The Hills Are Alive, With the Sound of Music(?)

Over the last couple of evenings, in the interests of Knowledge (and of finding some background music for the book trailer I spoke about last week), I've been randomly clicking albums on Jamendo.com, subjecting myself to all sorts of bizarre tunes.  

As I wasn't sure what type of music I wanted, I decided that I should start by checking out the 'tags' - ie the different categories of music that have been loaded onto the site. 

Before starting this task, I'd been smug in the knowledge that, along with retro stuff like jazz and rock, I knew what ska and emo sounded like... but looking at the mile-long list of musical styles on Jamedo, I was humbled; flabbergasted by the sheer number of genres I'd never even heard of.

It was clear that to find the perfect music was going to take a lot longer than I imagined. I managed to knock a few genres off the list of 'possibles' by name alone. I knew what I wanted wouldn't be found in the 'brutaldeathmetal', 'microtonal' or 'tribe' categories, but had no idea what chiptune, onirique or phyloexera was. There was only one way to find out...

Thankfully I managed to survive the musical surfing without making my ears bleed - though it was a close thing on occasion. I actually had quite a good time. Found some music I liked, and even some which might be suitable for the trailer. 

I also learnt that there are some genres I will never, ever warm to. Take Psicotropicodelia for example: the word looks like a parrot related disease, but the sample I listened to sounded like a horde of Orcs tearing each other to pieces and eating the remains. Mind you, if it's true that the next craze to hit YA will be zombies*, and I'm tasked with creating the trailer for a 'living dead' book, I already have the perfect music for it!

*This is a hotly contested question - Twilight spawned  many many vampire romance novels, but what will the next big thing be? Some say zombies, some say werewolves, and others say angels. I have some doubts about the zombie thing myself - you can create interesting romantic characters out of vampires (and for that matter, werewolves and angels), but the living dead? hmmmm... What do you think it will be?

Thanks to Hebedesign for the photo.

Comments

[Heather]

Zombies romance - just say no! icky! Bits fall off them, you know!
Werewolves though..... Angels, demons hmmmm - you really should be watching 'Supernatural'...

[tammy]

Angels! I want it to be angels!

[Harlem Pinheiro]

Heya, mate!

It was pretty interesting finding this blog post on one of my google searches, and the reason i got here is the term "psicotropicodelia".

I'm the responsible for such neologism, and it baptized the netlabel i coordinate as well. It isn't a music style, just a word I invented for describing experimental electronic music majorly made in Brazil and focused on soundtrack/visual soundscapes.

Psicodelia [portuguese] => Psychedelia
+
Tropico [Tropic]
=
Psicotropicodelia

It can actually be electro, idm, noise, ambient, rock or even pop stuff, as long as it works fine with video and leaves a deeper impression when listening it. It seem the idea worked fine there, heh, but not on a pleasant way, i know.

[Mio Debnam]

Thanks for your comment Harlem (I know you left it ages ago - I've been really slack!) It was interesting to hear what you had to say about Psicotropicodelia!