My tastes are a bit... odd. Sometimes even I'm surprised to see what's sharing shelf space in my CD collection. The broad categories are:
1. New Age (For lack of a better term): Adiemus, David Arkenstone, Maire Brennan & Clannad, Enigma, Enya, Kitaro, David Lanz, Loreena McKennitt, Patrick O'Hearn, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Andreas Vollenweider, & Yanni. Some of the most painfully beautiful stuff I've ever heard includes Enya's "Exile," Lanz's "Cristofori's Dream," and Vangelis' "Heaven and Hell, 3rd Movement/Theme from
Cosmos"
2. Orchestral Film Scores: David Arnold, Danny Elfman, Christopher Franke, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Trevor Jones, Michael Kamen, Basil Poledouris, Alan Silvestri, and John Williams. Particular favorites are
Batman (Elfman),
The Rocketeer (Horner),
Dark City (Jones), and
The Empire Strikes Back (Williams).
3. Old-School Heavy Metal: Iron Maiden, Manowar, & Metallica. As a D&D-playing Gamer Geek, I find a lot of cool villain themes and fight music I can use from these guys. I've got some Joe Satriani & Steve Vai gathering dust among my old cassette tapes as well.
4. Classical. A smattering of Bach, Beethoven, & Mozart to name a few. Particular favorites are Gustav Holst's
The Planets and "Pictures at an Exhibition" & "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modeste Mussorgsky.
5. Miscellaneous: There's a few stray albums by Tori Amos (I liked
Little Earthquakes but I'm glad I haven't been through whatever level of personal Hell that inspired her more recent work), The Cheiftains (I
am an Irishman, after all
), Sting (Useful for those times when I'm having or coming down from a big stupid crush) and the incomparable comedic genius "Weird Al" Yankovic.