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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Botany Bay: Soulful free rock

Cover art for Broken

I hear the word "soulful" being thrown around quite a lot when it comes to pop, rock, country, R&B, alternative, and just about every other sub-genre of modern popular music, but what does it really mean? To me, the term has always meant the ability to communicate emotion in rich and complex ways. Anyone can sing a sad song or a love song, but the rare artist brings dimension to such emotional content and paints a canvas of emotion from a pallet that is as rich as our own experience.

Such an artist is the Creative Commons veteran band, Botany Bay.

To be perfectly frank, there's quite a lot of junk on Jamendo and other free music sites. It takes me a long time to wade through it and find the gems, but when I do, I'm rewarded for the effort many-fold. Botany Bay was formed in 1995 with a lead singer whose name has since been changed on the band's Web site to protect her after falling prey to Scientology. The core of the current lineup is writer/keyboardist Stephan Kleinert, vocalist Stephanie Mühr, guitarist Wolfgang Springob, and Felix Klöckner. As gems go, the band is as lustrous as I could hope for. Their 2007 album, Grounded, is a 19-track opus whose contents are as varied as any collection I've seen on Jamendo. Some tracks harken to indie folk while others are driven pop-rock pieces. The common theme is that ineffable quality: soulfulness.

CBC Radio 3

CBC Radio 3 is an excellent Canadian radio station that's broadcast over the Internet and via Sirius Satellite Radio. They're also a curator on Free Music Archive where you can get access to reviews, concert recordings, and free music uploads from many artists featured on their station.

The service was originally modeled on BBC Radio One and similar efforts, and has been successful in reaching a wide audience and bringing attention to a number of performers. Pop and experimental pop hybrids are their primary focus, with more of the experimental work showing up on Free Music Archive and more of the mainstream on the Internet stream. The Web site is also a blog with its own reviews, artist interviews and promotional tracks.

I recommend that everyone explore the service, and thank my good neighbors, the Canadians, for supporting this sort of station!

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.

Magnifier: Google Music's free stuff!

Google Music has just launched their free service, which will allow you to upload 20,000 of your own music files, and then provide additional room for purchased and free music from the service which can then be streamed over the Web or to your Android device (and presumably other platforms in the future). In conjunction with the service, they have a Web site called Magnifier, which they use to advertise free music. Right now there are some examples up from David Bowie and The Rolling Stones, but that's part of the promotion for the launch. Typically, during the beta period, they've had up-and-coming bands that are publishing free tracks as a way of advertising.

I've discovered a few gems through Magnifier including:

• Empros by Russian Circles, an instrumental hard rock piece that reminds me of some of the earlier pieces from one of Jamendo's most popular commons artists, PeerGynt Lobogris
• Baby by Alice Smith & Aloe Blacc, an American cover of a 1969 Brazilian pop tune
• Marathon by Tennis, a wonderfully upbeat and strange ballad about a sailing trip

I recommend throwing Magnifier into your RSS feed reader (e.g. Google Reader) of choice; I know I have!

I'm also keeping an eye on other services, and intend to do a post about the free stuff available elsewhere sometime this week.

Édith Piaf: Internet Archive Collection

Widely regarded as one of the greatest French singers of the 20th century, Édith Piaf had an astounding voice and the ability to convey a rich emotional tone along with her relatively simple ballads. Probably best known for Non, je ne regrette rien which translates as, "No, I'm not sorry for anything", her impact on the post-WWII cultural landscape of France is quite significant.

The Internet Audio Archive always manages to amaze me, and their 2008 collection "Edith Piaf-21-30" certainly doesn't disappoint. The recordings are relatively low-bitrate, including an MP3 VBR, OGG and MP3 64k encoding. As a result, OGG might be your best bet, as it has been shown to surpass MP3 for sound quality at lower bitrates by a substantial amount.

There are three potential problems with this collection:

1. I'm not sure I entirely believe the claim that the recordings are in the public domain. IAA claims this to be true, and I want to believe it, but they're mid-20th century recordings which, in the U.S., would mean that they're still under copyright. I don't know French law, though, and the extremely overzealous copyright periods in the U.S. may not translate directly, there.
2. The 8th track is labeled Rien de Rien, but is, in fact, a duplicate of the 5th track, Non, je ne regrette rien.
3. The 9th track is in English, and a poster to the page claims that it is actually Eartha Kitt. I cannot confirm this, but the voice is definitely very different. Then again, many of those differences may stem from the use of a non-native language.

All around, it's a mixed bag, but well worth a listen.

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.

Song: Yakuza Baby by The Easton Ellises

Cover art from Musique

The latest netBloc release is out, and it contains a fun, upbeat, song that's categorized as electropop as its first track. I've never heard The Easton Ellises before, but they make me think of a sort of mid-80s quasi-punk, quasi-pop garage band, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! The lyrics begin with a sort of Killer Queen litany of the titular character's attributes, but it becomes more of a love song as it progresses. Of course, comparing sex appeal to crime isn't a new concept, but the Ellises make it feel fresh and exciting.

This single can be found on the latest netBloc: Vol. 34: The Whitewash, as part of the Jamendo release, EP: One, or on their home page as a soundcloud link. You can also watch the video for this song on YouTube. As you can see, they cover the various free media sources quite well, and I think we'll be hearing more from this band in the future.