Musical_Genius wrote:
1. Access Zero
2. Aesthetic Perfection
3. a-Ha
4. Assemblage 23
5. Ayria
6. Azoic, The
7. Birthday Massacre, The
8. Church, The
9. Clan of Xymox/Xymox
10. Code 64
11. Covenant
12. Depeche Mode
13. Echo And The Bunnymen
14. Hocico
15. Imperative Reaction
16. Iris
17. I:Scintilla
18. Mesh (English Band From Bristol)
19. Numan, Gary
20. Ocean Blue, The
21. Stark, James D.
22. VAST
23. VNV Nation
24. Xentrifuge
What!? No Skinny Puppy?
My frame of mind on pop music is this - when I'm at a bar or a restaurant and its a place where people of completely different mindsets all come together - it seems like it's in its place. The other thing about pop - you have some of the most brilliant mastering engineers working on it, that's where whatever genius still exist in it seems to be (I barely listen to the radio anymore but I won't lie, I got bored of my cds for a minute, turned on the radio - Alpine head unit with JL components in the doors, JL W3 v2's in the back, and I couldn't turn off an Avril Lavigne song just because it was so well balanced, EQ'd, and mastered that if I ignored the meaning of the words entirely it was actually a good listen).
As for music that you can extract real meaning from - some of it you can, most of it though is a bit tired. Like yourself though I tend to go toward darker electronic (my screen name likely tells you just how much drum & bass I listen to). Still like good industrial, good trip-hop, though as time goes on I definitely don't chase aggressive sounds unless they have a lot of vision behind them. I can't get enough of music as well that has layers and layers of emotion, and its not that I'm an art snob about music, I just have to claim that this is the way I'm wired and I find the sublime/transcendental in music that really aims that way. When I can listen to a cd by an artist - rock, trip-hop, rap, drum & bass, dubstep, whatever it happens to be, and get mad chills and even tears in my eyes listening to it - that's where its at for me. That kind of electricity is something that you can't find in pop music and when you can find something that has that which sounds like it should be pop, it isn't and it never seems to catch on as such for that matter either.