Musical investigations

Wow, it's been a while. And in all of that while, nothing really interesting happened, which is probably why I haven't felt like writing a blog post. That is to say, lots of things happened, but they were mostly along the lines of work, meeting with friends, watching movies, etc etc. And I've been reading the same novel (Anna Karenina) for at least two months, so not much to say about that either.
But! There are developments on the musical side of things. Some time ago I wrote about discovering Spotify, and coming to the conclusion that I treated it pretty much the same as any other technology; stick to what you know. But things, they are achanging.
First of all, some big company decided that they would share all The Beatles songs with the rest of the world anyway, which was pretty nice. But more importantly, I've been looking up new music myself. Not really 'by myself' as such, but I've been getting recommendations from others, or hearing songs on commercials, or on the radio (and checking which song they are by using the nifty app SoundHound) and I've added those to my music. And then (this is the magical part) I go to that artist's page, and listen to their other music. Not all of it, of course, but the top 10 songs at least.
Which has led me to discover the following artists:

Ludovico Einaudi: man, he is brilliant. I know nothing about this man, apart from the fact that his song Life was used in a commercial. So I checked him out, and found a treasure trove of beautiful instrumental music, most of it just a piano. My absolute favourite is Nuvole Bianchi, which has almost 40 million listens on Spotify, and is hauntingly beautiful. I'm still trying to find the sheet music, to be able to play it.

John Mayer: I thought this was some guy from the 60s, but apparently he's quite a bit more recent. I heard Heartbreak Warfare on the radio, which I loved, and then I checked out some of his other songs, which were really nice as well. Mellow, but not sleepily so. He can get a bit whiny, but then we skip to:

Modest Mouse: can you believe this band name? Too cute! Anyway, someone recommended Dashboard (which has a very funny video clip too), and then I looked some more on their page, and found out they're the guys from Float On, which was also used in a commercial (sad, how many songs I know mostly from tv ads).

Muse: I've had lots of friends who were into Muse, but somehow I'd never really listened to any songs. Now that I have, I find them a bit too aggressive for what I would normally listen to, but there are times when I like that uptempo shouty stuff, for example when I try to hammer out some minutes for meetings.

I could go on and on (The National, Wolf People, The Raconteurs), but most of them are kind of the same music as I've always loved (Ludovico Eunaudi is like Howard Shore and Philip Glass, and all the other guys are your regular middle of the road band, leaning slightly towards the countryesque). So technically, I haven't really evolved that much, especially when you compare it to the friend who has suddenly decided she's into 'gangster rap'. But still, small steps towards more musical open mindedness.