Approved Music

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While fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls by and large tend to be more film and literature types, every once in a while they may wish to set the mood for an adventure, get into a character's headspace, or just chill/rock the fuck out.

This page is to help find musicians and albums for just such an occassion.

Please note that soundtracks of Approved movies have been omitted as generally, they count automatically.

Now, with all that said, let's begin.

Rock

  • Frank Zappa - Hot Rats and everything else he made: The original rock music iconoclast. Arguably helped to make rock music a respectable artform thanks to his thoughtful compositions, and unlike other iconoclasts, he had a sense of humour about his music. Unfortunately marred by some songs that could be considered racist, homophobic, or otherwise...well...shall we say outdated?
  • King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King+: The soundtrack of a medieval apocalypse. Classical and acoustic instrumentation mixed with rock music stylings, a sprinkling of jazz here and there, and lyrics that make fantasy allusions make for the perfect mood setter for your grimdark D&D campaigns.
  • Yes - Fragile, Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans+: You'll be hard-pressed to find a more quintessentially prog band than Yes. Probably could be viewed as a noblebright King Crimson. Fantastical lyrics with ridiculously tight playing and songwriting and just enough of that prog cheese to keep it fun. Good luck finding a band that would better suit your 80s inspired fantasy games.
  • The Residents: A deconstructionist art-rock band that have been making music since seemingly the dawn of time. Some truly weird songs and imagery in their lyrics. Perfect for pilfering.
  • Slint - Spiderland: Edgy post-rock that walks the delicate line of being angsty but not whiny. Minimalist rock production with your typical verse-chorus-bridge songwriting with cool time signatures. All of this is in service to the dark tone with songs that cover topics of social anxiety, depression and abandonment. The lyrics alone could be used as inspiration for characters and adventures.

Metal

  • Alestorm: Pirates + Metal + Scotland. If you haven't heard this playing in your local hobby shop, you've never been to your local hobby shop. Period.
  • Black Sabbath: The guys who made the genre. Any metalhead who isn't at least semi-knowledgable about them will be put to death by the masses.
  • Blind Guardian - Nightfall on Middle Earth: A one-hour-long speed metal concept album about The Silmarillion. If that doesn't sound fuck awesome to you, then get the fuck off this website. Appropriate levels of cheese, manliness and awesome are expected.
  • Tool: Their fanbase may suck and be full of cringe, but at least Tool can stand on their musical merits. Catchy riffs and songs with enough time signatures to keep the hipster who pretends he knows music theory happy.
  • Gloryhammer: A swiss-scottish power metal band lead by Christopher Bowes, the lead singer of Alestorm. Their music is cheesy as fuck, but the lyrics sound like a D&D campaign gone off the rails.

Folk

  • Comus - Comus: Folk-prog that's dark as fuck, covering topics such as rape, murder and heresy. This album is special though in that every single song on it seems to relish how evil it gets. If you need to get into character next time you play an evil alignment, this is the one.
  • Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea: IT'S A POTATO!!!!! I LOOOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOOU JESUUUUUUUUUUS CHRIIIIIIIIIIIST!!!! SEMEN STAINS THE MOUNTAINTOPS!!!!! This album is the rosetta stone that will help you decode /mu/ should you ever feel yourself patrician enough to enter such a magical realm. Though on the surface it may seem like esoteric hipster trash, give it a few listens, and it soon becomes an incredibly engrossing and heartfelt album that has been known to make grown men cry. Seriously, there is a reason /mu/ goes so crazy over this shit.
  • Joanna Newsom - Ys: Though her voice may put some off, the music and lyricism of this album is well worth it. Articulate and poetic lyrics with lots of metaphor and symbolism and long-form songwriting combined with classical-style production makes this album sound like something out of a fairy-tale or a Tolkien novel, and is thus a perfect mood setter for any fantasy game.
  • Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day: Very naive, very positive, very noblebright album that has a very pastoral vibe. Good for relaxing, and good for mood setting, provided that the setting your playing in is noblebright to the utmost extreme. Seriously, there's no describing how positive this album is.

Electronic

  • Aphex Twin/AFX: The guy that made modern EDM. There's a bit of everything electronic here. Ambient, downtempo, hardcore, acid house, Drill and bass, etc. His discography is as diverse as it is big.
  • Autechre: The music robots will be listening to when they rise up and take over the world. Techno music executed with cold precision. Sparse, metallic textures and synthetic timbres, as well as pure, straight-forward rhythm.
  • Biosphere - Microgravity, Substrata: Microgravity is a minimalist techno album with a theme of space and space travel with plenty of samples from classic 60s sci-fi and Gerry Anderson TV shows. Substrata is a purely ambient album meant to build an arctic atmosphere. Both are approved as classics of their respective genres and would make great mood music for any appropriate campaigns.
  • Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children, Geogaddi: Ambient techno and hip-hop beats with an emphasis on building a nostalgic atmosphere with obscure tape samples and vintage synths. Great mood-setting and chill out music, with some cryptic sampling and references to keep fans invested long-term. Tomorrow's Harvest is also an approved album as it's basically a John Carpenter rip-off that would be great background music in your 80's inspired post-apocalyptic campaign.
  • Depeche mode - Violator, Songs of Faith and Devotion, Ultra: Synthpop that is equal parts moody, gothic and oh-so sensual. As such, it is a sin to play a Vampire: The Masquerade game and not hear one of these songs at least once. Also, some real catchy songs in here, so be prepared to be singing them for the next week.
  • The Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, UFOrb: Ambient house music that is very sample heavy with an over-arching campy sci-fi theme. The first album can be thought of as a journey through space. The second is less of a concept album but still a fun, spacey, chill album.

Hip-Hop

  • Death Grips: With a fanbase that has as many /b/tards screaming "NOIDED" as pseudo-intellectual fartsniffers pretending they understand this music, there's no doubting that Death Grips have secured a place in the 4chan-verse. Super noisy production with rapping from MC Ride that borders on mad, paranoid screaming and drumming by Zach Hill that is as dangerous as it is frenetic, it's easy to see why their sound sticks out it in the modern hip-hop scene. Wanky posturing aside, the music here is actually pretty good, and despite the "industrial" nature of the overall sound, it can be quite catchy and even (shock-horror!) listenable with every album of theirs bringing something new to the musical table. DEATH GRIPS IS ONLINE!

Classical

Yes, classical music has a certain...image, but come in with an open mind, and you might just find something cool.

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Baroque counterpoint daddy. Listen to his cello suites at the bare minimum.
  • Joseph Haydn: The daddy of symphonies.
  • Gustav Holst - The Planets: Where Star Wars music came from.
  • Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring (at the very least): The piece that was so good it caused a riot in the theatre and started the modernist movement in music. Despite how old this music is it's metal as fuck, and we're not just talking about the original ballet's plot.
  • Olivier Messiaen - Turangalîla-symphonie: A truly gigantic orchestral meditation on love, both on a cosmic and personal scale. Has a uniquely alien sound, especially for an orchestral work, thanks to it's use of the Ondes-Martenot as a solo instrument.
  • Richard Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen: Yes, Wagner was an anti-semitic piece of shit who probably inspired Hitler with how much of a cunt he was. That being said, his ring cycle is to Opera what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. This shit is BIG, totalling FOUR. WHOLE. OPERAS. each one three hours long AT LEAST, totalling 15 hours of playing and telling a story that spans several generation's worth of time. Musically, this work pioneered the use of Leitmotif to represent characters as well as emotions and ideas, and hearing these be incorporated, re-incorporated and evolve over such a huge piece is something that is yet to be replicated in any other media to this day. It's one hell of a party.
  • Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians, Different Trains: Minimalist daddy, and the composer you should start with if you're ever willing to try out classical music. Music for 18 musicians is so groovy it's almost hypnotic, with so many layers and instrumental variety that you could really do a deep-dive into it's sound world, yet repetitive enough that you could just have it playing in the background. Different trains is different it that it is a work with a story, one that you could similarly pay attention to, yet still able to be put on in the background.

Other

  • Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica: Rock music made by a Malkavian. Actually, is it even rock music? Is it Jazz? Is it Blues? The truth is nobody really knows. What further adds to the confusion is that this thing has been cited as the best album of all time by some very notable music critics. As such, it is prime shitposting material on /mu/. Weirdly enough, it's actually got moments of not only being catchy as fuck, but also strangely quotable and can be used to judge the patrician levels of any passing normie. MY FROWN IS STUCK, I CANNOT GO BACK TO YOUR FROOOOOOOOWNLAAAAAAAND!
  • Two Steps From Hell - All of it: A music production company that makes epic trailer music. Every time you saw a movie, video game or TV show trailer with epic music that didn't appear in the actual show or game, it was these guys. Despite movie trailers being their day jobs, they regularly release albums of epic instrumentals. Chances are, you've already heard them and said "This is epic".
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