How to develop musical taste and how to listen to music correctly

Music has the power not only to evoke past emotions, but also to evoke feelings we have never experienced, experiences we have never known

Jonathan Miller

Why is it necessary to develop taste in music? I asked myself this question and for a long time did not find an answer convincing enough to dedicate an entire article to it.

It seemed to me that a rich musical taste is needed only to consider yourself a more refined person than others or to surprise your interlocutors with your extensive knowledge of music. These goals are certainly not worthy of devoting a whole text to them.

But then I realized that the development of taste also has its own meaning. We will talk about this in this article. I will also tell how to properly listen to music. And for those who are interested, I will give a short overview of my favorite music at the end of the article. Perhaps this review will help you find new interesting artists and interesting directions in music.

New connections

As I wrote in the first article in the How Music Helped Me Depression series, when I was depressed, new and unfamiliar music styles helped me break out of old habits and learn a lot about myself. Then I began to actively listen to music that I never understood, trying to comprehend its harmony, to expand the boundaries of my taste.

But why else did I start liking music that I never liked? This happened, not only because I became calmer and eliminated the usual patterns of mental reactions. One way or another, any new music that goes beyond the boundaries of the traditions in which we were brought up and which shaped our taste can be difficult and unusual to listen to. Just because it’s really something new for us.

And I am convinced that when we begin to understand some new music for us, something in our brain is rearranged. Before a small child begins to grasp the relationships in this world, he must form new connections in thinking. At first glance, it may seem to him that there is no correlation between the fact that dad stopped going to work and the fact that mom sold her fur coat. But then, he learns something new. And in place of the disorder, a whole picture appears, woven from causes and effects.

In the same way, a taste for a certain piece of music appears: harmony and order take the place of seeming chaos. For example, earlier jazz seemed to me some kind of improvisational mess. But, over time, as I got acquainted with these directions, I began to hear the logic and beauty of this music. And it became obvious to me that changes had taken place in my brain, new connections had formed, allowing me to discern some kind of musical meaning where I had not seen it before.

Unfortunately, I cannot support this statement with any scientific references, but I think that I have not sinned against the truth. What, if not the development of new connections in the brain, determines the fact that we begin to perceive what we could not perceive before?

This brings me to the question, why develop taste in music. This is necessary in order to expand our range of emotions, to please us with the discovery of new feelings and sensations that are unfamiliar to us, to destroy the usual patterns of perception. When I began to explore new musical directions for me, I felt that a whole new world of sounds was opening up for me. And this was a kind of challenge for me: can I find what others have found, hear what was inaccessible to me before?

The development of musical taste enriches our inner world and the sense of beauty!

Before I talk about the development of taste, I want to warn you that this is not at all in order to gain a sense of superiority over those who are more experienced in music than you. A taste for exquisite music does not make you better or smarter than those who do not listen to such music. Taste is no reason for snobbery and contempt!

On the development of taste

The development of musical taste is not a complex science, but there are still certain rules here. The beginning is quite unsophisticated and obvious. Just take the music you never understood and start listening to it.

How to do it? It’s not that hard. The Internet is replete with ratings like “Top 100 Electronic Albums” or “100 Great Classical Music”, “Rolling Stone’s 500 Best Albums”. (Or use the social network Last.fm, it’s very convenient). Firstly, it will facilitate the selection and search. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with relying on the taste of critics until yours has formed. Thirdly, it will give a chance to get acquainted with the universally recognized masterpieces of world music.

Purchase (or download) an album and take the time to listen to it.

When you listen to music, try to only listen to music and not do anything else. I understand that many of you are used to playing music in the background while doing something else in parallel. But now try to act contrary to established habits.

Set aside an hour of time (the average length of a standard album) and dedicate that hour to music. Listen to a recording (album, compilation, etc.) from start to finish without switching to anything else. Follow the following rules, they will teach you a lot and not only in the field of perception of the art form discussed in this article.

Rules for correct listening to music

Rule 1 – Be patient

I assure you, listening to an album to the end will be quite difficult. It is possible that, at first, you will even like the music a little, but after a while it will get boring. And then it will begin to seem to you that you are wasting your time in vain, because you could be doing something else. You will want to get up and start doing something. But take your time, let the album play to the end. You do not waste time, you rest and relax. You can set aside at least one hour a week for this activity.

This will teach you patience, concentration and relieve stress.

Rule 2 – Get rid of expectations

Sometimes it seems to us that this or that work of musical art should bring certain sensations. For example, we expect that calm, smooth, enveloping music will begin to give rise to images of the cosmos in us, and a classical work will awaken images of antiquity in our imagination. Sometimes we will just wait for some certain emotions, as our mind associates them with music.

But try to accept what is, and not compare your feelings with what “should be.” Your emotions and feelings are what they are at this moment in time. The word “should” does not apply to them at all.

If you constantly wait for something specific, then your mind will start to worry when it notices that the expectations do not correspond to reality, and this will greatly interfere with the process. For example, you will listen to one of the greatest, according to critics, albums on Earth, which has been appreciated by millions of people. But you will notice that you do not feel anything, the music will seem boring to you. You will start to think: “Is something wrong with me” or “why can’t I have fun now.”

Instead, just relax, let the feelings be as they are. And even if you don’t feel anything, then accept it. Most likely, not everything comes the first time. It took me many times to listen to certain albums before they became my favorites. Or maybe, really, this music is not for you. I said that taste is nothing more than a habit, but I did not say that you should like absolutely everything.

This approach will teach you to accept your emotions as they are and not feel frustrated because your expectations do not match reality.

Rule 3 – Don’t Label

When you don’t get the satisfaction you expect from a song, you’ll start thinking “I just don’t like this style”, “I don’t like female vocals”, “this music is too heavy/simple/dark/boring for me”, “previous the album was nothing, but this one is kind of simple.

Get rid of quick judgments and just listen. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that almost any music from light jazz to metal can have its own beauty, only each style expresses it in different ways. We get used to certain musical genres and don’t accept others: we don’t listen to hip-hop because we just don’t seem to be able to appreciate fast recitative. Or we don’t like hard rock because we don’t like the sound of guitars and all that rock aesthetic with long hair and black suits.

But don’t rush off and generalize.Every musical style has its nuggets, whether they’re holding a guitar, a violin, or locked in a studio surrounded by musical equipment. Musical ideas change year after year, new genres appear and old ones disappear. These things are temporary. Try to see behind these things something eternal and unchanging, that beauty, a sense of harmony and order, which man has already begun to express since the time of savage tribes. Everything changes, but this beauty remains and exists in many styles of music. Don’t focus on one style, listen to different ones.

This will teach you to see unity in imaginary opposites and find the most intimate and eternal under the cover of the transient.

To these rules, I would like to add advice to go to concerts more often, including concerts of classical and jazz music. Choose a day when you go to a concert instead of the usual leisure in a bar. Changing default habits can be a lot of fun!

Further, only for those who are interested, I will tell you about my favorite music. I do not think that this should be interesting to everyone, so I will say that what I wrote above , is a self-contained part of the article and you can end on it and not read further. But, perhaps, thanks to me, someone will find new interesting performers. And for this I am publishing a small overview of musical trends and musicians, from jazz to electronics.

What to listen to?

I think for sophisticated music lovers my list will be amateurish and superficial. The way it is. About my musical tastes of the last few years, I can say that I just love good music, regardless of its style. Even though I’ve always gravitated toward unusual, weird music, I didn’t listen to the underground. Also, I have rarely delved deep enough into one genre of music and cannot be considered a deep connoisseur of, for example, jazz or techno. I just chose good performers from different directions, and as a rule, these were the most famous representatives of their genre. Because the tactics of finding “great albums” that I offer you, I have never hesitated to use myself, so my field of vision was mainly the most famous (though not always in the widest circles) performers. Let’s start my cursory review of world music with jazz.

All the albums I recommend will be released in the order in which I recommend reading them (from “easy” to more “complex”).

Jazz

Why did I start with jazz? Because, in my opinion, this style is accessible to people of different ages and tastes. Although, as I said, taste is just a habit, sometimes this habit is quite deeply rooted in the cultural background of a certain person. And this habit is difficult to overcome. I think my grandfather would find it hard to enjoy listening to electronic clicks and IDM squeaks, while I wouldn’t enjoy retro hits much (but I still like some). But some album by jazzman Miles Davis, I think we could enjoy together.

So, if you’ve never understood what the pleasure of listening to improvisation of brass and keyboards overdubbed on a stuttering drum beat is, then it’s time to find out!

Herbie Hancock

A wonderful and very famous and influential jazz pianist. If you go to the site whosampled.com (on this site you can see which musical fragments (samples) of some compositions were borrowed in others), you will see that fragments of his classical jazz works have been used by a great variety of modern performers, mainly in the genres hip-hop and r’n’b. Herbie Hancock is one of the most quoted jazz artists in hip-hop. The music ranges from catchy and popular tunes to the avant-garde. I attended his concert in Moscow, it was an amazing experience. Hancock is a Buddhist and a meditator.

Recommended albums:

• Fat Albert Rotunda (light and fun album)
• Maiden Voyage (more lyrical album about the sea, it is recommended to listen to the ocean)
• Head Hunters (Peppy Jazz Funk)
• Crossings (Jazz-rock, moving to the avant-garde towards the end)

John Coltrane

I must confess that until now I knew very little about Coltrane. I decided to go to Wikipedia and read a few facts from his biography. And now I’m much more interested in his work.

John Coltrane is one of the greatest jazz musicians. But his uniqueness lies not only in his virtuosity, brilliant possession of the saxophone, but also in the fact that music has become for him the resultant effect of his spiritual transformation. Coltrane, with the help of religion and spiritual practices, got rid of heroin and alcohol addiction. And of course, these facts are very interested in me.

Coltrane held the views of many representatives of various mystical schools and new age. He believed that all religions lead to God and made no distinction between different religious traditions. His reference books were the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bible. His albums are called: “OM”, “Meditations”, “Amen”, “Dear Lord”. He believed that every religion contains its own wisdom. In my opinion, the fact that a person begins to see the unity of different traditions, and not contradictions, suggests that he is at a higher level of spiritual and religious development than those who get bogged down in strife generated by disputes about whose religion is better and which one is more true.

I understand that Coltrane’s personal views are not always of interest to those who simply want to listen to his music. But I’ve always wondered what kind of person and character is behind a certain work of art. And I see that there is only good behind Coltrane’s art.

Recommended Albums:

• Love Supreme (my favorite jazz album)
• My Favorite Things
• Blue Train

I’m just going to check out his other stuff.

Miles Davis

Perhaps the most famous representative of jazz music that appeared after the 60s. He was the inventor of several sub-styles of jazz at once. Unlike Coltrane, he did not possess such virtuosity, but his calm musical statements were more concise and precise. Also, unlike Coltrane, he never got rid of his addictions, which had a bad effect on his career towards the end of his life. (It would be nice if he practiced meditation, following the example of his colleagues Coltrane and Hancock) However, this did not stop Davis from writing great music.

Recommended Albums:

• In Silent Way (very calm album to relax)
• Kind of Blue (perhaps his most famous album, melodies from which other musicians actively borrow)
• Bitche’s Brew (jazz-rock, jazz fusion, more unusual sound than the above albums, two bassists, two pianists and two drummers were used at the same time)

How to listen to jazz?

In our time, dzaj is associated with sophisticated music for sophisticated aesthetes. But, in my opinion, it’s just music, just like everything else. Jazz is like cocaine. While the drug was available to everyone, it was used by the lower strata of society. And as soon as its value increased, it became the prerogative of the rich. But jazz was also once popular music, and jazz concerts were attended by people from the poorest areas, and not just highly intellectual snobs.

Therefore, when you listen to jazz, don’t try to find some “high musical ideas” there, but just listen. This music, like any other, is capable of captivating, making the heart beat faster and the head nod to the beat, you just have to get used to its changeable harmony.

Rock

Rock is different, as, perhaps, any style of music. Here I will list two of my favorite rock bands.

King Crimson

British progressive rock band formed in the 1970s. Throughout their work, their music absorbed the influences of various musical styles and added something of itself to these styles. Their early work was heavily influenced by jazz, concrete and avant-garde music, and some of their compositions were structured like long classical suites. The composition of the group, as well as its sound, has constantly changed throughout the existence of the group. The only constant member of the team, the heart of the group’s ideology was Robert Fripp. He is the inventor of original styles of guitar playing and a follower of the Russian mystic and spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. The music of King Crimson is quite technical and virtuoso. She has always flirted with avant-garde and experimental music, but at the same time she never strayed far from the rock traditions that many people understand.

Recommended Albums:

All in chronological order. Personally, depending on the life period, I liked different albums. About 5 years ago, I loved a little pathos, long, melodic albums of the early period. Now I prefer more minimalistic and concise works related to later work (for example, the Discipline album).

Tool

This modern heavy rock band from the USA is the most paradoxical band I know. I read on an American site: “If you like Tool, it means that you are either very smart or very dumb!”

Of course, this is just a hyperbole of speech, but it has its own truth. The group is very popular. And the army of her fans includes overage aesthetes, who find references to Jung in her texts, and teenagers of puberty who love the band for their heavy, aggressive sound.

Probably, among the famous rock bands, only Pink Floyd can boast such a variety of fans.

If you listen to their aggressive sound for the first time, you will think that this is another alternative band that celebrates violence, tough temper and sex. But here lies another paradox. The team in a rather energetic manner, actively using a heavy guitar sound, impulsive vocals and fast drum beats, talks about how important it is to live in the moment here and now, strive for the absolute, God, educate your Ego (although not in every song). Vocalist James Maynard Keenan narrates meditative spiritual experiences in his eccentric way.

I feel that this music is very close to me in philosophy and in spirit, despite the fact that I have never been a fan of heavy sound. And as my passion for Tool, I discovered another paradox. Energetic guitars slowly hypnotize, even soothe, causing the effect that monotonous and calm music usually produces. But the music of Tool can hardly be called calm! Perhaps this is the merit of skillful musicians who, relying on the traditions of metal, created a new, original sound. This is metal with an ambient spirit! And it seems like a paradox only at first, but in fact, gradually comes the understanding that the words, and music, and the manner of performance, in fact, are one and are a model of beautiful harmony, albeit a very unusual one.

Recommended albums:

Lateralus

10000 Days

Aenima

Ambient

A smooth and calm Ambient style will help us to make a smooth transition from instrumental, “live” music to the field of electronics. Ambient, if you do not take into account some dense avant-garde, is perhaps the most boring style of music. Many popular artists are actively adapting the sound of this genre, including melodic overflows in their compositions, rich in percussion and vocals. But pure ambient, as a rule, does not contain any of this. It is fluid and monotonous. The compositions are usually long and devoid of drums and various effects.

But, if you have patience and devote some time to this music, then it will open its amazing treasures for you. In addition, Ambient, in my opinion, has the most significant therapeutic effect, allowing you to relax, achieve a state of concentration and calmness and catch those shades of emotions that are usually inaccessible to you. Ambient is almost like meditation. Moreover, I believe that this music is accessible to almost all ages and cultures.

Brian Eno

Brian Eno is considered one of the inventors of ambient music. But he did not begin his musical career with calm music. Yes, before he wrote the first ambient album, he was a member of the glam rock band Roxy Music (by the way, a very good band, I advise), dressed in an extravagant suit with feathers, in which he went on stage. He also released solo albums, and took part in collaborations with other musicians, for example, with the same Robert Fripp from King Crimson.

It is said that Eno came up with the idea to record an album with calm, slow music with repetitive passages while he was in the hospital listening to noises coming from the window. And he decided to start making music that slowly hypnotizes, envelops the listener, immersing him in a certain sensual atmosphere, and does not deafen him with swift chords and new sounds.

Eno lived for some time in St. Petersburg. He had close contacts with the Soviet-Russian scene and even produced the album of the Petr Mamonov group – Sounds of Mu.

Recommended albums:

• Music for Airports (an early great ambient album with little electronic sounds yet and active piano use)
• Ambient 4: On Land (good, already electronic and a bit dark album)
• Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks (an album about space flight, conveying the atmosphere of delight and loneliness of a person who was in space for the first time)

Steve Roach

Another famous classical ambient performer. He traveled to remote corners of Australia, under the impressions of which he recorded the wonderful album Dreamtime Return. Author of lengthy half-hour compositions.

Recommended albums:

• Structures from Silence
• Dreamtime Return

Biosphere

Geir Jensen lives in Norway, in a small town in the Arctic Circle. His music is the polar night embodied in sounds, whose sky shimmers with the colors of the northern lights. It is able to invisibly envelop the listener with soft snow and the northern frosty wind. Biosphere’s music demonstrates the ability of the abient to immerse a person in a world in which he has never been. This is probably what music lovers call “atmospheric”. And this property is inherent to a greater extent in ambient music than in any other music. And especially the music of Geir Jensen. This is perhaps my favorite musician in this style.

Recommended Albums: Start with the great album Substrata, then move on to the very first techno-influenced work, Microgravity, and listen to everything in chronological order.

Other electronics (Techno, IDM, Experimental)

In this part of the review, I’ll probably write about music, which is probably a challenge for music lovers. This is experimental electronic music. It can be quite difficult to perceive and, at the same time, beautiful. It is unlikely that people of all ages will understand it, although I may be wrong about this. Therefore, I write about it last. Although this is not an underground at all, but rather well-known musicians in their genre.

Plastikman

For a long time I considered the minimal techno style to be something completely stupid and primitive. It doesn’t take much intelligence or talent to layer a simple sequence of a few electronic sounds onto a monotonous beat. But everything is not so simple, and the music of Rich Houtin, who releases it, including under the pseudonym Plastikman, is a vivid confirmation of this.

His music demonstrates the difference between minimalist music and simple, primitive music. Minimalism is complex expressed in simple, much expressed in small. The beauty of Plastikman’s music is not in complex melodies, varied sounds and dynamic progressions. Its beauty is not like the splendor of the magnificent decoration of ancient temples or the idyllic southern sunset. Her beauty is the beauty of the perfectly smooth surface of the black ivory ball, the beauty of geometry and mathematical order.

It is different from the wordy, generous and unrestrained beauty of the music we are used to listening to. Therefore, it can cause such misunderstanding at first. And that’s why I’m writing about it here.

After all, this is really a different form of musical expression, and not some kind of “under-music”. And when I began to understand it, I realized that it takes a lot of skill and talent to build such a composition from a few mean sounds and effects that the listener can like! Moreover, I began to think that having a huge number of forms of musical expression in the arsenal and the freedom to make music as complex as you like, it is much easier to surprise the listener than when these means of expression are few, as in minimalist art. Everything ingenious is simple! Everything ingenious is minimal!

Plastikman’s skill and talent lies in the fact that he does not have anything superfluous in compositions, but what is there stands in its strictly defined place. One gets the feeling that if something is changed, the whole structure will quickly collapse. The musician, it would seem, managed to catch the only possible order in which music can exist under the given restrictions. At the same time, each sound from a mean set of sounds undergoes precise and filigree processing on special equipment. And it also sounds the way it should sound and nothing else. When you listen to some other music, you enjoy a melody woven from sounds. Here you enjoy the sounds themselves.

I may not be able to accurately describe my impressions of Plastikman’s music in my own words, so you’d better just listen to it.

Recommended albums:

• Artifacts
• Consumed
• Closer

I also recommend listening to Richie Hawtin’s other projects besides Plastikman.

Coil

Coil is a British electronic duo. Its participants were fond of occult and sexual practices, as well as drugs and all sorts of debauchery. They were followers of Macrquis da Sade and Aleister Crowley, and admirers of Piero Paolo Pazollini. If the music of John Coltrane, about which I wrote above, hides a lot of good things: his religious path and spiritual development. Then behind the music of Coil there is less good: it is the embodiment of decadence, aesthetic debauchery, unrestrained and unrestricted hedonism. Nevertheless, I really like the work of this team for a long time. Their music has the ability to evoke all kinds of emotions from the unknown corners of the subconscious, and in addition, it can be very beautiful, especially when it does not hurt the ear. John Ballans and Peter Christopherson have recorded quite a lot of material in their not very long lives, and all of it is very diverse. The music is sometimes very strange, which in itself is not a strange fact considering what these guys were like.

Recommended Albums:

• Music to Play in the Dark vol. 2 (Beautiful “lunar” ambient with the insinuating voice of John Ballance. Many critics and also me consider the band’s best album)
• Love’s Secret Domain (a dance album where acid house mixes with dark vocal performances to a slow beat. Great record)
• Music to Play in the Dark vol. 1 (The first part of a double album, also very good)
• Angelic Conversations (neo-classical with Shakespeare)

And many other different releases, among which almost unbearable noise and avant-garde come across.

Autechre

Another British duo whose musical style is referred to by critics as IDM, which stands for Intelligent Dance Music. I don’t know about intelligent, but dancing to her confused pseudo-chaotic rhythms is very, very difficult. The duet’s music is very unusual, but also very talented. As a friend of mine said, Autechre are more music programmers than musicians, and I agree with him on that. In their music, beauty is expressed through a strict mathematical order, as if it is floating somewhere high, detached and devoid of everything human. It seems that it was written by a robot or an alien. In it, you will not meet the usual emotions, if at all you will meet at least some emotions. If the early albums still contain some hint of tenderness, melodiousness and familiar harmony, albeit aloof, strange and inhuman, then later records are deprived of this as well. This is the romance of microcircuits, soulless mechanisms, cold space and lifeless impulses running along the neural fiber of the electronic brain.

This is not what you are used to listening to. But music, of course, must be beautiful. And Autechtre’s music is very beautiful and performed, I must say, very professionally! Even the name of the group Autechre is very beautiful, but at the same time abstract. But the mind makes associations with some kind of technology and artificial intelligence. The name is fully consistent with the music. This is one of my favorite projects. Even in later, chaotic works, a certain order and intention of the creator can be traced. Although, at first glance, it seems that this is just a randomly generated sequence of samples.

Recommended albums: everything, starting with the first Incunabula and going chronologically, it is in this order that the “complexity” of the music increases. I like almost everything by Autechre, but my favorite album is still Amber. The clip below is not indicative of their creativity, I just like the video sequence. And in general, in the case of Autechre, it is difficult to find an indicative track, everything is very different. It is better to listen to albums.

Boards of Canada

Unlike all the above-mentioned performers in the category of experimental electronic music, it is difficult to shock anyone with the work of the Scottish duo Boards of Canada. I think even if you let your grandfather listen to them, he won’t really mind (But it’s hard to imagine what will happen to him if you show him the Autechre clip above). The music is quite soft and calm.

But, nevertheless, I managed to understand this music with great difficulty. I was very interested in why this group is so loved, why their albums are appreciated so much. Whereas their music seemed boring and dull to me. And I again had a feeling that I was missing something, and I began to listen and try to catch in the music of Boards of Canada what made them so popular in the world with almost no promotion and advertising. I had to listen to their albums 10 times before I started to like their music and really like it! (By the way, here’s another advantage of ratings and critical reviews. In them you can find music that is worthy of trying to “understand” it, even if you don’t understand it yet and can’t rely on your own taste.) I do not regret the time spent at all, now, Boards of Canada are my favorite band and their album Music has the Right to Children (as well as their other works) I can still listen to constantly. This music is never boring. It seems to me that everyone who listens or once listened to Dosok can be divided into two types. The first ones are those who don’t like their music at all. And the second are those who are simply crazy about this group! There is no middle ground, I think. If the work of the band has revealed at least a little of its splendor to you, then you will become their devoted fan for a long time and will return to this music again and again.

The emotions that BoC tries to express are quite unusual. You can’t call it any one word: “sadness”, “longing” or “joy”. It’s something more subtle. These are not bright shades, not sharp strokes, but soft halftones, a mixture of different colors that your eye can hardly distinguish. When you listen to this music, something is born inside, what exactly is hard to say. Some melodies have a clear nostalgic tone, like an echo of childhood, some kind of forgotten feeling from ancient times, which is difficult to perceive in its entirety, but you can only catch its barely noticeable, but incomparable distant aroma. The music of Boards of Canada is a memory of something that never happened.

Recommended albums: all works. I recommend starting with Music has the Right to Children.

Conclusion

That’s it. I hope you enjoyed my little review. I did not try to tell about all the performers I love, here I have brought the most interesting ones, those who were able to change my ideas about music. And if you liked something from my small selection, I also recommend that you familiarize yourself with the work of the following artists:

• Massive Attack (trip-hop, for the widest taste. Their songs are heard in many movies)
• Tricky
• Aphex Twin (considered one of the inventors of IDM. Unfortunately, I didn’t write about him, although he certainly deserves a mention. As compensation for this omission, I enclose his wonderful track)
• Burial
• Pink Floyd
• Joy Divison
• Old Woman Moss and other projects by Roman Sidorov (only for the most mentally stable. To say that the music is depressing and depressing is to say nothing. Listen carefully)
• DJ Krush
• Ryuichi Sakamoto (excellent Japanese pianist)
• David Sylvian (My favorite vocalist. I should have dedicated a separate review too)
• Aesop Rock (Do you think hip-hop is primitive and stupid music? Listen to this guy!)
• Dead Can Dance
• Talking Heads
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor
• Radiohead

I will also be glad if you advise me something in the comments! I can’t promise I’ll listen soon, because I have many other artists in the queue!

Final advice and caution

This article was about music. More precisely about the perception of music. But I hope that your, as well as mine, acquaintance with audio art will not be limited only to consumption, but is also realized in creation! I hope that this will become my future hobby, about which I will definitely write an article on the site.

And remember! Loving experimental music doesn’t make you smart and cool!

Good luck and success!