LastGraph / why I listen to so much gothy bleep

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

For those who use last.fm, a random cool thing: LastGraph. Give it your last.fm username and a date range, and you'll get a "wave graph" showing which artists you've listened to in that time and how much, in PDF and SVG. Here's my graph (PDF), starting in January last year, just before I started listening to streams from last.fm. It's a much better view of things than the charts available on my last.fm profile: you can see how I've listened to numerous artists, some of which I've liked and kept listening to, and how my tastes have changed over the past year.

Currently my listening habits seem to be approximately centred on the tuneful end of what's played at The Calling. A good example is Mind.In.A.Box, whose album, Crossroads, I've recently bought (I've never heard that particular group played at The Calling; if any of the DJs are reading this, could we change that?) That's because these days I mostly listen at work and I find that style about right as a background for that. At a concert or when sitting around not doing anything important, I love listening to the Wise Guys, who are engaging, funny and often moving too. When I'm coding, I really don't want that; I just want something tuneful, not too distracting, active/bouncy (so as not to send me to sleep) without being cheesy. It's the last of those that's largely the explanation for the tendency towards darker, gothy stuff; I think very few more mainstream bands get that right. My favourite example of one that does is The Feeling, despite the quote on that page: Don't fear the cheese, embrace it. Contrast that light-heartedness with groups who try to write terribly serious stuff and fail (except perhaps from the point of view of the average teenager, hence their success).

What about you lot? Those who write code (or do vaguely similar work) in particular, what do you listen to?

Chris' journal has moved to InsaneJournal

LastGraph / why I listen to so much gothy bleep