Reviews of (legitimately) free netlabel and/or Creative Commons music. Yes, the music is completely free. Yes, the musicians know. Yes, they welcome donations and purchases. No, you won't be arrested. Dive in.
Pushkin: Farewell to the Sea. Ivan Aivazovsky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
It won't come as any surprise to you, but Catching The Waves has come to the end of its natural life. There are two main reasons for this:
My health is woefully erratic;
Despite a desperate tussle with the laws of physics, it still takes me hundreds of hours to listen to hundreds of albums.
While running Catching The Waves, I've been lucky enough to have found some excellent free music and corresponded with terrific people from all over the world. I hope my readers have managed to do the same.
If you still thirst for legally free music, I can't do better than recommend my sidebar entitled "General Netlabel Sites", where you'll find some useful links to netmusic portals. If you're brave enough to explore the CTW archive, you'll find articles about these portals, explaining what makes them so good. The internet has not deemed Catching The Waves worthy of the same, so I'll have to beat my chest and say that this blog's chief strength was its devastatingly potent monkey-god sex appeal insistence on publicising albums whose chief virtue was the high standard of music rather than the sale price of zero. I trust that the emphasis on quality (and not my inherent laziness) explains CTW's slothful publishing schedule.
I'll keep the site online for a few months so that visitors can fight with the blog's architecture and extract what free music they can. My apologies for any dead links.
No doubt like you, I've been very frustrated with CTW's technological shortcomings. The blog format is quite a straitjacket for someone who would have liked to have a far more welcoming and comprehensive website (and escape this maximum-security institution for distressed gentlefolk). However, I am to computers what radiation is to the environment.
So, in a seamless segue, please allow me to recommend one last free netmusic portal. Netlabelism advertises itself as a "magazine for quality netaudio". Its eighteen-strong staff, composed of netlabel owners, musicians and geeks, backs up this claim by offering (deep breath): articles, reviews (by genre) of free albums, monthy compilations, interviews, a radio station, a recommended album of the month and, for those who want to give their ears a rest, a recommended album cover of the month. The attractive website is updated almost every day and (netlabel owners, please note) is it easy to use and explore. I hope the site goes from strength to strength. It also gets the last-ever place in netmusic's most hallowed arena: CTW's "General Netlabel Sites" sidebar. Ahem.
Before I close my Twitter and Facebook accounts and cryo-freeze Catching The Waves, I must issue a sincere thank you and apology to all the many artists who released their free music on netlabels or who, very flatteringly, submitted their albums to me in the hope they might get a review. Thank you so much for your effort, optimism, talent and ingenuity. May you continue to make the music you want to make. I hope it's of some comfort to know that for a few years I listened to just about every free release in the netlabel world and elsewhere. No, really, I did. (You do the maths.) I must have been mad...
As the light dims, it's time for one last free track from my "All the great tracks from very-good-but-not-consistently-great albums that I was too pernickety to review" vault of files. Year's End comes courtesy of ANgR MgMT, an artist from Arizona who, despite a sticky Caps Lock button, has crafted a beautifully meditative piece that sounds like Bach discovering the world of softsynths and then deciding to bring things to a close in a flurry of glitches because he had no more worlds to conquer. It's a fitting end for the world's worst free music blog, don't you think?
Life's hard, I can tell. Money is tight. Tinned spaghetti is starting to look good. You're selling your cat's kittens on eBay. You can keep flipping your underwear inside-out and back again for only so long. The pressure is telling. You need something cool and soothing to mop your fevered brow. Look no further than the free Grey-Purple EP by Fiji (the musician, not the idyllic South Pacific nation) and its eight tracks of ambient-tinged trip-hop.
But before you gleefully throw away your "Arse-crack available for bicycle stand" sign, please note the following. In an attempt to make the claps pop and the kicks thump, Fiji, who comes straight outta Orenberg, has overdone it slightly. Consequently, follow Uncle CTW's advice and adjust your media player's preset to "Agnostic" or something equally neutral that will stop your car's sub-woofers from blowing its doors across the street.
Today's recommended track is Hour of Glances and Kisses (feat. Kammerton). The plucked guitar and sultry, breathy female vocal that start the track are subject to a familiar production trick, apeing a lo-fi AM broadcast by cutting the low & high frequencies and keeping the stereo stream narrow. Fiji then simultaneously hits the listener with the full audio spectrum and widens the sonic field to a warm, chorus-y, your-ears-are-bathing-in-chocolate scrumptiousness. It never fails to work, both aurally and emotionally. The track then indulges in some very slow synth arpeggios that will remind those with receding hairlines of Apollo 440, and a raucous, rising synth tone that eventually dissipates under the weight of the fluffy pads and vocals.
But guess what? You can't listen to the whole track unless you download the entire album.
(IDIOTIC EDIT: Hour of Glances and Kisses is available from Fiji's own Soundcloud profile. Thankyou to @Lukelibrarian for the help. He's a lot better than Jacasta Nu. Now, listen to Jedi's Fiji's deft handling of filtered vocals:
Granted, there is a sampler for the EP, and it's enlightening to read the comments on the Soundcloud player, but I'm always surprised at the ingenious tactics that otherwise excellent netlabels (such as the fantastic and thoroughly recommended Siberian/Muscovite Electronica) will adopt to prevent listeners from hearing their music as easily as possible. There is no need for Tal-like complexity or Petrosianesque obfuscation.
Мой русский вентиляторы теперь, глядя на что последнее предложение, и думал: мы желаем вам, как пишет Филидор играли в шахматы, вы идиот. И наш лидер борется тигров в то время как твой имеет лицо, как дно ребенка.
Anyway, here's the sampler - I think you'll enjoy it. Props to the comment, "Veryyyy beauty!"
If you've simply pressed "Play" and slumped back onto your crisp-infested and beer-stained sofa, the first thing you'll hear (after a Slav Barry White intoning, "Elyectrrronicah") is Copy Paste Feelings, a pleasant blend of filter-swept doo-wop vocals and easy-paced trip-hop. The same formula is used for much of Grey-Purple, the album, and Grey-Purple (feat. Long Arm), the title track of said album, so expect to hear plenty of white noise and dollops of piano, rhodes piano, subtle pads, drones and the occasional trip-hop stutter.
The third track, Faked Imaginary Freedom, is slightly more funky. The claps are rather intrusive but the gorgeous sampled/chopped pads make up for them. Fiji beds the rhythms in a hypnotic swathe of synths and pianos; when the beats disappear, as in the latter stages of the trumpet-flecked Ocean In My Head, one feels as though the music is even better for it.
Frustratingly, the pseudo-DJ-Shadow On 17th Floor has drool-worthy sustained piano chords, but would be much better without the half-hearted breakbeat-and-clap accompaniment.
Next up is Smiles Before Bedtime (smiles during bedtime are better), which essays a lovely descending piano line in tandem with some crunchy white noise and marvellously delicate synth chirrups. Again, not too sure about the kick and clap - but bear in mind that I listen to all my music on an iTincan - so adjust to taste.
Night of White Flies - not the most enticing of titles - contains a snippet of a classical recording that I trust is old enough to be out of copyright. Mind you, Fiji may have recorded it himself and aged it in the studio. Music software can do almost anything nowadays, bar curing Country & Western. You'll like it if you like crunchiness, guitars, scratches, violin solos and Mom-and-Pop vocals.
Grey-Purple is a rare thing in the world of electronica/trip-hop; it's so warm and fluffy that it encourages one to cuddle the nearest thing to the listener, whether that be a spouse, teddy bear or the biscuit barrel. Personally, I think it's just a sneaky Russian trick to save on heating bills.
If you like the album, please drop a "thank you" email in Electronica or Fiji's inbox and/or empty your glass and throw it in your fireplace.
It's a mystery to me how Luxus-Arctica netlabel managed to take this photo of CTW's reception suite. The guards tell me that the CCTV footage went offline at a crucial moment. The only physical evidence of their break-in was the hundreds of dead starlings in the street below. Strange.
It won't have escaped your attention that computer wizardry is rampaging through electronica, IDM, minimal and hip-hop, where it's common for percussion one-shots and layered synths to be sampled and chopped to death, but I remain surprised by how relatively few artists delight in mangling acoustic instruments and "found" sounds. There's a delicious, malicious joy to be had in hearing a familiar and/or traditional sound getting kicked up the backside by music software.
I imagine that Erik Nilsson must wear a virtual pair of hobnailed boots as he stomps around Stockholm, because the eight marvellous tracks that constitute his restrained, gentle and ingenious Recollage are an acoustic mangler's delight; he makes the old-fashioned sound delightfully modern. Peruse the back cover of his album and you'll find the following:
Recollage is a development of simple musical elements and ideas towards greater complexity and richness of detail using real and sampled instruments, assorted acoustic sounds, and synthesizers & audio manipulation techniques.
Honestly, I don't know why I bother. How am I supposed to waffle on at (very great) length about records if the musicians have already written a cogent summary of said album and, what's more, in better English than yours truly can muster? What a cheek.
The opener, Into Motion, uses a sneaky compositional trick - one used to great effect by Trentemøller on Take Me Into Your Skin - whereby various elements are added one by one to create a wall of sound that, at the crescendo, drops away completely to be replaced by a quiet, fast-paced rhythm. The unexpected dynamics will tug at your ears. The track is an enticing blend of upbeat, sparkling guitar, somnolent piano/harpsichord and some ambient excursions. Its cheerful and gentle soundscape will perhaps remind readers of another Luxus-Arctica album, Global by The Lights Galaxia, reviewed here.
Timepiece features a grandfather clock's two-note chime up front and centre (and slightly too loud, methinks). I doubt whether the clockmaker would approve of how Mr Nilsson makes it repeat, stutter and pan all over the place, but I approve of the mangling, especially when it's accompanied by a gently picked acoustic guitar, a cut-and-paste harmonica and ambient crackles.
The first thirty seconds of Rumore del Roma explain why this album is such a treat for the ears: you'll hear a ghostly piano; the distant wailing of guitar feedback; a chopped and reversed bit of sound; cheerful guitar strumming; the dusty pops and grumbling of old vinyl; and the creaking of an unoiled door hinge that slurs and slows down into a snare drum roll that kicks off some semi-distorted, mandolin-backed trip-hop. There's also a violin stuffed in there somewhere, courtesy of Sofie Louzou. Phew. Then, after a couple of minutes of pleasurable head-nodding, most of the sounds fade away until only the ghostly, plaintive piano can be faintly heard on the right-hand side of the stereo field. A few bars later, it's joined by a toy-like xylophone, only this can be heard up close and on the left. It's the thoughtful treatment of such ostensibly simple elements that make the album a pleasure to hear. Try it yourself:
Erik Nilsson - Rumore del Roma
No, wait. You can't. Luxus-Arctica is like America's Liberty Bell: an inspiring symbol of independence that can't make a sound because it's cracked. L-A will give you the whole album free of charge but won't supply links to individual tracks. *bites knuckles, screams* Gentlemen, please rethink your policy.
Allow CTW to flex its mighty muscles. *thump* *yell* *bash* Got it. God, I'm good. Let's try again:
15 Minutes of Boredom might be retitled as 2 Minutes, 15 Seconds of Bewilderment. I can't explain how such diverse elements as movie dialogue, a repitched, reversed and disrespected guitar riff, heavy breathing, a high-passed filter sweep (and the occasional interjection of Fred Astaire's name) can in any shape or form constitute music; but they do. Hands up who would like to see Erik Nilsson's workflow. Yes, me too. Ableton or Logic or Cubase and an MPC, do you think? Knowing my luck, it's probably done with witchcraft, beer and Lego.
I rather like the compressed story that can be inferred from a song called Old Piano/Bad Back. What's even more likeable are the ticking clock intro, the fluttering flute, various ominous thumps and scrapes, a thoroughly unsettling vocalised noise and, best of all, the appearance of a slide guitar redolent of Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas. (A quick aside - we Creative Commons music fans, though fans of electronica, minimal, etc., are starved of guitar music. Please, riffers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your mullets.) It's a slow, solemn, piece of ambient electronica until someone whispers "Let's go!" in your left ear, and the guitars get up off their porch seats to welcome the arrival of a kick drum. All of a sudden, the piece transmutes into neo-Hillbilly and threatens to get epic. Disappointingly, it goes back into its shell soon afterwards, but it's still a terrific track.
There's a similar flirtation with grandiosity in the title track, Recollage. It starts with manipulated kitchenware samples (I'm fond of how the sharpening of a knife doubles as a very lazy hi-hat), a fuzzy bass, inoffensive guitar doodlings, and a door opening and closing; it continues with a beautifully apt Moog-like synth, an upright piano and a not-so-happily-mixed snare drum; and it threatens to break out into a sweeping piece of Kate Bushness before fading to an ambient burble.
To my mind, the ghosts of Kate Bush (consider the gentle tempo, the mandolin and the sample of a cocking rifle in her Army Dreamers) and Pink Floyd flit in and out of some of these tracks. I get a Floydian tang from the mournful, descending guitar and bass lines to Tail Lights; as the tempo picks up and morphs into light rock, one half expects some Roger Waters kill-yourself-now-because-life-is-a-cosmic-joke lyrics and a searing guitar solo from Dave Gilmour. Instead, the track shies away from the bombastic and stays true to the album's intimate milieu with some subdued glitching.
Finally, imagine you're ten years old and have just got your hands on your first guitar. It's a clapped-out acoustic, half the strings are missing and those that remain are tired, saggy and barely in tune. Then imagine that you've just learned to play a riff that reminds you of Marc Bolan's T-Rex and, pleased with yourself, you play it repeatedly. Your pre-pubertal friends form a rhythm section by slapping cardboard boxes and bending rulers on table edges. Welcome to the first half of the pertinently-named Little Demon. Spent, you stop playing only to hear music floating across the road from that creepy house with the drawn curtains. It's barely audible but it's definitely someone playing a spooky motif on an ambient pad preset over and over again. Welcome to the coda of Little Demon.
Surprisingly, this album reminds me of, would you believe it, the ghost stories of M.R. James, which often tease their overly logical Edwardian protagonists by suggesting that there is something disturbing lurking over the brow of the next hill - if only they care to look. Thanks to his harnessing of modern techniques to long-familiar sounds, and the inclusion of the odd gasp, wheeze, scrape and scratch, Mr Nilsson's work shares the same ambivalent qualities. Indeed, I hope I'm not doing him a disservice by suggesting that parts of his album would do very well as soundtracks to James's tales.
If you fall in love with Recollage, please remember to send a "thank you" email/cash/eye of newt and toe of frog to the talented Erik Nilsson and the estimable, double-barrelled Luxus-Arctica netlabel.
Listening to the various tracks from a newly-discovered good album is like seeing familiar numbers pop up in the first few seconds of a national lottery draw. The first appearance is pleasing and so is the second; the third gives you a sense of satisfaction and achievement; two more good ones appear and you jump on your chair; one more pops up and you scream at the TV/stereo/neighbourhood that you'll devote your life to living in a huge chateau others less fortunate than you if the last two numbers are the ones you want. If you're like me, you'll end up with a lingering sense of the futility of life and a muddy sofa. But fear not - at least CTW has some free CC music for you to hear after you've stopped shaking your fists at fickle Fate.
Your post-lottery placebo takes the form of Bu-Bu-Bubbles by Foam, an English musician about whom I know little, for which I blame Wikileaks. If only he'd insulted a potenate or two.
There aren't many traditional musical elements (melody, harmony, development) herein. The eight tracks might best be described as beatless minimal and melodic ambient; parts of it are certainly experimental. Foam has a habit of combining featherlight tics and swirls with knocks and bangs that push up hard against loudspeaker cones. The good news is that his productions skills make his EP a palatable listen.
I'll start with the album's seventh track, Widget, because I'm a hip-swinging mo-fo who can't count. The first thirty seconds of Widget are nigh-on silent; the next minute consists of a metallic sound (the widget?) carrying out Chinese water torture (not quite the same as American waterboarding, my pedantic and politically correct chums) on the listener's frontal lobes before an answering beep pans back and forth. The only other element is a lo-fi organ sound that plays a couple of chords before the track (and the listener's lust for life) peters out. I've decided via a process of elimination that it's an experimental meditative piece - because you certainly can't whistle it, sing it or dance to it. (And I'm running out of brackets.)
Next up is a new piece of technology that will augment the planet's already over-intrusive surveillance systems. Gum is full of synths that are pitched so high and, towards the end of the track, become so shrill that only people under forty will be able to hear them. If you can't hear them, you're too old or a Motorhead fan or you play banging techno in your tarted-up hatchback. Or all three. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.
That's got the two most challenging tracks out of the way. You'll have noticed, particularly with Gum, that the sound quality is superb. So it is with the first track on the album, Day-To-Day, where the toy-like sound of a looping nine-note melody forms a musical backbone, around which is wrapped Geiger Counter-ish glitches, and percussive one-shots that sound like out-takes from Wall-E. It's a happy track.
Crab Attack is not a musical description of a naval doctor's waiting room on a Monday morning. Instead, you'll be faced with low-passed, bubbling sine waves, noises reminiscent of a fridge that's been left open, and some glitchy percussion that Riverdances right up against your eardrums.
The two minutes of Trouble remind me of the relentless music used to brainwash Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Play it while switching your kitchen lights on and off and the reverberating, ambient washes will have you under the KGB's thumb in no time. By the way, Caine + 1960s + John Barry are widely acknowledged as a very good thing indeed. Resistance is futile: you're now under Jeff Bezos's thumb.
Bumbleebee is the type of track that's starting to pop up on the soundtracks of indie puzzle games: a half-formed melody from an inoffensive synth with lots of glitches and bells popping up now and then to keep you awake. Like many such tracks, they will burble away in the background so that you can concentrate on other matters - but if you sit down and listen to them, they will mesmerise.
I've left Offthesky's remix of Madness until last to reward your perseverance. It improves on the well-built but bland original (think Jane Russell) by blending minimal with ambient to become something more enticing (think Sophia Loren). Your clapped-out Nokia/it-looked-ok-in-the-catalogue Panasonic/of-course-I-didn't-mortgage-the-house Bang & Olufsen will enjoy it.
I must explain to the trendier of my listeners that Archipel netlabel released Bu-Bu-Bubbles when wing collars and monocles were the height of fashion. My apologies to the label (and its enlightened policy of making their commercial albums available for free after a few months on sale) for taking so long to leave the Sea of Despond, crawl onto the beach, walk upright and develop ears.
I've tagged the album as "experimental" because CTW doesn't have a paradoxical category. There aren't many albums that could be described as "easy to listen to" but not "easy listening". Foam has a spiritual, transcendent quality. If you're looking for a non-theological musical path to spirituality/nirvana/chocolate/becoming a hipster emo, you could do a lot worse than listen to Bu-Bu-Bubbles, contemplate the ineluctable modalities of life and wonder whether it might help to use a different set of lottery numbers next week. Or you could send a thank-you email to Archipel or - the horror! the horror! - buy one of their commercial albums.
Regular readers of dusty old CTW know what to expect: (ir)regular reviews of free CC/netlabel albums, leavened with poor jokes and even worse grammar. It's rare that your humble scribe deigns to describe anything so ephemeral, so lightweight, so throw-a-bag-of-kittens-in-the-canal as a single track. But I do do it occasionally.
Today's internet eructation was prompted by my stumbling across a video made by Eirik Solheim, a project manager for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), who is very enthusiastic about technology, photography, and, in the most entertaining and truthful phrase that I've read this week, "stuff that I find important."
Anyway, he has made One Year In Two Minutes, which could be described as a nigh-on perfect ambient video, the ne plus ultra of everyday sights and sounds, or even the cappuccino venti of coffees if you're into using corporate drinks-vending metaphors. Mr Solheim visited the English Park in Oslo weekly for a year, snapped some photos and then compiled them ingeniously with Photoshop and Final Cut Express to produce a seamless and bladder-looseningly beautiful two-minute film of nature getting up for work and coming home to bed. The lovely visuals are accompanied by a truly ambient soundtrack recorded in situ; it's a hymn to rustling leaves, birds, rain and thunder. Be sure to select the "full screen" option by clicking on the little arrowed box in the lower right-hand corner of the video.
What's more, the video is free for you to share and remix. To quote Mr Solheim: "All the images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. In other words: Use them non commercially as long as you give me credit and as long as you share the work you do under the same license."
Which is nice of an award-winning, rather talented media maven, don't you think? I wonder if there are any musicians out there who would like to adapt the visuals or simply plonk their own music over the video? At this point, I must confess that CTW has been a little lax in discovering these films. They appeared two *cough* ago. What? I said, two *mutter* ago. All right, if you insist, the films were published two years ago. I can't be mega-trendy all the time, you know; I have toenails to grow. But wait, there's more goodness to come. How about another video on the same subject, but this time with people ghosting by in the background?
Lovely, mmm? And for the attention-deficit sufferers out there, here's a 24-carat ambient-minimalist jewel: One Year In 40 Seconds. I think it's the prettiest of all of Mr Solheim's work. It would make an ideal desktop video or screensaver.
If you have enjoyed these films, please think about sending Mr Solheim an appreciative email. If you haven't, send me an abusive one and I will endeavour to return to reviewing free albums and combing my hair in new and vaguely disturbing ways. Until then, please remember that free, CC-licensed stuff isn't evil; it's fun. And sometimes it can be beautiful.
To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any Broque netlabel album cover painted any colour you want so long as it is black and white. This, the latest in an unbroquen line of drab album covers, does its best to dissuade listeners from exploring Applause Phenomena, a classy minimal EP by Dennis Korsunski (A.K.A. Clapan, otherwise known as Information Ghetto), but Catching The Waves is made of stupid stern stuff. Advanced electronic rhythms from the Russian Black Sea coast via a Bavarian netlabel? Pah. It's all in a day's work for CTW. Chancellor Merkel, put your fat ankles up on a cushion and enjoy some multikulti.
The opener, About Chords, begins with skipping, scratching percussion that forms a spiky bed for the titular synth chords, which are either cold and distant, slathered in reverb and high-pitched delay, or upfront and cuddly. The contrast makes for an enjoyable listen. Yes, a driving hi-hat appears halfway through the track, as agreed in UN Resolution 1998 (Minimal Tropes Being For The Benefit Of Dancefloors), but that's merely there to keep your head nodding: the real interest lies in the off-stage noises and clever use of reverb and echoing pads that tar-and-feather the basic rhythm.
At eight minutes long, today's recommended track is a flagrant violation of CTW's renowned First Law of Dance Music (in short, two's company; three's a crowd), but I forgive it in the same spirit in which I forgive @stephenfry for jawing on and on: to quibble in the face of such good-natured entertainment would be churlish.
Applause Phenomena contains a number of Good Things: beautifully fashioned granular ticks and flecks; a rolling but polite kick drum; a splashy snare; groovy, good-natured vocal phrases; a bass line that sounds like an ogre turning over in his sleep; bursts of applause that are more like white-noise interjections than the usual hackneyed attempt to inject atmosphere; gentle pads and spooky lead synths that almost imperceptibly guide the ear through the plethora of sounds that tease the eardrum from left and right, near and far; and the dawning realisation that the track is unerringly getting groovier and yet more profound while at the same time kicking out like a potato-faced English footballer confronted by a wily continental.
Let me catch my breath for a minute. I'm not used to writing paragraphs. *puff* Right, onwards.
At its best, minimal/techno/dance/insert-suitable-genre-name-here transcends its repetitive origins to become electronica or fast-paced ambient; something that has depth. It's not just about endlessly repeating a four-bar loop and hoping that listeners will dance around a pile of handbags and manbags on a nightclub floor. Enough of my pseudery. Press the little love triangle below and draw your own conclusions:
You're allowed to dislike it. But you'll have to return my spare snuggie and we can no longer be friends.
After that comes the "Less Softbeat" remix of the same track. It relies heavily on the goodwill engendered by the appearance of familiar elements. Sad to say, it's a competent but rather anonymous track that would have benefited from more melodic or percussive variety.
The "support" in Old Cool Support refers, I think, to the Amen Break-type rhythm underpinning the crunchy and distorted pads and stabs that ready you for a dance-floor banger. However, the appearance of a simple and slow three-note bassline confounds expectations, as does the appearance of a wildly panning and repitching pseudo-harpsichord. Once another synth pops in with a rhythmic hook and is joined by a shower of clicks and high-pitched pops and crackles, the track veers between funky profundity and profound funkiness. It came a very close second to today's recommended selection and is still hoping that drug tests will reveal that it was cheated of glory.
The last track, Snow Report, threatens to disappoint with its extremely unoriginal four-to-the-floor kick intro until superb, machine-tooled incidental noises flesh out the rhythm and warm synths float in from on high to reassure you that time spent listening to this album is time well spent. I'm fond of the brief stop-start breaks made from diamond-hard percussive elements that are dropped in a sea of reverb and then high-passed and panned out to the extreme edge of the stereo field.
Speaking of which, the whole album is a testament to Dennis Korsunki's production wizardry; in places he has squeezed the proverbial quart into a stereo pint pot, relying heavily on the fact that you've probably got two ears. (A mono recording wouldn't be nearly as impressive.) Imagine you're back at your schooldesk and enjoying (ha!) a maths lesson. Forget your pimples and your crush on the teacher, and concentrate on the protractor spread out in front of you. Now imagine a click, pop, burble, snap, drum, synth and bass placed on each line of the 180 degree arch. Each element has its own niche. Imagine further that each sound sits comfortably in its own spatial reverb and has had all its superfluous frequencies cut away. Suddenly, your ears can make sense of the dozens of sounds thrown at you. You can solve quadratic equations. You will go to Harvard and bang as many students with superb teeth as possible. Life is good, all thanks to free CC-licensed music supplied by a hard-working netlabel and a maverick Russkie.
Write 100 times: I must send a thank-you email to Broque netlabel. And comb your hair.
Kemuzik One is a compilation of folk-pop songs sung by guitar-clutching winsome individuals with tremulous and/or gravelly voices. There are three acknowledged reactions to this type of thing:
Buy a machine-gun;
Stick a candle in a bottle, chill out and enjoy the glory of life;
Get arrested by the roadside at three in the morning, drunk as a skunk, clad in nothing but a pair of baggy grey Y-fronts and bawling an old flame's name at the moon.
I chose the second option; guns are expensive. Option three can wait.
Kemuzik One is an unusual release, partly because it's not one of the (very nice) ambient & electronica albums that swamp the free music world, but mostly because it's a compilation that hasn't succumbed to the "one supermodel and her East German hammer-thrower friends on a girls' night out" paradigm.* There's a spookily high number of good tracks amongst the fourteen on offer, many of which have been supplied by stalwarts of the CC music scene, though I must point out that one or two of the tracks' endings suffer from harsh edits.
To demonstrate this unusual achievement, I'll work very hard and highlight the first track on the album, in the hope you'll be seduced by Dutchman Thijs Kuijken's ukelele and the seductive sing-a-long feel of a hymn to forestry, avians and flames. (Folkies, eh? Tsk.)
Continuing my laziness, let's move to the second track. Madelaine Hart has a smoky bottom range and a tremulous upper register, so comes off as a non-substance abusing Billie Holiday. Have a listen to Inside Out, wherein a Hackney-residing Australian (who played Glastonbury in 2009) will make your bottom lip wobble:
You can pop along to Jamendo to download her two (criminally ignored) free albums or buy them from iTunes and Amazon if you want to help her out.
Cementing my slothness for all time, I come to the third track, Fragile Meadow by The Black Atlantic, who are fond of wibbling on about nature. It must be something in the Dutch water.
After mentioning that The Dada Weatherman's Painted Dream comes across as Dylan backed by a slightly confused Sibelius, and noting that the late blooming of electronica in Tim Fite's misery-fest Where Is My Woman is the only proof that Kemusik One was recorded in the 21st century, I'll leave you with Allison Crowe's Effortless, in which she croons over a piano and effortlessly evokes just about every shampoo advert ever made. La Crowe's current download figure at Jamendo stands at more than 120,000, which is a cheering thought.
Ill health and the nature of writing about a compilation has perforce meant a certain brevity in my descriptions; my apologies to the fine artists who I have neglected to mention. It might be an idea for curious (and curiouser) listeners to follow the links on Kemusik's Bandcamp page and see just how deep the free music rabbit hole goes. Please don't forget to thank the musicians and/or buy their commercial music.
My thanks to everyone responsible, especially Kemuzik supremo Przemek Bobnis, for adding this very welcome platter of free folk-pop sugar to the free music buffet. With most compilations, it's usually best to cut off the thick crust and keep the tasty but disappointingly small pie; you may find that Kemusik One will force you to loosen your belt a notch.
There's a story behind this interruption of my intensely relaxed posting schedule. Recently, I've wasted a fair amount of time on listening to, selecting and then writing about albums that I've subsequently realised contained copyrighted samples, and have been forced to toss the half-finished review in the bin and move on. What galls me is that the albums in question came from reputable netlabels who proudly display a Creative Commons licence on their website.
The whole point of a CC licence is that the holder has already given permission for the user to download and share: there's no need to ask. But if that same album contains samples that are still owned by someone else and who has not given permission for their work to be disseminated, then the whole process is rendered meaningless, irrespective of whether those samples come from an old, obscure song or album. Either an album is Creative Commons or it's not; bending the rules plays
right into the hands of those who criticise the CC paradigm and accuse
everyone who enjoys a legal sharing culture to be thieves. One of the reasons CTW is not the fastest draw in the West is because of delays caused by the above. I'm not a musical encyclopaedia and can't check every piece of music used in a song, so I rely on musicians and netlabels not to abuse the Creative Commons licence.
On a related note, and to explain my modus operandi to new readers of Catching The Waves, I usually recommend a free album and then remind readers that it's often possible to send a donation or buy more of the artist's output. Today, I'll recommend an album that is not Creative Commons-licensed and not free at all, but which is actually a commercial album that is technically and regrettably "free" despite the best and entirely honourable intentions of the artists involved. And it's not the one pictured above. It's this one:
Machinarium is an award-winning point-and-click game set in a mechanical world that looks like a cross between Sesame Street and Bladerunner. The Czech makers, Amanita, thoughtfully released the game without Digital Rights Management (DRM), which meant three things:
Buyers wouldn't have to enter tiresome sixteen-digit serial codes to enjoy what was now their property;
Equally, there would be no awkward online authentication;
Anyone could copy the game from a torrent site.
Sad to say, Amanita reported last week that "only 5-15% of Machinarium players actually paid for the game". However, they also announced a "pirate amnesty" in which everyone could buy the game plus its superb official soundtrack and a free bonus EP for just $5 instead of the usual $20, an offer that prompted geek extrordinaire Wil Wheaton to encourage gamers to "do the right thing." Consequently, Amanita sold over 17,000 copies of Machinarium in a week and has extended its amnesty until 16th August.
We deduce from this that a tweet from @wilw to his 1.67m followers...
*flutters eyelashes*
...is rather more effective than Amanita's $1000 publicity budget, and that people will pay for content that is available for free elsewhere if the content is desirable enough; if the money goes direct to the game developers; if they're brainwashed by celebrities advised by people they trust, and if they want to help the artist to produce more of that desirable work.
In the interests of balance, many of the people who have bought the game recently have done so because the publicity has led them to the game for the first time, or because they felt the price was previously too high to justify a purchase. Not everyone on the internet flies the skull-and-crossbones.
However, what sets the game's teasing puzzles, quirky humour and dusty, gently rusting cityscapes off to a tee is Tomáš Dvořák's playful ambient-electronica soundtrack. Dvořák has been called an "electro-instrumentalist" and is a graduate of the Prague Academy of Visual Arts. In Machinarium, he has cleverly spliced elderly analogue synths, smooth sweeps of radio interference/white noise and barely audible, distorted vocals (from an old Apple speech synthesiser) with traditional acoustic instruments. The latter are often filtered through a granular effect, resulting in a clanging, grimy soundscape that suggests Eastern European jazz and post-Cold War industrial decline to my susceptible and over-imaginative ears.
Rarely has such an eclectic, old-fashioned collection of instruments (piano, clarinet, kalimba, metallophones, accordion, melodica, double bass and cello) sounded so 21st century. The result is oxymoronic: melodic ambient. I'll illustrate just how melodic and just how ambient the official soundtrack is by showcasing a track from the other, free album. (Logic, I laugh in your AND/NOT gate.)
Impressive how the piano floats on top of the pads, background vocals and distorted noise, isn't it? By The Wall really blossoms if you wear headphones. The clarinet intro is better than a shot of whisky with a morphine chaser.
Here, Dvořák conveys the whimsical and enticing atmosphere of the game with a jolly bass line, reverberating percussion and, mid-track, a delicately tuneful blast of radio interference:
Please note, those tracks are from the free five-track EP. There are 14 more dreamy examples of sublimity on the official soundtrack, which can be bought separately - but it makes more sense to get both albums simply by buying the game. Do so, and you get the
remastered soundtrack, the bonus EP and a gentle, amusing, mesmerising
game that is suitable for grandchildren, grandparents and all those who
contribute to the global economy. "Buy one, get two free" is a pretty good deal. Speaking of which, I'd like to see Aminita continue its amnesty until the end of the month, when people are more likely to have cash to spare.
If you do get the official soundtrack, look out for the lightly menacing The Black Cap Brotherhood Theme, the turn-your-woofer-down Clockwise Operetta, the café-jazz of The End (Prague Radio) and The Glasshouse With Butterfly, which is one of the best crackling, echoing atmospheric pieces of ambient it has been my privilege to hear.
Failing all that, simply download the free Free Machinarium Bonus EP and keep your money in your pocket. After all, this is where you come to get good, legally free music, isn't it? I won't tell anyone that you have short arms and long pockets. But I do have a song for you:
Pixel Mixel by Bitbasic has been festering on my hard drive for quite a while. You see, I've already reviewed two of his albums and so I'm wary of appearing blinkered in my choices. In my defence, I declined to review his most recent free outing, Sprinkling Rainbows, because I found it lacklustre. However, talent will out. (Google Translation: I love this and hope you will too.) Released two months ago by Cologne's Rec72, one of the best CC netlabels around, Pixel Mixel offers 11 tracks of bluesy, glitchy, swinging, drill-and-bass goodness, and confirms the Bitster's status as a musician to follow. That doesn't mean you can stalk him or search his dustbins.
Now, I hope I don't offend anyone, but it seems to me that quite a lot of IDM/jungle/electronica seems intent on making listeners' headphones flap like a crane who's just aborted a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Over-excited by the heady glitching and sampling possibilities of computer music, some artists tend to throw glitch after squawk after screech at their tracks and, understandably, can forget some of the compositional (Bit)basics, although I readily admit that that is their prerogative, and good luck to them. However, Pixel Mixel, like the previously reviewed Grating Rainbows and Leonard, contains melodies and riffs and, blessed relief, remembers to ring the changes with different tempi and a broad palette(SP) of sounds.
To continue this deadly dull riveting line of reason, your Honour, I should add that there are three main strands to Bitbasic's music and all of them are on display here. I give you exhibits A, B and C (and recommend that your Wigness give special attention to the jazz guitar-infused, mesmerising and schizophrenic title track):
(A) Lullaby-like melodies, often formed from bell-like tones: Bitbasic - An Opener
(B) Blistering, jungle-cum-breakbeat glitchy workouts and (C) swinging, swaggering, snap-your-hips downtempo blues riffs (I refer you to the sections at 1:53 & 4:05): Bitbasic - Pixel Mixel
But all that is irrelevant. What matters is that Bitbasic's music is melodic, funky and entertaining. His tracks are well-structured, varied in both texture and tempo (this is not as prevalent in electronica as one might think) and contain tunes that will spring from your lips while you're in the bath/supermarket/jail.
Fish Restaurant combines soothing and soaring synth arcs with an utterly mad glitch breakdown about two-thirds of the way through; Milk is as mellow and atmospheric as a Pink Floyd/Lemon Jelly mash-up (I love the stabs of distorted noise that sound like a shorting electricity sub-station); and Oily Slither will appeal to the millions tens of you out there who like to hear roughed-up synths swing in a downtempo, bluesy manner. I must also mention Sift If You Like, whose wildly panning, now-it's-clean-now-it's-dirty bass is joyfully funky. All of the tracks mentioned are stuffed to the gunnels with extraneous noises, but these are slotted in so skilfully that they enhance the listening experience.
If Pixel Mixel had turned up at the weigh-in with a nice round figure of, say, eight tracks, it would be a knock-out, an almost certain winner of the yet-to-be-invented "Netlabel Album of the Year" award. As it is, it's still a marvellous release (I like all the tracks, really) and makes me thankful, yet again, that artists like Bitbasic are having such fun with the Creative Commons model. On second thoughts, it would still get my vote. I'm so soft.
(This may come as a surprise to newcomers to netlabel land, but fans of
CC music often have to dodge a double-edged sword wielded by, no, not
record label executives, but the artists themselves, lusting madly after
triple-CD concept albums and the chance to release 18 of their best
tracks in one shiny package. Many CC releases would be all the stronger
if artists could refrain from spreading themselves too thinly.)
If you like the album, try Leonard and Grating Rainbows and put together what will be a very entertaining playlist that will make your friends considerably less trendy than you. Then please do your good deed for the day and send Bitbasic and/or Rec72 a thank you email.
Bye. What? No, I'm going. I need a crate of beer salad. What do you mean you can't get enough of Bitbasic's creamy, crunchy goodness? (Ewww.) All right, here's what I'm going to do. Just for you, I'm going to ruin my reputation for impartiality and welcome another old friend back to CTW. It just so happens that there's a stonkingly good Bitbasic track on another Rec72 release and it comes with a beautifully relaxing album picture that any ambient artist would treasure.
Heh. Yes, Professor Kliq is back in town and this time he's brought his lab rats. I'll be brief because my brain is tired and so are your eyes. Download this and you'll own All Control, a funking Big Beat track as only the Prof knows how to do it (woody synth leads ahoy!) and four remixes of said track (one of which will confirm that Bitbasic has just as distinctive a style as PK's). The remaining tracks get three thumbs up - I must see the doctor about that - and a "We're not worthy" bow to Funkmeister Zentraal, otherwise known as Rec72. (I'm sure they're following me down the street. I must secure my dustbins.) Anyway, wrap your shell-likes around this:
The man's not ready for the bathchair just yet, is he?
Sincere apologies to the obviously talented Pisu, Akashic Grenade and RoybOt for not bothering to write a proper review of their, and I quote, "perfectly sutured gabba techno dubstepped breakbeats" but my laptop has run out of ink. All Control is good, clean fun and packs a punch. It's also free. Enjoy the weekend.
Regular readers will know that it's my long-term ambition to make CTW redundant, superfluous and generally as irrelevant as BP's PR department. To that end, I sometimes add similar websites to my "General Netlabel Sites" category, an honour so highly regarded in the Creative Commons music world that it reacts as though a new star had ascended to the heavens. (Yeah, right.) And lo, it came to pass that yours truly looked upon the works of one Thomas Rauskamp and was well pleased.
Thomas is the editor of Germany's Beat magazine (it's similar to the UK's Computer Music Magazine), the only Hauptstraße periodical I know of that devotes time and space (reviews, interviews and roundtables) to the Creative Commons netlabel scene. Germany's position, Cologne's in particular, as Netlabel Zentraal makes me wonder, in a chicken-meets-egg analogy, if Beat spurred on the CC music movement there or vice versa. It's rare for a commercial publication to take the free music scene so seriously, but Beat does so because it realises that it's fun, refreshing and reflects the changes that the internet has wrought upon popular culture.
Thomas's enthusiasm for the scene is so great that he has forsaken all notions of propriety and started blogging reviews of CC albums, an idea which, as we all know, is monumentally stupid. More to the point, he reviews frequently and with great insight, and invariably explains various aspects of the netlabel scene while doing so. As such, I urge you to turn your traitorous backs on CTW and slake your thirst for good, legally free music by visiting Thomas' Posterous as soon as you can. If you do, you'll wonder why you ever turned to heroin and crack to obliterate the yawning mental chasms that opened while you waited...and waited...for the next CTW post. No, don't thank me, meine leiblinge, thank Thomas: he's the one doing all the heavy lifting.
What's that? You don't believe that there are much better free music sites than this one? Are you telling me that you are...
*digs deep into my vault of puns*
...doubting Thomas? (Sorry, sorry. That was a particularly egregious joke, a low blow in the fight for Creative Commons credibility. I won't do it again.) If you visit his website, you'll find lots of lovely netlabels to explore, and you'll have found a great new resource for squeezing enjoyment out of this magical online world we call Duhweb, or Dasveb, as my German friends refer to it. Look, trust me. I should know all about these things, having been reviewing free music for a few years. After all, I've been at it for so long, I'm preposterous.
Once upon a time, it was fashionable among the music press to denigrate heavy rock, prog rock and heavy metal (think Led Zep, Deep Purple, Yes, Rush, Motorhead) as boringly repetitive. The mantra went that rock relied too much on a single riff played over and over again ad nauseam, with endless guitar and, save us, O Lord, drum solos for light relief. Where was the innovation, the rebelliousness, the spunk? Hence, said the poet, punk. Almost overnight, the Gods of Rock were kicked upstairs to Valhalla, from where they grimaced at the usurpers who had saved music from the tyranny of repetition by thrashing out three-chord riffs at four beats to the bar. No, I don't quite understand it either.
Which brings me to electro. Or house. Or fidget house. Or fuss-budget techno doodah or whatever new genre has spawned on the sticky floors of European nightclubs. Today's slab of sound hails from Italy's Sostanze netlabel and features - how shocking - repetitive riffs in a four-to-the-floor situation. Why don't the critics stamp on such music as they did for whiskery rock? Three reasons:
The sonic variation inherent in intensely filtered synth riffs sustains listeners' aural interest. (Impressed? Yes, my brain is a sponge of pleasure.)
For all its repetition, electro contains more rhythmic variety than the average 70s rock song, due to breakdowns and glitches, although prog rock has a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. Rush is/are exempt from this discussion anyway 'cos they are fab.
Raver Boom by Bebop The Dog is a five-track EP that minds its manners. Most of the tracks are less than five minutes long and all start quite sedately before dropping an electro bomb a minute or two later. My recommended track features no intellectual fibre whatosever (it rhymes "Aztecer" with "ass-kicker") but has a considerable amount of what car fans call "grunt". Two minutes in and your undercrackers will thank you.
It's a little raw in places, but it's energy on a stick, isn't it? And it's free.
The start of Intro is deceptive - keep a finger on the volume control or else the absolutely monstrous rising tone will pop something dear to you, be it speakers, eardrums or other body parts. Bebop The Dog gives you 60 seconds to recover before unleashing a riff that's stickier than toffee candy floss. The same could be said for the second track (which might actually be the EP's highpoint) Come Back and, er, all the other songs. (Who mentioned repetition?) I'm curious as to how the dancefloor will receive these tracks - they lack the pristine production of a top studio and producer - but I'm sure they'd provoke one or two hipsters to bust a move and flutter their eyebrows at the DJ.
Right, onwards. The title track (Raver Boom, for those who aren't taking the smart drugs) bounces cheerfully under a ragga vocal and some Daft Punk low-pass filtering. Bad Boy has fun swapping its introductory pitch-wobbling synth riff, dropping it for a fairly mellow electro bass riff (if there is such a thing) and thus embarking on a stop-start odyssey that gives poor dancers some cue points with which to regain their dignity. I laughed at the dog bark that bursts into one break. The dub-like siren is the icing on the wobbly cake.
The EP ends with Loop a Looza, the highlight of which is the dive-bombing bass line. It's not the most memorable of tracks, mainly because the dive-bombing bass line will interfere with your short-term memory.
In short, Raver Boom will supply electro, fidget and (my eyes!) nu rave fans with the recommended daily intake of breakdowns, white noise sweeps, bouncing kick drums and gritty bass lines. I am therefore grateful to Bebop The Dog and Sostanza netlabel for the free CC fun. If you enjoyed the album, please show your gratitude by sending them a "thank you" email or a donation or a bill for your new hearing aids.
One of the many things that music fans & musicians love about the interwebutron is its demoticism: any fool can stick a microphone out of their window, record the sounds, upload them to a website and, voila, they've made a field recording and have preserved a moment in time for ever.* Further, give that same recording a suitably opaque name such as Plangent Undertunes (Airport) IV, and yet another ambient album is placed before a horrified delighted world. It's as though everyone who loves sound for sound's sake is currently enjoying an electronic group hug.
Well, stuff all that. Let me show you a better class of field recording. The National Trust, a British charity that, since 1895, has preserved culturally and historically significant landscapes (pastoral and industrial), architecture and art - in short, some of the most beautiful bits and pieces of the sceptered isle - has released thirteen tracks recorded at some of its many lip-quiveringly gorgeous properties. The album is free but, alas, does not yet bear a Creative Commons licence. The sounds are timeless, though if you listen to the tracks while studying a photo of the relevant property it's easy to imagine that you are raising an ear-trumpet to another age.
To be even more galumphing than usual, it tickles me that a charity that has preserved many an estate and art collection owned
formerly by the aristocracy, gentry and other beneficiaries of
privilege and unbridled capitalism should decide to release a completely
free album and ask Jarvis Cocker, former frontman of Pulp (best known
for the song Common People) to produce it. Not only is it a spankingly good idea
(as is the NT itself), it's also deliciously moreish of them.
*brushes
crumpet crumbs from smoking jacket lapel*
By giving you a rundown of the track titles I will endeavour to impress upon you that Mr Cocker, the Paris-residing scamp that he is, has done Britain proud by producing a baker's dozen of field recordings that will float up your ear canal like a sugar-coated barge. Please keep up with the tour guide and don't let your children duck under the ropes: Walking on Gravel & Birds (though not literally, one hopes), Birdsong, Waves Lapping Along The Shore, Footsteps Through The House, Creaking Staircase, The Billiards Room, Death by Chainsaw & Acid-Bath, Old Music Box, Murmurs of Children in School House, Birds in Water Garden, Gardening, Strap Press, Clocks Ticking & Chiming and Clock Tower. One of those titles might not actually exist. The rest, however, luxuriate in a warm and spacious mix and remind me that this planet is a wondrous instrument that plays the music of the spheres.
To illustrate, allow me to transport you, Dr Who-like, to County Antrim in Northern Ireland, where the workings of Patterson's Spade Mill fade away to be replaced by the timepieces of Blickling Hall in Norfolk:
Charming, isn't it?Which reminds me,I must thank the very nice people at the NT's press office (I have a vision of an iPad with a gingham border and tassels) who responded to my whinge about the postage stamp-sized image that comes with Time To Think by sending me the man-sized photo that adorns this review. Unfortunately, I'm given them a headache by also asking if the NT could slap a CC licence on it PDQ or, at the very least, ASAP. Yes, TTT is free - and a glorious gesture it is, too - but it is also at the mercy of everyone on the internet and so will be chopped up and used/remixed by webheads without delay. A CC licence would legitimise and encourage such use, and help to publicise the National Trust's ethos around the world. After all, the National Trust isn't just for Brits scuttling to stately tea-rooms to avoid the rain; it's for everyone for all time. They've got to shift those souvenir tea-towels somehow.
If you're feeling charitable, please make the charity feel better by sending a "thank you" email, and/or a donation, and/or become a member or do all three and ask if there's honey still for tea.
And so to the home of reggae: Sweden. Specifically, to Uppsala, the heartbeat of Scandinavia's reggae community, home to the massive Uppsala Reggae Festival and, far more importantly, birthplace of one Joel Eriksson - who prefers to be known as Doobie. In All Kinda Wall, this non-Techno Viking* has produced an album that should appeal to fans of 70s/80s-style traditional reggae, and which has already appealed to the listeners of the Portuguese ZonaReGGae radio show, who voted it the best roots revival album of 2009.
Over the past four years, Doobie has collaborated online with many different vocalists and wound up with 14 tracks that explore lightweight topics such as religion, politics, violence, social inequality, drugs (in short, Babylon), all addressed in a forthright and confrontational manner. Fortunately, the songs will also have your ears bobbing blissfully on a sea of dub, although I must point out that some of the tracks, particularly the vocals, seem to be mastered at quite a high volume. Even more fortunately for those who would rather not listen to the lyrics, there will be a chance for you to straighten your bowties and enjoy the instrumentals, the whole instrumentals and nothing but the instrumentals. Explanation at the end of the review.
At this point I'd like to slap an mp3 in your hand to justify my choice of album, but Dubkey, the sp(l)iffing netlabel responsible for All Kinda Wall's distribution, doesn't provide anything so old-fashioned as plain old sounds. No, it's video time.
WARNING: The following video, Check Out, features a terrific vocal from Amsiebrown and an irresistible rhythm. It also features extremely explicit war footage and is therefore not suitable for children or for work. You have been warned. It's a tough watch - once is enough, although the album track merits repeated listening.
Told you.
The artists on All Kinda Wall advocate Jah and peace (note Haji Mike's dub poem, Bless) but aren't reluctant to engage with specific topics such as Palestine (New Zion by Hanouneh); the role of parenting in society today (Iyah Lazer's The Future Of Our Nation); pharmaceutical abuse (Leave Those Drugs Alone by Jah Zebi) and, in Dan I Locks's Friend In Weed, the joys of ganja, making a case for its religious role in Jah, its therapeutical benefits, and its subsequent decriminalisation: "A friend in weed is a friend indeed".
The relationship between the music and its message is strikingly paradoxical: traditional reggae is probably the most conservative of musical genres, yet the philosophy is liberal, even cleaving to libertarianism in places. Walk around the planet and you'll end up where you started.
Doobie is to be complimented in his use of software to recreate the feel of thirty-year-old reggae and his use of the net to gather a roster of artists - who says computer music is impersonal? I'm even more impressed with the way he has bedded the vocals into his riddims. Of course, I speak from experience (and an ivory tower) because I've heard the instrumentals. You can, too, because Dubkey have released All Kinda Riddims, for those music lovers who don't care for the vocals. The new album cover will make Photoshop fans smile:
If you enjoy All Kinda Wall/Riddims, (and I did) please consider sending a "thank you" email to DoobieSounds and/or Dubkey. Both albums are issued under a Creative Commons licence, meaning that you can share them with your friends however you like, although it might be best if you all sat on the floor in a circle and passed a burned CD around until everyone has had their fill. Just don't hog it.
I'll make this not-quite-brief. It has been touching to receive so many kind-hearted and encouraging comments from music fans and stalwarts of the CC netaudio world, so much so that I have decided to continue Catching The Waves, although in a reduced capacity due to my irritatingly fragile health and my exasperatingly robust laziness. If none of you object, I shall post reviews and articles rather less frequently than before, and I will continue to recommend other legitimate free music sites in the devout hope that CTW will finally, once and for all, become superfluous to your music needs.
Thank you to each and every one of you for making the effort to post a comment, tweet a tweet, or write an email. Such interaction, to use a rather dull word to describe such a happy experience, came as an unexpected and welcome surprise. Please feel free to drop in at anytime and let me know what you think (good or bad) of the blog, or if you simply want to complain about the level of the euro, the weather or my grammar. I will endeavour to respond either in the comments section itself or via a new post.
(By the way, this being the internet, I am duty bound to point out that my choice of illustration does not reflect any political leanings but was merely an opportunity for a giggle. I remind you of the web's informal motto: "The Internet - Promoting Ignorance Since 1985".)
Before I go, I feel I must respond to a couple of the comments:
Embe, thank you for your suggestion about writing for the lovely and cuddly Phlow. During the last couple of years, I have had a number of undeserved but very flattering requests to write for other websites, all of which are much better than crumby old CTW. To my regret, I have had to turn them down because I am an unreliable individual and I would hate to damage the reputation of any of the (now numerous) estimable CC music sites, including Mo's marvellous website, by missing deadlines or not being able to write anything comprehensible.
Additionally, though I have been shocked by some of the extraordinarily nice things that my cuddlesome readers have said about CTW (though note with disappointment the paucity of offers of sex or money or money for sex), quite the most outré sentiment in the comments section came from David McMahon. Mr McMahon is obviously a devotee of Jane Austen, for his message was in the finest tradition of that peerless stylist:
I jizzed in my pants when I checked my email and I saw a new email from my subscription to CTW.
Well said, David, well said. World, you can keep the Booker. Don't bother with the Pulitzer. Stuff the Nobel. Catching The Waves will make you jizz your pants.
It might have come to your attention that health and time issues have delivered a steel toe-cap to CTW's love-plumbing. The only thing to do is to turn around and hope that the same toe-cap will add momentum to this dead blog by administering a swift kick to the nethers.
So... to gauge whether the enormous, brian-bursting* effort to maintain CTW is worth it, I am asking you, my insane fans, if you want me to carry on getting my fingernails dirty. To do so, please do one or all of the following:
Leave a comment at CTW
Tweet the tag #ctw
Send me a private email declaring your undying love
If enough of you wasters respond, I might - might - plant CTW's flagpole in the internet's soft, pliant earth. Yeah, baby.
If not, thank you so much for everything and have a great life, you wonderful people. Take care.
The man struggling under the unexpectedly strong gravity of Planet Spit is Kit Knows, formerly Kaynose, half of hip-hop group Two Left. He's arrived on the surface direct from Toronto thanks to the rocket fuel provided by fLako in his recent collection of 30 showcase beats - as previously reviewed by yours truly. He's slapped his raps and a little moon dust (edits, extra instrumentation, emotion) on 20 of fLako's 30 instrumental tracks, so now you can enjoy either the original's pristine trip-hop loops or the aggression/sincerity of an experienced rapper playing with what he must know to be uncommonly good raw material. The beauty of Creative Commons licensing is that it encourages just this type of adaptation.* Free music is fun, n'est-ce pas?
Most of these tracks don't outstay their welcome, the majority clocking in at under threee minutes' length. I'll plead laziness a thirst for brevity and give you a few vignettes rather than the Grove Dictionary-like analysis you're used to.
Knots improves on the original by slipping in an unutterably cool sax solo. In Colours Of Love, Kit jumps on what might be the catchiest riff that fLako has ever penned (and certainly the most de-tuned synth pad you'll hear today) and describes his girl troubles and triumphs. It works. Desert Ride, the second track on the album, reminds me why most rappers should avoid singing at all costs, but the opener, Welcome, demonstrates why Kit Knows' remixes are worth persevering with. His presence adds adrenalin to fLako's loops, and it's fascinating to hear how he slides into them seamlessly. (My choice of verbs in this review are giving me cause for concern.) The album itself has a close affinity with its predecessor, not least the fact that it's so difficult to hear the bleedin' music. Welcome is the only track that (sickly yet handsome in a windswept kind of way) reviewers can stick in their blogs. Still, it's a good 'un.
With Crying On The In, fLako produced a haunting piece of trip-hop, complete with an understated vocal hook, a spooky synth leitmotif (pretentiousness, thy name is CTW), and an unflappable acoustic bass line. Kit has the good sense to tread gingerly and manages to transform this snippet of cool into a lament for loved ones and a meditation on the meaning of life. More of his concern with weighty matters can be heard on the non-fLako last track, Space Rock, in which Kit reads from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. I'm not sure if it (or the theory) works, but I respect a rapper who wants to get smarter or die tryin'. If you're in the mood for more of the genius with a finger-in-a-socket hairstyle, here's a lovely story about the great man. My thanks to the folkster's folkster, Robin Grey, for the tip.
The First Space Kit On The Moon is not an unadulterated success, and it might tempt listeners to prune the lengthy track list and produce a much better EP for their playlists, but it contains enough ingenuity and ambition to make me glad that Kit Knows made the effort. If you feel the same, please think about sending him a curt, manly nod of thanks via email.
*Having looked and looked, I can't find a CC licence on Kit's website, the album cover or the music files, but since Kwatro netlabel publicised it, I suppose everything is on the level. It's disappointing that Kit Knows has worked so hard to remix a CC album yet has failed to clarify his album's status, other than that it's "free". One good turn deserves another, but I'm sure Kit knows.
Yeah, baby. When it comes to drive-by punning, there ain't no other.
EDIT: Kit has ever so politely pointed out that there is no CC licence on fLako's album. In return, I have ever so politely pointed out that I am a complete and utter spanner who really should be barred from writing about music. I thoughtlessly assumed that Kwatro/fLako had released the original free album under a CC licence. I accept that this was a mistake on my part and I apologise unreservedly for the unwarranted criticism of Kit. My crunk juice cup has been packed up and shipped to a charity shop and all my bling is back at the pawnshop.
*returns to non-funky life, parts hair down the middle*
It was rather pleasant to find something recently that reminded me why I keep reviving this stupid blog: I still want to thank musicians for the great free music and, in my excitement, to tell as many people as possible that they could download some lovely stuff if only they'd look in this neck of the woods. Having said that, I must advise you to look in the dusty "About" section of CTW and notice that it falls within my remit to publicise commercial releases once in a very long while. Today is that day, and I do so without fear or favour even though I risk becoming part of Musicblogocide 2010. Yes, my humble loons readers, reviewing music can be a risky business. I'm so manly.
You don't give a stuff, do you? You come here for free music... and here it is. (Weird) Uncle CTW wasn't going to let you down. Yup, the about-to-be-mentioned music is free although, tiresomely, you'll have to give up an email address. Failing that, buy the CD and think yourself lucky. In Chains by Dead Heart Bloom (from New York) was once a fully fledged 2008 commercial release, but DHB, in their Buddha-like wisdom, have decided to cut the chains (boom-boom) and let it go for free. Note that this is not a Creative Commons-licensed album - so please respect the copyright.
In Chains is a five-track EP made by a four-piece band that will satisfy all three of your ears. First off, it sounds wonderful: the mix is as clear as the Hubble telescope. On first listen, Boris Skalsky's vocals are buried in too much reverb, particularly in the opener Flash In A Bottle; hear the lyrics again and it comes as a shock to hear just how much is effortlessly audible. It also comes as a pleasure to hear lyrics that sound like they come from a newly minted classic American folk song, if that makes sense. As for the album's milieu: those of you who love late 60s/early 70s folk-rock should fetch your flares from the back of the wardrobe and settle in for some serious tokeing tapping of your feet. Falling Towards Goodbye features guitar picking, the lightest imaginable percussion and lead vocals so warm and cosy that they could replace a duvet.
Halfway through the album comes Halfway Gone, a very laidback reminder not to let The Man get you down. It's a polite, competent mid-tempo folk-rock ditty for the first thirty seconds until the vocal harmonies begin to swoop and swell... when it becomes a lost track from the White Album. It's gorgeous, and I'm especially fond of the little organ asides near the end of the track. George Martin would approve. Let's see if you do:
Continuing the utterly satisfying retro-rock feel, Farther Than You rides in on the back of a rolling blues riff. The high-pitched, whispered lead vocal reminds me of none other than, wait for it, Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees, while the background vocals and rich, echoing slide guitar/violin are redolent of Ennio Morricone.
By this time, the hash harmonies will have you looking at the ceiling, so it's appropriate that In Chains ends with Impossible New City Dream, which is literally a lullaby albeit a gently (blues) rocking one. Like all the other tracks, its strong melody will make sweet, sweet love to your eardrums. You could also strum your new Apple iAirguitar, but I suspect you'll shrug at it and wait for the Google AirGuitarOneTMto appear in the shops.
If it was hard to pick out a track to recommend (and it was) from such a good album, imagine my horror delight when I realised that In Chains is part of a conceptual trilogy. Dead Heart Bloom describe IC as "ambient rock", Fall In as "dream pop" and Oh Mercy as something called "rock", although there's a hint in it of that legendary Tyrannosaurus (if not T-Rex) of Rock: "Glam". They too sound superb, they too are free, and although they don't quite measure up to In Chains, I must mention Fall In's deeply Lennonesque Here We Are...
...and the gold medallion that is Blues 3, which nestles snugly in the hairy chest of Oh Mercy:
While being utterly wonderful, Dead Heart Bloom's folk/pop/rock is also utterly traditional; it doesn't innovate and it owes an awful lot to music from quite a few decades ago. But so does "traditional" classical music - and I love that to bits, too. In short, it makes me feel happy, and there is no greater praise than that in the CTW household - except when I look in the mirror. If you like the EPs, please think about sending DHB a "thank you" email and/or buying a CD or two. All the albums are available in most musical formats from Bandcamp via the DHB website.
My grateful thanks to Casey of Rock Proper netlabel (for people who love rock and hate adverbs), who recommended DHB's stuff in his Rock Proper blog.
The greyest - that's greyest, thank you - blog in the world has coughed back into life to run its twig-like fingers over an album before the summer gets here and ruins the mood. London-based folkie Robin, er, Grey has made an album that suggests sea air, Celtic redheads, old-fashioned pubs and late-night Guinness-fuelled ruminations on life. As such, he's mortally afraid of that hot thing in the sky and, as the action photo above makes clear, has to make a dash for the nearest tearoom whenever the clouds part.
The eight tracks on Strangers With Shoes use only the latest plug-ins and MIDI controllers, most of which are new to me. What are these things called ukeleles, accordions, violins, banjoes and flutes? Still, they worked nicely on Robin's previous outing, Only The Missile, so I assume that all of the new software is now out of beta.
We start with Younger Looking Skin, a merry banjo and accordion-led romp through non-sequiturs so obtuse that your forehead will need Botox if you try to work out what on earth Grey is banging on about. Fear not, Till Dawn will smooth your troubled brow with a gorgeous fluttering flute from Poppy Villiers-Stuart and quintessentially folky (read winsome) backing vocals, presumably also from the same mellifluously-named Poppy.
I Love Leonard Cohen first made an appearance on Robin's 2008 EP of the same name, and it certainly deserves another outing. It's a winning, sly look at how one's tastes change over the years. (Wedding snaps from the early 1970s are always kept under lock and key. Those flares...) I particularly like the chorus and its build-up, whose subtle pauses and changes in rhythm confirm that Strangers With Shoes is worth a listen or three. In case you're worried, Mr Grey is not quite as lugubrious as Mr Cohen. /Reservoir Dogs
Not only does the next song, The Suitors Ballyhoo, revive an underused but perfectly good word for its title (I can never get enough of "The"), it will also have you singing its catchy refrain of "I, I, I, I, I, I want you" at highly inappropriate times. After that is Montreal, a fine song marred only by a slightly affected delivery from Robin, who sounds as though he's not quite comfortable with the vocals on this one.
Shakes & Shudders, another refugee from ILLC, tells the tale of a slow train ride on a slow day:
I'm making my way north on an unpretentious day/Yesterday the sky was naked/Today she's wrapped herself in grey/And I have cloaked myself in my hat and coat and dreams/So for now I am safe from the cold/Whatever today brings.
Robin's voice and Beth Dariti's gentle background vocals and guitar accompaniment will make good use of five minutes of your life. Those of you in Europe and the USA who are snowed in will find that it's the perfect soundtrack for watching snowflakes float by, especially if you remember that Shakes & Shudders was co-written in an afternoon and recorded in one take. Those of you in more temperate zones: go out, dance, seduce attractive people, etc. The music will be waiting for you when the hangover kicks in (unless you're reading this via a RSS feed reader, in which case you'll have to knock on CTW's door).
Enjoy the good times while you can, because the next track, Ninety Days, is a terrific post-breakup song, and sourer than a liver & liqourice cocktail served by an underpaid waiter with fallen arches. Ben Oliver of Blue Swerver, having made a full recovery from an old CTW review, confirms his talent thanks to some excellent Rhodes piano noodling, while Robin lets rip with a curse that made me grab my petticoat. I'd love to hear a stadium crowd join in with the catharsis. It'll certainly liven up any Women's Institute gigs. Oh, go on then, but it's NSFW:
The chief strength of the final song, Roses From Africa, is its cheerful, valedictory atmosphere, reinforced by the playful violin of Barbara Bartz. It feels like an end-of-show song designed to:
a) send the audience on its way home with a smile on its face;
b) allow the theatre manager to switch the stage lights off one by one;
c) give Robin and his fellow musos time to dash to the bar before last orders;
d) impel online fans to buy Strangers With Shoes;
e) and persuade the same online fans to see the man himself in concert.
Speaking of getting your grubby little hands on downloading/buying the music, Strangers With Shoes is available for free from Jamendo at a lo-fi (but actually very good thanks to excellent mixing and mastering) 192kbps, and is also available to buy & download from Bandcamp at an ever-so hi-fi 320kbps in a variety of formats at an ever-so low price of £4.99 (album) or 70p (per track). There's also a limited edition CD if you're not into the whole brevity thing.* I'll slap the Jamendo player in this review because The Big J needs all the help it can get at the moment, but please note that the Bandcamp version of Strangers With Shoes is an aural treat.
Oh, and just in case I haven't made myself clear, Robin Grey has talent coming out of his ears and into yours. If you agree, cross his plam with sliver or go and buy a dictionary. At the very least, send him a "thank you" email.
It's good to see that Robin is enjoying life after injury ended what was a promising career as a professional cyclist, the undoubted highpoint of which was, as this second action photo demonstrates, his finishing the 2007 Tour De France as the lanterne noire.
Robin Grey - Strangers With Shoes from Jamendo (free) and Bandcamp (not free but hi-fi)
Here is a true story, told in the hope that you will forgive CTW for making more comebacks than a boomerang: not ten seconds before I pressed the "Die, die, die!" button and published the very last post at Catching The Waves, one of my lackeys presented a missive, written on vellum, from a devout music fan. I sighed, pawed the letter from the proffered velvet cushion and proceeded to scream.
The letter was from a Robert Nagle, Esq. I dimly remembered some nonsense from six months beforehand, when he had contacted me and announced that he was going to investigate this "free music" mullarkey and see if there was anything worth hearing. If he found something notable, would I be interested in his conclusions? Busy as I was with matters of state, I allowed him to kiss my imperial ring - yes, thank you, that's quite enough of that, my dirty-minded readership - and shooed him away with all the panache of an in-demand haute couturier. Now, here he was again, like an audio-crazed Terminator, to announce that he had listened to 2,200 albums on Jamendo and had picked the best eleven. That's two thousand, two hundred albums, people. Murderers have received less harsh sentences than that.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that Robert is completely off his chump truly dedicated to finding legally free music and that he should be taken to a secure facility and sedated all netmusic fans and artists owe him a debt of gratitude and other clichés. Not only has he written a long article about the eleven worthy albums, cunningly titled 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download For Free (Best of Jamendo), he has also interviewed all of the artists concerned, thus providing PR manna from heaven - and a quick ego-rub - to people who like to release free music under a CC licence. Kudos, Robert.
And that's not all. Such is his love of the free stuff, Robert has also added additional addenda to his aural adumbration (sorry, my "a" key stuck momentarily) with an appraisal of Jamendo and tips on how to get the best out of it. He also mentions old CTW favourites Professor Kliq, Josh Woodward, Brad Sucks in dispatches and recommends good blogs, i.e. the must-visit Free Albums Galore.
It was absolutely fascinating to peruse the eleven picks and travel from Hungary to Bulgaria to Germany to France to Poland and ever onwards, like a drunk student with an InterRail pass. (The train to America must have been interesting...) Some I knew (Tryad's Listen and Antony Raijekov's Jazz U amongst others) but most I didn't. Some left me stony-faced, others happy. All were worth hearing. I won't bore you with my irrelevant opinions on the albums Robert has chosen, other than to declare that the strongest of the bunch, with apologies to the other worthy candidates, is that old Creative Commons warhorse, Aleksi Virta Meets Torsti At The Space Lounge. Väinö Ala-Härkönen's opus has been out for years, got reviewed up hill and down dale, passed the 42,000 download mark at archive.org, and has its own dogbasket in the CTW household. If you don't know it but are in the market for some trippy, dubby, funky, trip-hop-funk-bigbeat-dub-hop-skip-n-jump-hop, your luck is in. Enjoy...but not on Jamendo, 'cos I can't find it there. I think the internet hates me; I'm just too sexy for it. Take two: enjoy a selected track and ignore the album cover that follows it.
It's official: Catching The Waves is the world's first zombie Creative Commons music blog. Yes, I've killed it, buried it and sowed the grave with lime, but here it is, ready to rake its filthy, jagged fingernails across the ears throat of anyone it meets. Honestly, it's not my fault. I've finished with the damned thing but something I did in December has just raised its ugly head (out of the grave, as it were) and needs hitting with a sharp-edged spade. Besides, I know you're keening with grief at the demise of CTW, and this post will recommend a place where you can find free tunes aplenty. I'm so lovely.
Let me take you to a board meeting circa 2006. Around the polished oak table are heavies from WFMU, an American free-form non-commercial radio station that has been broadasting from New Jersey since 1958, and legal beagles from the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Think ceiling fans, drawn blinds and cigar smoke.
The chief lawyer twangs his red braces and announces that WFMU is to make contemporary music of all genres available to everyone across the state and compile a podsafe online music library.
"What am I, chopped liver?" asks a sweating radio luminary who has seen too many Woody Allen movies. "Who's going to pay for this smorgasbord?" he adds, hoping to sound sophisticated.
"Fugeddabout it," responds the lawyer, doing his best Chazz Palminteri impression. "Da Noo Yawk State Music Fund...
*CTW ignores the "You are offending millions of people" pop-up warning*
...is gonna ante up the dough. Da big record companies have been running a payola racket and we're giving youse somma da court settlements."
Hands are shaken and brows are mopped. But what to call this new archive of free music, this music archive that is free? Cigars are chomped, generic Italian dishes digested (as is one Chinese take-away, ordered by a newbie lawyer who hasn't yet been hazed at the local Masonic lodge), and legal pads filled with possible titles. At 3am, they have it: the Free Music Archive.
Bada-bing bada-boom.
In April 2009, the website went live under the joint management of WFMU and some non-profit community radio stations and venues. Go there and you'll find a constantly growing library of free music that you can listen to and download. There are also short artist biographies and links to the musicians' websites should you wish to investigate further. If you're a little overwhelmed by the volume of music and not sure where to start, investigate the curators' recommendations or take a look at the FMA's constantly updated charts. I'll let the site itself take over:
Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the
FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists,
and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist
page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to
learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We
also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song
profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist
and/or label’s preferred vendor(s). Users can also “tip” an artist if
they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’
PayPal account. Artist profiles include tourdates, encouraging users
to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live
music.
Legally free music is still in for a bumpy ride, in my opinion, especially if it becomes truly popular. It remains to be seen whether the Creative Commons approach and the similar format adopted by the FMA can withstand the rigours of the internet. It's early days for the FMA (which will be refined as it grows in popularity), but it clearly has the potential to be a superb asset for fans of legally free music. Fingers crossed, everyone.
Anyone can visit and use the site, although music and editorial content is posted on an invitational basis - which brings me to the December stuff I mentioned.
*switches on megaphone*
AND NOW, AT LAST, SOME MUSIC. BUT FIRST, WITH THANKS TO ENGADGET, A JAPANESE ROBOT WILL PERFORM AN INTERPRETATIVE BREAK-DANCE SEQUENCE TO CONVEY MY JOY AT FINALLY KILLING CTW. TAKE IT AWAY, MANOI GO:
Yeah, baby.
The FMA were idiotic kind enough to invite me to put together a compilation cum playlist of tracks. They'll be familiar to regular visitors to CTW, but I hope they will serve as a good antidote to the "All free music is rubbish" argument. To whit: some free music is superb. I am most grateful to Cameron Perkins, the Culture Program Assistant at creativecommons.org, and Jason Sigal, FMA Managing Director, who were very patient with me.
The Catching The Waves FMA "Mix" (I'll make you go via the Creative Commons so you can bask in the glory of the CTW logo, which is made of plasticine and a lot of swearing.)
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