Every Noise

in Misc

Tag map of music genres

Every Noise is a website for music discovery. It is spare. You don't experience it with your eyes.

Its main page is a tag map of genres. Scroll or search, click to get a sample, repeat. It is absolutely thrilling fun. It turns out I like Sambass?

Every Noise sifted through the most popular music of 2022 from around the world. They have samples and spotify playlists for a ton of genres, and you can narrow by country. I haven't started exploring beyond the US yet.

You can enter an artist's name and Every Noise will show you all the lists they're on so you can explore similar songs. That's a very cool feature. Unfortunately, many of the artists I initially entered were not popular enough to be on any lists. And the ones who were (Rosalia, Bad Bunny) are too popular for that to be useful. The place this feature sings is with artists like Gorillaz, that genre hop and aren't so popular as to be everywhere.

Combined with the genre map, the hit lists are a great tool. You can find a genre on the map, then do a text search on the 2022 Around The World page, click it and get a bunch of related artists and songs. One thing that's interesting is that the most popular songs of related genres all tend to sound closer to each other than the samples on the genre map do. This is especially noticeable with things like Trop House, where the "tropical" part gets flattened into the vibe of popular dance music that gets music on to hit lists.

And for all that there are a lot of genres here, it is more striking in its breadth than its depth. Any fan of a genre could parse things into microniches and maybe if you're using "sounds like this other artist I know" as your starting point, that would be useful. Still, what makes music good isn't how many adjectives it takes to name its genre. What you really want is music that is ineffably catchy and charming, and that quality will never be reducable to MP3 tags in an itunes library.

I spent way more time on this site than I should. It was like roaming the shelves in a labyrinthian alibrary. It's easy to get lost in the stacks. Below are my tasting notes.

Concentrated Focus

So much of my music listening isn't actually listening. It's more like curating a sonic background for my brain to track while I do other things. My first foray into this list was to look for the lulls.

  • Ambient Techno is what the inside of my head sounds like when I'm trying to fall asleep at a party.

  • Compositional Ambient was a delight. It's perfect for when you're doing sunrise yoga in your hexayurt.

  • The Lounge and Sunset Lounge playlists are pleasant.

  • The Escape Room is a surprisingly good listen if you want to concentrate with some urgency and you can take background noise. I guess that's what it's like in an escape room?

  • Their LowFi Beats are not low fi, but they are slow beats without the crackle and pop. Chillhop is also pretty on point. If you're in this mode, you might also enjoy Focus Beats, which clocks in at a slightly higher bpm. Similarly, Focus and Neoclassical are pleasant if you trend acoustic. Meanwhile, the LoFi Chill playlist steps it up a pace but is vocal-forward. A more melodic alternative is the Chill Wave playlist.

  • Vapor Soul is nice and chill without being super slow.

Jazzy

  • The Electric Blues playlist is not electro or electronic, just electric, which is quaint buy rhythmically satsifying.

  • The Jazz Funk playlist is funkier tho.

  • Jazz Piano is every hotel lobby with a live pianist you've ever been to.

House and Electronic

  • Turntablism does not feature turntablism, but if you like the flow of Method Man and KRSONE, you will enjoy it.

  • Minimal Synth is exactly what it says: just people playing with synths. It's like 90s tracker mods.

  • And of course I had to listen to the Deep House playlist, which is... poppy? Full of vocals, not minimal at all. Why have a Vocal House category if everybody is cramming divas and baritone drones into their house? And the Bass House is all over the place. It even gets a little jungle at times. My quest for deep, minimal house that doesn't devolve into tech house continues.

  • If you have to do tech house, at least make it funky.

  • I am secretly into Witch House, but the Russian Witch House is way extra.

  • The Electronic Trap playlist has too much of the wubs.

  • Are you into Progressive House? I wasn't, then I listened to the most popular tunes of 2022 and... I'm nostalgic for progressive.

Everything Else

  • I refused to click on Meme Rap. There is good hip hop out there. I guess I should dig into Every Noise and find it.