Essential space ambient music with cinematic ambitions.
Space-based ambient music, calmly uplifting. Produced by artist ALONE from Saint Petersburg, this album consists mostly of long, stretched-out synth pad sounds. Bass only fades in late into a song, drums are a rare occurrence.
Continue reading “ALONE – [2017] Beautiful Universe”Uncompromising hard-hit tech house. Melodic, yet noisy compositions.
Tech house to me sounds like the red wine of electronic dance music. Very tasteful, yet sometimes quite dry. But once after you have gotten used to that strange feeling on your tongue resp. eardrum, you must come back to it from time to time. If you need more, the mexican artist has archived their back catalogue on Bandcamp for our listening pleasure.
Continue reading “In Vitro – [2008] Falso Self En Androides EP”Music festival promo release by Mexican netlabel MYRDAL, spanning indie rock to indie pop.
A recent dive into the deep waters of the Internet Archive yielded MYRDAL from Mexico, apparently active since 2012 and still releasing music. So I gave their back catalogue (35 items) a spin and found this compilation, which I serve you today. Popular music, but with local flavour in vocals and style.
Continue reading “Various Artists – [2015] Gold Medal”Instrumental hip-hop and easy listening from the olden days.
How could I miss out on reviewing this album for so long? My bad, your good: prepare for an album that must be part of every anthology of CC music. Aphilas must not shy away from being compared to artists like Air or Zero 7.
Continue reading “Aphilas – [2003] Instrumentally Ill EP”Early single release from one of the forerunners of the free music scene.
Labelled as Chillout or Ballad at the time, this vocal pop remix of an even older track released at the same label still sounds fresh 20 years later.
The song features harpsichord sounds, dream pop lyrics and easy listening percussion. The radio-ready production makes it stand out from the otherwise rather experimental sound back in the days.
Continue reading “Vic – [2000] One Turn 5 (Vic Remix)”Exceptionally varied compilation of experimental to conventional electronica from Phonocake.
It’s hard to talk about a release who’s name you cannot pronounce, and more genres included than I possibly could fit into this tiny review. Ranging from art pieces that you would expect screening in an avant-garde museum opening. The comparison is fitting, as this whole release is a nice marker for the state of Creative Commons music in the late 2000’s on both ends of the creative spectrum.
Continue reading “Various Artists – [2008] 月餅”Melancholic melodic indie folk pop prog rock. Boom. Genre keyword density overflow.
Netlabel 12rec., active from 2004 to 2011, is still one of the most relevant names in the game due to their consistently high quality throughout their 64 releases. Giraffe is representative for their roster, with an artsy, yet approachable indie style slightly “left” of Elliot Smith.
Continue reading “Giraffe – [2005] Giraffe”Uplifting house music, straight from the source.
Netlabel Toucan Music is my preferred stop when fishing for well-produced, mainstream sounding dance music with a Creative Commons license attached. While I typically like and review their hour-long mix releases, here I present to you a short, two tracks long EP of remixes done by two staples of the label’s roster.
Continue reading “Psychadelic Pedestrian, Notch – [2019] Psychadelik Pedestrian v Notch Remixes”Slick abstract trance, located somewhere between deadmau5 and Moderat. Genuinely trance-inducing.
Netlabel Digital Diamonds has stayed one of the more active netlabels. As such, it comes up more and more often when fishing for recent releases in the younger parts of the Internet Archive’s audio section. This release is a particularly brilliant gem of cerebral dance music. Doing well both as fancy coding backdrop as well as late night club furniture, its polished soundscapes hide lots of work that must have gone into their effort betraying shiny finish.
Continue reading “Point – [2019] Human Music”Routinely produced indie pop rock by staples of the genre in Creative Commons land.
If you have been following “the scene” for some years, Emerald Park are one of the big names. They regularly have released high quality indie pop ranging from synth to vocal pop rock. Clearly aimed at broader rather than niche audiences, their sound is pleasing yet not flat.
Continue reading “Emerald Park – [2020] Basement Sessions (CC Version)”