Drone music, thoughts and ideas?

I'm a fan of Drone music, specially when it comes to metal and forms "Drone metal" music. But, lots of people think that's just noise and it's not music. What do you think about this genre? and also, please introduce your favorite drone/drone metal artists.

2 hours ago, ilv said:

If the music has melody lines, perhaps with some harmonies over a drone note, that's definitely music. I don't know if my description is an authentic one for drone music, however.

 

This is the definition from Wikipedia :

Drone music,^[2][3]drone-based music,^[4] or simply drone, is a minimal music genre^[5] that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones

I think what you described is only an ambient (or any other experimental/electronic) track with a drone as backing track.

Drone music comes from the 50's. Lamonte young wrote good examples: The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, one of them.

If I had to translate labels, I'd say electro-acoustic spectral music is a pretty much what you would end up classifying most "drone rock" music as. Consequently, you can look that kind of music up if you like drone rock and see a lot of similar-sounding music, just with a different name. A good place to start is with stuff like "Medium II" from Iancu Dumitrescu, which is for solo double bass. Another similar piece is "Music On A Long Thin Wire" by Alvin Lucier.

There's a good deal of overlap in places that at first sight don't seem to be related at all. As for me, the only band I've actually listened to that qualifies is Sunn O))), but I didn't think much of it when I listened years ago. The whole "death monk" getup was cute tho, I have to say.

17 hours ago, SSC said:

If I had to translate labels, I'd say electro-acoustic spectral music is a pretty much what you would end up classifying most "drone rock" music as.

Oh, this was one of the best descriptions for "drone rock" or "drone metal" music, I think I heard something like that from "Stephen O'Malley", too. 

17 hours ago, SSC said:

As for me, the only band I've actually listened to that qualifies is Sunn O))), but I didn't think much of it when I listened years ago.

When I listened to SunnO))), I was curious about the genre. Because the band had been introduced as a "doom metal" band, and I like doom metal (I mean Agalloch, Saint Vitus, YOB, etc) and when I listened to their music, I was a bit disappointed, but I did a research on their genre and style and I realized that they're experimental band. Also, I listened to some of Earth, Boris and Black Boned Angel works. I'm familiar with the genre. But the main problem (specially in metalhead communities) is "this is not music, only AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH sounds".