John Coltrane, Bjork, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Flying Lotus, Miles Davis, MF DOOM, Wayne Shorter, Joanna Newsom, Charles Mingus, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Pharoah Sanders, At the Drive-In, Herbie Hancock, The Beatles, Bill Evans, Refused, Mos Def, DJ Shadow, Elliott Smith, J Dilla, Madlib.
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Thunder Bay ON, Canada
Madeon, She, Daft Punk, Skrillex, Porter Robinson, Darth & Vader, Knife Party.
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OC california
It's hard to nail it down to just a few but here is the list artists and albums, composers and performers. The Cure 17seconds and Faith listening to them now makes me think something done with less is more. Vince Guaraldi, The latin side of Vince Guarildi and Snoopy Christmas never get boring. Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache band makes music that easily blends straight ahead jazz, latin jazz, and afro jazz like no one else. Astor Piazzolla tango composer that served as a conduit for me to discover that genre of music. I'll quit there cause I could go on forever.
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Worthing
At the moment, for what I'm writing for weekly beats:
x|k
Emperor
Immortal
Naglfar
A.M.U
Napalm Death
Baroness
Mastodon
minusbaby
Psycroptic
Porcupine Tree
Arctic Monkeys
Though what I am influenced by depends wholeheartedly on what it is I'm composing (you'll probably notice the black metal influences STRONGLY in my entry for this week 
)
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Adelaide
I've got so many, but my major influences are:
- Mike Shinoda
- Michael Giacchino
- The RZA
- Sage Francis
- Hans Zimmer
- Kanye West (yes yes, he's a douche, but musically he's a genius)
- Clint Mansell
- Ennio Morricone
- Plan B
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Adelaide, Australia
Nuro Z wrote:
I've got so many, but my major influences are:
- Mike Shinoda
- Michael Giacchino
- The RZA
- Sage Francis
- Hans Zimmer
- Kanye West (yes yes, he's a douche, but musically he's a genius)
- Clint Mansell
- Ennio Morricone
- Plan B
I'mma let you finish your list but Black Swan is the greatest movie of all time
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St Louis
I have many many influences and agree that it is important to listen to LOTS of music.
my main influences
Amon Tobin, Aphex Twin, Autechre, download/skinny puppy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Scorn, Kid 606, DJ Krush, the Melvins, Nels cline (as member of jazz groups, not Wilco), Sun Ra, Miles Davis bitches brew era, King Crimson, Rush, John Zorn, Justin K Broaderick (godflesh/jesu/techno animal), Trey Spruance, Mike Patton, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the Herbaliser, MF Doom, Kool Keith, there are probably some others I'm forgetting but that's off the top of my head and doesn't even include my metalhead influences.
to a lesser extent: NIN, Ministry, Orbital were acts in the nineties that really made me want to make music as a younger guy. I still love that stuff, but it doesn't really affect my music making that much now (although I still covet some of the production abilities all those guys have!). I also really like Rob Crow related projects, especially his earlier stuff, which has been some of my more listened to tracks in my library (thingy, heavy vegetable, older pinback). the first two major chemical bros releases were also inspirations to get into electronic music. also I had a couple of friends in high school that got me into music; and my older sister was an influence since she had a lot of music, and took me to a college to see the production dept and mics, tape recorders etc, in the late 80s.
this makes me feel old, but I think it was Larry Lalonde (Primus guitarist) and Tommy Victor (Prong) who made me want to play guitar when I was 17. still two of my favorite guitarists.
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L003, C0rnw4//.
Paul Lemos
Swift Treweeke
David Jackman
Claypool
Alexander Brandon
& many many more
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Riverside, CA
Joel Zimmerman, John Gooch, Damon Albarn, Shingo Nakamura, Dinka, Above&Beyond, Wolfgang Gartner, High Contrast, Sub Focus, Netsky, Haywyre, KOAN Sound, and London Elektricity... to name a few :]
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Philadelphia
well aparently these are my top 5 scrobbles.
Kodek
DKSTR
Trash80
One Day as a Lion
minusbaby
I guess i wasn't scrobbling when i was listening to Cryptocracy on repeat for an hour.
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St Louis
I can't believe that I forgot to mention Kevin Shields/MBV as a key influence. and for picking up the guitar, Page Hamilton/Peter Mengede of Helmet were pretty key for that too.
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Thunder Bay ON, Canada
Dj Sonik wrote:
Joel Zimmerman, John Gooch, Damon Albarn, Shingo Nakamura, Dinka, Above&Beyond, Wolfgang Gartner, High Contrast, Sub Focus, Netsky, Haywyre, KOAN Sound, and London Elektricity... to name a few :]
man we should collab
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St Louis
and especially, cheer accident (how could I forget my favorite band??)
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Upstate New York
Main ones are prolly
-Dan Deacon
-VCMG
-(recently) OK, Ikumi
-Black Moth Super Rainbow
-house influence courtesy of: deadmau5 and cooshinator
-aaaaand RAJA....who's fucking boss http://soundcloud.com/lordraja
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My favorite artists are ilkae, Proswell, Machinedrum, and my friend and rival Agargara.
I also really enjoy VGM, where my favorites are Kazumi Totaka (Link's Awakening), Hip Tanaka(Earthbound/Mother 2), Junya Nakano (Dewprism/Threads of Fate), Masashi Hamauzu (Saga Frontier 2), Manabu Namiki (A ton of cool STGs (and BRS the Game!)), Jun Ishikawa (Kirby!) and Yasuhisa Watanabe (also a bunch of cool STGs and Taito titles).
There's so much more that I like, but these artists seem to be the ones I listen to most. I'm most interested in the peculiarities of an artist as opposed to any particular genre or style.