Listening to the same music day in and out isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Often, however, departing from the usual results in one of three things—either you gain a deeper appreciation of the genres you enjoy, or you add a new set to your roster of listenable things, or both. So if you’re sick of listening to Gaga telling her men to stop calling her, or done with the Bieb professing his equally infant love to well, a baby—then it’s time to learn about some other genres that might have slipped your auditory radar.
INDIE FOLK
There is something about the imagery brought to mind by listening to indie folk that makes you think of sitting on the back of a pick-up truck, sipping a sangria, listening to a man playing music on an accordion whilst on the way to a French coast. Indie folk is indie rock (ergo music by unsigned bands or bands that don’t fall under the Big Man umbrella of commercial labels) with the use of flugelhorns, French horns, and other such eclectic instruments.
Artists to listen to:
Sufjan Stevens
Fleet Folk
Beirut
GOA
If you listen to trance, then you’d know that Ibiza is party central for all the best of DJs. Translate that into its counter-part in Asia, which is Goa. This refers to both the genre and the place in India where it all started. Goa is your cookie-cutter trance/techno, except you won’t be hearing the same melody throughout the whole song; rather, the sound evolves from the first second to the last, with variations in beat and rhythm. Usually fast paced, the music is trippy, hypnotic, psychedelic, and any of the other words that can go with the set.
Artists to listen to:
Juno Reactor
Infected Mushroom
Astral Projection
DUBSTEP
Dubstep is a relatively new genre, just a tad over a decade old. It started out as dark, dub, b-side remixes for two-step tracks, but when people found that it had listening value, it evolved into something bigger. Dubstep could sometimes be a beast, with deep bass, sharp kickdrums, and dub rhythms reminiscent of drum and bass. It can also be very light and melodic, bordering on lounge trance. If you stepped into a dubstep party, it’d either be in a living room with people in the couches or in a basement sweating it out and destroying the woofer.
Artists to listen to:
Skream
Headhunter
Liquid Stranger
INDIE POP
This is a genre that may seem a little more familiar to all of you, since movies like Juno and Scot Pilgrim vs. The World have popularized them. One of the most popular artists that fall under this genre may be Florence and the Machine, who covered the indie folk song of Beirut, “Postcards from Italy”. Indie pop stays away from the mainstream with the use of intelligent lyrics, and is heavy on the use of violins, drums and synthesizers.
Artists to listen to:
Voxtrot
Cansei de Ser Sexy
PSYBIENT
Now if you want to stray from the mainstream so far you’d be on a mountain, listen to this genre. You could actually listen to psybient on a mountain. It’s the trippy kind of music that you’d imagine playing in your head if you ingested too much herbs and had an extra dose of absinthe in your system. Psybient is a genre that utilizes poetry and spoken word, mixed backwards, and is heavy with the synth. While it may not be very melodious, it definitely is worth a listen, if not for the melody then for the hypnotizing beat.
Artists to listen to:
Pitch Black
The Mystery of the Yeti
Celtic Cross
