I'm a musician - have played violin since I was 5 - and I love many kinds of music.

I love anything that mixes the avant-garde or weird with catchy tunes.

In rock and pop music, I like art pop, avant pop, baroque/chamber pop, shoegaze, dream pop, old school industrial, neoclassical darkwave, folk (various subgenres), electronic and lounge. I'm starting to realise I like prog more than I thought, but mainly things that are more about the song/composition rather than showing off the musician's "amazing" skills at playing arpeggios and scales really fast.

In Western art music, I like early music, baroque, some 20th C composers (though not the Second Viennese school) and minimalism (including later offshoots of it).

I'm starting to explore more jazz, but I don't feel I understand it well enough to know what to look for.

I don't downrate music that isn't my style as I don't see the point in it - if someone loves a genre I don't, my opinion of it isn't really relevant to them and vice versa. However, I won't hesitate to give a low rating to something by an artist or in a genre I like if it's something I think isn't very good.

I also won't rate or review anything I've played on or that friends of mine are on to avoid conflict of interest.