ween - ive been listening to ween since high school. i listened to the mollusk a lot on the way to school or work. i feel like every other year i have a phase where they're all i listen to for like a month. its tough to pick a fave album but its definitely between the mollusk and quebec. i saw them live in 2022 and it was an almost 3 hour show and one of the best ive been to. so fun, i cant wait to see them again this year. for a time i was a part of a ween archive server where i saved a lot of demos they recovered, its wild how much unreleased stuff they have that is so good. you can see some of the ones i saved in this playlist. i will always be finding new stuff from them.

animal collective - ive been aware of/liked a couple songs from animal collective since 2015, but i only really got into them in 2022-23. in junior year a kid next to me in AP us history showed me the vid for floridada on his phone and was like "isnt this weird?." when i met my girlfriend in 2021, she really introduced me to them as she's been a big fan for a while. diving into their stuff has been so fun, there's so much variety. ive really enjoyed the members' solo stuff too, we saw avey tare, deakin and geologist do solo sets last year and that was probably my favorite show ive ever been to. id love to see them all together asap. similar to ween, i feel like there will always be stuff from them to find that i havent heard before. i saw their visual album oddsac for the first time last year and its extremely good and scary.

king gizzard and the lizard wizard - i started getting into them right at the end of 2017 before gumboot soup came out. that's probably why those five 2017 albums are still the best imo. not to forget nonagon infinity, which was the first one i heard and is still probably my favorite. ive been to their shows twice and they were awesome both times. very different shows though, one was in philly in 2018 and was just perfect setlist wise. the other was in 2019 in asheville right after infest the rats nest came out and the crowd was definitely a lot rougher but it was still so much fun. they used some of my video clips in this vid too :) i got a bit burnt out on them as theyve released so much stuff, but i still go back to their albums from 2014-2017 albums quite a bit.

machine girl - in 2019(?) i was in college and two friends invited me to go to a small show machine girl was playing at but i had to stay in a study for an exam. i always wish i had gone, but i believe the show was cut short by the cops anyways. ive listened to them a lot ever since then. gemini and reporpoised phantasies will probably always be my favorites, but u-void synthesizer got me thru some bad times in 2020. ive seen them live three times, but my fave was seeing them for halloween in 2022 in brooklyn. i will take any opportunity to see them live, its so much fun. in 2020 i submitted some vids that got into their global fandemic set and in 2022 i was a winner of their art competition where my art was used on some machine girl mtg cards (which i cant find the picture of..)

mr bungle - sometime in 2015/16 my friend showed me two fan made videos for retrovertigo and pink cigarette. later that year i think i saw some video that used stubb - a dub and was like ohhh i love this band. california is my favorite album by them, closely followed by the self titled. i found promotional cd copies of those two albums and disco volante at a thrift store one time. that's probably my best haul other than the time i found ssb melee for $1. the record store near my college campus had a mr bungle tape, california vinyl, and the cd/calendar book suspended animation by fantomas (super group including 2 bungle members) which has art by Yoshitomo Nara (all of which i copped and treasure dearly).

the aquabats! - i first started listening to the aquabats in 2014 when i was really into mega64, who would talk about them a lot. they were actually the first big show i ever went to and i got to meet all of them. my dad took me and my friend and actually ended up really liking some of their stuff and he still listens to the legend is true and sequence erase to this day. their music and aesthetic is just so fun. the tv show is really cool as well, i love all the villains they fight. my favorite album is either the aquabats vs the floating eye of death or myths legends and other amazing adventures vol 2. i hope i get to see them again soon.

talking heads - my first memory of a talking heads song is listening to burning down the house in the car on the way to the beach with a friend in elementary school. a good friend of mine gave me a burned cd of sand in the vaseline in high school that i would listen to in my car. i listed to pull up the rootson repeat for a long car ride in college. i listened to this must be the place a ton during quarantine when i would just drive around. i guess most of the times ive listened to them have been in the car. its good traveling music. i saw stop making sense twice last year in the theater and i think its just one of my favorite movies. their music just makes me so happy.