Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

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