This year I'm a quarter of a century old. The lesson I keep learning is that music is one of only a few things I think are beautiful in a world that I'm really not crazy about. Being away from music makes me sad, and more than anything else I want to give back to the thing that gives me so much. This is a part of that.
I grew up on late 90's metal. People like to give me shit about this, but I can't help who was making music for 15 year-old's when I was one. It was loud and angry, and so was I, and that's fine, and I'm still angry. I was a purist, or I was a dick, if you want to be a dick about it, so I didn't listen to much that wasn't California alt-metal, and later Swedish melodeath and the wash of American bands that those bands inspired in the early 2000's. A couple of anomalies would sneak in, some Aphex Twin and Chemical Brothers and stuff. In 2005 I began to seriously study sound, and the business of music, and when you start thinking about sound as a physical event and not just a sensory experience, you listen to things in a way that kind of forces your tastes open. I'm still picky, but I've pulled a lot of new things my admittedly still insular album collection. I have new favorite songs and new heroes all the time, and I'm sincerely grateful for that.
