What music is good for your mental health?

Sometimes really dense doom/drone/noise, walls of noise to drown everything out, sometimes delicate ambient stuff. I’m gonna do something irredeemably wanky and quote myself from the ambient listening thread on the latter:

…for someone like me (and I’d wager a fair few people here) who spends a lot of time with an immovable sadness filter on the best melancholy ambient/drone stuff doesn’t help to make anything feel less sad but instead helps you focus on the beauty held within that sadness, which is often a bigger help to me. It feels more honest, sort of like, “well, s’all fucked but it sure is lovely, isn’t it?”

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Basinskiiiii

A lot of beats oriented stuff (Flying Lotus, trip hop sorta stuff) I find a good way to relax the brain a bit when stressed out or anxious about the future and that

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Stars of the Lid. Always.

Also the answer to the question no-one is asking: “what music is good for your hangover”?

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Been a lot of Talk Talk chat on here lately, which I fully endorse, and there’s something about their later music that just puts me in a good place mentally and emotionally. It’s vulnerable and sad, but there’s something hopeful and somehow celebratory underlying it all. Just like @colossalhorse says:

Also Mark Hollis’ solo record.

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That’s a really tough question. For me when I’m feeling awful I need music that matches or even exacerbates the feeling in order to get out of it. But maybe the best answer would be “P.S. You Rock My World” at the end of Electro-Shock Blues by the Eels. The album takes you to some brutal lows (“3 Speed” and “Dead of Winter” especially) but then that last song is probably the most cathartic and hopeful-despite-everything song ever written.

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Also “Mayonaise” by The Smashing Pumpkins. It’s such a sad song and you can really hear the pain and desperation in Billy’s voice, but there’s this underlying hope too and it’s really kind of the most beautiful thing ever written. I’d consider the song itself a reason to live.

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Ornette Coleman

GAS

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Brian Eno’s ambient albums, particularly Music for Films.

Pretty much this - I have a post-rock playlist that I regularly reach for. The wall of noise and ambient melodies just carry me away and if not help to bring me back to a level, tend to connect with me on an emotional level that rarely occurs otherwise and let me wallow in misery without feeling guilty, somehow.

MONO, Yndi Halda, EOITS, Mogwai, GY!BE und so weiter.

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65daysofstatic.

Headphones on, coat on and then I go for a long walk listening to The Fall of Math.

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probably quite a fast walk too!

love to listen to Kozelek talking about his bowels or why he didn’t like a certain meal he ate. It’s very comforting to hear someone go through minutiae as melancholic nylon string arpeggios drift by. It’s like the best parts of music & podcasts combined!

ambient, relaxing stuff. Boards of Canada a fair bit. Sometimes stuff from earlier in life when things were less stressful as a form of nostalgia/comfort blanket. If both of these things then bingo, often this is computer game soundtracks from my youth…

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new fucked up album

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I gave The Fall of Math a good outing on Saturday actually for the first time in a while.

One Time For All Time - More of the same really but not as good, Radio Protector is still absolutely incredible though

The Destruction of Small Ideas - Annoyingly mixed, their most post-rocky type of record I’d say and it sounded fucking enormous live but struggles to replicate that with the way it was compressed or something. The vinyl sounds brilliant though.

We Were Exploding Anyway - Their ‘dance’ record. It’s frantic and loud and fucking great fun. There’s a bit in Go Complex that makes you feel like someone has picked you up and launched you into a wall, in a good way. Tiger Girl is the track that Fuck Buttons wish they had made (and I quite like Fuck Buttons tbf)

Wild Light - Wasn’t crazy about it initially but I think it’s grown on me to the extent that it’s my second favourite after The Fall of Math now. Unmake The Wild Light and Safe Passage make for an unbelievably good end.

The Silent Running score was great to see performed with the film but I rarely listen to the actual album. The No Man’s Sky soundtrack is kind of similar (but better). There’s a disappointing live record and then all their old remixes and EPs and bits and bobs which I absolutely love. (Their remix of Reading In Bed by Emily Haines is fucking superb and I’m going to listen to it now)

They’re getting into algorithmically generated soundscapes and stuff now which I’m less interested in but am still looking forward to seeing how it all works live next month.

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(I learned, very pleasingly, that The Fall of Math lasts pretty much the exact duration of my walk from the station to Old Trafford which gave me a real boost)

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Coming right up.

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Piccadilly, it’s my perfect walk length frankly.

I do know that song by the band Vessels, there was a period of my life when I was dead into that band, think they probably account for about 3% of my tinnitus levels from a show at the Brixton Windmill years ago.

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when i’m feeling unbearably sad Adebisi Shank are my go to band to try and at least make myself feel it’s worth being awake at all

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