Music as Identity - Part 5 - Electronica

It was 1996 when I met John. Damn, it's almost been a decade. He was a rather eccentric fellow who joined our architecture firm. We became good friends and he introduced me to two bands in particular. Yo La Tengo and Stereolab. Yo La was good, but Stereolab has stuck with me through the years. And so began my interest in Electronica or as Wikipedia calls it the sub-genre of Downtempo Music . It seemed quite a natural progression. I had been big into dance music and this was kinda like music for people who grew up listening to dance music/synth pop. Like lite jazz for todays Baby Boomers. To boot, Austin Powers had just come out and Stereolab's style had similarities to some 60's lounge music. Surprisingly, even though their music is so electronically based, they are one of the best bands I have seen in person. Alongside Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails in the same small venue (The Metro) five years earlier.

From there, we bought a compilation CD called UltraChilled. The album left us with such a good feeling everytime we listened to it. It didn't leave the CD player. From there, we got in to the popular Play by Moby and my sister started introducing us to other bands. She supplied us with a steady stream of musical groups that we loved one after the other. Favorites like Thievery Corporation, Kruder & Dorfmeister, DJ Krush, and Royksopp. In addition, we bought more in the UltraChilled series and picked out bands that we liked. There's also Massive Attack and Boozoo Bajou. My recent favorite is details by Frou Frou and a Quebec compilation CD called Resonance. The latter has songs that vary from more recent styles to stuff I listened to almost two decades ago.

It is quite interesting to see how I got to this point with the influence of previous musical tastes. To make the liasons and the disections. Will we continue in this direction or will some other genre influence our listening tastes? Will we regress or just be content to listen to the stuff we used to listen to? How will our decendants be affected by our listening tastes like I have by my parents? Cool stuff to think about.

Next stop, I will return where New Wave and Industrial left off. Dance Music. Currently the other forthcoming parts include Dance Music, Grunge (yes, Grunge), Mainstream & Misc, and the Conclusion. I may add another part if any come to mind. Stay tuned.