Catching The Waves

No Doubting Thomas

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.

*rimshot*

Suck it, bitches.

Thomas' Posterous

I want top rankin'

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 time for an exceptionally violent video hosted at Myspace.

WARNING: This video features real and graphic violence from war footage. Watch at your own risk. If you don't want to watch Amsie Brown - Check Out, you'll have to settle for the zipped album at the end of this post.

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.

DoobieSounds - All Kinda Wall (link to zipped album)

DoobieSounds - All Kinda Riddims (ditto)

Dubkey

*Skål!