How have your listening habits changed during the pandemic?

would love to do a music league with less people, playlist is too big for me to listen to that often :frowning:

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I’m enjoying it a lot but I imagine there will be a point where my time and enthusiasm to get through a 4 hour playlist every few days will dry up

I’ve needed something easy listening in the background while I work so I’ve got the synth wave / vaporwave hard recently. It’s extremely chill

It’s made me never want to listen to music again.

Can now listen to music when I work which I couldn’t before in an office, so I’ve had a chance to listen to a lot more than I have for years, and check out a lot more new stuff than I could before - a lot recommendations from this site in fact.

In lockdown 1 I had two ‘projects’ (like the OCD music wanker I am): ‘get into jazz’, and listen to the complete recorded output of the band Coil. I pretty much managed the latter, and made some headway into the former, but have only really dipped my toe in overall of course.

As the year went on it turned into more post-rock and ambient, which I have always liked, but gotten out of the habit of listening to lately, so enjoyed that.

The most recent lockdown it’s been a combo of ambient, dreamy, spacey stuff like Julianna Barwick and Agnes Obel, and heavy doomy sludge stuff like Emma Ruth Rundle/Thou. Have increasingly been listening to heavier music - works for working too if it’s quite dense and all-encompassing I find.

What I’m missing is anything with vocals high in the mix, as that doens’t really work for me while I work. So less rock/indie/alternative stuff and I’m missing that a bit.

Not going out has also had me listening to 6Music at times when I never did before, and I now love Iggy pop’s show on Friday and look forward to it, as well as the run of shows on Sunday from Guy Garvey to Don Letts (highlight being Maconie’s Freakzone).

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That’s unfortunate. What will you do instead?

Might take up fighting.

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Definitely with you on Coil; I was always more into Current 93 and Nurse With Wound and my knowledge of Coil was pretty scant even though they’re so beloved of other artists I adore (like Julian Cope); I’d only ever really known the Musick To Play In The Dark series. I’ve ended up picking up a whole bunch of Coil and Coil side-projects albums in the last year due to what seems like a concerted effort by the various parties that own their incredibly fractured back catalogue to rerelease this music to a slightly larger than ‘basically no one/rich collector’ audience. Also reading England’s Hidden Reverse which is excellent, and really bringing to life the whole connectivity between Coil, C93 and NWW.

As for Jazz, it’s always an ongoing project. I feel like such a tourist most of the time but I’m finding favourites all over the place now.

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Awesome! I too read England’s Hidden Reverse last year - great book.

Which Coil releases have grabbed you? I was a dabbler for years, having come to them from NIN, but decided the time was ripe to dive in. Love Ape of Naples and Horse Rotorvator for the vocal stuff. Time Machines and Queens of the Circulating Library for some drone. The Unnatural History comps of b-sides and whatnot were also surprisingly good.

It’s great that the catalogue is slowly being re-released - I’ve been picking up most things as they come out - even if the copyright issues are very murky. For that reason in fact, you can actually listen to or download their entire body of work from Archive.org for some odd, but apparently legitimate, reason: Internet Archive Search: coil

I’ve actually just started on Current 93 this year, having heard very little before. Going to delve into that and some NWW as well over the next few months…

It is funny really, previously I would listen to music constantly in the office or on my commute. Now I am working from home, even if I am alone in a silent room I just don’t bother listening to much. I will outside of work time, LPs in the evening or while my wife watches telly, but not my old usual times. Listening to new music has dropped a bit too, with less releases and no gigs perhaps. It feels like new albums don’t “count”.

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I absolutely love Musick To Play In The Dark as mentioned above and it’s lovely to finally have a physical copy of it. Also got a copy of dubious-rights-issues Backwards, which is mostly cut from the time Jhonn screamed instead of sang, very Throbbing Gristle-y. Of the side-projects I really like Black Light District, Time Machines is something I can only listen to in the right mood, and I like drone/ambient stuff in general - it’s just very intense. The rerelease of the previously Russian-only Guide For Beginners/Guide For Finishers compilation is also fantastic. Got a preorder in for Love’s Secret Domain reissue and eagerly waiting for news of a Musick To Play In The Dark² reissue.

As for C93/NWW, I’d say of the three bands, C93 is the most accessible but has the deepest dive in terms of mythology and symbolism, and NWW is by far the least accessible, mostly delving into industrial sound collage, sample bending and Musique Concrète and can be incredibly challenging but that’s kind of what I’m after a lot of the times these days.

Got in to jazz. Don’t know if that’s lockdown related, WFH related, or just coincidence.

Socially distanced boxing match could be a lost Monty Python sketch.

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I did the Pitchfork 60s list in the autumn, and partway through the 70s one now. Can’t say I’ve enjoyed absolutely everything (found some of the jazz ones on the 60s list very challenging) but I’ve enjoyed doing it. The 80s list looks great - looking forward to getting my chops round that.

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Black Light District is great. Also have a pre-order in for LSD and eagerly awaiting an announcement re MTPITD2. Maybe we need a Coil thread now that quite a bit or material is being released at the moment…

Interesting re NWW. I enjoy that sort of thing when in the right mood. Which release(s) would you suggest as a slightly more accessible starting point?

Livin’ Fear Of James Last is a great 2 disc retrospective that’s well worth picking up as a primer, and Sinister Whimsey To The Wretched is a nice two-fer doubledisc reissue of a couple of older, hard to find albums. I’d also thoroughly recommend Who Can I Turn To Stereo, Thunder Perfect Mind and Soliloquy For Lilith.

The trouble with NWW is he has made something in the order of 120+ albums in the last 40 years, and it’s nearly impossible to know where to start (his earliest albums are astonishingly abrasive).

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Less hip-hop, sadly. Can’t work or read with hip-hop on, too much competition for the part of my brain that processes language I assume. Used to get my hip hop in during drives… but we aren’t allowed to go anywhere and everything is closed.

Loving the music league though. A good way to force myself to listen to new recommended stuff instead of just rutting it up with my old favourites.

I used to use my walk to and from work to listen to music but that’s gone now. I don’t listen as much during work as I used to either. Really wish I’d never got into podcasts. Post-podcast all I want to do is listen to podcasts

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I listen to loads more music now than I used to. It had been trending upwards anyway due to listening to more music during my commute but now I have music on during the workday as well whilst I work from home.

Also used the initial lockdown to get more familiar with classic jazz, and have been voraciously listening to new releases like never before - it’s a rare week when there’s fewer than ten new albums I’ll stream whereas I probably listened to ten new releases in a year in 2016.

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Three main things I’ve noticed:

  • More ambient / light instrumental since I’m reading more
  • Never used to binge bands, but lately I’ve been doing entire discographies in one day
  • Huge periods of non-stop Corgan and Counting Crows, probably because my pandemic anxiety is out of control
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