I keep noticing that my taste in music makes more sense when I stop thinking about genre.
I can go from Sabbath to Zeppelin to Rush to Helmet, and on paper those are different things, but to me they are connected by the same idea: rhythmic architecture. I like music where the riff is not just a hook. It is the structure. It holds the whole thing together. And I like drummers who are not just keeping time underneath it. The drums are arguing with the riff, pushing against it, answering it, making the whole thing move in a way that feels physical.
That probably makes sense because I play drums, but I have always wished I could really play guitar. I think I hear structure before I hear genre.
Helmet is a good example. Page Hamilton came out of jazz guitar and played with Glenn Branca before he made Meantime, and you can hear that background in the way Helmet is constructed. It does not sound like random aggression to me. It sounds engineered. Precise. Almost mechanical. I think of Helmet as something close to Sabbath with the blues surgically removed.
Then there is Tomita, which seems like it should have nothing to do with any of this, except somehow it does.
Snowflakes Are Dancing is Debussy run through a Moog in 1974. Clair de Lune, Arabesque, the Preludes, all of that impressionist music turned into electronic sound. I love that because it connects two parts of my taste that should theoretically be separate. The synthesizer stuff and the classical stuff are literally sitting inside the same record.
And Debussy makes sense on a synthesizer because he was already thinking so much about timbre. Color over resolution. Atmosphere over arrival. He was interested in what sound felt like, not just where the harmony was supposed to go. A synthesizer is basically a machine for doing exactly that. Attack, decay, waveform, resonance, filters, harmonic content, you can change the personality of a note completely. Debussy was already thinking that way before the technology existed.
Chopin is another one I keep coming back to.
A lot of people think of Chopin as beautiful piano music, especially the nocturnes, and obviously it is. But the more I listen, the more I think the mazurkas are closer to the way I naturally hear music. There is something unstable underneath them. The accents shift. The pulse leans. The rhythm is doing something subtle under the melody that keeps it from ever feeling completely settled.
That is probably what I like in all of this.
Sabbath, Zeppelin, Rush, Helmet, Tomita, Debussy, Chopin.
The genres are all over the place, but I keep reaching for the same things: structure, tension, timbre, rhythm, and music that does not just sit there politely.
I like music that feels built.
Losing It Lyrics by Rush
And the men who hold high places Must be the ones who start To mold a new reality Closer to the heart Closer to the heart The blacksmith and the artist Reflect it in their art They forge their creativity Closer to the heart Yes, closer to the heart Philosophers and ploughmen Each must know his part To sow a new mentality Closer to the heart Yes, closer to the heart Yeah Woah Woah, woah, you can be the captain And I will draw the chart Sailing into destiny Closer to the heart Closer to the heart Well, closer to the heart Yeah, closer to the heart Closer to the heart I said, closer to the heart Well, closer to the heart Yeah, closer to your heart Closer to your heart Woah