I guess by eclectic music I mean a little bit of everything, with emphasis on some very unusual sounds. The everything part includes new age, jazz, folk (especially Celtic, British, and some European),'70s rock, some interesting later rock stuff (but not much), Baroque classical, and especially electronic and avant-garde music.

So what do I mean by electronic and avant-garde? This is the really eclectic stuff. I guess it started in Berlin in the late '60s, and spawned such groups as Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Kraftwerk (originally Organisation), Ash Ra Tempel, and Annexus Quam. If you think of Tangerine Dream's pop sound today, or Kraftwerk's later dance music, you have a completely different sound in mind. Some early albums, like Tangerine Dream's Zeit had no melody, no baseline, but were really just textured layers of ambient sound. What I like about this kind of music is how it makes me feel. ( A good later example of what I am trying to describe would be Brian Eno's Discreet Music.) When I'm really stressed, this kind of sound can relax me. I also like it in the background if I have to concentrate on some work. Of course, to most people, listening to this stuff just makes me a little weird.

This form of music also developed into New Age. In fact, that term was first used to describe Ashra's New Age of Earth, released in 1975. If you listen to early recordings by Deuter, you would think of it as New Age, even though that name for a musical style hadn't been coined yet. I also really like New Age, so it's no surprise that I like where it came from. This is just great stuff to mellow me out after a rough day.

My favorite music of this sort is mostly electronic, with hypnotic repetitive baselines and melodies and other sounds laid softly on top. Listen to Edgar Froese's Epsilon in Malaysian Pale, Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, Rubycon, or the live album Ricochet, Klaus Schulze's Mirage, and Michael Hoenig's Departure From the Northern Wasteland to hear some of my favorites.

I could go on and on with this stuff, and you'd think it's all I listen to. Not hardly! Just a few more album titles, though: Cluster's Soweisoso and Zuckerzeit, Neuronium's New Digital Dream, Deuter's Silence is the Answer, Kitaro's From the Full Moon Story, Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene, Steve Roach's Now and Traveler, Between's ...and the Waters Opened, self-titled releases by Cluster and Eno, Neu, and Kraftwerk, the Far East Family Band's Parallel World... Gee, I really can go on and on about this.

I'd better switch to something acoustic, hadn't I? Folk music? World music? How about Loreena McKennitt's latest, The Book of Secrets? It's a great contemporary Celtic album, though I like her more traditional stuff, like Elemental just as much. Have you heard the Dutch group Flairck? They are among my all time favorites. Early traditional Irish folk recordings by Clannad are simply fantastic. Besides, I love Máire and Enya Brennan's voices. Oh, to be able to sing like that. I also really like Relativity. Mix Irish music, new age, and electronics and you get Enya's beautiful albums. Take folk music a little over the edge, and you get Blowzabella and Boiled in Lead. Mix European folk, jazz, and '70s rock influences and you get Mauro Pagani's solo album. Mix '70s rock sensibilities with Irish folk to get Horslips. Is this diverse enough yet? Was weird a good way to describe my musical taste?

Oh, and just to add a little confusion, I find myself listening to old Renaissance CDs (the group from the 70s, not 15th century music, which I like too),Kate Bush (with her incredible 3 octave range), Can, Mike Oldfield, and even some Gong (like You, Gazeuse!, Downwind, and Shamal).

Well, maybe we can talk about it sometime over a cup of coffee with Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays' As Falls Wichita, so Falls Wichita Falls, or Shadowfax's Watercourse Way, or a Vivaldi flute concerto in the background. That does sound nice...

Last updated 10.12/2000.