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!

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.

LukHash (SH music): 8bit music for an analog world

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, so when someone describes themselves as an 8bit rock band, my ears tend to perk up. Such is the case with LukHash (AKA SH music, and no I have no idea why they have two names, but both are used on their Web site). This project uses real 1980s era 8bit hardware such as Nintendo and Commodore64 to generate authentic 80s-era video game soundtrack-like tracks. Right now, PRELUDE, the first song on their May 2011 album, Digital Memories (also their first), is the #1 track on Jamendo.com, and after giving it a couple of listens, it has really begun to work its magic on me.

I'd also like to point out that the group appears to have made a subtle nod to ELO, one of my favorite bands. ELO's album, Time, began with the tracks Prologue and Twilight while Digital Memories begins with PRELUDE and TONIGHT. I don't know the that the coincidence was deliberate, but I'd like to think so.

I'm looking forward to good things from LukHash in the future. It will be interesting to see if 8bit rock is a sustainable subgenre past a first, high-concept album.

Atomic Cat: Electronic departure

I've been a fan of French electronic band and Jamendo regular, Atomic Cat for some time now, even though I'm not a big fan of the dance/club genre in general. Their most recent release, Rainy Day for Broken Heart, is a single song release, breaking in many ways with what their fans might expect from their frenetic, beat-driven releases of the past. Instead, Rainy Day is a bit like a Tangerine Dream piece with just a hint of Atomic Cat's usual sensibilities. It's, quite frankly, a song I'd expect to hear from Project Divinity, not Cat.

That's not to say that there's anything wrong with breaking from the mold, and in this case, the result is a pleasant soundscape that's a great way to start my day. If you're interested in exploring their other work, I recommend Trance Imagination, as one of the best examples of their work. It includes a number of instrumental club/dance/trance mixes as well as the lyrically simple, but beautiful Talking to the Moon. My favorite single from the band, however, is Time Is Running which is quite a bit more pop than their usual, making use of an array of trippy effects and morphing slowly from a haunting, one-verse ballad into an intense dance tune that reminds me of The Orb.

I hope you enjoy them. On a side note to readers: I recently contacted Google Music about including Jamendo tracks in their catalog. They dropped me a note in response indicating the method for such sites to partner with Google, which I subsequently forwarded on to the marketing folks at Jamendo. Here's hoping we'll see movement on this front in the future! I'm tired of Google Music treating all of my Jamendo albums as second-class citizens, not allowing me to share or +1 them.

Album: Not Alone in Kyoto by Project Divinity

One of my favorite ambient/electronic bands, Project Divinity, has 6 free albums released on Jamendo of which my favorite is still the early, Divinity. Their recent release of Not Alone In Kyoto in August brings a calming, background-music-for-travel themed selection of three new songs to your collection.

The artist responsible for Project Divinity is also behind two other excellent electronic efforts. Finnish Matti Paalanen is the motive force behind Project Divinity, Celestial Aeon Project (now probably best known for the soundtrack to the world-first "heroic" mode kill video for World of Warcraft boss, Ragnaros) and Frozen Silence which Matti describes as "neo-folk, neo-classical instrumental".

Getting back to Not Alone in Kyoto, the songs average about 4 minutes each and the album only lasts around 12 minutes total, but it's well worth those 12 minutes if you enjoy resting, thinking, reading or doing work with soothing music.

If I had a complaint, it would be that the percussion on all three songs occasionally becomes distracting from the general atmosphere of detachment that the pieces otherwise maintain.