I recently wrote a short post for Beneath The Tangles that is all about Lo-fi music and anime. Strange huh? Well, I hope you find the connection interesting! You can read the whole post here, as below is about half of it.
I admit it. I’m addicted. I need help, but I don’t really want any. It’s a daily struggle—some days are better than others, and it can get pretty bad. This thing has ahold of me and won’t let go. Every year it just gets worse, and I keep on adding more to it.
What’s my addiction?
Music.
It’s something that I have to listen to every single day, in one form or another. I don’t play instruments nor have a particular interest in learning, but I do love listening to them! Since I was in middle school, I’ve been downloading and collecting music that I’ve enjoyed. Remember the Napster days? If you do, you understand!
Ever since I discovered Spotify a couple years back, I’ve been even more hooked. I signed up to their premium service and never looked back. What’s great is that I don’t buy MP3s or music CDs anymore since everything is streamed, so I actually save money! I have since deleted all my downloaded music—whether purchased or otherwise—and am strictly on the stream.
If you were to come to my workplace, music would be playing in the background the entire day. I have a few playlists I leave on shuffle that have thousands of songs ranging from jazz to piano, worship song instrumentals to video game remixes, anime instrumentals to who knows what else. I continue to add to these playlists weekly, as I keep finding more amazing tunes from around the world.
I really love these soothing, sometimes soporific beats. They are relaxing and I listen to them (even now) when writing, reading, or having guests over. And as I added to my playlist, I kept noticing anime album or playlist covers. Retro anime was all over the music artwork, including Sailor Moon, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, and others I couldn’t recognize, so much so that one of the major labels, Chillhop Records, found itself in copyright violation for using a looped gif from Whisper of the Heart; their top live stream was taken down from Youtube. It went back up, but it goes to show that the anime studio (in this case Studio Ghibli) paid attention.
Continue reading Lo-Fi Music and Anime: What’s The Connection?