for a lot of different reasons. It's one of the few things basically every culture has a version of, there's very few people that are anti-music lol
My favorite genres are probably Doom/sludge metal, rap, heavy psychedelic (zamrock too :)), blues/oldtimey folk and jazz, but I'm generally pretty open to most things as long as they have some type of uniqueness that interests me. I'm gonna use this page as a place to rant and make some notes about genres I like. Also, a lot of the time my taste is gonna be biased towards the USA bbecause I love there lol
My top ten favorite albums (sorta, not going to include different albums by the same band/artist as separate things), in no particular order, are: Entertainment! by Gang of Four, Come My Fanatics... by Electric Wizard, Some Rap Songs by Earl Sweatshirt, self-titled by the Velvet Underground & Nico, Flower boy & Igor by Tyler the creator, Geogaddi by Boards of Canada, Pure Guava & the Mollusk & the Pod by Ween, ...And Justice for Y'all by Weedeater, Troutmask Replica by Captain Beefheart and Vincebus Eruptum & Insideoutside by Blue Cheer. This is a changing list and I won't always keep it current but this is my general feelings as of September 8th of 2024
I like doom because it's slow and heavy. It's basically what I think metal should sound like. Nothing wrong with thrash or any other metal style, but doom is just so good. It has this nasty, sludgy vibe that is just hard to get any other way. Early Electric Wizard is just peak music ever, we're not gonna get anything better probably
I'm going to seperate "Doom" into 3 different categories: Doom, sludge, and ambient metal. These are all separate styles, but they have an overlap and I like all of them sometimes. Ambient Metal just feels so big and powerful, hard to explain. Especially albums like Earth's early stuff and some of Sunn O))'s music has this almost comsic vibe. It just feels larger than life, while still having that punishing loud sound I love from the more simple doom bands. I remember an article that described a Sunn show as being a quasi-religious experience, they have this very strange style of almost ritualistic stage performances. A lot of it is oddly soothing in a way, it reminds me of old pagan stuff
More traditional doom is something I listen to more often. Electric wizard, some Black Sabbath stuff, etc. because it has the slow, foreboding vibe with more of an actually metal feeling. Sometimes when they start rambling about smoking pot or whatever I just roll my eyes, but the music itself goes hard asf with bands like Bongzilla or Weedeater. They really take a lot of the black sabbath/heavy psych inspiration that a lot of early metal had and just keep doing the same thing with new tecology basically, I love it
Sludge is generally a bit faster than doom and definitely less clunky than ambient, but this isn't always a bad thing. A lot of sludge metal is made in parts of the country that generally aren't doing the best (the South: places like Louisiana, economically depressed parts of the Pacific Northwest and some of the more adventurous punk bands in LA/San Francisco). Sludge introduces this distinctly misanthropic, mean edge to the music that isn't as present in Ambient or Doom most of the time. It feels a bit more grounded and agressive, even if it's not as "heavy". It's basically grunge if grunge didn't suck mad dick lol
This is a pretty big grouping, which is how it should be. I mostly like southern blues, but there are folk music traditions all around the US that are interesting. But I'm mostly gonna focus on southern tradition here because I know more about it. Click here to look at my shitty, oversummarized and probably far under-researched blues history
One of the most powerful things about blues is how simple it is. In it's early, purest form, it's just a person singing with a guitar and/or a harmonica. Maybe some stomping for an additional ryhthmic element. That's basically it. They talk about everyday issues: religion, love, work. There's definitely an underlying tone of struggle to it all, especially considering the context of a predominantly southern, black artform in the pre-civil rights era southern US. The blues that I love (Blind Willie Johnson, Henry Thomas, Son House, Howlin Wolf, James Cotton, etc.) is that simple, honest expression. It's hard to find music so simple and impactful as one like Dark was the Night, it's a haunting song that hasn't ever left my head since I heard it. It's a classic musical form that has common roots with much of America's popular music. Here's a playlist of my favorite blues songs if you care about my opinion
There's also some earlier "old-timey" music that doesn't cleanly fit into that blues category (click this Awesome hyperlink to see some of my favorite songs of this type). The Missippi Sheiks are a great example of this, they're an old band that uses some pretty creepy fiddling in addition to the typical blues style. Sitting on top of the world is a great example of this, the lyrics have a habit of worming their way into my brain and never leaving for some reason. There's some older versions of when the saints come marching in that have a darker, more apocalyptic tone when sung in a more stripped down way that was common in this era. If you've ever read the lyrics to that song, it's really about the book of Revelations and the end of the world. Rather weird that we use it for a football team now lol
There's also psychedelic blues artists that I like but am gonna save for the hard psych category later. These are some of my favorite blues/blues adjacent artists: Sister Gertrude Morgan, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Howlin Wolf, Tampa Red, Missippi Sheiks, Muddy Waters, Bukka White, Abner Jay, Woody + Arlo Guthrie, Leadbelly, various unnamed/uncredited artists that worked on folkways recordings