The Joy of New Music

For me the height of musical invention occurred around the mid-nineties. The period had everything- Mudhoney, Nirvana, Primal Scream, a bit of Ministry and NIN, Leftfield, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, the entire output of the Ninja Tune label at the time, Tom Waits, My Bloody Valentine, Tricky. I could go on and on. I started out with stuff like The Stone Roses, moved into the whole grunge and alternative thing, then developed a taste for electronic music. Apart from the occasional need to listen to the likes of Leftfield's remix of Renegade Soundwave really loud I tend to stick to the more chilled out side of the musical world. I really do like my ambient tunes.

Anyway, since then my musical tastes haven't really changed- but I still hunger for new music, indeed, I go through short bursts of an insatiable craving for new sounds to listen to. I'm about halfway through one right now. My latest acquisitions include Stars of the Lid (Avec Laudanum is particularly blissful), the awesomely fantastic Sigur Ros (með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust is a perfect album), Susumu Yokota's Sakura, Snow Patrol's A Hundred Million Miles (not quite as good as the last album but it's growing on me), Red Snapper's Pale Blue Dot, Martina Topley-Bird's latest The Blue God (she really should be more famous), Helios and the brilliant Caesura, Blockhead's Music by Cavelight, Mogwai's The Hawk Is Howling and the trance album Are You Shpongled?

By and large, pretty chilled out stuff- and I can't believe how lucky I am to have discovered so much lately that I really, really like. Thank heavens for Amazon's recommended lists. They are a fantastic way to find new artists. Anyway, drum and bass was a music style that I only partially got into- Goldie's Timeless was pretty popular among my crowd back in the day- and I really liked T-Power's Self Evident Truth of an Intuitive Mind and Photek's Form and Function. Apart from that though, it sort of passed me by. Until now- checking out the much changed Ninja Tune I happened upon King Cannibal and the staggering Aragami Style single. It's brutal, the muscial version of a horror movie. Even if you're into something like heavy metal or hard rock and have no interest in electronic music, I suggest you check it out. Tracks like this don't come along too often. Now all I have to do is negotiate an unknown genre and see if there's more like this out there.

Here's another of King Cannibal's tunes- Badman After Dark. It doesn't have the visceral impact of Aragami Style- it's the aural equivalent of being hit in the face by a sledgehammer- but the dense, dark sound and ominous tones seem to be part of this guy's style. Here's hoping he brings out an album of tunes like these.

UPDATE - Check out King Cannibal's MySpace page- along with a few other tracks to listen to.