hello! need soft music!

Hello from Alabama!

i'm 22, i spent most of my childhood listening to A Perfect Circle, Tool, The Mars Volta, Isis, Porcupine Tree, Kayo Dot, etc. i was also a big fan of early krautrock and post-rock.

i've become very sound sensitive over the past few years (i suffer from Crohn's disease, so i'm underweight and malnourished). i can no longer listen to most music with a deep drum kick, loud snare, or distortion on guitar. sometimes i'm able to filter the low frequencies out with winamp's EQ, but a lot of bands i've simply had to give up listening to.

a friend who works in music pointed part of my problem is the compression they began using on drums in the 80s. i have more problems with newer bands, as they are mixed very loud.

just to give a few examples of bands i enjoyed up until a year or two ago... Dance Gavin Dance, Emarosa, Tesseract, Periphery, Sleeping With Sirens. things got really bad right before Tesseract released Altered States, so i missed out on that. i've had to give up 80s-90s alternative stuff like The Cure, The Sundays, Cocteau Twins, Slint, Codeine, Red House Painters, PiL and Siouxsie too.

nowadays i'm down to Elliott Smith, Michael Hedges, Talk Talk, early Tangerine Dream.. some string quartets for APC and Tool.. and a few percussion-less pieces here or there. not that i mind any of those, but i'm definitely missing the variety i used to have.

as far as "rock music" i'm down to a few songs by the Offspring and Garbage's first album (with winamp's EQ on of course). and *anything i can find* without percussion. so i'm looking for any good ambient groups or post-rock groups that wouldn't bother me too much. Sigur Ros is too percussive for me, ironically (a lot of people have suggested them). the only post-rock i can stand atm is Bark Psychosis and Talk Talk.

any soft progressive, avant-garde and/or folk would be nice too. thank you for reading! ^_^

P.S. i should probably also mention that i write music, so i'm looking for new inspiration just as much as new music to enjoy. :P


Edited by Sandalphon - April 12 2014 at 10:00

Hello and welcome....Here's a few things for you to try.  Good luck!

http://music.lowercasenoises.com/album/migratory-patterns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG5kbO4MI08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bLp28BvrHs&list=PL3CE2254B735062DC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpWUDMMQ5_Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLpVkHqnASM&list=PLF616F3C1ABF9181A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VypFVF7hA

Welcome, Sandalphon! Sorry you have those ailments and can't enjoy music as much now.

One prog group I find soothing to listen to is Camel.

I don't like loud sounds either and find it hard to listen to some rock anymore. Yes, the volume wars treatment to music is part of the problem. Watching TV is annoying too.