Are there tracks that took you 30 odd listens to appreciate?

as usual a piano piece from me, but i have known this tune for over 3 or 4 years, and had it described to me by teachers, and people whos opinion i respected, that its awesome. but only just tonight, for some reason, did i listen to it once more and finally, holy fuck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFKmVWXvwI

a strange feeling, almost the exact opposite of nostalgia, in an equally melancholy and indescribable way. maybe someone else has had this.

yes, hold on i'll post all off em

completely ot but in the same geist: i panned random access memories initially and now upon subsequent listens i begrudgingly like it

For me it's artists: Burial clicked when I heard "Ghost Hardware" - before that I liked but didn't "get" his earlier EPs and debut.

...Boards of Canada took awhile for me to go from enjoying to being a passionate fan of...actually that goes for Aphex and Squarepusher and most of the WATMM featured artists.

  On 5/22/2013 at 3:28 AM, joshuatx said:

For me it's artists: Burial clicked when I heard "Ghost Hardware" - before that I liked but didn't "get" his earlier EPs and debut.

actually that is a good one; i didn't like etched headplate or archangel at first but now they're basically all the burial i listen to

  On 5/22/2013 at 3:39 AM, tht tne said:

 

  On 5/22/2013 at 3:28 AM, joshuatx said:

For me it's artists: Burial clicked when I heard "Ghost Hardware" - before that I liked but didn't "get" his earlier EPs and debut.

 

actually that is a good one; i didn't like etched headplate or archangel at first but now they're basically all the burial i listen to

 

I had quite a visceral and vivid experience hearing it, I had a remarkable flashback to staring out of the a London Underground train window. I lived in the UK from 99-01' and while I never actively listened to garage I was aware of it - his soundscapes evoke that in a very universal way. The Metal Gear Solid samples were the icing on this cake. His music is a soundtrack to nostalgia i have but had never attached a soundtrack to. It's quite amazing really.

As a whole Untilted probably took me a year and a half to appreciate but it slays me now, what an album.

All of draft 7.30 took me easily a year to appreciate, was the first Ae album I ever purchased / heard and it was just like fucking stupid noises to me.

After then going back and listening to the earlier back catalogue, I revisited draft and its now in my top 3.

BOC was a one of which I had gotten to know early on, but the vibes would'n touch my soul until a few other Electronic artists later.

I listen to Merzbow every now and then and have been doing so for like the last 18 months. I still don't get it

  On 5/22/2013 at 6:11 PM, feltcher said:

All of draft 7.30 took me easily a year to appreciate, was the first Ae album I ever purchased / heard and it was just like fucking stupid noises to me.

After then going back and listening to the earlier back catalogue, I revisited draft and its now in my top 3.

my favorite aspect of draft 7.30 (my fav+ ae album) is its lack of their "annoying pseudo-vocals", anyone know what i'm talking about?

  On 5/22/2013 at 6:28 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

I listen to Merzbow every now and then and have been doing so for like the last 18 months. I still don't get it

There has to be a good one...right...right?

I did manage to really dig his track "Ultra Marine Blues" one late night but it was while I was playing around with a free copy of EJay DJ mix program and mixing it with Interpol's song "Stella Was a Diver And She Was Always Down" and using some flange effect. It was actually really engaging and meshed well.

There are three Merzbow albums that I find usually work to convert followers:

Merzbeat.

Dharma.

Senmaida.

On topic: It's taken me roughly ten years to fully appreciate BOC.

From my late teens I've been into Aphex, AE, Merzbow and all kinds of out-there arty noise and avant scratchings but BOC always left me cold.

I think it may be down to mellowing with age and not now wanting all the music I listen to to be ridiculously intense and/or difficult.

I'm not saying BOC are simplistic or anything like that. It's more that I've learned to chill the fuck out when listening to music.

There's some tracks I hate when everyone else love's them and then seven years down the road, "I get it" and I'm like why didn't I like this back then?

  On 5/22/2013 at 1:17 PM, tec said:

As a whole Untilted probably took me a year and a half to appreciate but it slays me now, what an album.

Same here: Untilted was the first Ae album I purchased and it didn't sound like any kind of music I'd ever heard before... It sat in my brain like an indigestible bolus of alien information until I found myself involuntarily spasming to Ipacial Section a few weeks later. What a glorious album this is!

Who does that? If I don't like something I don't go and listen to it 30 times.

because oliver messiaen taught me that there is music so densely complicated and beautiful that you simply cannot like it just by listening to it, you have to study its premise to enjoy it. so with the opinion of people that i trust, i will revisit stuff im not mental about to see if it clicks eventually. and often it does, as with the chopin ballades.

most of Untilted

I have to say, on first listen this Chopin piece is fucking awesome --grabs me more than most classical music does on first listen. I wonder why it was a hard one for you to appreciate. Maybe if I listened to a lot of classical music it would be harder for me due to all the comparisons I'd have for it? I know if I listen to a genre enough I start disliking things i would have liked at first because they're too much like so much else within the genre. "Oh, that again..." But somehow I doubt that would be the case with this piece as it seems incredibly well labored over.

In answer to the original question, I'm not sure I've ever listened to anything over more than 10 times if I didn't like it. that would be a lot of time to devote to something that did nothing to me. Actually, 30 times is a lot of listens for even music that I really like these days. If i listen to an album 10 times in the span of a year it must be a really fucking good album.

im not too sure either, i mean i was introduced to it at least 5 years ago, but i dont know, it always just seemed like it twiddled away too much. its one of those tunes where you spend the whole first 8 minutes waiting for the wildly emotional final reintroduction of the F minor theme at the end. studying classical piano you are forced to play certain pieces you dont like in order to expand your musical repetoire and stylistic ideas.

im racking my brains to think of electronic music with this effect, which we can all relate to, but the closest i come to is Mr. Bungle. I feel that my bloody valentine may eventually click with me. i listen to some of loveless around once a year, but not yet.

An album that's sadly been heard by none people as it's a bloody ace album, but Electric Company's Creative Playthings is full of tracks that took my several (maybe not 30) listens to like and then fully appreciate. One for example I absolutely hated on first listen but finally clicked after a year or so (I remember exactly where I was too, outside in the sunshine and mowing the grass around a crazy golf pitch!) was this -

i get a completely opposite effect with my favourite type of music, good, dense, techno, in which only the best tracks will i ever play out live more than about 5 times, but there is so much incredible stuff released that i can absorb and listen to anywhere between 50 and 150 new tracks each month. techno is like a constantly writhing, indefinable beast, which is where the role of the dj comes in so importantly, the casual listener could not possibly digest and discover all that comes out each month, it takes me about an hour or two of every single day exploring and discovering the best of what happens for listeners to appreciate.

there is not many techno tunes that can stand under the scrutiny of 30-50 listens and still astound, but still as a genre it excites me in ways no leftfeild electronic, or classical music can.

  On 5/24/2013 at 12:40 AM, mcbpete said:

An album that's sadly been heard by none people as it's a bloody ace album, but Electric Company's Creative Playthings is full of tracks that took my several (maybe not 30) listens to like and then fully appreciate. One for example I absolutely hated on first listen but finally clicked after a year or so (I remember exactly where I was too, outside in the sunshine and mowing the grass around a crazy golf pitch!) was this -

 

on my to get list!

Only thing that comes to mind is all of Loveless by MBV. Didn't get it at all when I first heard it a decade and a half ago, but then it finally clicked and I couldn't stop listening to it.

A lot of really ambitious prog takes me a good few months of repeated listens to appreciate.. for example:

Even though it's not quite as ridiculous as more obscure prog stuff, it still sounded self-indulgent as fuck when I first heard it.

As for electronic music, well, I guess the obvious one would be Confield. Go Plastic also fucked me up a little until I learned all of the glitches. I remember on first listen having the thought that I'd eventually love those albums though.