On to my current musical endeavors, which start at about age ~18. This is the time when my musical focus becomes very myopic. For ~5 years I was consuming all the EDM that I could get my ears on, taking it all in and slowly sorting it all out. As of ~18, I begin a stage in musical appreciation which some call narrow-minded. I call it knowing what I like and knowing what I don't like. I tend to compare my musical tastes to my food tastes. I'm in my 20's, I've eaten (been fed) a LOT of different types of food. That's not to say I'm some kind of food connoisseur, but over the years I've developed a mental library as to which foods I like and which I don't like. For instance, I've tasted beans--I don't like their taste or texture. However I've never eaten a bean burrito. Some people say that I should try bean burritos, but I insist against. They note that I've never tried one so I don't know if I'll like it or not. But what I have tried are the ingredients that make up the burrito--and I dont like them. The same can be said for music. There are certain qualities (and quantities) of music that I enjoy and there are many that I do not. When a certain peice of music (or genre) is defined largely by the qualities that I've sampled in other tracks, artists or genres--and didn't enjoy--I believe it's safe to say that I will not enjoy this new music.

It comes down to time, really. On a given day, I find ~2-3 new artists and listen to 5-6 new albums. If the 4 tracks in your myspace page are not impressive, I will not get your album and give it a listen. Your samples to the world should be representative of your music as a whole. There are simply too many genius-level musical artists in existance to waste time with those who are not. If i have 17 hours in a day to listen to music and there are 17 hours worth of genius musicianship available to me every day, then there is no point in listening to anything less than such. I believe this ratio is not only true, but more substantial than I make it out to be (in that, there are not enough hours in every day to physically take in all of the musical genius in the world in 1 lifetime). It is for this reason that some call me "picky" but I believe it to be a matter of simply knowing what I enjoy.

Typically, I may say something like "house music sucks." Mind you, I live around chicago, IL, the birthplace of house music. You can't, with a straight face, tell me I just haven't heard "the right" house track. I've heard good house tracks, tracks that I really enjoy. Tortured Soul, Les Rhythmes Digitales, some Jamiroquai tracks, some remixes, etc but when I say something like "XYZ genre sucks" that is to imply that I don't enjoy 99.9% of it. I believe that in EVERY genre (even happy hardcore), there are rare gems of musical genius or even just tracks that I can get down with for whatever reason.

As of current, I generally listen to: breakcore, IDM, glitch-hop, dubstep, neo-classical, glitch, downtempo, jungle, backpack hip-hop, post-rock, and variations and combinations of each of the aforementioned. The posts from here on out will likely be centered around one of those.