This week’s release is unusually hard electronic music by released last year at the Sostanze netlabel. It features monotonic, stomping, pure Breakbeats or Drum & Bass — I’m not so sure about the exact classification. Six tracks with well chosen names like Preludio or Santo Hertz await to thrill your nerves and your neighbours if you are blessed with decently sized speakers.
A Best Of album representing all free music released last year… that sounds ambitious. The Phlow magazine tried it anyway. While I am hesitant that this monster compilation really includes all great tracks from last year, there are many tracks I would have missed otherwise. So as usual I selected some tracks which I think you should have heared. The complete release contains over 100 songs, so this selection by far cannot cover all genres.
Cute. Pop. Music. That’s this EP in a nutshell. Sweet like early child memories, with a faint glimpse of melancholy. The netlabel Corporate Identity serves this yummy musical candy. What a pity that it only has two tracks. Like usually, I strongly suggest to listen to the samples below and to download the release.
This release is itself a teaser for the full length album First Flight which they offer for free (ok, your email address) in 128 kbps MP3 — incredible. So better get the full album instead of bothering with this small bit.
Great ambient shoegaze Electropop like AIR. Hm… that’s stockfinster in a nutshell. What else to write? Of course they don’t sound exactly like them, they seem to have taken up influences by Zero 7, too. They are more difficult to classify as purely easy-listening, a little bit of Trip Hop is in the mix. 10 tracks or 1 hour of great music. This is one of the rare releases in which I usually don’t have to press Next once. Like usual, read on for a preview of my favourite tracks and the download link.
Cam Butler would easily win any “Be the next Ennio Morricone” contest, the composer of well known italo-western movie soundtracks like Once Upon a Time in the West. Cam Butler’s music sounds just like one of those soundtracks, but much happier. Guitars and violins ride into the sunset, riding on a chevalry of classic march drum patterns that remind me of Ravel’s Boléro. Listen to my two favourite tracks below and get the whole release of four tracks yourself.
Wow. It is impressive what calm synthetic carpets of ambient sounds can achieve. An emotionally dense experience awaits you. Just open your ears and listen to this impressive album by a talented young electronic artist. The album’s tagline “Toward a new electronic romanticism” nails it. While being very calm and ambient, the music is far from boring.
The Japanese netlabel Bump Foot is a great source for a wide range of free music. His Name Is Radar is a very organic sounding Pop Funk release. Younnat’s other album The Duct, released in 2007 at the same netlabel, is among the Top 10 of most downloaded releases. He also has released some tracks at Kahvi on the album Radiovision.
A well mixed one-file EP comes from Yasahi, released at the netlabel Sublogic Corporation, which specializes in electronic dance music. This release is a solid breakbeat breakfast. Five songs with a total playtime of 17 minutes wait to be discovered.
In this case, both download and this preview contain all tracks in a single file. The download also contains a cue file that allows direct access to the individual tracks like the track on an audio CD. Using the program mp3directCut, you can losslessly cut the single release to individual songs. But back to the music:
Cologne Commons is an annual conference and festival for digital culture that takes place in — surprise, surprise — Cologne in Germany. Unfortunately, I have never attended so far. YouTube enabled me to watch some conference talks online. Fortunately for me as music collector, a colourful music compilation is released for each conference. This album is the first compilation, released in March 2008. As usually, I’ll present my favourite three tracks directly in the article. The download link to the whole release follows all way down.
Obscure 70s funk samples, harvested from a supposedly vast record collection, are mixed together to create a strange, groovy sound. This album consists of ten tracks with a total playtime of 25 minutes.
Creator of this album is Chenard Walcker, a sampling artist who has released a lot of albums on the Internet Archive in his own netlabel called Free Sample Zone.
Category Review: Recommendations to music releases I like. Each review features track descriptions of my favourite tracks. A download link can be found at the bottom of each posting.
Hi, this blog is about great free music, self-made desktop wallpapers and some text in a while.