My love for electronic music

I love music but I’m too scared or embarrassed to share my tastes with other people; it’s the type of music I listen to that makes it difficult to share with others.

For example, We would sit in a car together travelling on a nice day out and the phone would be passed around for songs to be played on the journey. I would just pass it to the next person without adding anything to the playlist. I get way too nervous playing any songs I like to others, especially friends, and especially over speakers. I either get scared they won’t like what tracks I add or embarrassed they question my taste in music. To be fair, it would be very jarring to go from one upbeat modern pop song to a song with no lyrics and just experimental sound, but that’s why I find sharing my taste in music with others difficult.

That’s not saying I don’t like music though, I love all music! Any genre of music I’ll find a way to enjoy it. The amount of stuff I Shazam on a daily basis and ask people what’s playing is staggering! And I love that people love different genres of music; I’d never go out of my way to personally attack someone for liking something that’s different or not to everybody’s taste in music.

So what is it I listen to? Electronic, synth, and techno. Music made by machines and computers that I can turn the volume up to 11 and feel reverberate in my chest as I listen though headphones. I listen through headphones as I feel it’s the best way to experience this type of music and sense every change in rhythm, tone, and frequency – identifying the single layers in electronic beats or components of the track, remembering them for next time or forgetting they exist as a new digital bit comes in. I love this electronic music of the future because it redefines what a musical instrument is and what we classify music itself as a whole. With headphones on and the volume at maximum, I close my eyes and picture stories that blend with the tones of sharp stinging electronic signals. If jazz is the sound of the past, pop the sound of the present, synth is the sound of the future. I am entranced by synth and computer-made music. This false music, played through electronic instruments or programs not only fascinates me on the technical level, but projects the sounds of the future.

I’m not 100% certain on how it came to be that this type of music would be my jam, but I have a pretty good guess. As a child I only had two CDs and they were probably rejects from my brother – they were Zombie Nation’s Kernkraft 400 and Eiffel 65’s Blue – I would have been maybe five or six years old at the time, but I listened to these albums constantly. This was my first taste of music, but somehow it stuck – maybe through influencing me at such a young age when my mind was still malleable.

Then as I grew up through secondary school and college, I started to source out similar artists on YouTube. I discovered Daft Punk when I started secondary school, The Temper Trap was big for me in 2009, and in 2011 Drive had the biggest musical influence on me with its soundtrack consisting of stunningly composed ambient synth by Cliff Martinez and French electronic artist, Kavinsky. Tied with the occasional recommendation from my brother, my love for this type of electronic music was cemented.

I’d say my brother helped me get into this type of music as he was always the one with access to it – even if now his tastes have completely changed. But I must acknowledge my Dad as well, as just like the connection of listening to Zombie Nation at an early age helped influence me, Dad has had a interest in this type of music his entire life – as I only discovered that when I shared with him what music I was in to and that I had Shazammed a track he was listening to. The story goes, Dad was listening to Kraftwrek through speakers, I liked what I heard and didn’t know what it was so I shazammed it in secret, and later burned the disc to my iTunes. We then talked about them afterwords and he showed me that he owns Kraftwrek on Vinyl!

Let’s not ignore what influence film and TV had on me though, with Doctor Who being the best example of electronic synth and music concrete, and one of my favourite films of all time, Blade Runner having a killer ambient score by Vangelis. When I went to Brighton for the Story of Sound I met Martin Stig Anderson and experienced his moody acousmatic score for the game Limbo.

Since then I’ve gone through a rabbit hole of electronic discovery, building collections of Daft Punk, Kavinsky, College, The Glitch Mob, Com Truise, Avicci, Fuckbuttons, Vitalic, Kauf, Flashworx, Sonic Youth, New Order, Empire of the Sun, The Chemical Brothers, Gary Numan, Vangelis, Bonobo, Grimes, Chromatics, Kreftwrek, and the creator himself Giorgio Moroder.

There are tonnes of other electronic artists out there it’s hard to take a wrong turn. Again, I do love music and not just this electronic stuff, it’s just this happens to be the stuff I listen to most. I adore Art Garfunkel and Metric, and will always give other stuff a go.

My advice for listening to this type of music; put on headphones, crank up the volume as high as it can go, and feel the music inside you. Share at your own risk because it’s not really dancing music… Case in point, Kraftwrek live… keep an eye on the audience and the one dude waving his arms…