Your Favourite Artists / Bands
 

I thought it would be nice to have a thread for people to share their favourite artists/bands, why they like them, background info on the band for the potentially uninitiated, and maybe a few favourite or 'essential' tracks.

Not only is it a great way of sharing the love of music, but a great recommendation tool; as I, for one, am always on the lookout for new bands/sounds to enjoy.

I'll start off with (quite possibly) my favourite band of all-time:


"Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (1982 – present)
Skinny Puppy is an influential industrial band, formed in 1982 by core members cEvin Key (Kevin Crompton) and Nivek Ogre (ohGr) (Kevin Ogilvie) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Inspired by the groundbreaking music of Chrome, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Portion Control, The Legendary Pink Dots, and others, Skinny Puppy experimented with electronic recording techniques and methods. The band composed multi-layered music generally using keyboards, synthesizers, found sounds, drum machines, live percussion, tape splices, samplers, and conventional rock music instruments. Whereas many contemporary remixes and re-edits of songs were created in order to make a song more suitable for dancing or different radio formats, Skinny Puppy approached remixing and re-editing as an artistic process of reinterpreting compositions, often using remixes to push their sound into styles of ambient, dub and techno. Skinny Puppy’s often informal, improvisational approach to musical composition is indicated by use of the term brap, coined by them and defined as a verb meaning “to get together, hook up electronic instruments, get high, and record”.

Skinny Puppy’s first two proper releases, Bites and Remission, fall somewhere between the found-sound chaos of early Cabaret Voltaire and the abrasive, futuristic synthpop of the Units or Crash Course in Science. While the intense synth programming, abstract rhythms, and surreal samples—all Puppy trademarks—are present here, the albums owe as much to new wave as to industrial."

(source: last.fm)

Some of my favourite tracks:

Curcible (The Process)

Dig It (Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse)

Smothered Hope (Remission)

Spasmolytic (Too Dark Park)

Tin Omen (Rabies)

Essential Albums:
Bites
Cleanse, Fold and Manipulate
The Greater Wrong of the Right
Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse
The Process
Too Dark Park

THROBBING GRISTLE Hamburger Lady @ Northampton 1979 - YouTube

Abba - The Winner Takes It All - YouTube

Big Black - Deep Six - YouTube

The Velvet Underground - Sister Ray (full lenght) - YouTube

The Fall - The Man Whose Head Expanded - YouTube

Crass - How Does It Feel (With Lyrics) - YouTube

Flipper - Get Away - YouTube

Beach Boys - I Get Around - YouTube

Slayer - Playing With Dolls Video (Part 1) GOOD QUALITY - YouTube

this is a mere smattering of my favourites...;)

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/...y+10463028.jpg

My favourite band are The Sisters Of Mercy.

Their an 80's cult rock band from Leeds that celebrated their 30th Anniversary this year! They haven't released a record since the early nineties, but they gig very regularly.

Over the years they've gone through many line-up changes, with only their singer, Andrew Eldritch, and trusty drum-machine, Doctor Avalanche, as permanent members.

Essential tracks:








All of their 3 albums are worth picking up, but the one typically regarded as the best is 1987's Floodland]Error.

I love The Sisters of Mercy - great post, and nice choice of tracks rz. :coolblue:

I own the A Slight Case Of Overbombing greatest hits collection and love the likes of Lucretia My Reflection, Temple Of Love and Dominion. Superb Saxophone solo on the latter track too and the band's female member was well hot imo!:)

A few bands/musicians that float my boat.

RUDIMENTARY PENI. Originally lumped in with Crass and other bands of a similar stance and sound, Peni always had a darker gothic edge to them, not so much in the music but more in the lyrics and art work of singer Nick Blinko. I'm a total Blinko obsessive owning books and art work by the man along with the bands recordings. Stand out lp, "Cacophony" a punk prog concept lp based on the works and life of H.P.Lovecraft.

HANOI ROCKS. I confess to being a teenage glam rocker, it was such a breath of fresh air after constantly worrying about nuclear war and state control during the early 80s punk scene. You have no idea how radical I felt not wearing black all the time when I got into them. One of the best party bands ever. Favourite lp "Oriental Beat".

BIG BLACK/RAPEMAN/SHELLAC. Steve Albini as musician, is a God in our house. Difficult for me to pick one thing by the man but if push comes to shove then it's the Rapeman lp "Two Nuns and a Pack Mule".

LOVE. If you don't own "Forever Changes" shame on you. Go and buy it now, you'll be a better person for it.

HAWKWIND. Perhaps England's finest band, well up to 1975 anyway.

ELVIS. Forget the fat biffer in a white suit, even though some of his later stuff is great, check out his early stuff on Sun Records. The man was on fire, there is something so primal about these records along with a lot of other early rockabilly it's a shame that more people don't listen to the genre. Charlie Feathers is also well worth looking into.

DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS. Though they are today remembered mainly for wedding dance floor filler "Come On Ellen", Dexys first two lps are blinding bits of white UK soul music. One of the main things that make them so attractive to me is the passion and belief of Kevin Rowlands in his music and the transcendental nature of music in general. Few people are that honest. Of course he was mocked for it in the press. Oh and he was a bit of a twat at the time, so fair does. I like to think of Rowlands as one of England's great music eccentrics who lucked out and had chart hits with what on reflection is an odd idea:soul music with added banjo and irish fiddle.

COMPULSIVE GAMBLERS/OBLIVIANS/REIGNING SOUND. The three main bands of Greg Cartwright, 90s garage punk legend. A God in our house along with Albini. CG have a country waltz edge to some of their early stuff, Oblivians are out and out dumbass punk and RS alternate between howling guitars and some of the finest love songs ever written. As the great man Greg himself says on the live Oblivians lp, "Suffer motherfu*ker, suffer".

SHIRLEY COLLINS. England's greatest female folk singer. She's appeared with loads of different bands over the years including Current 93, but the couple of lps she did with her sister Dolly are amazingly bleak and mournful and thus highly recommended.

THE OWL SERVICE. A modern folk band who draw heavily on late 60s early 70s English folk bands. Some of the most beautiful music ever made. They also do a rather fine drone when not singing about wasselling and poachers. The main man is a Sunn O ))) fan.

We have a mutual love of Hanoi Rocks.

Michael Monroe's latest solo album is excellent by the way.

I've not heard any of his solo stuff in years, so I may have to check it out. Cheers for the heads up.

Did you pick up Hanoi's 12 Shots on the Rocks album in 2002?

A fine album by the latest incarnation of the group.

Yeah, I really liked it. It must have been around it's release date that I had a nostalgia trip and went to see them, something I don't normally do with bands that have been important to me in the past.