Soundtrack of My Life

I think I've blogged about this before but when I fall in love with a song that I can relate to (with emotions of the past or present), I always think that I would add it to the soundtrack of my life. In my mind, the soundtrack of a life is the music that would underscore extremely meaningful, life defining events in much the same way that music is used as an added emotional prop in movies.
So, for the latest additions to the soundtrack of my life, I notice that I have become more obsessed with light dreamy electronica and the ethereal vocals that sometimes play over that music. I date this interest to starting in highschool because I would listen to Enya to fall asleep at night, but categorically, I think her music is more "new age".

By the way, I hate explaining what music sounds like because I never know what an appropriate category might be. There are so many classifications that seem to bleed into one another that I am more often than not, confused by how music is categorized in music stores, on iTunes, and even in other peoples minds. Point being, I will probably never be able to catalogue or describe music very well, so don't ask me to.*

I think a major turning point for my little love affair with this music was watching the movie 'The Beach', which featured a lot of trip-hop and electronica based music. In particular, Moby's "Porcelain" always sticks out in my mind. The dreamy quality of the synthetic sounds always evokes (for myself) that air of daydreaming and fantasy that I romanticize into my own perceptions of the world. Some might say this is living life through rose coloured glasses, but I like to think that it is the side of my personality that steps away from cynicism and embraces hope and fantasy.

My motivation for writing this post comes from having mentioned a lot of dreamy artists, like Imogen Heap and even a few others who don't necessarily always compose in this style, but I've found the few songs that are. For instance, the last Dido album 'Life For Rent' has an awesome song called 'Stoned' that I am in love with. It is a better album in my opinion than 'No Angel' and as long as she keeps pursuing these tangents I'll keep buying her cds. Another artist I've stumbled upon is Ivy.
Actually, Michaela went on a quest to find out a song by Ivy that played in a Veronica Mars episode, and then she told me the name. I've heard the song before and Ivy has been around for a number of years, but I was just a little slow on the discovery. Probably had my head buried in a book or was busy listening to more rockier music.
Anyways, this trio is awesome, I love the music they are making, and I love that mournful daydream quality that stirs my emotions. Perhaps you are beginning to notice that so far, January has been a very contemplative month for me.

*Also as a side note for discovering new music based on categories, in the past little while when I worked in the lab, we used a site called Pandora, the home base of the Music Genome Project, which attempts to match music to a category or band you input into their search engine. I would say that 70% of the time it has matched up some good listening based on the searches we input but sometimes it is dead wrong. However, they are so clever, that if something doesn't match your idea of what should music be coming up , you can tell them not to put it onto your playlist preferences again.