The Syndicate

Fedora With Hat wrote:A staple of any music related forum.

Simple question...what are your top 10 bands (preferably of all time, but right now is also acceptable)?

Mine:

1. King Crimson - first band that I really got into. My gateway drug that lead me on the music quest. Also, awesome.
2. Frank Zappa - no holds barred creativity. Fantastic composer/player/ideasmen.
3. Soft Machine - the hardest one for me to answer. I really don't know. It's just all in there. Everywhere. Constantly spitting out.
4. Van Der Graaf Generator - combines the emotional and the musical better than any band out there. Great singing/drumming/organing and the rest.
5. Henry Cow - My first true taste of the 'weird'. Opened the door to the avant world. Bonus: Chris Cutler.
6. Magma - A whole universe that combines many musical attributes that I enjoy (jazz/rock/classical/etc) with top notch musicianship and creativity.
7. Agalloch - Bleak and despairing with great melodies, pacing/development, and atmosphere.
8. Area - off the wall I-talian goodness. A fantastic mix of the 'normal' with the out there.
9. Sun Ra - Jazz master. No holds barred creativity as well. Percussive heavy, experimental, and from a world of his own.
10. Matching Mole - A continuation of what Soft Machine could have been? Maybe. But either way...the best Wyatt has done since leaving SM. Carry that spirit and edge.


Roughly, of course.

DisgruntledPorcupine wrote:1. Porcupine Tree
2. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
3. Boards of Canada
4. Sigur Ros
5. Brand New

After that it gets too tough. But my Top 5 has been clear for quite some time. I love all these bands for their own reason. PT just carries a vibe that no other band does and I enjoy all of their songs. GY!BE are the masters of buildups, climaxes, and spoken word samples. BoC has an atmosphere to them that provides a very different kind of enjoyablity (almost druglike, heh) compared to other artists. Sigur Ros makes possibly the most beautiful music out there. Brand New, while some might find them generic, just make consistently incredible songs (save for their debut perhaps, but their other 3 are all amongst my top 100 albums) with some of the best lyrics out there. They may belong to the "emo" genre which tends to get a bad rap, but I love them. Especially after seeing them live.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

For some reason, it becomes MUCH tougher right around #10. I really can't narrow that one down.