Music I Like Outside My Wheelhouse

My tastes are varied, but everyone has certain sounds they gravitate towards more than others. Most of the time, I’m listening to death metal, bluesy hard rock and doom, or Americana-tinged indie music. But every now then, I like something completely different. Here is some music I like that’s outside my usual wheelhouse.

RY X

When Australian musician RY X collaborated with Olafur Arnalds on the song “Oceans” I had never heard of him before. But I really liked the song, so I looked him up. His album Unfurl has elements of Bon Iver, James Blakely, and even in places, Sting. All artists I appreciate in theory but rarely if ever listen to, mostly as a result of falsetto voices and electronic-driven music. Even so, I really enjoyed listening to the songs on Unfurl.

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Wardruna

On paper, Wardruna from Norway is totally my jam. Their Bandcamp description says they are:

dedicated to creating musical renditions of Norse cultural and esoteric traditions. With the use of the oldest Nordic instruments and poetic metres, lyrics written in Norwegian, Norse and proto-Norse tongue,

But if you listen to Skald, it doesn’t sound like anything else I listen to. How could it, since the whole point is to sound centuries old? Of course I’m going to like it.

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Liturgy

Since there are elements of many musical styles I routinely listen to, I’m not sure this album by Liturgy is exactly outside my wheelhouse, so much as music that makes me say WTF? But I’ve already done that post, so here it goes. I probably wouldn’t have listened to H.A.Q.Q. except that the track that was used in whatever blog post I read about it was “exaco II.”

That track reminded me so much of the music from The Piano Dance, a very unique contemporary ballet by Paul Gibson, that I had to listen to more. And the whole album was as weird and unique as the ballet that first track reminded me of.

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J Balvin

Latin music in general is outside my wheelhouse, and when I read whatever blog post that covered Colores, (that of course, I can’t find anymore) I had to look up reggaeton because I didn’t know what it was. J Balvin is a Colombian now making reggaeton in Texas, and although this is not usually my jam, for some reason, Colores got its hooks in me. The first time I heard it, I had to turn it off because it was distracting me from my work. Each track represents a color, has a video, and apparently there are guided meditations as well? Plus, oh dude, the album artwork is by Takashi Murakami.

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Childish Gambino

I love Donald Glover as an actor, but most of his music is not really my thing. “This is America,” was brilliant but discovering its similarity to an earlier released song by a much less-well-known artists took a little bit of the shine off it. Then Childish Gambino put out 3.15.20, a single hour-long track. And then took it back and rereleased it as Donald Glover Presents or something and I couldn’t keep up. But somewhere in all that I did get to listen to it once, and for the first time, I really enjoyed a Childish Gambino album.

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scarlxrd

During the pandemic my husband has revived a long-dormant interest in recording and sound engineering. He discovered scarlxrd when someone posted APXCALYPSE in a Facebook group with a “hey check out this video I made with my guys.” And it was awesome. I don’t listen to a ton of hip-hop, and I don’t even know what characteristics define the trap subgenre. But I really dig this track, and the other videos I’ve seen. I also really like that they’ve made a really compelling video with basically nothing, under socially distant conditions. (Although apparently the face mask is a scarlxrd thing, and unrelated to the pandemic.) It doesn’t look like he’s got a Bandcamp page, but the DXXM II album is available some other places.

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Colleen

Too conventionally pretty to be truly experimental, and too freewheeling to be neoclassical or pop, Colleen‘s music is hard to classify but easy to enjoy. The most recent release from this Bandcamp Daily discovery is called The Tunnel and the Clearing. It’s an evocative title that hints at hidden meanings and depths to music that sounds light and simple.

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