What's one of your favorite genres of music and what's your favorite thing about it?

Technical Death Metal. Depending of the band you get this ridiculously crazy and sophisticated instrumentalism and polyrhythmic beats like Archspire, other times you get more progressive, experimental groups like Blood Incantation that mix and match genres and soundscapes.

In fact, the newest album from Blood Incantation is a good example of that, one moment you're listening to fast blast beats and then it suddenly takes a hard turn into pink floyd and slowly starts crescendoing back into fast Death Metal over the next couple of minutes. It's an absurd aural experience to say the least, but I really like experimental music that pushes boundaries even when it doesn't totally work.

Drum N Bass

Not necessarily a favourite but I have a lot of time for Drone Metal - classic example would be ØØ Void by Sunn O))). You can stick on a pair of headphones and the world ceases to exist.

Whatever genre includes System of a Down, Rage against the Machine, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails

They have either a message or emotional rage or both at the same time. SOAD can go from pizza song to songs about prison industrial complex on the same album. Rage is uncompromisingly left political. Tool is on a journey from anger and unhealthy mental health in their early albums to embracing therapeutic ideas and healing while still feeling human emotions. NIN is just raw industrial sound and emotion.

’80s (new wave, synthpop, post punk) – unadulterated nostalgia

“We don’t search for old songs,
we search for old memories.”

Post-hardcore. Typically 90’s old school like Fugazi and Hot Water Music, and then especially 2010s style “the wave” Touché Amore and La Dispute.

Not the 2000s style that veered into emo and Metalcore territory. Although there were some fantastic bands around that time that experimented with the classic sound, like Thrice and At The Drive In, and an obviously earlier example of that being Refused.

The combination of hardcore punk with slow and mid tempo breaks, throw in spoken sections or poetry. If it’s done right it’s just beautiful and makes you feel everything.

But if it’s done wrong, it’s so bad, don’t even bother. Honestly, for me, there’s so many 2000s-era bands that are unlistenable, and to me don’t even fit the genre as far as what came before and after them. But everything changes and people experiment with different sounds.

And it’s such a flexible genre, you have bands that take post-hardcore sensibility and turn it into indie rock, like Manchester Orchestra.

It's hard to pick a favorite, but right now I'm really into Funk. Funk as a whole, definitely, but the subsect that is Bubblegum Funk is just so relaxing and chill, I've been listening to it while working lately.

Dreampop is just so relaxing to listen to. It makes you feel like you're floating on a cloud.

Witch house is also relaxing to listen to. It makes you feel like you're about to be sacrificed by a death cult.

I love many genres of music, so the open ended creativity in the downtempo electronic scene is where I usually find myself regularly being rewarded with something that feels new. Any genre or mix of many can be worked in and explored with the gloves off. And I love deep groovy bass work.

Less of a genre, more of an era, but I absolutely love music from the '60s. It's just infectious. Some of it is infectiously happy - e.g., Dancing in the Street by Martha & The Vandellas, or Dance to the Music by Sly and the Family Stone. Some is infectiously melancholy, like The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel, or Abraham, Martin, and John by Dion. And some you just can't help but sing along to, like Creeque Alley by the Mamas and the Papas, or Good Morning by Oliver. And of course all the amazing classic rock, experimental sounds, and folk music from that era! Even some of the novelty songs are super memorable (I'm lookin at you, MacArthur Park!).

Murder ballads. I don’t know that it’s a genre of music per se, so much that it’s a subject that people have sung about across different genres. It’s just so antithetical to what we normally consider music, normally it’s love songs and such. Epic examples include:

• In the Pines (famously covered by Nirvana)
• Violent Femmes - Country Death Song
• Mack the Knife (Louis Armstrong version is the best)

Grindcore. Blast beats. Anti-capitalism.

Folk music. I love the sound, obviously, but I also love the way it's not so much about writing songs as learning them, taking something from the past and carrying it into the future.

Progressive metal.

One of my favorite bands has a song where it sounds like everyone is playing a different time signature simultaneously, and it feels out of time and chaotic... And then snaps into focus perfectly, before breaking up again. (I can't identify the time signatures, no. I can hear at least two, and I'm pretty sure three. I think the drummer is doing polyrhythms?) You can listen to the same song five times in a row, focusing on a difference part each time, and hear something new each time. Or take Opeth's "River"; the same same song seems to effortless combine elements of country, blues, 70s rock, NWBHM into something that feels both classic and new. ("New" despite being originally released in 2014.) Or, shit, An Abstract Illusion's "Woe"; it's nominally split into 7 tracks, but the lack of breaks between songs means that the whole thing flows into a single piece. Or, or or!, "Castaway Angels" by Leprous; Leprous stretches and strains the definitions of what metal is, and is not. While some of what they do is clearly metal, are they still a metal band?

The only thing that's a real constant in progressive metal is that the bands all have impeccable musicianship.

Shoegaze.

The waves of euphoria I feel being blanketed in a wall of melancholic distortion and fuzz makes my brain go brrr.

I'll give you two:

First, what I call "shitty punk rock" (no offense to the performers). I consider it a form of folk music as it is played by people who may or may not be talented or skilled but, they play it anyway. They have something to express and they choose to express it and passionately express it with such a low level of self-judgement that I envy. Years ago, I'd be in the pit but, I'm not cut out for it anymore. I'll still support em as I can though.

My favorite though, absolutely has to be folk-punk. Whether singing originals or covers or punkified trad or tradified punk, I absolutely love it. Some recommendations would be Days'n'Daze, Defiance Ohio, and The Dreadnoughts.

Blues, because it has so widely influenced other forms of music.

https://www.strathmore.org/community-education/public-education/shades-of-blues/the-enduring-influence-of-the-blues/

"The blues has become the basis for nearly every form of American popular music over the past 100 years: jazz, R&B, rock, hip-hop."

My favorite new blues tune:

https://youtu.be/ooYkWcfGmFk

Any metal with growing. I don't care for lyrics unless they are funny. This applies to music where you can actually hear them too.

Try suggesting a metal band too extreme for me. I don't like the lo-fi black metal because of the lo-fi part.

Gothic metal, Peter Steele is my spirit animal and Type O Negative is the soundtrack of my life.

Bach. Both easy to listen to and a never ending trove of new discoveries. Emotional and yet silly. Spiritual even for an atheist. Simple yet cerebral. Occasionally melancholy yet always life affirming. Rule bound, yet jazzy.

Metalcore.

I love the raw emotion you can hear and feel in harsh vocals, usually the lyrics and themes explored in this genre are best expressed with screams, and sometimes its the only appropriate way to rail against injustices and corruption or express the anguish and headache of emotional struggles.

I also love the contrast that clean vocals provide, usually with pop-like hooks soaring into catchy choruses or just to really bring a juxtaposition with the harsh vocals to give even more depth to the things that are sung and the things that need to be screamed. And sometimes the heart wrenching emotion that the cleans can provide [listen to Gone With the Wind by Architects]. (Note: not all metalcore has both clean and harsh vocals, but often a combination of both)

And the music itself is high energy, driving beats rapid double bass drum patterns and catchy guitar riffs with often unpredictable tempo changes and transitions to take you by surprise and keep your brain buzzing with anticipation, and not to gloss over the breakdowns. Oh when that tempo drops, guitars chugg and the drums start crashing china cymbals like a thunderstorm erupting around your head and you just feel the need to bang your head feeling like your heart is beating out of your chest and electricity is coursing through your veins.

Anyways, i think its pretty good music.

Corridos (like Los Tigres Del Norte, Vicente Fernandez, Chalino Sanchez)- their accordion players have no fucking business being that good!

Old country (like Lefty Frizzell and Ernest Tubb) - Them dulcet tones and godDAMN that slide gitar.

Dreamcore

I can't really describe it other then it tends to be dreamy, buzzy, otherworldly, tends to use binaural beat type sounds, vestibular. If you liked Earthbound's music you'll probably like it a little

Sort of similar to lo-fi and muzak but it sounds qualitatively distinct to me. I find it very soothing and relaxing

Dubstep, proper dubstep and not the brostep sound that was popularised in the later 00s.

I love it because I love bass, I love a proper system and standing there feeling the music course through you. I also love how very diverse it is within the one genre, there are so many different styles and sounds to explore.

Powerpop. What's not to like? Jangly guitars, vocal harmonies and killer hooks.

My favorite genre is what I can screechy women singing weirdly. I can't decide whether my favorite part is the screeching or the weirdness.

I'd most recommend that other people listen to gamelan orchestras though. It's like the sound of dancing rain.

For me it's Irish traditional music. Aside from having an interesting history, the style often takes a very high level of musicianship to play well. A single monophonic instrument can play a tune and the fast-moving stream of notes can simultaneously spell out melody, counterpoint/call-and-response, and harmony, as well as providing a strong rhythmic pulse (it is music to dance to, after all).

That strange point on a musical map, where Instrumental Hip-Hop, Chilled Trap, woozy Electronica, and Future Soul meet, exchange ideas, collaborate, and spawn in the soft, bluish glow. Unwind and detangle amidst the soft harmonies, deep bass, smooth chords, ethereal vocals, and dynamic percussion. Coughso,Coughma

I don't know if there's an official term, so I call it the vocalsynth genre, which includes things like vocaloid, UTAU, deepvocal, enunu, diffsinger, etcetera.

One thing I love about it is that they- especially utau because it's free and there are a lot of voicebanks, tutorials/guides, and other things designed specifically for it- allow you to be able to create a song that would normally never be made by a famous or up-and-coming singer. At least the vocals, though, because you still need to make the backing track (or outsource that to someone else). It kinda evens the playing field when you have people who are not good at singing making songs/covers that are just as good as songs from the music industry.

Plus, there are so many original songs out there and usually covers of said songs that if you don't like one version, you can always find another version that might sound better. That definitely holds true for the biggest songs and even various lesser known songs. All the songs are made from people across the globe, so you end up with a lot of different songs of different genres, themes, etcetera.

Breakbeat/EDM; I love a good rhythm.

Baroque

Trance