I have thought of not just about general influences, but singular moments in time where my views on the music I would eventually make changed and approximately when I experienced them. While it would be easy just to write a list of ‘favorite songs’ and call it a day, I found that actually thinking about specific songs that lead to new genre discoveries, or new musical trains of thought was more difficult. Which singular entities encapsulated the influential concepts the best?
So here is my list of singular moments in time where my views on the music I would eventually make changed.
1986 – Hirokazu Tanaka, Metroid [Main Theme]
1987 – Kinuyo Yamashita, Satoe Terashima, Wicked Child [Castlevania OST]
1989 – Takashi Tateishi, The Mega Man 2 OST [Almost in its entirety]
1994 – Nine Inch Nails, Closer
1994 – Napalm Death, Twist the Knife (Slowly)
1995 – Massive Attack, Protection
1995 – Fear Factory, The Demanufacture Album [Almost in its entirety]
1996 – Yasunori Mitsuda, Corridors of Time [Chrono Trigger OST]
1997 – Chemical Brothers, Setting Sun
1999 – Infected Mushroom, Overload (Deedrah Remix)
2000 – Tabla Beat Science, Palmistry
2001 – Wumpscut, Koslow (First Take)
2002 – Lustmord, Cellular Blur
2004 – Technical Itch, The Hand
2005 – The Wretch, This is Terror
2007 – Patrick Jumpen, The Secret
Honorable Mentions: These tracks may have inspired me in less obvious ways, but given how many listens they have received I felt I should include them. Many of these tracks bear similarities in some form to the primary list above.
1996 – DJ Shadow, Midnight in a Perfect World
1996 – Marilyn Manson, The Beautiful People
1996 – Underworld, Pearl’s Girl
2000 – Type O Negative, It’s Never Enough
2000 – AmIEvil, Death on the Snowfield [Final Fantasy VI OC Remix]
2001 – Robin Beanland, Rock Solid [Conker’s Bad Fur Day OST]
2002 – FFMusicDJ, Final Fantasy 7 String Machine [Corel Prison OC Remix]
2005 – ABG, Lavos vs. Jenova [Chrono Compendium Mix]
2005 – Shoji Meguro, The Sun [SMT:DDS2 OST]
2006 – Soda Inc., A Barcode
2008 – Portishead, Machine Gun
2009 – Tim Exile, YouTube Killed the Now Wave Star
2013 – Avicii vs. Nicky Romero, I Could Be The One [Nicktim]
Other Honorable Mentions: Daft Punk, The Prodigy, Jimmy Buffett and the many, many, wonderful projects at OverClocked Remix.