Music to relax by (rant)

It's November 2nd, and I am in the library at Kwantlen. This is my first semester back to school, and I'm finding it easier to adjust. First of all, everyone is younger than me: so this time around I know what kind of bullshit to expect from my fellow students. Second of all, I feel like the 5 years I spent not in school have motivated me to learn about things I've always wanted to know. Example: I have always been interested in my family's history, of which a quarter is Russian and mysterious, so I'm taking a history course and writing a rather lengthy paper on the Bolshevik-Russian revolution (the reason for my grandmother being in Canada). I've always thought of myself as a good/creative writer, but always received bad marks in English classes, so I'm in a 'catch-up' English class, relearning the basics of structure. Finally, I always end up in situations where people ask me for advice, so I'm in a Psych class trying to understand why we think the way we do. I feel like I'm leaving all my old habits behind me.

One of the things I'm taking with me from high-school, however, is my constant need to listen to music while working, and I feel like my musical taste has refined to actually help with that. In the past, especially during high-school, my taste leaned more towards slightly abrasive, maybe angst-y alternative rock. I can fully remember a time when I could honestly tell people that Incubus was one of my favorite bands, that Pearl Jam was one of the greatest live bands ever, and that System of a Down was the most creative metal band ever. To some that may be true, but listen to the fucking music I was listening to while working on homework. Abrasive shit when my brain should be thinking freely.

So I'm discovering little pieces of what helps me to relax, and think without restraint. Music without lyrics is a good start: when people are talking, I can't read. So I'm discovering over and over again that I love ambient music.

This all traces back to the moment I discovered that music was my primary interest in life. I have a pretty terrible sleeping issue, it's probably some sort of disorder; anyways, I don't know how to relax and go to bed. I'm one of those ADD kids raised on ritelin, so I've got some relaxation issues. I'm drawn to melody and mood in a song more-so than the energy of it. Coldplay released Rush of Blood to the Head at the end of a period where i was only sleeping 4 hours a night for a month, and one day I listened to the album while all fucked up from lack of sleep. That was pretty much it, sad to say it was a Coldplay album that did it.

Not like it's a bad album or anything... I just can't stand 'Coldplay today'.

Anyways after that I really got into albums that... envelope you in their ambiance, mood, and melody. Albums that make you zone out and just wander through your mind. Soon I had discovered Bjork's 'Homogenic', Sigur Ros' untitled, Broken Social Scene's 'You Forgot it in People', Godspeed and their various amazing albums, and what I consider to be my alltime favorite album still to this day, Radiohead's 'Kid A'.
And relaxing is resulting in all of my shit getting done. Instrumental music, ambient music, or music with an emphasis on melody and mood. That's what gets me, really. Right now I'm listening to William Basinski, a record producer who put together a series of 4 albums of ambiance called 'The Disintegration Loops vol I-IV'. They're just ambient loops compiled on magnetic tape that he had made in the 90's; recently he tried to transfer them over to a digital format, but in the transfer the tapes started to disintegrate. He looped each tape until it was completely disintegrated, and recorded that as tracks for the album. What results are 4 discs, with tracks that range from 8-40 minutes in length, of the same short loop, playing over and over, disintegrating with every repeat.

Do you ever get part of a song stuck in your head? Listening to this takes it's place, and is kind of comforting when you're trying to read.