The complete room looks like this...

So fairly self sufficient in terms of music equipment. (also have a proper drum kit in another room, but I'd be killed if I were to use that at home) except for singing ability. (and lyric writing ability. My songs tend to have fragments which I hear when I listen, but haven't recorded)

Although I dare say that a proper drum kit played by a better drummer than I would sound better than me through addictive drums 2.

The mixer fulfills a few roles - 1) stops me needing to faff around with cables whenever I want to use something different, while not being the noisy heap o' poo that the old behringer mixer was.
2) when doing live work, it accepts a USB connection and allows recording of all channels separately, meaning recordings can be taken and not sound rubbish. And has more than 10 xlr inputs. Which has proven to be too few.
3)can also accept up to 22 channels from the computer in place of the physical inputs and allow for some slightly easier playing around with mixes than is possible with my 8 track control surface.

Generally, music tastes veer towards late 60s/early 70s blues/rock. Think Free, Led Zeppelin, Cream, early Sabbath etc with some other influences thrown in there - pearl jam, pink floyd, various others. But don't really know how I'd categorise what I'd write. People who have heard my work have generally gone for introspective not-quite-rock.