blocSonic and the netBloc series

It cannot be stressed enough that the future of music is as uncertain right now as it has ever been. Giant corporations are competing with dozens of different sorts of indie music outlets. Some are focusing on older technologies, some on newer. Of the newer tech, the dominant phenomenon is the netlabel: publishers who primarily use the World Wide Web to publicize and promote their artists albums which they distribute electronically. Of the netlabels that I've interacted with, blocSonic is by far the most innovative and prolific.

News: PeerGynt Lobogris planning a rock opera

PeerGynt Lobogris, a long-time contributor of free music to Jamendo.com, has just announced the upcoming release of a rock opera titled, "The Inmutant," sometime before the end of the year. The above "trailer" is more of a behind the scenes glimpse, but it certainly spikes my interest.

If you're unfamiliar with his work, check out Lobogris's work with Epic Soul Factory on the Night Hunter track from their Xpansion Edition album. Honestly, I think it's the best work he's ever done. He's partnered with BlondBlood (see his "White Flag" single on YouTube) and Jaime Heras (listen to his entire "Siderea"album on YouTube) to form "Singing Sands" for the musical effort and the vocals will be performed by what's looking like a full cast including Ricardo Texidó, Conde, Juanjo Meroño and Lara Castro along with some folks that have yet to be named.

It's hard to "review" a trailer, but a few things I'll point out: Lobogris's heavy guitar won't let you forget that this is a rock opera, but if you were expecting anything else, you probably hadn't heard his music before. BlondBlood strikes me as a multi-talented artist, but as the above linked video makes clear, he's learning quite a lot on his feet, right now. If he's composing the entire opera as well as doing art, arrangements and several instruments, I wonder if he won't be in over his head... perhaps only time will tell. I like his sense of mood and, coupled with Lobogris's emphatic, lush ambience I could see this project being quite interesting, musically.

Web Site: FMA on Kickstarter

Sorry that I've been away. Just wanted to drop a quick note that a) I'm alive and well and b) Free Music Archive (FMA) has been curating a page on Kickstarter! If you're not familiar with Kickstarter, it's a Web site that allows you to give money to businesses or individuals to get their projects or products off the ground. It's been a hotbed of creative indie music, so FMA and Kickstarter are a great match. Check it out!

Album: Butcher's Ballroom by Diablo Swing Orchestra

Butcher's Ballroom
cover art

I can be a pretty hard-to-please listener, and for every album that I write a review of (almost all of which are positive) there are 20 or more that I've listened to and been unhappy. When I listen to something that's well crafted, I appreciate it, but that doesn't always mean it's great. In fact, it rarely is. One of the very rare diamonds in the rough is Diablo Swing Orchestra's Butcher's Ballroom.

I've been holding off writing a review of BB for some time now because I didn't want to do it off the cuff without thinking about it for a bit. Diablo Swing Orchestra is a Swedish avant-garde metal band, according to Wikipedia and BB is their first album which was released for free via their Web site and Jamendo.com. They've since maintained their ranking as one of the all-time most popular albums on that site, and for good reason.

Android and free music

Free music reviews are a fine thing, but knowing that there's free music out there and being able to conveniently listen to it on whatever devices you have handy are not the same thing at all. I thought I'd spend some time on how I do that and what tools exist to make your life easier if you have an Android phone or tablet like me.

Album: Celestial Aeon Project: The Fall of Ragnaros

Fall of Ragnaros cover art

Celestial Aeon Project is one of several musical projects to come from electronic and ambient wunderkind, Matti Paalanen. He's made several nods to the massively multiplayer online game (MMO), World of Warcraft, in a number of his albums, but recently, he produced an entire album about the game's "Cataclysm" expansion storyline, entitled The Fall of Ragnaros. Fall is a thematic soundtrack album, which has been used in a number of excellent World of Warcraft videos including the world first heroic-mode kill of the final boss, Ragnaros, of the expansion (for which at least one of the tracks was created).

Video games aside, Fall is a sweeping, grandiose soundtrack that would fit well into any number of films. As background music it is great for work, though it's a bit too driven for relaxing at home (see Celestial Aeon Project's other albums for that). I highly recommend checking it out if you find yourself enjoying Danny Elfman's Music for a Darkened Theater or the like.

Welcome to new readers

Dangerously Free Sounds would like to welcome our new readers. I've just started to put some advertising out for the blog, so expect to see more posts here, soon (I have one coming for one of my favorite ambient bands, Celestial Aeon Project). Meanwhile, feel free to browse by labels. Some of the most populated tags on the site are electronic and rock. To those who came here thinking that, perhaps, this was going to be your ticket to free copies of Lady Gaga's latest album, let me clarify the history a bit:

As I mentioned in my first posting on this blog, DFS is about exploring the music that artists give to the public for free download. Sometimes they release or perform one or a few songs as a promotion for the rest of their work, such as you'll find on Free Music Archive's WFMU. Sometimes artists want to get their music out there first to build a brand, as you'll find on Jamendo.com. No matter how or why music is released to the public, though, I want to find it and review it so that others can enjoy it too.

That's the mission of DFS: bring free music to an audience that will enjoy it. So... enjoy!

Group: Axial

At the intersection of free music and free software stands Axial, a Brazilian band which is also working to create and distribute a free music tool called Bagagem (literally translated: Luggage). They've released one song (Papaloko) on Free Music Archive and have a number of free podcasts on their site (warning: QuickTime browser plugin required).

From the single sample song, I can say that they certainly capture the Brazilian "lounge" sound perfectly, and the lead singer (Sandra Ximenez) has a voice like silk. The wood-percussion and other elements of more traditional music of the southern hemisphere are a welcome break from the routine of heavily electronic and artificial tunes available on every corner of the Web, these days.

The non-free album, Axial, contains the track that FMA has for free, but also contains twelve other tracks that you can explore if you found the free track intriguing.

Album / Artist: DUDELDRUM

DUDELDRUM
cover art

DUDELDRUM is both the name of a band and of their first free album. The band is Russian, but the sound is a mix of Celtic, rock and other influences. The band suggests that their sound is similar to Corvus Corax, whose instrument arrangement also includes extensive use of bagpipes, drums and electric guitar. While a bit less refined a sound than Corvus Corax, I very much appreciate the creativity of DUDELDRUM.

Cascade is a particular favorite of mine for managing to be somewhat trance-like with bagpipes. Not something I would have considered, previously...

Skaz is also a fun and frenetic piece that's worth listening to. I might consider adding it to my "stay awake while driving" mix.

The album certainly isn't for everyone, but I'd suggest giving it a try. At the very least, you will not come away from disappointed that it was just more of the same...

Album: Atomic Cat: Land of Dreams

Album Cover:
Land of Dreams

Atomic Cat is a french electronic band that I've reviewed in general, here, before. Their latest album, Land of Dreams, is very much what you would expect from them with one notable difference: the usual one or two songs with lyrics are missing. This is an entirely instrumental album, which is fine for a dance/trance album, but might leave some AC fans wanting for their signature style of repetitive, dreamy lyrics of the sort that appear in Talking to the Moon or Time Is Running.

The titular first track is ridiculously more popular on Jamendo than the rest of the album, and for good reason. It has all of Atomic Cat's usual catchy-but-not-just-repetitive charm and remains a solid, danceable track. Beyond that, I recommend that you check out Desteny (sic) of Love and Karma Vibrations, both of which have some surprises in store.

Overall, I'd say this is one of AC's weaker albums, but then I'm extremely partial to their lyrical work and not nearly as much to their pure instrumentals. Still, AC is one of the most consistently excellent free artists out there, and if you're partial to electronic, instrumental work, this is definitely a must for your collection!

Why free music?

I've had friends ask why I would bother wading through the mountains of truly awful music that's offered for free, just to find the few gems. After all, isn't it easier to pay someone else to do that work for me? Well, here's the thing: if I do that work and then review the good songs, albums and artists on my blog, then lots of other people get the benefit. Sure, I spend my time wading through the noise, but I get to see thousands of others reap the benefits.

On the other hand, I get to discover bands like Diablo Swing Orchestra (who restored the joy that heavy metal brought to me when I was a teen), Atomic Cat (who demonstrated that the terms "dance" and "quality music" were not mutually exclusive) and so many more. It's a real pleasure to listen to this music, whether it's free or not.

So enjoy the blog, download the music and have a great time! If you feel like giving back, post a comment to this thread, and tell me what you've discovered!

Group: Tunguska Electronic Music Society

The cover of the first album:
Chillout Grooves

The Tunguska Electronic Music Society is a loose-knit group of mostly ambient and electronic artists, that was started in Russia. A quasi-netlabel in its own right, the Society has now published over a dozen albums through Jamendo.com, and continues to publish new music to this day.
The first album, Chillout Grooves, gives an excellent sense of the project. The first track, Tunguska M by Bigfoot is a bit more rock-oriented with electric guitars, drums and keyboard setting the stage for the rest of the album.
Euphoria by MoVoX is a much more experimental piece, with complex timing and wild electronic effects that are almost theremin-like.
Vacuum Fields by Aquascape is a very traditional style of relaxing ambient composition with the addition of electric guitar.
Overall, the album plays as expected of a high-quality, modern electronic project, anywhere in the world.
The most recent album, Craters: Romeiko seems to be taking on the native North American musical traditions, attempting to forge a modern re-interpretation of the classic tribal rhythms. There's more vocal work on Craters than the earlier work, and for a Western audience this might be a problem, but for my money, a good foreign vocal is just an extra instrument.Grust' Devushki by Panna Cotta is a lovely trancy number with a beautiful female lead vocal track that's mesmerizing in any language.
Craters is currently the most popular album on Jamendo.com, and in my opinion, that status is well-deserved.
There's so much more to go into, and I probably will write individual reviews of each album if I have time. But for now, why not go down load an album or two and see what you think?

Album: Epic Soul Factory - Xpansion Edition

Epic Soul Factory is a band that I've been aware of for a while now, but who I was never terribly impressed by (though I certainly didn't think they were bad). Their section album, Xpansion Edition, which was uploaded to Jamendo in January of this year, changes all of that. This album is an ambient, orchestral, soundtrack for everything from quiet nights to the most epic of video-game battles. It's a real suite, and well worth listening to.

Val Davis raising funds for a new Album

Cover of Val Davis's first album

Val Davis, whose first album is a rock/country/folk hybrid called Immortal, is raising money for a second album. His first work was characterized by an acoustic sense of open spaces, wonder and humor, best summed up by the dreamy Texas Sky and the tongue-in-cheek Court of Greedy Kings. I suggest giving the album a try (the Jamendo download has some really annoying song naming problems with underscores all over the place (intentional?) but you can find it on Amazon's MP3 download service for just $9 if you want to save the time in correcting song names.

Anyway, if you like it, consider contributing to his next album. I'd love to see more patronized free music production, and to that end, I've already thrown a few dollars his way.