I’m trawling through my iPod at the moment, which is quite good fun: Mozart one minute, Peter Rauhofer the next. It was this strange pairing that left me struck by the similarity in visceral reaction I get from both some of my heaviest dance and some of my favourite classical music.
Bach and Mozart particularly had a talent of creating quite a driving beat, and I occasionally find myself almost “busting shapes” to Elvira Madigan or something equally unexpected.
Is it just me then?
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I was always interested by genre-banding artists. The one that comes off the top of my head is Elvis Costello. His records are so wildly different to each other but he was never a dilettante, he has a love & genuine detailed knowledge that you just can’t fake in each genre (His “academic” credentials, even for the cloth-eared, were to my mind poven beyond doubt by his performance on the TV programme he hosted, which would have been beyond a random journo’s wildest dreams).
The same musician makes records that are totally different, but all recognisable as the work of the same hand. The same goes for loads of others who just absorb influences, like the Grateful Dead.
I don’t really shuffle, I go through my music A-Z like an anorak (N for Neil Young right now) but I get what you’re saying.
I like to follow influences & go as close to the source as I can get. I’ve never thought much about whether artists of different backgrounds & methods end up creating the same sort of mood but now you come to mention it it is worth thinking about!
I know that you can headbang to Vivaldi.
You sir are not: anoraks would have Neil Young under Y!