Remember that thing people were doing on Facebook a little while ago, where they’d share ten albums over ten days?
What you’re reading now started out like that, and then turned into this absolute column. Which, if you know anything about my relationship with music, shouldn’t be that surprising. I have a bit of an aural fixation.
I tried to narrow down my selections to just ten albums but it’s really hard, and I don’t really do things in half-measures. (I’m working on it.) So instead I ended up with a little over a decade’s worth of musical history, dissected into eras of discovery.
The first CD I ever bought was the 2Fast 2Furious soundtrack, because it had Ludacris’ “Act A Fool” on it. I rinsed that CD through my Walkman countless times on the bus home from school, and for a while it was the only piece of music I owned. But when I got an iPod for Christmas and discovered LimeWire, everything changed pretty much overnight.
I’ve curated a playlist for your listening pleasure. It follows along chronologically as you read. Enjoy.
2005 — Parkour + punk rock
When I first got my iPod, I was woefully unqualified to put 30 gigs of storage to use. All I had to sync to it was Fort Minor’s newest (and tragically, only) release, The Rising Tied. I’d gotten the CD as a gift and was slowly figuring out how to transfer music to my first-ever MP3 player. My more tech-savvy friends showed me how to use file-sharing software — my first brush with illegal downloading — and I’d find myself haphazardly stealing whatever I could find.
For the few months of that iPod’s lifespan, I had about a dozen songs on it.
I was on YouTube one day and a friend of mine showed me one of the first-ever parkour videos. It took me forever to figure out what the accompanying song was, but after a little Googling I discovered it was a song called Paper Wings by Rise Against. I downloaded the rest of Siren Song Of The Counter Culture almost immediately, and developed a burgeoning love for vegan punk music.
My collection swelled to two dozen songs.
Those same tech-savvy friends of mine soon introduced me to Linkin Park, Yellowcard, Porcupine Tree, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, the Arctic Monkeys… Some of which I loved, most of which I was pretty indifferent to.
I still rinse The Rising Tied all the time, by the way.
2006–2007 — Discovering rap and RnB
I still firmly believe the late 2000s was one of the best eras for music. Pop music, anyway. I fondly recall listening to Timbaland, Keri Hilson, Akon, 50 Cent and everyone else you and I remember hearing on the radio.
But when Justin Timberlake dropped Futuresex/Lovesounds — that was a game-changer. It was a tightly-packaged exploration of RnB, Dirty South and hip-hop in a way I’d never experienced before. (“Chop Me Up” is still a certified club banger.)
I don’t remember exactly who introduced me to Eminem, but somehow I got turned onto The Eminem Show and the rest is history. I listened to that album all summer of 2007 until I knew most of the songs front-to-back.
By now, I ‘owned’ about two hundred songs running the gamut from punk rock to ‘obscure’ pop to hip-hop in glorious pirated 192kbps. Eminem and JT still live on my phone to this day.
2010 — First signs of independent identity
Between my last years in Singapore and my arrival in Canada, I suffered a bit of a dearth in discovering music. Sure, I remember the joys of listening to Empire of the Sun, Passion Pit, MGMT, Mac Miller and such for the first time, but none of it struck me to the point of piracy. I still rinsed the same old tracks on the bus.
I was in spare one day in tenth grade and YouTubeing around. I stumbled across a parkour video that was on the cusp of going viral. (Noticing a trend yet?) I watched the whole thing twice, then showed it to my friends. The most striking thing about the video, though, was the music. Luckily for me, The Glitch Mob were acknowledged in the credits. And so I fell down my first real musical rabbithole.
The Mob’s music spread like wildfire across my school. We started hearing Drink the Sea everywhere — in movie trailers, at spin classes, in amateur edits on Vimeo. It felt like perfect timing. I found myself devouring absolutely everything I could find on them — including a laundry list of solo work by edIT, as well as old-school mixtapes and one-offs like Crush Mode. The former included Crying Over Pros For No Reason, which would coincidentally become the first vinyl I’d ever purchase and serve as my introduction to beat tapes and IDM.
Around the same time that I discovered the Mob, my friend Dakota introduced me to Onra’s mirror-polished and ambitious beat tape Long Distance. I was immediately struck by the compelling aesthetic of that album, and ended up digging into his back catalogue as well, discovering the grittiness of his Chinoiseries series — a collection of ideas developed while he was in his native Vietnam.
But soon I’d find myself foregoing moody, pensive, purposefully-crafted tunes for the intoxicating grit and abrasion of the West Coast’s burgeoning electronic scene.
2011 — Birth of the banger
The first dubstep song I ever heard was Jakwob’s remix of Ellie Goulding’s ‘Starry Eyed.’ Dakota had shared it on his Facebook and I was fortunate enough to stumble across it. I subscribed to QuantumDnB immediately, which pretty much sealed my fate and would introduce me to a whole slew of musical jumping-off points.
Around the same time, a bunch of us discovered Excision’s Shambhala 2010 mix. It was probably the single most compelling departure from anything I’d listened to at the time. It was a bottomless buffet of dubstep, drum and bass, glitch hop, drumstep — whatever genre you could imagine. That mix introduced me to Skrillex, Pendulum, Liquid Stranger and a whole host of other names that haven’t released anything in years now.
Pendulum’s ‘Salt in the Wounds’ was one of the standout cuts on that mix. Overnight, I consumed a nauseating amount of their material, focusing on Hold Your Colour and Immersion, planting a seed that would aggressively germinate over the next few years.
My nascent dubstep obsession was fed by cuts like Cookie Monsta’s ‘Bliss’ and Datsik’s ‘Nuke ‘Em’ to name but a few. I discovered Ministry of Sound’s The Sound of Dubstep compilations and fell further down the 140 rabbithole, discovering artists like Skream, Benga, Digital Mystikz, Flux Pavilion, and Doctor P.
2012 — Japan + Live Music 101
2012 was my most musically ambitious year to date. I was in the thick of a period of overwhelming discovery, consuming everything I could get my hands on through Soundcloud and YouTube and relentlessly ripping tracks.
At some point I took a trip to Japan with my family, spending about two weeks in Kyoto and Tokyo. I had a fateful encounter with Kid Cudi at the APC Store in Saragakucho, browsing around while listening to Man On The Moon I in its entirety. I still rinse that album all the time and wish Cudi would put something out of that caliber.
No trip to Japan would be complete without discovering Nujabes. I’d heard the name in passing (and some tracks in my high school hallway) but during that trip, I listened to pretty much all of it.
I touched down in Japan listening to trench dub, and left with a newfound appreciation for jazzy beats and upfront hip-hop.
2012 also marked the year I’d attend my first proper electronic show. I was fresh into university and a friend of mine really wanted to go see Crystal Castles at MacEwan Hall in October. I’d been crushing on a girl in one of my classes and I asked her to join us (she said yes, even though she had no idea what she was getting herself into.) That was my first brush with the electrifying potential of live music, and I still think about it all the time.
2013 — A clubbing career’s humble beginnings
Towards the tail end of 2012, a new genre started to gain traction in the circles I travelled. This guy called UZ was releasing nasty stripped-back Dirty South instrumentals in a series called Trap Shit. Around the same time, Baauer was prolifically releasing an as-yet-unnamed, undiscovered (by us, anyway) style of dance music that featured driving drum rhythms and dance-facing instrumentation and synthesis. A friend of mine showed me ‘Harlem Shake,’ and, well, many of us know what happened next.
About two months before the Harlem Shake was meme’d into oblivion — early 2013, let’s say — a handful of us went to see [iconic hip-hop producer] Just Blaze and Baauer at Commonwealth. That was my first experience with a full-on rave and I was woefully unprepared. I stumbled into what would turn into a full-on fight club, a withering assault of bass that shook bottles from bar shelves and would spit me out onto the streets wide-eyed and shell-shocked.
I was hooked.
The overnight gentrification of what came to be known as trap music lead to a preposterous period in my life where I’d got to the HiFi Club every weekend and witness the rise and fall of a genre. I’d also attend my first Mad Decent Block party and see Dillon Francis, Flosstradamus, Zeds Dead and Major Lazer in the same day (iconic), then spend over $200 on tickets for Halloweekend parties, and generally stay up way too late doing terrible things to my eardrums.
2014 — Concretization + further explorations
If 2013 was a year of excess, then 2014 represented the tempering of that excess. Relatively speaking, anyway — 2014 was also the year of my first Shambhala. I was fresh-faced and blissfully ignorant, with my equally-ill-equipped girlfriend by my side. Luckily for us, we were taken in by a troupe of professional degenerates and had an amazing first year, setting the stage for even more decadent consumption of maximalist electronic music.
Serendipitously, around the same time I started to run out of steam, I discovered Ninja Tune’s YouTube channel. On a fateful winter’s day, they flung Machinedrum’s Vapor City Archives into my sub box. Hearing ‘Safed’ for the first time was revolutionary, and I started to develop a palate that went beyond surface-level mindfuckery. As you’d expect, I wholeheartedly devoured Machinedrum’s back catalogue and came out equipped with all sorts of new musical affinities.
Serendipity struck again when a drum and bass DJ I followed on Facebook — I forget who — shared a mix they described as ‘really forward-thinking.’ My curiosity was piqued, and so I discovered Ivy Lab’s first-ever IvyCast. Luckily for me, they had a second and third iteration already published as well. Those three mixes were arguably the most important parts of gelling my musical palate, introducing me to halftime and autonomic DnB — notably the works of dBridge and Om Unit.
2014 was also the year I discovered Soulection through a mix by its founder, Joe Kay. If 2013 was the year trap rose and fell, then 2014 was the year of future bass. Breakout producers like Kaytranada, Lunice, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, RL Grime, Wave Racer and a whole slew of others primed the collective consciousness for the arrival of a more mellowed-out take on hip-hop — a take that would soon consume a healthy potion of new-school rap, too.
2015 — Explorations in Indie
By now, my once one-track musical mind was going off the rails in the best way possible. I was doggedly devouring everything I could find, emboldened and equipped with the sonic rabbithole that is Discogs. My copy of the Crying Over Pros reissue showed up on my doorstep, planting an insidious (and eventually fiscally ruinous) seed that would germinate into collecting records.
Around the same time, I found myself attending the first of many contributors’ meetings for Beatroute magazine and writing about local and international musical talent. I’d also settled into a barbacking job at Habitat Living Sound, a storied venue that’d shape my long-dormant penchant for house music. I was thrust into Calgary’s rapidly-growing music scene almost all at once.
In the spring, my relationship ended. I spent lots of time reminiscing, listening to Tame Impala’s Currents (and started to feel like Kevin Parker wrote those songs about me, not for me) and crunching out articles for Beatroute.
In the winter, my commitment to the local music scene would continue to ramp up. My friends and I opted to go to Edmonton to see Machinedrum for Halloween, and my friend Paul Brooks connected me with FREQ. Magazine regarding a potential writeup about the experience. A few days later I’d get my first byline in FREQ.
2016-current — Unprecedented snobbery + jadedness
After a few years of attending Shambhalas, Pembertons, and Mad Decent Block Parties, as well as countless one-night massives, I was ready for something different. Serendipity struck again and that summer, I found myself riding along with Paul for my first Bass Coast.
Getting to see behind the curtain for the first time — and taking in cutting-edge tunes that would broaden my horizons even further — was like opening Pandora’s Box. Kahn’s set with Rider Shafique set impossibly high standards and I fell in love with dubstep all over again, and the abundance of techno ushered in understanding.
I’d gone full rave-snob.
The time between then and today has been a blur of musical decadence and exploration. I’ve developed totally-not-infuriating mannerisms surrounding music including
– Listening to something once and then dropping it forever
– Conversely, rinsing the same ten tracks forever
– Having ~20 Bandcamp tabs open at any given time
– Spending ludicrous sums on rare records (up to $50/song)
– Keeping 10+ Wikipedia tabs open to remember albums I’ll never get around to listening to
– Hating on 99% of what’s on the radio
– Poking fun at everyone else’s tastes
In fact, music might be the #1 reason for how jaded I can be. Watching genres rise and fall overnight, hearing old heroes and idols on the radio, and witnessing once-beloved subcultures permeate the mainstream tends to do that.
Nowadays I’m listening to a lot of dub, autonomic + halftime DnB, house and techno, as well as a more nebulous combination of ambient-facing stuff, jazz and classic tunes. But those same tracks and mixes that got me started on this path still get rinsed every once in a while.
I’d love to hear about your listening careers. Drop me stories and suggestions below, or email me and say hi!
