A new member's salutations

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   Hello!

I've been a member of this site for a little while, but I haven't really started scoping out the forums until now.

I'm a high school student, 17 years old, in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. In addition to music, I am interested in theoretical mathematics, strategic board games, and wordplay. When it comes to music, I play the clarinet, and have started informally teaching myself a bit of guitar.

I had heard the occasional bit of progressive music from a very early point in my life, but I wasn't really conscious of the genre's existence until a couple of years ago. My first exposure was to Yes and Gentle Giant, who remain two of my favorite bands.

I like a wide variety of music, but I'm particularly attracted to more eclectic prog, jazz-rock fusion, and electronic music. In general, I prefer music either that is highly structured, layered and complex, or chaotic and improvisational. (Or both, although these naturally don't overlap much.)

My favorite bands are King Crimson (particularly Red and Discipline), Gentle Giant (particularly Octopus and The Power and the Glory), Kraftwerk (particularly The Man-Machine and Computer World) ,and Yes (particularly Fragile and Relayer), as half mentioned above. I've been discovering a lot more music through Pandora, in particular the promising Swedish band Gösta Berlings Saga, who I think are quite excellent; also, this very website has helped expose me to new music.

Gradually, I am posting more reviews to this site, but doing so involves lots of prolonged deliberation and almost never gets done. But I look forward to eventually making my overly verbose mark here.