Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

Sometimes I feel as if I am a bit unique on various music forums I post on, because I have almost zero nostalgic feelings  connected to music. 

Once I reached about the age of 20, music stopped being the "soundtrack to my life", and became something to appreciate on a purely artistic level. Once that happened, the idea of listening to a song because it reminded me of a great time I had during my youth, became trivial to me.

Not that I don't listen to some music from before that time, but it still has to meet the criteria* I love in music. I do not listen to it because it came from a certain time in my life. 

*Those criteria being: very high levels of musicianship, deep and broad range of emotional and/or intellectual content conveyed, moderate to high levels of complexity. 

@audio-b-dog 

I could not make a list like @simonmoon of the musical attributes that appeal to me. 

Szymanowski’s Symphonie Concertante. It sounded "experimental" enough (although probably a hundred years old) to be on @simonmoon’s list. Do you know this composer?

 

Let me be clear, I did not consciously choose to only like music with the attributes I listed previously. I didn't create that list with intent to only only listen to music with those attributes. 

I just noticed over time, that music that did not have most or all of those attributes became less and less interesting to me, and my tastes and search for new music kept heading toward those attributes.

I have several recordings by Szymanowski that I like quite a bit.

Those criteria I previously mentioned:

Those criteria being (no particular order): very high level of musicianship, deep and broad levels of emotional and/or intellectual content conveyed, fairly high levels of complexity and sophistication, (usually) long form song structure that goes through changes in: mood, intensity, tempo, dynamics, time changes, etc., over its length.

@johnnotkathi 

Yes, Riverside is a very good modern prog band. 

Although their latest recording didn't so much for me. 

@frogman 

“……….no genre boundaries”.

No matter the genre, sometimes a performance is so locked in and with such strong collective sense of purpose that it brings a different meaning to “spiritual”:

Perfect description of the vast majority of the performances of guitarist, Allan Holdsworth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPbmPM7epY

As a good friend and a top LA studio musicians said about Holdsworth:

"For me, Allan Holdsworth was the most innovative improviser of all time on ANY instrument. The great jazz soloists (McCoy, Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Trane, etc.), all had predecessors on their respective instruments that they copped licks from and modified with their own voice. There clearly was no guitar lineage leading up to Allan's approach. This freak landed ship with a completely new vocabulary not based on anything that was already established. No blues, pentatonics, bop, post-bop...NOTHING"

@mahgister 

Is Monteverdi 8th book of madrigals, all Gesualdo and  Josquin Des Prez   are boring or correspond to your definition ?

For me there is no relation between genius and chronological time ?

Those composers you mention, are not boring to me based on the attributes I previously mentioned. They are boring to me because they do nothing for my personal artistic sensibilities.

For me also, there no relationship between genius and chronolectal time. 

I am able to fully admit, that: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, the composers you mentioned above, and many others of similar periods,  were probably geniuses. That doesn’t change the fact that I am mostly unmoved by their music. 

I have no problems understanding their: contributions to music, their innovations, their skill, their knowledge of theory,  etc, without actually enjoying their music. In fact, I will go one step further; I can listen to their music, and even hear what others: find so appealing, are moved by, what they hear and interpret as beauty, etc.

But I always feel like I am removed from it, emotionally and/or intellectually speaking. When I listen to music by those composers, I can’t help but think to myself, "Oh, this is the part where the composer is trying to elicit feelings of awe, here’s the part where the composer is trying to create tension, this is the part where the composer is trying create a pastoral atmosphere, here’s the part where the composer is trying to create excitement, etc". 

But despite hearing what the composer is going for, it doesn’t reach into me and actually create those feelings within me.  

@saugertiesbob 

God, I wish I had half the time you all have to come up with these thread topics that generate thousands of hours of down the rabbit hole minutia, Maybe when I’m retired and have done everything else I plan to and literally find myself waking up one day thinking "hmmm...what can I post that will then keep me engaged for a few months and hundred of hours of my life"...

 

For me, music is by far, the best art form there is.

Listening to music is not a casual experience for me. I become entirely engrossed while listening to music, and transported emotionally, intellectually, mentally. 

Since I am nearly obsessed with music, that near obsession extends to discussing and reading about music, and hearing what other people have to say about music. 

It does not take thousands of hours to create or post on these threads from time to time. Not even close. 

And if by coming to these posts, with the possibility of discovering a some great new music, band, composer, musician, etc, is well worth the time. 

I have certain criteria that I love in music. If music does not have most or all of those criteria, I find it uninteresting, emotionally and/or intellectually. And it's not like I made a conscious decision to only like music that meet those criteria, it was an evolution over the years.

Those criteria being (no particular order): very high level of musicianship, deep and broad levels of emotional and/or intellectual content conveyed, fairly high levels of complexity and sophistication, (usually) long form song structure that goes through changes in: mood, intensity, tempo, dynamics, time changes, etc., over its length.

I am bored by songs in standard verse>chorus>bridge>repeat structure, in 4/4 time, 3 chords, with obvious hooks.

As time passes, I become more and more intolerant of music that does not have those criteria. Even music by bands I used to love  (Deep Purple, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, The Beatles, etc)  does almost nothing for me anymore. 

The genres that most often meet those criteria for me are:

Jazz - post bop, fusion, avant-garde, chamber-jazz, M-Base

Prog - avant-prog, Canterbury, symph-prog, Zeuhl, prog-metal

Classical - avant-garde, serial, atonal, New Complexity, Spectralism, 12 tone

@toddalin 

Bring back Progressive Rock!  I don’t think there is anything like Gentle Giant anymore.  Gotta be one of my all time favorites.

https://youtu.be/ifRnVEkqB2I

What do mean "bring BACK progressive rock"?

Progressive music has been going strong ever since the Swedish band, Änglagård  released their debut album, Hybris in 1992! Complex, emotional, great musicianship.

They sort of opened the floodgates.

Deus ex Machina - Italian band with frightening levels of musicianship. Vocalist with 5 octave range. Borders on jazz-fusion at times.

After Crying - Hungarian chamber-prog band. Their first 6 releases are killer, 

The Thinking Plague - US band deep in the avant-prog subgenre. Atonal, complex, and "difficult", but worth the effort. 

Flower Kings - Swedish band doing classic sounding prog. Have many releases, although the latest have gotten a bit "been there, done that". 

Haken - British band that straddles the line between prog-metal and classic prog. Complex and emotional, with world class musicianship. Their album "The Mountain" has more than a bit of similarities to Gentle Giant.

Echolyn - US band with some killer releases. "As the World" and "Suffocating the Bloom" are their best, IMO, and have some very Gentle Giant influenced, multi part vocal passages.

Zopp - British band steeped in the Canterbury style (National Health, Hatfield and the North, Caravan). Really good stuff. 

Corima - US band in the Zeuhl style (Magma). Killer stuff, with amazing violin playing by Andrea Calderón.

Koenjihyakkei - Another Zeuhl band, this time from Japan. These guys are intense and can be relentless. Their latest are their best. 

This is just a small sample of some killer prog from very recent times. 

Here’s a list of top prog albums from just 2025.

ProgArchives