The music sound sourceOn the 17th of april i went to the Utreg United party with a friend. But before we went she let me listen to some nice new electro. Thus i discovered some nice new artist names which I'm going to be spending money on. Downloading it from iTunes, buying it in the shop or looking out for some excellent vinyl.
The thing i love about music is discovering. It's always a great sensation to hear a new track and getting goosebumps, learning/growing to love it, sharing it with friends and family. You can find a diverse range of music in my iTunes and vinyl library ;). From Alan Parsons Project to Kilimanjaro dark jazz ensemble, jazz to breakcore and back again to minimal classic. I'm open to listening to new music and there are a few good ways of finding it. In this post i'll tell about a couple of my favorite ways of discovering new music!
Ye olde shop.
You know where you go into a store and a man/woman stands behind a desk and sells you music. There are loads of these shops in the city centre of Utrecht and most of them are terrible because they cannot recommend me any music based on my taste. It's the reason why i started buying music online. Nevertheless there are a couple of exceptions; The first; Metro record store, the second; de Jazzwinkel (the jazzstore). (there are more exceptions of course) Why do i keep going to these stores? Well, it's because they are run by music lovers with a great deal of knowledge. Whenever i go to these stores, i want to hear something new! i ask the owners if they can recommend me something. I listen to a couple of records they select, pick the ones i like and leave with a couple of cd's or vinyl records. I'm a lazy person and in my mind there is nothing better then to just say; "Could you recommend me some new music that sounds like a cross between Miles Davis and Toytronic" and they come up with Nils Petter Molvaer. Great!
iTunes store.
You can of course fill in any online store here that you want but the reason i say iTunes store is because i have a couple of Apple products. iPhone and Apple TV. So I'm locked down into the Apple eco-system. The cool thing is i can get recommendations, watch out for new releases, it lets me buy music on a saturday night at 00.10 from the couch. What i usually do to discover new music is type in the name of an artist i already know, like Johan Johansson, go to the album and look at the recommendations. One of those was the album Float by Peter Broderick and oh gosh! wow is it beautiful, minimal classic! Goosebumps!
Friends and Family
This is my all time preferred way and the one i was talking about in the beginning. People showing off their music. It's great, especially with an excellent bottle of wine, cheese and a good sound system. What i like to do is ask someone to let me hear some new music he/she has recently bought or some of their classic stuff which gives them goosebumps. I just make some notes and order the music i liked the next day. I think about 70% of my music collection has been bought this way and i look forward to spending yet again a day/evening with some friend on the couch listening to music.
But of course the thing that makes discovering music with friends and family the best for me, is a people social thing. The music is just a bonus ;)
ps. i want to shout out to DJ Illusive and DJ Westrum in remembrance to the Biltstraat sessions. Every thursday night, listening to great music all night long! ah, always the amazing atmosphere! oh the good ol' days........wanna know more? i'll soon blog about it.