Music

Since Studio Brussel is having a birthday party these days, I wanted to share some thoughts on music, mainly how my collection got where it is. People that were on some of my kot-parties or copied my music at ICT-Blue.lan parties (don't copy music kidz) know I have a rather wide variety of music on my regular playlist.

As far as I can remember, I've always had some thing with music. If I'm not playing myself than there's some music on (my ipod is an always-on device so to speak). I grew up with MTV, back in the day it was not yet hijacked by hip hoppers,  R&B (Rhythm & Boobs anyone?), ringtone ads, ... . The days where TMF was just rising. The times where Katja Schuurman presented "so 90's", the days where Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Bush and The Smashing Pumpkins were all the rage. I played guitar in a (rock/grunge) band for a while (the infamous "Moldy & the blasting nymphlikes"), I still enjoy playing piano and guitar (hell, I sometimes even take a 30min drive to my parents house just to play). All this to simply say: I love music, it runs in the family, and I couldn't live without.

It all started out with hearing what my brothers had on tape (yes, tape, those were the days). It ranged from early Clouseau over R.E.M. to Nick Cave. The inspirational odd piece of classical opera or French popular chanson were brought in by my parents. The parents also included some "pré historie" of late 60's (Ricky Nelson, Jewel Akens, Edith Piaff, ... ).

It's fair to say my brothers (Ardi and the not-online Zors) shaped my early taste. Add on top of that the Sunday morning ritual called "De Afrekening" on Studio Brussel and it's not too hard to see where I got my rock influence.

In the Dutch series, there was 10 om te zien, leaving me with a notorious collection of "foute muziek" (politically incorrect music, think YMCA on a straight, heavy metal, biker party, but worse). An influence that still shows today in my collection through artists like the Backstreet Boys, Take That, Bart Kaëll, Frans Bauer, various aprés ski hits (Drei Weisse tauben by EAV was an instant classic @ Casa Ardonio). Who cares, I like those songs just as much as the more established, politically correct artists.

Little rebellion I am, I dug into house music around the age of 15 (when I started going out on Saturdays). I filled my head with beats all day long. The more the better, hard and fast beats. Me and my friends were Jumping before it became a hype. Times spent in Discotheek BBC, Kokorico and Lamborghieni (simply called "De koko" and "De Lambo" because we were hip & cool and long names were so against our fastbeats life style) introduced me to a new era in my music evolution. I don't know what pulled me into it, but I think Formula had something to do with it (or at least the cover of the single)

I discovered the bliss of trance music in those hellholes. Heavenly voices, violin arrangements, long notes hanging high in the air on a solid line of slightly varying base and rhythm sections. Some of my all time favorite tracks are still the ones I discovered early on in this journey. Think about (amongst others): Delirium - Silence, Maria Naylor - Angry Skies (terrestrial vox mix), Lost Witness - Song to the siren.

For the sake of completeness, I have to admit I took the occasional wigger sidestep. Filling my collection with homies like 2Pac, P. Diddy, Nas, Eminem but also the lighter "black" music such as Aaliyah, All Saints (that's probably more "foute muziek" anyway)

All those beats started begging for a bit of counterweight and a bit more "substantial" music. Slowly, what I liked about trance started to resemble deephouse. The fact that, around that time, the internetmusic really started to be everywhere probably helped on this part of the journey. I also must pay the necessary respect here to my bro/DJ Ardixiv and the gang of KinkyPeople.

As I indicated earlier, I played piano ever since I was a little kid meaning I got some classical baggage. I still enjoy the sound of a well played piano, even on less classical works like this. Next to everything mentioned above this is a constant parallel path that every now and again pulled some classical music in. My hard drive still features a lot of Mozart (probably my favorite), Chopin, Bach, Vivaldi (what would I do without the wonderful rendition of Sposa Son Disprezzeta by Cecilia Bartoli). I recently started to go and see live opera performances. Not for the acting, simply for the live music. There's something magical about hearing opera music performed life in front of you, regardless of the acting and stage setting. It's something even the best in house audio system can't compete with.

The last part of my influence is down to my love for Italy and the language, fueled somewhat more by The Sopranos (the soundtrack is simply wonderful). One of the most memorable moments (music wise) must be the end of season 3 where uncle Junior performs Core Ngrato supported by just a guitar. Simply magical. It's not just the Sopranos that triggered it (even though they helped refueling). I was an early adopter of Andrea Bocelli, the recent passing of Pavarotti made me (re)discover his works (&friends). To top it off, here's a classic in my "Italian" list, a rendition of Caruso by Lara Fabian.

Since I'm a geek and love devoting myself entirely to videogames, It should be no surprise that I've been influenced by the following music stations:

And off Course:

That's a fairly large amount of variety in music I'd say. It pretty much ranges from heavy metal over a whole lot of mid-stream rock (some vids: Smashing pumpkins, creed, pearl jam, guns & roses, R.E.M., ...) over to the more soulful matters (more vids: Norah Jones, Sade, Erykah Badu,...), a lot of electronical influences (youtube all the way: Moby, Hotel Costes,...) to the big classics (Mozart high above). Recent discoveries include Carla Bruni, Soulshine, Vasco Rossi and Marvin Gaye (in  "The Very Best of Motown" 3cd set).

I know I forgot a lot of music I listen to on a regular basis, if I wanted to really detail what I like on music I wouldn't have time to actually listen to it and figure out what else I like besides what I know.

I also promised myself that, as of today, I would start using last.fm client on my work laptop also and connect my ipod to my pc so what I play can be scrobbled (I hate itunes auto-sync, don't bother telling me about that). If I can now take up the habit of regularly changing the 8Gb on my ipod that should give a reasonable last.fm in due time.