What have you been listening to this week?

I've been exploring Dungeon Synth, listening to some of the popular albums on the Dungeon Synth Archive. I enjoy background music when working, or lately applying for jobs, like certain game albums and genres like Synthwave, Vaporwave, and Barberbeats. This has been an extension of that desire and has been incredibly enjoyable seeing this deep niche genre I'd not heard about. There are tons of different subgenres in it and I've slowly been making my own playlist of albums I've enjoyed.

I have been on a deep dive of all sorts of metal subgenres for the past year or so. I'm mainly trying to acquaint myself with subgenres that I've either never listened to, or subgenres that I've written off because the few songs I've heard haven't been my style.

That being said, the subgenre Blackgaze has been really catching my attention! It started when I finally listened to Deafheaven's Sunbather for the first time. It's exactly the kind of chill vibe I've been looking for with a dark, ominous undertone. I especially love the lack of clean vocals in music that feels like it could otherwise be easy listening for me. Never knew this would be how I break into black metal in general, but I get it finally!

Listening to Nirvana's Unplugged Lake of Fire and Where Did You Sleep Last Night over and over, this week.

I can't get off this King Diamond train that I've been on for the last couple of weeks. I keep coming back to The Graveyard and Voodoo. The stories are just so good, the musicianship is top notch, and there's nothing more to be said about King's vocals. I'm dipping my toes into the House Of God album. It feels way more straightforward so far but still pretty good.

Tidal nailed this suggestion for me, Ezra Was Right by Grandbrothers, the other day. I'm a sucker for piano/electronica blends and this just hits all my buttons. Been digging through the rest of Grandbrothers discography and so far I am enjoying it.

Oonagh! After not getting many responses I did a google search and found some site that graphs artists by similarity. Tried a few and found Oonagh near Karliene, and wow!! I am in love. Feels like a mix of folk, Celtic, and Bollywood.

I found a way cool album trawling spotify for a track I was trying to remember (Spotify, Youtube).

It's a jazz/big band arrangement for some iconic tracks from Monster Hunter. There's another one that's more straightforwardly jazz. Monster Hunter Swing covers a few songs I particularly enjoyed/am nostalgic for, I really enjoyed how it changed up the mood of those pieces. If you want a track to start with, I would point you to the theme for Pokke Village. Just about anybody nostalgic for old MH will get teary eyed to it, and this arrangement drives home its best parts.

Another really good example is a battle track - a track that plays when the monster is coming for you, specifically, because there are separate pieces for things like "the monster has seen you" and "you are in pursuit". Compositionally, Monster Hunter's music tends toward the classical, maybe is a way to say it. Here is the original. It's of course, energetic, with a bit of a dramatic riff in the middle, and it's the first track you get in the third game so it's remembered pretty well/fondly. The rearranged version first extends it to more of a complete work (the battle track is intended to loop, so it's short and doesn't really conclude) and gives it what's maybe half of a new mood - it remains tense but goes for "frenetic" over "dramatic", is how I want to say it.

There is an enormous amount of music for those games that doesn't sound like a lot of others, in my opinion. They're more complex, and they cohere both within each game and across the series. I especially like that they create a unique theme for each game, and incorporate the original title's theme in every game. While they do reuse the basic composition of something like a monster's theme, they will rearrange it and sometimes recompose it to better fit with the theme they developed for the specific game it's showing up in. The original game's theme is often recalled during the most intense encounters, and when you succeed at things. That they maintain a pretty consistent sound across the games while making each game sound unique is pretty impressive to me. The most recent game, Rise, kinda took it in a more modern direction, but not a whole lot. It still sounds distinct while leaning very heavily in a specific direction, to me. Anyway, that's what caught my attention recently. I'm a sucker for saxophones and band instruments because that is what I did for a while. I was pretty impressed with their decisions about how to use the tracks they picked, they hit the nostalgic notes but are their own completely.

I've been listening to a lot of 'Sly and the Family Stone' lately, going through the albums and finding some gems.

Duress by 8485

And

Wired for Destruction by Bodysnatcher

So yeah, I'm all over the place this week. These songs have nothing in common other than perhaps eliciting intense and dramatic feelings.