Non-Metal

[Astral Poetry]

Ambient/electronica: Tangerine Dream, Neptune Towers, Biosphere, Aphex Twin (Ambient Works Vol.2), Autechre, Moëvöt, Nehmödt, Wongraven, Dead Can Dance, Eno and Fripp, Die Verbannten Kinder Eva's, Les Joyaux De La Princesse, Burzum, Vinterriket

Classical: Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Bartók, Debussy, Ligeti, Holst, Reich, Wagner, Stravinksy, Shostakovich

Prog: King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Mike Oldfield

Post-rock: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Mogwai

Various others: Bjork, The Shins, My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Rós, Time Of Orchids, Virus

[Stranger]

Flamenco music:

Paco de Lucia
Sabicas
Moraito
Pena

[Flight_of_Zapan]

Janes Addiction 'Nothing's Shocking'
Dinosaur Junior 'Bug'
The Pixies 'Surfer Rosa'
The Sundays: all (a good melancholic easy listen)
ELP: 'Tarkus'
The Moody Blues: 'Days of Future Past'
SteamHammer: s/t
Talking Heads: 'Remain in Light'
Rudimentary Peni: 'Death Church' (extremely misanthropic and dark punk rock from the early 80's)

[Flight_of_Zapan]

All the above is good guitar based music that may or may not appeal. Still, I find these albums to hold my interest when not listening to Metal.

[Flight_of_Zapan]

here's the next big thing for me along with the electronic mentioned above. 80s pop (no not the songs, there were excellent albums that they came from):

a-ha - hunting high and low
depeche mode - speak and spell through black celebration (when they hit '89 or so they started to suck )
tears for fears - the hurting, songs from the big chair
wang chung - points on the curve, mosaic
soft cell - non stop erotic cabaret
men without hats - rhythm of youth, folk of the 80s
talk talk - the party's over, it's my life, colour of spring
the buggles - the age of plastic
the human league - dare
fad gadget
orchestral maneovres in the dark - orginisation, etc.
new order - movement, power corruption and lies, low-life
yaz - upstairs at erics
gary numan
a flock of seagulls - s/t
cutting crew - broadcast
duran duran - s/t, rio

really, all of these are brilliant artists/albums and i spent the time to type them out since no one else probably would have.

oh and of course, the greatest album ever made...

WINGER - S/T!!!!!!!!!

Great list! I am only familiar with some of the bands mentioned due to hearing them in the 80's on the radio as a kid. A-Ha are fucking class and yr list has reminded me to get my ass into gear and try and get hold of some Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears and New Order. I hear a lot of this kind of thing on the radio at work and it reminds me of how good pop music was from those days. Ha! How I used to scorn it as a Metal loving kid! I'd always hum Metal riffs to myself to try and shield it from my ears! Funny days; the ignorance of youth....

[ray ban]

Wow, cool that someone responded. Yeah I like all of those artists, they express a lot of emotion to me in an intelligent way which is why I appreciate them, like metal, just a very different tone. Some of the most underrated artists there in my opinion are Soft Cell, Men Without Hats, and Yazoo. They had some hits but their full albums are just amazing. A lot of this stuff is really dark and it has depth to it too, like OMD, Depeche Mode, New Order, and Fad Gadget also but it's hard to find their albums. All of these artists had intelligent outlooks on society, life, and human emotions I think, and it's nothing like the pop music of today, and even then there was mostly bullshit. Anyway, I highly reccomend checking out all of those albums and I share them when I occasionally go on neoclassical.

[Niko]

Anything but Mendelssohn.

What?! Not even the violin concerto?

[death metal black metal]

I think the ultimate revolutionary act is to listen to classical.

It emphasizes complexity and depth, and eschews the three-minute song pop format.

I have rejected most "ambient" music because it cannot escape that ghetto, as most metal cannot.

All of your hipster friends hate classical. You can strike back for real culture by listening to classical and throwing out the crap.

[My AIDS, Your Arse]

This is a good thread.

Some of us probably have that fear of leaving the security that metal offers us, so here's the opportunity to branch out aside from direct influences to metal. There's quite a bit of overlap of what ANUSites choose to listen to, mainly because it's tried and true. Perhaps it should be looked at as well.

From my personal experience, if you don't have to try to listen to it, and it still engages you, it's probably a rewarding piece of music. A rewarding work almost demands that you hear what it has to say. This really shouldn't be a reminder to anyone though.

Prog/Misc. :
Rush - 2112 (the song alone)
My Bloody Valentine
Maudlin of the Well/Kayo Dot

Punk:
Bad Brains
Misfits
Descendants
Black Flag

Classical:
Beethoven (5th and 7th symphonies), conducted by Carlos Kleiber/Wiener Philharmoniker
Stravinsky's Petrouchka and Le Sacre du Pritemps

I think the ultimate revolutionary act is to listen to classical.

It emphasizes complexity and depth, and eschews the three-minute song pop format.

I have rejected most "ambient" music because it cannot escape that ghetto, as most metal cannot.

I talk to people who can't stand songs that are longer than 3 or 4 minutes, they can never seem to explain why, but we both come to the conclusion that "their attention span is small". Yet they can insist on listening to the simplest repetitive ambient because it doesn't require too much attention, or because "it has a cool sound XD".

I admit my immediate attention is small (as it is for most sane people), which is why I listen to classical and metal. Lengthy songs and movements that always capture and recapture your attention are better than 2 minute blastbeat arrangements and poppy love ballads. If we look closely, even Napalm Death's short songs form one great work when listening to the album as a whole, not as stand-alone songs.

As with the better things in life, you have to put forth some kind of effort to get something out of it, even something as simple as choosing music to listen to -- for too long have we been weakened by the availability of instant gratification.

[David_Ravel]

Klaus Schuzle beats everything named here except for Beethoven.

[Consvming Impvlse]

Lycia- "Ionia" and "The Burning Circle and Then Dust" are great darkwave.

[Goluf]

I think the ultimate revolutionary act is to listen to classical.

It emphasizes complexity and depth, and eschews the three-minute song pop format.

I have rejected most "ambient" music because it cannot escape that ghetto, as most metal cannot.

All of your hipster friends hate classical. You can strike back for real culture by listening to classical and throwing out the crap.

Not sure about that. Conservatory has a higher concentration of hipsters than did high school, where only 4 people I knew listened to classical. Probably it has more to do with one's capacity for lucid thought. The choice to listen to classical music, at least in American culture, is usually for reasons other than selecting music most appropriate to one's capacity for higher realms of thinking.

[Metal POWER!]

Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No.3    <-------- amazing

This piece sounds like: obdurate, belligerent, joyful war.

[Andrew]

Woods is a great lo-fi folk band, also Joose Keskitalo is good if you like this kind of music.  Joanna Newsom is also really good folk that I think almost everyone here could appreciate for the way the music is structured at the very least.  The Knife is a really good electronic band that I'd reccommend to fans of vnv nation and kraftwerk (Silent Shout is by far their best album).  Les fragments de la nuit is a really good neoclassical band that I think would be appreciated here, also The Days of the Trumpet Call I highly reccommend.  Hawkwind is really cool space rock.  Wongraven and Mortiis (era 1) I'm sure you all know, but I honestly enjoy both of them more than any metal; Wojnar is also a band I highly suggest if you like this kind of music.

[istaros]

Les Fragments de la Nuit SUCKS. its only possible artistic value is as movie soundtrack music; one-dimensional tripe. Joanna Newsom is fairly good, and one of the few modern "folk" acts that has a basis in actual folk music - but even so, i doubt people here will care much for her.