I don't know quite what you mean by upwind of. But yes I do. Well not so much death metal (like slipknot) but bands like mudvayne, and doom metal, industrial metal and doomy stuff.
I was just hoping you'd not have me be subjected to the likes of 'soothing' classical music. People have tried that before in meatspace, or R&B, and I just couldn't BEAR it, I have to leave the room if that stuff has to be played by others at any gathering I've been in. Its like someone first giving my brain and spinal cord a covering of skin, in order to lightly rub wool over it, and rub the coarse grain of wooden ice lolly sticks and the wooden spoons used for baking over my mental fingernails. And I NEED to go rock back and forth, or stand and spin and twirl in place, and hand-flap as though tomorrow I become an amputee at the wrists, with neither hands to flap nor fingers to flick and click. For that kind of music, and soft rock'n'roll, I must have some good doom, to soothe my fraying nervous system.
After a toxic exposure of that nature, harsh industrial metal, and even better, doom, as well as some, but not all death metal (I especially like a band called 'Kittie'), its like balm to the burns inflicted by such a nasty corrosive exposure..
That's intersting. It stikes me that maybe this goes way beyond personal tastes; could be some kind of direct neurological reaction to the wrong sort of frequencies? Ofc, I'm talking out of my ass here, though. I've not enough knowledge of neuroscience to even know if that idea makes sense. But it might be worth pursuing.
For my part, it's not so much the sound of most of "easy-listening " kind of stuff that annoys me; its things like gross sentimentality, tedious uniformity, lack of sincerity; absence of feeling; and orchestral music sounds really stilted to me, like it's passed through too many filters , on the journey between the brain of the composer and my ear. That might just be prejudice on my part, though. There's still a heckova lot of quietmore-or-less "soothing" music that I do like, though. I seem to have a much higher tolerance for dissonance than most people (and even a liking for it) ; but, even so, metal has eveloved into a bunch of subgenres that mostly do nothing at all for me except get on my nerves
. Sorry 'bout that . On the other hand, it's also produced some subgenres that bore me to tears, so maybe that's just to say I'm a complete old fart by now.( I'm a lot more at home with post-punk and post-rock , not to mention the prog rock i was into as a schoolgirl, along with sabbath etc . along with odd bits of jazz and folk. Well, basically, i was eclectically sidestepping the radio 1 shite,)
I kid you not on that "old fart" idea. A friend of mine walked in when i waas playing something loud and aggressive (I forget what, exactly) and made the observation that was "young people's music" , even though the band in question had easily been around long enough have a bunch of aging fans (might have been the Fall, or Nirvana) That set met thinking. He is not a stupid. And he did have a point, because my tastes are actually drifing more towadrs the quieter end of the spectrum; maybe due to losing my ansgt? and/or maybe neuropligical changes that come with age? I also go for dasys and days with out listening to music., TV or anything, a whole lot more often that i used to, just enjoying the relative silence (for as long as it lasts. my neighbourhood is surely not the ideal place for that)
By "upwind" of i meant , roughly speaking, somewhere where you wouldn't catch the scent of death metal, something unifluenced by it. That's just my notorious "poetic" turn of phrase; which results from my usual failure to recall the right cliche at the right time, so I just have to grope for something more original.
You have a nicely poetic turn of phrase yourself, btw. I just love your decription of how classical music affects you. You would make a brilliant lyricist, methinks. Know any bands in need of one?