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

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they  provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.

Etch-A-Sketch 2.0

In some electronica genres, such as IDM and Drum 'n' Bass, the drums skip, stutter and generally do everything but come up with a Unified Field Theory. The percussion to be found in Dreaming In Pieces by Hypnagog walks another path: it's well-behaved, mid-tempo dance/trance stuff that won't scare the horses. However, the synth work deserves a restraining order, an ASBO and an ankle bracelet. If Hypnagog hasn't pored over every atom of Air's magnum opus (and the most popular slice of French dinner-party electronica ever) Moon Safari, you can paint me yellow and call me a daffodil. The four tracks on Dreaming in Pieces are coated with layer after layer of melodies, diversions and digressions, all wrapped up in an analogue sensibility that en(psy)trances the ear.

During my rigorous selection process (it involves Guinness and meringues), the right half of my brain would whisper: "Meh...it's a bit leaden. It's ok, I suppose." But every time I reached for the "Destroy World" button, the left half of my bonce would butt in and exclaim: "Ooh, that glitch was unexpected. Hey, what's happening to the tempo? Wow, here comes another ice-cream of a synth. Crikey, is that three melodies at the same time? Funky, too."

My strait-jacket is tailored, you know. Only the best for CTW.

From the first few seconds of Still Dreaming, it's clear that Hypnagog (Felix Greenlees, an Australian earbender) is holding true to his stated intention to combine downtempo psychedelic breaks and IDM with his own style of psychedelic dance music. Pads, synth lines, squeaky stabs, IDM pitch-shifting: it's all there. And you get a rather nifty bassline. Job done.

Funkdiddle is full of aural cream cakes: a persuasive use of pitch-shifting and reverb in the introductory percussion section and, amongst other attractions, lots of analogue squelches. Its groove comes mostly from the walking bassline and micro-drumrolls, while the tempo variations and the cheerful, bluesy organ solos got me to the finishing line faster than a dysentery-suffering Usain Bolt chasing an Andrex puppy. Given the chance, I'd have popped Funkdiddle in your friendly CTW media player.

Next up is Tiny Little Pieces, starting with an audio sample that discusses the Biq Questions in life, followed by six minutes of soothing Spanish guitar, unpredictable diversions into glitch lay-bys, endlessly melodic synth doodling and mercurial tempo changes. It should be plain by now that this is a "headphones album"; there's so much superb work in Dreaming In Pieces that it demands your full attention, even though the overall effect is like reclining in a hammock and sipping a daiquiri. Like I said, think Air.

The last track, Reflections No.2, sounds as though Hypnagog ransacked every sine-waveish preset in his synth collection and played music that made him happy. This track will be at home in a beachside bar's dirty old stereo or in an audiophile's temperature-controlled, earthquake-proofed record collection.

And that's what I like so much about Hypnagog's release. It's as superficial or as deep as you want it to be, thanks to its constant melodic invention, restless search for smooth new sounds and a clean, spacious recording.

I hope you enjoy the album as much as I have. Bye.

*thinks*

I've forgotten something, haven't I? Ah yes, the sounds. Tut, me and my memory. Well, er, it pains me to say this but Up Records, in their otherwise razor-sharp Australian wisdom, supply only a zipped album, which means that visitors to their website can't hear their music.

*facepalm*

Fear not, Dreaming In Pieces is also featured at Ektoplazm, the suitably-psychedelic-but-I-still-got-my-shit-together-man psytrance portal/netlabel, so I'll just grab an mp3 from there and...

*headdesk*

No, no mp3 files there, either. However, at least they do stream one song, Tiny Little Pieces. So go here to hear it. Incidentally, Ektoplazm do a very good job of catering to fans of free psytrance, as their charts, download figures and frequent updates will testify. It's a fun place to visit. Chapeau, gentlemen. The website's appearance can be described as... trippy.

*slapshead*

Actually, you'd be better off at Hypnagog's MySpace page, where you can listen to all four tracks and press his Paypal button. Go on, send money around the world. Do it enough and you'll get a bailout. Heh.

Harrumph. While I am very grateful to all netlabels for their dedication and hard work in releasing CC music, I must say that persuading some of them actually to part with their music is akin to tickling trout. Fernando Fonseca's (Hi F!) recent rant on this subject ruffled a few feathers. He's mostly right in what he says, though I would have phrased things rather more gently; after all, I'm a confirmed coward gentleman. Fernando himself is vastly experienced in netaudio, helps to run the excellent PublicSpaces Lab netlabel and has linked symbiotically with the internet. Think probes and aliens. Ouch.

Yes, I know, CTW is a minefield of CC netaudio information. And I'm handsome. Control that jealousy, people.

Hypnagog - Dreaming In Pieces EP (link to zipped album in MP3, FLAC and WAV)

Hypnagog website

Up Records and Ektoplazm

Fabergé Eggs? I'll Take Two

Imagine, if you will, a craftsman hunched over a workbench, his concentration bent on producing a matchless gem fit for none but the cream of society. Further imagine, for the sake of an uninspired analogy, your nose pressed up against a jeweller's shop window as he places a Fabergé egg on a cushion of crushed velvet. If only you had access to the riches inside.

Let's face it, buster - you ain't gettin' no steenkin' jewellery. But do not fret. Succour is at hand in the form of one of the internet's great untapped music resources. If you visit blocSonic you'll get the following free musical Fabergés:

• Sixteen (you heard me, sixteen) zipped compilation albums, each painstakingly sourced from netlabels and Creative Commons websites around the world, available for free download in lossless FLAC format or mp3 (with a choice between 320kbps and 192 kbps). All tracks can be downloaded individually, which is good news for the many people without broadband.
• Highly professional and distinctive packaging artwork in tif, eps and pdf formats for your CD and jewel case, should you need something more tactile than an mp3 file.
• A substantial PDF file giving full track information and biographies, etc. of the artists. From netBloc 16 onwards there'll be a brief Q & A session with each artist.

As with all compilations, the tracks will elicit the following reactions: yuck/meh/dat is da shit, boyeee. With 16 albums to choose from, CTW's modus operandi was to download the 192 kbps mp3s, compile an enormous playlist in Microsatan's Windows Media Player and whittle the list down to tracks that rang my bell. Those tracks left standing in the rubble are the ones I will download at the better-sounding bit-rate of 320 kbps. I can tell you're impressed.

Of course, the compilations serve as a great starting point when searching for free netmusic. We all know how difficult it is to find music that suits our tastes perfectly, so being able to sift through blocSonic's compilations makes things easier and is also a lot of fun. Sites like blocSonic, Free Albums Galore, Phlow and Netlabelism are vital signposts on the open road to free music, and will help artists who don't have the backing of a record label to contemplate/sustain a music career, or who simply enjoy the buzz of releasing their music to a global audience.

BlocSonic should go from strength to strength. But here's the rub: given the high production values and the superb value for money (the music is free, donations to the artists are optional but welcome), the download figures are criminally low. It seems to me that the netlabel/Creative Commons scene is music's best-kept secret. Please, do me a favour - email your friends and colleagues with a link to blocSonic. They'll think you're terribly trendy, you'll walk a little taller, and the netlabel scene will continue to gather momentum. And, dammit, CTW's sidebar of "General Netlabel Sites" is far more exclusive than any hawker of trinkets to high society, so if blocSonic's been allowed to perch there for the last few months then you can rest assured it's worth visiting.

*gets off high horse*

The illustration at the top of this article is the cover for the latest compilation, Sweet Sixteen. Not only does it look lovely and give you an idea of the high standard of presentation common to the entire blocSonic website, it stops me having to use the blocSonic logo as the main illustration. I mean, as lovely as it is, it's this big:

 

..and the CTW computer boffins can do nothing with it. Stop laughing.

netBloc Volume Sixteen (Sweet Sixteen) (link to zipped album and individual files)

blocSonic

Campanologists Rejoice

My last review raved about an album that hit the net in, um, 2003, so as compensation here's something that's just appeared, mewling and puking, in the maternity ward. Foolk has released an EP with five remixes of Bells, a track from his new album Red Pills For Daddy, soon to be released on the Deadred label. CTW isn't the type of website that reviews all the latest netlabel releases (I'm too lazy discerning for that), but Foolk's Bells Remixes EP is definitely worth a listen. You can hear the original track at Foolk's MySpace. So, from the top:

1. Bells (Abuse/Rain & Hail Mix) - a rolling bassline and breakbeatish drums greet gently descending synths and blend with a bit of chopped guitar. We're off to a good start.

2. Bells (Karaoke Tundra & Peto Tazok Remix) - I'm guaranteed to love anything with the words Karaoke and Tundra in it, as I've said before. But curse my monolingual ways - all I can make out are those two words in the characteristically mad-as-a-hatter chopped vocal. Did Mr Tazok have to place KT in a straitjacket in order to finish the track, I wonder?

3. Bells (Millex/Latin Lover Remix)  - Here your ears get the old "kick/snare/kick/snare/here come the trancy synths" treatment. Enjoyable, but it fades out just as it gets going.

4. Bells (Milos 120 Remix) -  Hmm, let's see. *takes a swig* Ooh, glitchy, moody. No, wait, *sluices around teeth* here's a kick and a snare and *makes disgusting sucking noise* I'm getting some some bit-crushing and a taste of elderberry. Hey, it's minimal! *refuses to spit out* What's more, the tiny little pops and clicks create a melodic soundscape. *swallows mouthful and looks for more* Minimal fans might have heard it all before, but I found this remix to be an absolute treat. It feels futuristic. Excellent production, too. *hic*

5. Bells (Ear Drum Kru/Ring The Bell Remix) - Steel drums, a screaming James Brown - from Think (About It)? - and a sampled, silly vocal. What's not to like? It's a jolly dance-pop track that leaves me reflecting that the whole EP has put a smile on my face.

All of these remixes approach the one track differently, thus avoiding the curse of the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" remix that makes you wonder why the remix was attempted in the first place. This is a fun, free EP that has piqued my interest in Foolk's forthcoming record. I hope it does the same for you.

Foolk - Bells Remixes EP (zipped album)

Deadred label

Foolk's website

Foolk on MySpace

Buried treasure

Here's yet another great release from iD.EOLOGY - one perfectly formed EP of finely produced breakbeat, DnB (sort of), trance and chilled dance. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow the vocal instruction in the first track, Columbo in Africa, and "dig this". It's pretty easy when a growling bass helps push you along to confront the tense atmosphere created by some subtle cinematic-ish synths that hum gently in the background.

Move on to Who the F is Tyler Durden (a question I often ask myself) and you'll find a rolling, jazzy bassline backed by some very satisfying breakbeats, echoing pianos and horns and a cool descending synth melody.

Imagine changes the mood and style with a very slick and seductive trance track (I think it's trance - forgive my inexperience) that contrasts quick arpeggios with a throbbing synth that tries to get out of time but doesn't, forming a pleasing contrast.

Those tracks are my highlights but all the other tracks sound just as good. In Relectronic, NK has made a very satisfying album - polished, professional and full of little touches that reward the listener.

Tracks: Columbo in Africa , Who the F is Tyler Durden , Imagine 

Album: [iD.032] NK - Relectronic EP