apt-get's journal

It's nice to sometimes look back on your tastes and how they've changed with time. My last.fm account recently turned five years old, so I decided to check out what I used to listen to back then. I didn't actively listen to music prior to that: maybe I'd listen to the occasional (j-)pop track, mostly vocaloid or anime stuff, or perhaps I'd search up mashups on soundcloud, but I didn't have any interest in discovering new genres or artists.

The first band that made me yearning for more, outside of any fandom or other external factor, was probably Imagine Dragons. That kind of electro-rock mix wasn't really something I'd listened to a lot before, and I liked it a lot! Unfortunately, I'm not as fond of their reverb abuse and genericness today. (still, go listen to Smoke+Mirrors. It's a great album, at least for the first half of it.) I also enjoyed listening to a couple other similar artists, like Stromae. It's a shame that he's mostly known for a few ultra-popular songs (Alors on Danse, Formidable, and Papaoutai), because his second album, Racine Carrée, is absolutely fantastic. There really isn't a single filler song, and even if you don't understand French, the sonorities and instrumentals will surely hook you in.

It was after downloading a few OSTs, notably Cowboy Bebop's (haha how generic) and the Monogatari series', that my interest in Japanese music, rather than otaku music, really emerged, which may seem a bit paradoxal, I concur. Like most people that creamed their pants listening to the Seatbelts for the first time, it began with jazz and bossa nova. Then followed a period of obsessing over Rasmus Faber, Moe Jazz, and the others: you probably know how it goes. (It *did* make me interested in the Jazz and Bossa western classics, though, along with other cult folk singers like Sinatra and Mark Bernes. I still listen to all of these occasionally.)

My initiation into EDM, on the other hand, came as a bit of a coincidence. I had stumbled upon a rather nice Touhou pop track while playing Osu!, and wanted to find more from the same artist. That prompted me to download the entire collection for the circle ALiCE'S EMOTION... known more for their hardcore and bassy tracks than anything I was looking for at first. Still, putting those albums on shuffle in the background left me addicted to that genre.

Nowadays, I have a small preference for J-EDM (it's the kind of music I generally play when I LARP as an internet DJ), but I like pretty much every genre except metal. Well, it's not like I abhor the style, but it doesn't arouse any particular feelings within me. I also don't listen to much classical music, mostly because I've never really forayed into the genre; I suppose I may have an epiphany related to it in the future and start praising the ingenuity of the composers of yore.

Funnily enough, the band I listen to the most is a complete outlier from all this. I guess that could be considered a form of homesickness, huh?

Mood track: S̖̩t̛͔͍̭̼̦ͅu̮͕͍̜͙͝p̝̩̩͔ef̶͚̦̹l̴̰įp̜̼̻̠͕ͅ ̩̳̣͞-̜̟̣͓͡ ̼̲̩̱S̲̰͉͙t͙u͏̩͎͍͙̙p̴͕̖͓͓ ͉͍̀V̪͍͓͈ir̞̖̠͚̼̦u͇s̤̗̺͓