Great thread. I like your approach here. Dunno if I have that much to add right now. I tend to follow the idea DoS presents of working within limitations. Why I do that, I do not know. Seems almost counterintuitive in an age when I can buy a couple of multi-fx and have almost every sound at my disposal. Think my reasoning is that I do not want every sound, I want "my" sound, hence limiting my board to what I've over time come to see as the essentials. Not that it's constant and never will change, but the basics will always be there - not as a crutch or whatever, but as the means to achieve how I want my guitar to sound. If that makes sense. Edit: Actually, that might be trivially true.
Degradation and noise greatly interests me. Like, I don't listen to harsh noise music alot (ie. "pure" noise or just noise or whatever) though I do enjoy it at times, it's more the application of these "unmusical" sounds in more traditional music that interests me (seems this will be the theme of my masters thesis, so I can end up as one of those insufferable douchebags who try to intellectualize art ). As some of you might have noticed, I have an obsession with oscillating fuzzes. The way they respond to my playing, how I with some effort can get the oscillations to do melodies, well, basically how they open a world of possibilities where you'll have to fight your way to the sounds you want. Yeah. Something like that.
Oh, and sci-fi in music is naturally something I appreciate. I love how the cats in the prog/kraut/psych bands in the sixties/seventies seemed to have an intuitive idea of oscillators = space sounds.