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.
...and congratulations to all other German football fans. I'm interrupting my publishing schedule to post the above screenshot which proves that The World's Most Important Free Music Blog* has been featured on Breitband, the highly-respected Deutschlandradio Kultur (German state radio) programme devoted to media and digital culture. Yes, I was flown out on the express instruction of Angela Merkel just to be photographed strolling along Germany's sun-kissed north coast and ignoring an autograph request from an annoying child.
It's interesting to note that co-presenter Volker Tripp, who is heavily involved with the excellent iD.EOLOGY netlabel, favoured CTW's highlighted pop, rock and folk songs and mostly eschewed dance and electronica, although this was possibly due to time constraints and a wish to appeal to a large audience. (I apologise for not knowing whether his velvet-tongued co-presenter was Julia Eikmann, Jana Wuttke or Anja Krieger.) Equally notable was the number of songs with vocals (all sung in English). This tells me three things:
Creative Commons music would be more popular if there were more rock and pop netlabels.
Germany is enviably bilingual.
There are parts of Europe where the mullet can still be seen in the wild.
Germany has an endearingly high regard for Creative Commons culture. I've always thought of the country itself as Netlabel Zentraal; it's no coincidence that Beat Magazine is probably the only major music magazine that treats the CC netlabel scene seriously. It's an honour to be a tiny part of that culture.
Please click on the illustration to visit Breitband and hear the show, or listen below:
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.
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.
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)
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.
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!
It seems that every other album I review has a pristine white background. But don't worry your pretty little head about it: instead, come home from work/college/the pub/prison, select Blue Swerver's The Art of Collapsing from your extensive collection of CTW recommendations, flop onto the sofa, sip something good (tea, beer, wine, life partner) and listen to smoky vocals drift over eleven electronic blues-jazz morsels. Yeah, baby. For those of you out there wondering how to blend jazz and the blues with electronica, look no further than the first track, the spookily good Untempo, which morphs from jazzy blues to downtempo IDM to electronica before culminating in a short slice of trip-hop and an ending that suits the final lyric perfectly. Less than four minutes long, its many changes in tempo and mood provide real value for money – if that's not a surreal thing to say
about a free CC album. Don't blame me if you wake up tomorrow surrounded by empty wine bottles, a full ashtray and a trilby you've never seen before. As I said, it's the first track (apologies to feed readers - I'm waiting for Jamendo to do something about its invisible media player):
The Art of Collapsing is a disciplined album from Blue Swerver, a five-strong band from London. There's no egotistical jazz twiddling (which is something I love, when in the mood): all the musicians serve the
song. Nick Street's electronic trickery and Robin Grey's (for it is he) bass provide a firm bedding for Adam Green's
whispered/slurred vocals and Jules Fenton's judicious drumming. Ben
Oliver is a dab hand at jazz-blues piano. According to them, the god Orpheus helps out on triangle. So they've got that going for them.
A true fact about track seven: Zinedine Zidane is
not the name of a French footballing wizard but is actually a formula
invented by Louis Armstrong in his bid to discover jazz's equivalent
to the theory of relativity: Satchmo found that those five syllables,
pronounced in that precise order, immediately increased a singer's
hipness by a factor of cool. He died too soon to publicise his
findings – so thank CTW for the research. Adam Green's vocals in
the verses totter along the ragged edge between ultra-jazzy and
off-key, but the chorus is the coolest, catchiest thing you'll hear
all week. (Find Zinedine Zidane by clicking
on a track name in the Jamendo player and choose from the pop-up
playlist.) It ends with a marvellously pithy line: The rest of the week was much
better/I finally had it out with my neighbour's dog/He's been pissin'
on my roses/for way too long.
Speaking of which, what a pleasure it
is to hear such distinctive lyrics. This from Job, where a jazz piano and light electronica help to tell the Biblical tale: They said, “Crazy, you're crazy
still praying to Him.”/He said, “God is my shepherd even though
he burns my skin.” Or there's this from At The
Movies: Side by side at the movies/disappointing pizza and
a slow walk home.
There are a couple of beauty spots in the album's otherwise flawless complexion: the vocals suffer from too much sibilance and my crappy sound system distorts the trumpet solo in Tasky, though the latter's verses of beat poetry come through very clearly, which, depending on your taste for wordplay, may or may not be a good thing.
Right, this review is getting longer than my alcohol-deprived tongue, so I shall leave you to discover the other tracks with the advice to stick the album on your "chilled Anjou/Muscadet/Gewürztraminer/Buckfast Cider" playlist, if you have one. Please think about making a donation to Blue Swerver to thank and encourage them - it's easy to do at Jamendo. I can't remember if I found The Art of Collapsing via the peerless Free Albums Galore, but that's not going to stop me from a drive-by plug. ;)
Blue Swerver - The Art of Collapsing on Jamendo & Modifythevan (zipped album & individual files)
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