monkey!

February 16, 2008

music to code to

here is a list of music I generally code to. It has great melodies, great for just background noise (it’s not heavy at all) and the vocals are either very rare, or just superb (love thom yorke)

(in alphabetical order, I refuse to categorize these bands as I may get my face kicked in by some music extremists if I do)

• A Silver Mt. Zion. A montreal-based post-rock band. Some of their members are also involved in Godspeed You! (listed below)
• Air. French electronica at its finest. They have a lot of varying sounds and even have an entire album dedicated to the movie The Virgin Suicides.
• Anathema. Not their older stuff, but their new stuff is very mellow, almost Pink-floyd’ish with a very nice touch of soft and soothing sounds. Love em
• Boards of Canada. Surprisingly not Canadian, Scottish actually. It sounds like their stuff was made in the 70’s. Sometimes very scratchy, but most of the time very good.
• ef. A post-rock band from Sweden. Very instrumental based.
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Pretty much sex in the form of music for me. Listen to f#a#infinity and you will fall in love with them. Only band that can still send chills down my spine. Have about 5 albums out, but are pretty much broken up now unfortunately.
• Massive Attack. Pretty much the fathers of trip hop. Enough said
• Mike Oldfield. You’ve probably heard of him. Not post-rock, just great instrumental music. He’s done some great things with other bands as well
• Moby. I like all his stuff, but only some for programming as other ones are too distracting. Great electronic selection
• Portishead. A london based triphop band, also one of the big names in the genre. Easily one of the most amazing voices in music
• Radiohead. Need I say more? Thom Yorke has an amazing voice and this is the perfect music to get me into the mood if I’m not feeling it. Godspeed and all the others may keep me in the mood, but this puts me right into it (If that even makes sense!)
• Sigur Rós. Icelandic post-rock! These guys are awesome and can put you to sleep. I prefer to listen to them with headphones so even at the quietest setting, I can hear every word and whisper.
• This Will Destroy You. Kind of new on the scene but great music. Also American based which is surprising considering where you see most of this genre coming from (Europe and Canada)
• Yo La Tengo. Indie-rock that has been around for ages (I think like 15 years now). Some great melodic tunes and just awesome stuff to relax to.

Of course, this is merely a selection. I will post up my entire iTunes library here eventually.