Music that nobody knows about

music
41

Across the last year I‘ve really been enjoying the live keyboard DJ culture in indonesia, especially Mayen Sembiring. This genre is pretty popular over there but I think is virtually unknown in the west so I’m gonna talk about it.

It's basically all about playing as many notes as fast you can, modulating them on the fly, just moving along if you screw up, and generally a lot of heart coming through the keyboard performance, which you don't often see. It's done for parties and big events and stuff, and sometimes they get on TV.

Here's Mayen Sembiring with some dirty ass live house music. make sure you get to 2:10 of this video https://youtu.be/ZFG7tB54e9g

More:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GytPqOalTSc

I think this is a cover of that "umbrella" song maybe!? some popular thing. but I like it anyway!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APKV5A0kzZI

Arindi Putry is more popular but because of that she winds up doing much more traditional stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPvTMEex6RE

She's actually a good singer too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-waY1qjJpo8

Here's the party vibe that you usually get with these, it's super fun to see. I'd hang out at one of these!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH9T9nSIdLc

More blue tent party time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rODFEnfJ1no

I can't find my favorite party video right now, but the singer is a genderfluid dynamo getting it on the dance floor, I wish I could find it.

Dunno who the keyboardist is for this one but I like the vibe here (it's a wedding I believe) with grandmas out there getting it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx--oV0k3H4

Anyhoo as a music subculture this rules super hard and even The Cops love it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymO69taNNJs

If you're wondering whether dudes do this stuff also, the answer is yes but who cares
here's a guy who has the same last name as mayen... I think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxWLtRvlF3k

Learning about all this through youtube gives me very limited insight but maybe it'll be a jumping-off point for somebody to have a good time!

(p.s. A lot of the music they're playing is in the dangdut genre if you wanna explore further)

42

Jonathan Hape, a bloke from Ohio who does the theme song for one of my favorite film podcasts, Lost in Criterion, is putting out a new record on bandcamp and the preview tracks are something else I tell you.

https://glasscassette.bandcamp.com/album/glass-cassette

43

For some reason this band never got famous, I always thought they were well known but they sure were not.

Here's a song about a place down the street from my house, california's oldest lesbian bar. also maybe about heroin, one never knows. anyway I always liked the line "it wants you to come for a night of gay dancing."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOE3uPgmglk

44

Quick question; how are people posting embedded Bandcamp players?

I've tried the URL (thinking that forum magic would do the same as it does for YouTube) and the 'embed' code from the Bandcamp page, and in the post preview neither option seems to work.

45

Bunch of cool stuff here! Wasn‘t sure if I should post this in the “Sounds like Game Music” thread or here because I do use his stuff with racing and action games. I like this guy’s more aggressive synthwave style and there‘s some AMVs out there that have a bunch of views, but in terms of popular… I’m not sure. Since there's been so many new musicians making synthwave it can be easy to get lost in the shuffle and he stands out to me. So here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxxrUz4I3EA

46

@billy#4810 I posted

https :// glasscassette . bandcamp . com / album / glass-cassette

To get that embedded

47

One of my favourite albums of all time. No idea how obscure it really is, but endlessly fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVK-7FseoZk

48

I sometimes make this lo-fi DIY nonsense:

https://women.bandcamp.com/album/sensitive-man

http://women.bandcamp.com/track/piss-on-my-tiny-hands

It definitely falls into the 'music that nobody knows about' category as I do almost nothing to promote it and use it mostly as an excuse to make loud noises at people in clubs. I used to have quite a shitty job and this was an excellent release from that. I kinda like my job now, so the pop career has suffered somewhat.

49

Right now I‘m listening to CASIO Turkey Onsen. I first heard about them a few years ago, but I hadn’t downloaded their album Yu until today. I only remembered them because I thought their name was cool. Now I realize that I‘m in love with this weird 80s toy keyboard post-hip-hop that they’re doing.

Here's the music video for (a shortened version of) their song Surimacca no Uta, which I guess doubles as an advertisement for a [screen printing toy](https://surimacca.com)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f7-rNsb4qM

50

@Eubanks#2483

Casiopea is what got me on my now never-ending Japanese fusion jazz kick. I was looking into the music of Outrun and got referred to this band and never looked back. Love the crap out of these guys.

In fact, these days all I ever listen to is Japanese fusion and my favorite band ever which I am always thrilled to blab about to anyone who will listen. They may not be so obscure on the internet, but everyone I ever bring them up to thinks I'm making them up.

Anyway, they're a psych rock outfit from Australia called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They are super experimental and started out as pretty standard garage rock, but most of their albums are completely different from each other musically, exploring different genres and musical styles. In the ten years they've been around they've put out 16 albums (including 5 full, stand alone albums in 2017).

They play everything from acoustic dream pop:
https://youtu.be/lci8-n8K394

to straight up thrash metal:
https://youtu.be/qtTi_uyYynA

and all that is in between. They've experimented with polyrhythmic prog rock and boogie funk and eastern microtonal music. My favorite album of theirs has to be Fishing for Fishies.

https://youtu.be/-kE1S9olY6A

They also have recurring themes and ideas and that weave in and out of their albums in the form of musical motifs or references in the lyrics. The lyrics are often philosophical and metaphorical, but a lot of the stuff they write is drenched in sci fi and fantasy. One of their most prominent themes is a human-robot hybrid who threw up so hard he became then destroyed the universe. This character pops up in more than a handful of their albums in different forms and version and it's so much fun to find it when it pops up, along with all the other references and characters. Oh and one of their albums has a whole section called The Tale of the Altered Beast which may or may not be a reference to the game.

They also put on a killer live show. Oh and they had 2 drummers for most of their tenure which was a treat to see live. These guys love what they do and show no signs of stopping.

51

What counts as obscure anymore? I feel like everything is obscure except mega-famous stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_-H6012rks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yZWnv2W5rU

52

oh man trigger warning but I‘m about to talk about jpop and eurobeat lol. I used to like the group D&D, which is an old jpop eurobeat group that launched the career of Olivia Lufkin. After Olivia left the group the remaining members released like 2 songs before disappearing forever. One song is a track I absolutely love called Waitin’ for Heaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpHb17r6RsQ

there is a comment on that vid from 1 year ago that says "original: Margaret - YOU'RE IN MY HEART" and my mind is blown!! This is another song I've been listening to for close to 20 years and had no idea there was an original version! And it's really not uncommon for jpop eurobeat songs to be copies of actual eurboeat songs, but the fact that I've been unaware of the original version for so long is crazy!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDETWccT_TA

53

I looked for existing topics I could use to post this and I guess spanish indie bands are something that is unknown for people outside both of Spain and the local scene, so seems like a good enough fit.

Omar Álvarez is a former Nintendo Ibérica PR (the spanish subsidiary of Nintendo Europe) that left the company and used to work as creative director for Vizz, one the biggest gigs dedicated to the Youtube and streaming scene here.

He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and last October he shared that the doctors gave him 4 months of life. He's been very open with he whole process, hoping to normalize his situation and help others dealing with loss and going through similar experiences. Yesterday he shared on his Twitter account that he had produced the following videoclip of VVV, a local post-punk spanish band, in which he exposes how was 2020 for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S8oMGGObTU

I felt like sharing because I thought the whole thing was very moving and beautiful, independently of his whole personal situation.

54

I always come back to this song, Lust for summer blues by adustam. https://soundcloud.com/adustam/lust-for-summer-blues-1

I found it from this animation short (content warning for some real bizarre stuff in this, just a heads up) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RzNDZFQllA

The artist seemingly released an EP some 10 years ago, and has some tracks strewn across their Soundcloud, but I've never been able to track them to any future endeavors. It has been difficult to pin down a genre for this song, and I always come back to it every year or two when I feel the mood hit.

I don't know that I'd say it's "music nobody knows about" considering how many listens it has, I just think about the artist in question a lot and wonder what they went on to do. So maybe it fits in that respect.

55

@JoJoestar#13732 it‘s wonderful that he’s making meaningful art in the time he has left, thanks for sharing it here

56

@cera#2487 woah hey Shinobu! I've loved their stuff forever. They have a song based around Killer7 even.

i saw their Drummer's Tokyo band in like 2009 I do not remember the name of. Then Hard Girls which is a terrible name for an all guy band but I do like their stuff a lot.

57

Mammal Dap is an extremely tiny New England band that I saw live once. Of their two albums, I like Deep Field better.

Here's (I think) their most popular song:
https://youtu.be/wBB3KyYGuAA

58

I thought about this thread a lot and I went with 3 things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqRr9BokbeQ
This delightful hangout-ska band Sugarhill Downtown Orchestra that I need to put their albums somewhere on the internet because you can't get their stuff anywhere except two songs off one album on itunes???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wa1LnTLv8U
China Drum who I have been listening to since I was 14 and have not encountered someone that is a fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCtoVAKwZ8Q
And then some ancient IC lore of Kama Boiler.

59

here's some 90s pop rock woo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnPmVHk5078

so unknown no one went to their live show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLwUIoPBVTY

60

This is from an album I picked up from a bargain bin at a record store entirely on the back of it having some nice Roger Dean cover art.

The album as a whole is basically pretty good, somewhat proggy folk-rock. The opening to side 2, however, is, just... Peak Dad Rock. Like, "Would fit In perfectly In a Guardians of the Galaxy movie" levels of Dad Rock. And it's a song that currently has just over 2000 views on YouTube, from an album that doesn't have a wikipedia page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ3hRmR6kh0&list=PL6ERljmTLc6IKOk1s4nDy6aqHTtMWjBiV