Music is very tied to memory for me. Records dot my memories like snapshots of specific times and places. However, since I do most of my listening through physical media—which costs money—I can’t memorialize all of those snapshots. Invariably, some of the stuff I’m listening to at any given point ends up slipping through the cracks of my limited record budget.
But occasionally, a forgotten record will rear its head years after the fact. In this case, that record is Silent Shout by Swedish brother-sister duo The Knife, a record that was included in the deluge of new music I was exposed to by my roommates in Chicago. While I loved the record from first listen, it was crowded out of my to-buy list by bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Kraftwerk, New Order, Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear, and so much more.
Then this past year, my dear friend Bryan ordered me a copy for my birthday, rectifying its absence on my shelf.
Bjork has become kind of a punchline in recent years. And if we’re honest, both the fae princess schtick and her increasingly experimental electropop are pretty rife for parody.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “Change is the only constant in life.” He probably wasn’t talking about the artistic trajectory of musicians, but it’s certainly applicable. Every artist’s career is destined to change—whether by the continued growth of experimentation or the stagnation from repeating once-fresh formulas until they decay. And as artists change, their fans also change, and often in different directions. It seems to me that many fans usually follow an artist for three albums before they each move beyond one another.
Last week, while recording an episode on experimental music for my new podcast (oh yeah, 
Before the double-album pop masterpiece that was Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming brought them widespread acclaim, M83 was an obscure, mostly instrumental act that blurred the line between shoegaze, post rock, and electronica.
For years, I’ve had a fascination with trip hop. I became a huge fan of Portishead when Third was released, and later got into acts like 
Love ’em or hate ’em, there’s no denying that Radiohead is among the most celebrated outfits in musical history. Much of the talk of their work is centered around two of the five members—singer Thom Yorke and multi-instrumentalist and composer Johnny Greenwood.