Good music these days?

Coming off the Teen Hate thread, people were lamenting the state of music these days. As others pointed out, there is a lot of very good music being made, but most of it won't be found on the pop stations (though if you like pop, I'm not going to argue the point. Tastes are personal).

I like anything from 30s and 40s big bang (Artie Shaw was great), to blues, opera, classical, jazz, old-style country, folk, right up through death metal. If it's good, it's good.

So I thought it would be fun for people to discuss the less well-known good music that is out there, and to choose one song that they feel is good, but is by an artist most are unlikely to come across simply by browsing the popular radio stations.

I'll go with Agalloch, which I suspect some of you will like and some will not

 

**NOTE**

There's a music thread. Looks like this is already going on!

Lo siento!

 

I'm really into Brazilian music at the moment that is of a folky/jazzy sound. Mônica Salmaso and Marcelo Camelo. The two videos are not exactly new, so I don't know if this counts, but if you've never heard it, it's new to you, right?

 

I like these @Wreybies. Particularly the Marcelo Camelo.

 

The album name is one of the more clever things I've seen. Sóu means "I am" and if you flip it, it reads nos, which means "we". I am/we are.

 

That is clever. I'll have to remember that.

 

I personally like video game and film soundtracks (although I do listen to other stuff! This is just an example), such as Man of Steel's one. Have a listen to the power.



P.S. I think radio sucks, apart from rock stations and classical stations. Even if you like pop and dance music, they play about four songs in a day. The same ones. Again and again. It's ridiculously annoying. :/

 

@Steerpike that band is right up my alley!

Otan Vargas. I found this guy on YouTube about six years ago or so doing some Staind covers and I was pretty impressed. Then I found some of the original songs he did, which at the time, were just him sitting in front of a camera with his guitar in his living room.

Now he has two studio albums (Alone and Selected Sorrow) and he's working on third EP with Aaron Lewis which is being produced by Johnny April of Staind.

 

In a world in which Eric Johnson is still making albums, all hope is not lost.



He can be a bit too mellow for some, if they don't have a heart.

Also, one of my favorite bands at the moment is a Canadian band called Bedouin Soundclash. Here they are:

 

This is my favourite piece of music, from Bear McCreary. No-one should care that its from a soundtrack, its just lovely.

 

Found this band a while ago and I have to say the singer quickly became one of my favorite vocalists:
Louna - Пока Не Поздно

And here's an actually interesting cover of Happy Together by Slothrust. One of the comments sums it up pretty well: "I thought it was just a boring cover until... satan happened."

Lastly, a shorty from a band nobody has probably heard of before: Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agorapocalypse Now

 

Not an Agalloch fan, but was never hostile towards the band like a few other BM guys were back when they first made a splash in the metal scene. Always saw their style as an unproductive deviation away from the basic BM formula rather than something organically evolved from BM or BM with something incongruous grafted to it. It seems that people who are fans of Agalloch are fans for reasons other than the reasons they or others are fans of orthodox BM which I think confirms my view.

I think this deviation is unproductive from the BM perspective because BM is already a theoretically perfect music genre and there's still a lot of great music to be made using only its constituent elements.

 

Speaking of BM, Peste Noire from France has a pretty interesting take on the genre. Their song "La Mesniee Mordrissoire" off their Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor became basically the "theme song" of one of my and KaTrian's medieval hack'n'slash fantasies.

 

I have that CD. It is excellent.

The idea that deviation from orthodox black metal is unnecessary or undesirable is misguided, in my opinion. You can still have plenty of great orthodox black metal, and at the same time have plenty of great bands doing some different within the genre.

 

When did I say you can't have deviations? I only said they are deviations. I personally don't like Agalloch, but there are other bands which are just as much unproductive deviations in BM that I do like. The Meads of Asphodel, Tjolgtjar and I Shalt Become are perennial favorites of mine, but I'm not about to say they are the next step in BM evolution or are models for other bands, because they are not. My point is that I find praising such bands as "the best" BM or as more "advanced" than orthodox bands is detrimental to the continued development of orthodox BM, not that unorthodox bands shouldn't exist.

Only heard the first Peste Noire, which is great. Word is they have changed a lot over the years. My guess is that they've become more punky? Seems like that's how the band would go based on the things Famine says in interviews.

 

Ah, sorry. I misinterpreted your post. I agree with this - I wouldn't say these other bands are necessarily better or more advanced, they're just doing their own thing within the genre. I've heard The Meads of Asphodel somewhere (probably Spotify), but not the other two. I'll have to check them out.

 

Good idea! It's good that there's always some folks out there doing wacky things for its own sake. We need some wackiness to keep things real.

 

Here's a tune from a Quebec First Nations Band , 80's 90s time frame. It ended up on my iPod somehow and I love the music. Raw but easy listening.
▶ Kashtin - Apu Shapentaman - YouTube

 

I was lucky enough to find this Canadian band on a Songza playlist, absolutely amazing, and I can't stop listening to this song!