Something I found getting more and more into dj-ing is that when listening to music, I started to judge it more on how playable it would be, and whether it would fit into my dj sets. This sort of thought process is necessary, but when you do it all the time, it hinders your ability to connect with a lot of music, and music becomes a thing of utility rather than pleasure. So in that sense, isolation really helped in detaching myself from this thought process and ultimately lead me to discover a much wider range of music. One source of music that really helped with this was listening to radio shows. Stations like NTS and Skylab are absolute gold mines, and I became an massive fan of the casual nature of radio shows compared to mixes, as there was less of a focus on cohesion between the music and the hosts just more or less played whatever they felt like. Someone who does this seamlessly is Floating Points, I highly recommend checking out his monthly NTS shows, where you can hear extremely rare soul and gospel records all the way to drum n bass, within the hour! Another show I have been loving is Questing by Zakia on NTS, this one sticks to a theme of ‘spiritual jazz, psychedelic soul and other celestial grooves from across the planet’, but ultimately you can expect incredibly vast range of sounds, and you’re bound to find some gems. Her show is on weekly on Saturdays at 11am London time, and it captures the Saturday morning mood perfectly, where you’ve just made your morning beverage of choice and have absolutely nothing to do (this is a good thing!). Aside from radio shows, I’ve also found many tracks of BuyMusicClub lists, everyone should make these a regular source.
I wouldn’t say there any definitive link between the subject matter and my music taste, but definitely the act of studying defines a major portion of my relationship with music. First and foremost, like for most people I cannot study to music with words in it. When I’m doing physics work, I gravitate towards repetitive music, that is low impact and overall comforting, lush house such a Cape Cira by K-Lone is a perfect example. Yet, if i I am doing essay writing, I can’t listen to anything with loud drums in it, it has to ambient/piano focussed tracks, a good example of this is Utopia by Bremer/McCoy which has definitely helped write many essays.
Ah it is very, very, very early days so I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. Ultimately we are attempting to build something that will allow us to translate digital signals into mechanical waves, that results in complete catharsis for whomever these waves are incident upon.