Catching The Waves

The Secret of Success is Sincerity

All together now: "Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

One of the joys of reviving the still-warm corpse of this blog is reminding myself of music I've enjoyed, he said, boastfully. On that note, Brad Turcotte (not-so-secret identity, Brad Sucks) is about to release another album. So what, says you? Well, surly internet readership, CTW has already wibbled about I Don't Know What I'm Doing, which remains the catchiest free album I've yet found on the internet, so you should sit down, keep your hands on the desktop and listen to your mad teacher while he subjects you to a spittle-flecked diatribe. You can find IDKWID at Brad's own website and at Jamendo, where it's currently, ahem, riding the crest of a wave. Heh. Mind you, CTW's endorsement of IDKWID and the enthusiastic response of CTW's 1000000* readers has almost certainly nothing to do with its position at the top of Jamendo's "popularity this month" statistic. It's just rather good. Simple, really.

Fake It is a preview release (just the one track) from Brad's new album, Out Of It. The vocals, with respect to Brad, still sound endearingly homespun, but the guitars are meaty and the song is just as ridiculously addictive as anything from IDKWID. Brad has the priceless ability to get you bawling his lyrics while strumming the air guitar like a novice on Guitar Band or Rock Hero or whatever the latest penny arcade craze is. God, I'm getting old. The full album, Out Of It, will be available on 8th September 2008.

Brad's nervous about the reception his album is going to get, despite the fact that he's already received extensive mainstream press coverage for his previous efforts. I think he's going to be pleasantly surprised by the number of downloads, paid or free, that he's going to rack up. Besides, CTW's finance department has ratified the deposit of a few doubloons to BradCorpMegaIncKeepMeInBeerLtd when Out Of It gets pushed into the spotlight, so at least he can get himself a bottle of something to drink under a railway bridge. Yes, "railway". I'll be damned if I write "railroad".

Damn.

In case you're wondering, here's proof, in Brad's own words, that the netlabel/free music movement is wonderful:

"Just like 'I Don't Know What I'm Doing', it ['Out Of It'] will be available in CD, MP3 and lossless FLAC format. Pay what you want ($5 minimum for CDs) or download the MP3s for free. The full source will be available for remixers (or whoever wants it)."

God love him, the industrious, talented, free-spirited, entrepreneurial sprite.

Brad Sucks - Fake It (direct download)

Brad Sucks website

*This numeral may be in binary.

Chocaholic

 

EDIT 15/02/09: Choc, that impish Frenchman, decided to give his album a new cover picture and change his song titles. This resulted, through the magic of the internet, in Jamendo's mp3 player linking to a completely different album by a completely different artist. I've amended my review accordingly. Apologies for the confusion caused to CTW's already addled readers. I think Choc caused my wonderful, peerless website all this trouble because Britain refuses to adopt the Euro, dress well, eat decent food and have civilised working hours. C'est la vie. (By the way, I didn't crop the album's title on the photo of a woman enjoying the glamour of modern travel. It seems that it's not a Choc album unless there's a typo somewhere. Zut alors, mon ami!)

CTW's next selection was going to be something funky and sassy just so I could thumb my nose at Beethoven but fate had other plans. A recent article by Joe Queenan in The Guardian, "Admit It, You're As Bored As I Am", lamenting new classical music, and Tom Service's response, the Douglas Adams-tinged* "Why Joe Queenan Is Wrong About New Classical Music", got me thinking about the state of modern classical music. I love Nixon in China by John Adams and some stuff by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Philip Glass, but my personal filter tends to stop most "classical" stuff written after the 1960s. Mea culpa.

I'd love to know what music journalists, academics and everyday music fans think of Sound Object Deconditioning. In my humble opinion, Choc's five-track EP combines piano and strings with glitchy percussion, ambient noises and stuttering edits to produce an enthralling listen. Each track could bear the term "composition". That doesn't mean they're boring - listening to them is like being captivated by something beautiful. Pretend you're Nicolas Sarkozy. Heh.

The new (see start of review) song titles are less unweidly than before, although they still don't trip off the tongue. But who cares? It's the music that matters, and this collection of clear-headed, melodically strong ambient-ish electronica is entertaining enough to overcome mere words such as Eigenvalue Subspace Decomposition, Mimesis Algorithm, Final Breath, Digital Requiem, and Zion City. Mimesis Algorithm, which I've already raved about, is a slight retooling of its earlier version; it's still excellent although I'm not sure about the new guitar part. I suppose we all prefer our first kiss.

[Et Voila! Now with whiter-than-white Jamendo player. Listen to the first two - two, not one - minutes of track 1, Eigenvalue Subspace Decomposition, and see if it tickles your fancy. Please note (15/02/09), this album has just been reloaded at Jamendo so you may have to wait until the 16th Feb before it's ready for downloading.]

So, can we call this music serious, art or classical? "Art music" and "serious music" are specious terms, in my opinion. Strictly speaking, the term "classical" applies to music written between 1730 and 1820; Mahler, Stravinsky and the like are labelled classical for the sake of convenience. What to call this stuff? It's good modern music. What more need be said?

...er, nothing really, except: Choc's album is a free Creative Commons release, but please think about donating something, however massive small, so as to say thank you and to encourage him to keep producing music of this quality. The noble Jamendo website makes it easy to donate via the album's release page.

Choc - Sound Object Deconditioning (link to zipped album and individual mp3s)

Jamendo (repository for over 14,000 free Creative Commons albums)

*as in: "Not only is (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) a wholly remarkable book, it is...more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?"

Open Sesame

With the advent of the high-minded One Laptop Per Child project and the high-to-middling-minded EEE PC laptop, the internet is slowly, finally, becoming available to those who need it most: the neediest. Despite horror stories about fraud, pornography, spamming and surveillance, the vast army of workers at Catching The Waves believes that the internet can be a force for good and that it can enrich the lives and minds of those thirsty for education and opportunities. The tenured fellows of CTW's ivy-strewn quadrangle (typical dress: mortar boards, gowns and damp tweed) have found yet another reason to reinforce that belief: Musopen.

Musopen is intended to be a repository of public domain classical music. Although composers such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev are still under copyright (and will remain so if the parties involved are allowed to keep extending that copyright), giants such as Bach, Beethoven and Chopin are now gamboling in the green pastures of public domain. This means that anyone can perform their works and distribute recordings of those performances for free without breaking any laws or infringing on someone's intellectual copyright - until the powers that be think of new laws to stop it. Give it time...

Anyway, Musopen now offers a recording of all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas that can be listened to via streaming or downloaded for free and stored on your hard drive/mp3 player. There are also quite a few pieces by Mozart, Bach, Brahms and others, searchable by composer, performer, instrument, period and form, with biographies and a brief description of each work on offer. Musopen's random streaming radio option is an excellent way to prick up one's ears.

Just as impressive is the fact that Musopen also provides public domain sheet music, which scrolls on-screen as the music plays, for all the available compositions. The scores can be downloaded as a pdf file. Cash-strapped music teachers and students will jump for joy at this news.

It's still early days for Musopen due to the sheer size of the task. What to choose? How to decide which works to record? Ingeniously, the site has a bidding system so people can donate towards the costs of recording a favourite piece. Once the budget is there, a recording is commissioned. At the moment, Bach's Goldberg Variations has raised a third of its budget - and someone's a fan of Scarlatti's Sonata in F Sharp Minor. General donations are very welcome, too.

Inevitably, the performances and recordings are not as accomplished as those provided by the major record labels but they do provide a convenient starting point from which to explore the classical canon. With a bit of luck, newbies who find a piece they like might then go on to buy a recording by Naxos or Deutsche Grammophon and attend concerts - and therefore, glory be, Musopen's provision of free classical music could help the beleaguered recording industry. Far more importantly, the website now has a link in Catching The Wave's hallowed "General Netlabel Sites" section. Better than an Olympic gold medal, I tell you.

Isn't it wonderful that a child or student on any continent can travel back in time and hear a grumpy German or a bibulous Austrian or a melancholy Pole plonk up and down a piano keyboard?

Isn't it, kids?

*taps screen*

Kids?

Damn. They're all listening to Dizzee Rascal and watching re-runs of Family Guy. Two hundred years and Wolfie still can't get a break.

Musopen

Because You're Worth It

It seems that Germany, despite losing last week's European Football Championship final to Spain, isn't quite ready to admit defeat. In response to the previous CTW recommendation, the German coach has thrown on an extraordinarily last-minute substitution straight from the heart of Berlin:

Dubplates From The Madhouse by Dub One! (The exclamation mark comes as part of the package. It helps if you say it as. If! YouwereCaptain...KIRK!)

The first sound on this five-track EP is a cool double bass, then a cooler dusty beat. Hmm, so Jack's Pot (Radio Edit) is trip-hop, surely? But no, here's a pulsing organ and swelling horns. Sit back and enjoy dub delirium. Rather appropriate for something from a madhouse.

A minute in to Odd Man's Planet Dub and what was an exemplary dub track gets a bespoke, crackly trip-hop drum beat that elicits a Neanderthal grunt of satisfaction from CTW. Play this (not the grunt) to your friends and watch their jaws drop when you tell them that you got it for free without resorting to a balaclava and sawn-off shotgun. Your friends may scoff at your claim, but you will remain calm and untroubled because your inner soundtrack is set to "trip-hop", permitting your yin and yang to enact a slow-motion duel between sitar and guitar. Satisfaction ensues. You've just been levitated by the Sitar Sensi (2007 Jah Crazy Edit).

Next is Wise Man's Dub, in which the narrator tries to find the path of enlightenment by bothering old age pensioners for the answer to life, the universe, etc. He gets nowhere until he talks to a nubile young lady. That's wisdom. And it's extremely wise of Dub One! to produce such a blend of trip-hop, light dub and rock guitar, not to mention a dusting of sitar.

We end the EP surrounded in a cloud of smoke with Dub One!'s whimsically titled "Sedative Gunjah Remix" of Knock Me Down by ETF. There's sax, flutes, organ, a soaring rock guitar solo, and a lithe young woman singing along - all it needs is a reverberating snare drum and you could file this remix in the dictionary under "Dub". And, would you credit it, the snare drum's there too. Somebody give the Oxford University Press a call.

I think this glimpse inside an asylum is the best thing that Dub One! has dub done. Each track is a head-nodding treat, and there's a professional sheen to the sound. If you want more of his stuff, you'll find it at ever-reliable Ideology, where he joins up to good effect on various releases with Authist, his usual partner in crime.

Dub One! - Dubplates From The Madhouse (EP) (link to zipped album and individual mp3s & oggs)

Dub One! on MySpace

Ideology netlabel