Allison Weiss’ lovelorn yet buoyant acoustic live album

Artist: Allison Weiss  | Album: Live at Sidewalk, NYC

A cross between the witty prose of Suzanne Vega and the young poppy angst of Avril Lavigne, Weiss is shiny and buoyant, even in her lovelorn pain. You can tell she’s thoroughly enjoying herself onstage, performing her music and conversing with her audience intimately. She performs the entire set on acoustic guitar, making this sound more like a jam session on your back porch after dinner than an actual album. But that’s the appeal of Weiss’ music and the personality that shows from her spiels in-between songs. Her pop is the approachable kind, like that of a talented friend’s, or a beatnik cousin’s — the person you can count on to break out her original songs around a campfire. Favorite tracks include the jump-up-and-dance album opener “I’m Ready,” the Suzanne Vega-ish “July 25, 2007,” the bittersweet end-of-relationship “I Had to Do It,” the angry “Yer Goin’ Down,” and the cover version of Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

She knows her guitar well, and plays it with enough variety to keep it interesting. Can’t wait for her to finish her studio album. Interestingly enough, this Athens, Georgia-based artist raised a bunch of money via Kickstarter in order to record her album. Her initial goal was $2,000 but by the end of the campaign, she got more than 7k pledged.  In gratitude, she performed a marathon live-streaming concert of her singing all 50 of her songs on one afternoon, and she’s releasing it as a gift to all her donors. Talent + skill + indie marketing savvy = an artist living out her dreams.  More power to her, we say. 

DETAILS:
12 MP3s encoded at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. Total run time of 44 minutes. 

Download page for Allison Weiss’ live album (one zip file around 41 MB) 

Artist website.

Portabot’s liberating wall of noise

Artist: Portabot |   Album: There Must Be a Sunrise In Every Ending | Netlabel: 12rec.net

Just like the most basic tenets of life aren’t self-evident until you’re only peripherally conscious of them, some music won’t make sense until you forget you’re listening.  Portabot’s 44-minute album of maniacally-sliced-and-diced guitar samples, drones, FX, noise, atmosphere and glitches is one example  of what I’m talking about. Listen to it at work and let your consciousness fade in and out as you concentrate on whatever humdrum task you’re doing at your tiny cubicle in the middle of the corporate machinebeast’s belly. And pretty soon Portabot will make an awful amount of sense. Portabot (aka César Pesquera, a Spain-born graphic designer, director and musician who lives and works in London and Barcelon) is on a mission to free your mind from the repetitious transactions you deal with and expose you to the radiation of his granular synthesis and sample distortion. 

There is noise out there. And the noise in your headphones will drown out the noise around you. Wave upon wave upon wave of building noise grows in your ear canal. When the album finally ends there is release and the silence becomes a sad affair. In that sense, Portabot’s album is the muzak that sets you free.

DETAILS: 

12 MP3s encoded at 256 kbps 44.1 kHz stereo. Album’s zip file is 106 MB in size. Total runtime: 44:52

Download the entire album as a zip file from their netlabel release page on 12rec.net (which includes the music video for track 12: “Lladro”). 

http://www.12rec.net/Release_Portabot_055.htm

Artist website: http://www.portabot.net/

Just like the most basic tenets of life aren’t self-evident until you’re only peripherally conscious of them, some music won’t make sense until you forget you’re listening.  Portabot’s 44-minute album of maniacally-sliced-and-diced guitar samples, drones, FX, noise, atmosphere and glitches is one example  of what I’m talking about. Listen to it at work and let your consciousness fade in and out as you concentrate on whatever humdrum task you’re doing at your tiny cubicle in the middle of the corporate machinebeast’s belly. And pretty soon Portabot will make an awful amount of sense. Portabot (aka César Pesquera, a Spain-born graphic designer, director and musician who lives and works in London and Barcelona) is on a mission to free your mind from the repetitious transactions you deal with and expose you to the radiation of his granular synthesis and sample distortion. 

There is noise out there. And the noise in your headphones will drown out the noise around you. Wave upon wave upon wave of building noise grows in your ear canal. When the album finally ends there is release and the silence becomes a sad affair. In that sense, Portabot’s album is the muzak that sets you free.

DETAILS: 

12 MP3s encoded at 256 kbps 44.1 kHz stereo. Album’s zip file is 106 MB in size. Total runtime: 44:52

Download the entire album as a zip file from their netlabel release page on 12rec.net (which includes the 18 MB music video for track 12: “Lladro”). 

Artist website: http://www.portabot.net/

The Wave Pictures’ lament on the fate of the artist

Artist: The Wave Pictures.     Album: Puncture my Pride

The Wave Pictures sounds like they belong on the film soundtrack to High Fidelity. They have that anachronistic tenderness that was last seen in late ’60s folk songs or ’80s UK new romantic bands like The Smiths, New Order, and The Waterboys. The proof? They mix strummed acoustic guitars, fiddles, pop saxophones, Beatles-esque backup vocals and melodies that borrow from folk songs.  In “Now You Are Pregnant,” singer David Tattersall lilts like Morissey, while “Holding Hands” rocks out in full psychedelic, post-punk mode. The topics that Tattersall writes about include: love (of course), the angst of being a writer, scultpture and marmalade, alienation, isolation, and forgetting about all the pain in alcohol and cigarettes. And he uses repetition to drive the point home, as well as sometimes awkward and dramatic pauses in the middle of his tunes.

Some the lyrics border on the inane, but with the band rawk-ing out underneath, it doesn’t matter. You get carried along in the wave of their testosterone-laden, alcohol-tinged whining. Puncture My Pride is then a lament on the hubris of the modern day world that relegates the artist to the pub, written in the key of folk. 

 

DETAILS: 

12 MP3s encoded in 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. All files: 65 MB. Total runtime: 47:09  

EP released for free exclusively on the Team Love Library. (Requires a signup.)  http://library.team-love.com

Artist website:  http://www.thewavepictures.com/

Lauren Zettler’s live album gives somber folkpop teeth

Artist: Lauren Zettler
Album: Live in L.A.

Soundling vocally like a younger Paula Cole or Vanessa Carlton,  Zettler comes across as a somber, mature folk artist. When she lets loose on tracks like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (a cover of a Bob Dylan tune) and “Over My Head,”  her midwestern drawl begins to show its teeth, and her bittersweet lyrics and melodies grab your throat.  The fact that she performs with a live band on this album (mandolin, clarinet, drums, percussions) greatly increases the tonal variety of the music here. From jump-up rock-n-roll to tender folk ballads. “Thank You” is a quick, folksy ditty  that would put the Indigo Girls to shame. And then there’s the Radiohead cover “Creep” which encapsulates her alienation in a pretty package with ribbons and bows.

She changes tempo midway through some of her tracks, bringing surprises along the way (which her band gets through without a hitch). You can tell that she’s trying to make music that lasts, that aims for something greater than a 4-minute track on a CD.  Look past the limitations of her guitar playing,  and the live recording’s imperfections (clipping /distortion at some of the louder sections) and you will find a fearless young artist baring her aspirations and experiences on the stage for all to hear. To listen is to feel voyeuristic anxiety. Am I supposed to hear this? Or is this a private conversation between her and the universe? Turns out it’s both. And we are lucky to be included in the audience.  Bravo, Lauren.

Note: The YouTube video above is footage taken on her recent “Midwest or Bust” tour.

DETAILS:
7 MP3s, encoded at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. Zip file is approx. 30 MB in size.

Download the free album (approx. 30 MB ) by signing up for her artist newsletter on her website.

Artist Website: http://www.laurenzettler.com

Sean Fournier’s fresh sparkly pop in “Oh My”

Artist: Sean Fournier
Album: Oh My

What makes pop Pop? Maybe a little acoustic guitar and some Paul Simon-like vocals over a bubbly beat. Maybe some Ben Folds-y vocals backed by acoustic piano melodic lines and broad strings. Maybe love songs with sentimental similes (“If your love was a broken stereo, well I’d be music to your ears.”) Maybe it’s a bunch of ethnic dance loops and some vocoded, auto-tuned vocals.

Sean Fournier - Oh My (album cover)

However you define it, Sean Fournier should be classified under the pop banner. And this 6-song album “Oh My”  (his 4th) should be an interesting and fresh addition to the pop idols you already have hiding  in your mp3 library. His lyrics are poetic without being cheesy and his music brings you places instead of hammering you into a pulp with the same blocks of overused cliches. Favorites include the ethnic percussion and drama of “Holding the Hand of the Hurricane” and the upbeat sunshine of “Broken Stereo.”

To top it all off, because the album is released under Creative Commons, he’s giving everyone a chance to do cover versions of his songs which he’s releasing as its own album “Oh Brother.”  See his cover version project page for more details.

DETAILS:

6 MP3s at VBR 44.1 kHz stereo.

DOWNLOAD all tracks in one zip file (Size: 26 MB) from Jamendo

Artist website: http://www.sean-fournier.com/

The Subtle Downtempo of Koei: Aion OST

 

Koei : Aion OST

IMAGE: http://one.dot9.ca/2/releases/011/images/225.jpg

When Vincent Fugère (aka Vizion) feels sad, he doesn’t just mope about the Interwebs, posting emo messages on Twitter. No sir. He gets to his workstation and channels his doom into his music. This EP released on the One netlabel, is 24 minutes and 49 seconds of quiet lonely introspection and undistilled sadness. Conceptually the EP is a soundtrack for the last man on earth, Koei, using the haunting imagery of a possibly non-existent graphic novel entitled Aion. 

It is both organic and mechanical, mixing ethnic percussions and subtle electronic beats with sad synth pads and flowing melodic lines. In “Izanami All Over Again” and “And the Nightsky Fell Upon Us” you have spoken word samples from faded documentaries and long-dead homilies coming back to remind Koei of the civilization that once was. There are touches of IDM and glitch in “As I Gasp For My Last Breath: Introspection” giving menace and atmosphere to a simple tune. The final track “Le Point de Fuite” is nothing more than long melodic tones reverberating over dead space and then a slow muted groove.  Overall, “Aion” is a beautiful EP of subtle electronic downtempo which is a perfect background for working or for rainy days contemplating your own eroding mortality. 

 

DETAILS: 

7 MP3s, 192 kbps stereo, 44.1 kHz

Download all tracks as one zip file. (34 MB) 

http://www.archive.org/compress/one09

Release page  on the One Netlabel 

http://one.dot9.ca/2/releases.php?id=011

Vision’s artist website:

http://vizion.genshimedia.com/

 

Koei - Aion OST

When Vincent Fugère (aka Vizion) feels sad, he doesn’t just mope about the Interwebs, posting emo messages on Twitter. No sir. He gets to his workstation and channels his doom into his music. This EP released on the One netlabel, is 24 minutes and 49 seconds of quiet lonely introspection and undistilled sadness. Conceptually the EP is a soundtrack for the last man on earth, Koei, using the haunting imagery of a possibly non-existent graphic novel entitled Aion. 

 

It is both organic and mechanical, mixing ethnic percussions and subtle electronic beats with sad synth pads and flowing melodic lines. In “Izanami All Over Again” and “And the Nightsky Fell Upon Us” you have spoken word samples from faded documentaries and long-dead homilies coming back to remind Koei of the civilization that once was. There are touches of IDM and glitch in “As I Gasp For My Last Breath: Introspection” giving menace and atmosphere to a simple tune. The final track “Le Point de Fuite” is nothing more than long melodic tones reverberating over dead space and then a slow muted groove.  Overall, “Aion” is a beautiful EP of subtle electronic downtempo which is a perfect background for working or for rainy days contemplating your own eroding mortality. 

 

DETAILS: 

7 MP3s, 192 kbps stereo, 44.1 kHz

Download all tracks as one zip file. (34 MB) 

Release page  on the One Netlabel. 

Vizion’s artist website.

 

Pinionist’s “Machinations” is Electro-Industrial Beauty

Search Twitter for “Free+ Album” and you will uncover a host of goodies that only come to those seeking for the “magnificent random.” One such example is Pinionist’s 3rd album “Machinations” (released July 2009) which is available for free on his own website, and which, on first listen, led me to exclaim: “Holy hell!!!!! I never expected anyone doing industrial stuff this well to release it for free!”

“Machinations” is 12 tracks (a glorious 46 minutes and 19 seconds) of some of the heaviest electro-industrial rock I’ve heard this side of Nine Inch Nails and 1990s-era Ministry. For the most part, the tracks flow seamlessly into one another creating an immense texture of heavy noise.

Tracks like the album opener aptly entitled “Torture” bring menace back into the industrial mix, pitting groaning drums with guitar distortion that fills you with that warm fuzzy feeling called fear. Track 4 “Social Abortion” even mixes in a little pop bounciness into the mix along with ten-foot walls of noise. “Escalation” starts out with a plucked guitar ballad but apropos of the title, quickly leaps into headbanging mode by the one-minute mark. Title track “Machinations” melts from a post-punk rhythmic piledriver into a slower grind.  “This Means Nothing to Me” is a nightmare lullaby with an anthemic mantra for this humanistic society we live in.

The album is a brilliant noise in the bland silence of our world of plastic pop idols. Pinionist (AKA Stuart Spoard) is vocalist, composer, arranger, and a genius at his art.  Download it now.

DETAILS
12 MP3s at 320 kbps stereo 44.1 kHz.

Download all files in one zip file: Machinations

Pinionist’s website.

Eat Rabbit’s videogame zaniness in “Kiss the Dolphin”

Eat Rabbit – Kiss The Dolphin

In two words: crazy,  funny. Lyon-based artist Eat Rabbit pushes himself to the limit with this 14-track album that fuses old-school TB808 beats with insane electro elements resulting in a break-dancing frenzy. Sounds like early 808State, Orbital, and even Prodigy if you played Prodigy’s tracks about 30 BPM faster than the original speed (and if they took themselves less seriously).

A meaty synth bass encourages your brain to urinate in the album opener “Waves of Piss” but that’s probably the most serious track on there. Starting with “Monsieur Dauphin” in track 2, you get fast-paced bouncy tracks with vocal snippets, and craziness everywhere. The samples fly about, the beat is relentless and hyperkinetic. Adult content and cuss words abound on “Caviar on a Booty” but then are spaced out childishly, even mixing in the theme from the Batman TV show, making it about as adult as a SpongeBob porno. “The Book of the Dead Seahorses” sounds like a soundtrack for a Wii game featuring murdering rabbits with Attention Deficit Disorder.

In summary: “Kiss the Dolphin” is a zany, tongue-in-cheek soundtrack to the hilarious side-scrolling adventure videogame which we like to call ‘life in the 21st century.’ Trust me, it’s 49 minutes of the most fun you’ll ever have without playing your Wii.

DETAILS

Release page on Da! Heard It Records

http://www.daheardit-records.net/en/discography/dhr10/

Eat Rabbit discography on Discogs

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Eat+Rabbit

Eat Rabbit on MySpace

http://www.myspace.com/eatrabbit

In two words: crazy,  funny. Lyon-based artist Eat Rabbit pushes himself to the limit with this 14-track album that fuses old-school TB808 beats with insane electro elements resulting in a break-dancing frenzy. Sounds like early 808State, Orbital, and even Prodigy if you played Prodigy’s tracks about 30 BPM faster than the original speed (and if they took themselves less seriously).

Eat Rabbit's cover for Kiss the Dolphin

A meaty synth bass encourages your brain to urinate in the album opener “Waves of Piss” but that’s probably the most serious track on there. Starting with “Monsieur Dauphin” in track 2, you get fast-paced bouncy tracks with vocal snippets, and craziness everywhere. The samples fly about, the beat is relentless and hyperkinetic. Adult content and cuss words abound on “Caviar on a Booty” but then are spaced out childishly, even mixing in the theme from the Batman TV show, making it about as adult as a SpongeBob porno. “The Book of the Dead Seahorses” sounds like a soundtrack for a Wii game featuring murdering rabbits with Attention Deficit Disorder.

In summary: “Kiss the Dolphin” is a zany, tongue-in-cheek soundtrack to the hilarious side-scrolling adventure videogame which we like to call ‘life in the 21st century.’ Trust me, it’s 49 minutes of the most fun you’ll ever have without playing your Wii.

DETAILS:
14 mp3s encoded at 256 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo.
Total Run time: 48:56

Download whole album in one zip file. [55 MB]

Album’s release page on Da! Heard It Records (netlabel)

Eat Rabbit discography on Discogs

Eat Rabbit on MySpace

Transdutor’s brazilian jungle goes for the jugular

Transdutor -Are You Ready for Locomotive?

I don’t even remember how I got to Transdutor’s website.  Probably a stray Twitter search.  Nevertheless, I was in an after-lunch coma, ready to give in to the grogginess when I plugged my headphones in to take a listen to “Preparado Para Locomotiva?” And boy, was I blown away.  It’s a case of the perfect download at the perfect time. His album is overflowing with jumpy jungle beats, menacing drum&bass melody lines, and  bucket-loads of Portugese rap-vocals that make this a monster 11-track album that runs a little over 46 minutes.

The album title translates to “Are You Ready for Locomotive?” but the rest of the track titles make little sense to my untrained eye.  Makes me wish I could understand Portuguese. But in the end it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that fast, aggressive riffs abound, peppered by a little hip hop, and a little ska. The perfect soundtrack for a groggy afternoon at the office.

Transdutor (which is Portuguese for “transducer”) is an artist living in Brazil who calls himself an AutoDJ owing to the fact that he is a solo act doing live P.A. as well as MCing to his own tracks.

Note to artists making your album available as a zipped file:  Please, for goodness sakes, number your tracks in their proper order. After all, we all deserve to hear your music in the order that you decide.

ALBUM DETAILS

Total size: 42.5 MB

Tracks: 11 tracks of 44.1 kHz stereo, encoded at 128 kbps.

Total running time: 42:46

Download direct link from Transdutor’s website (42.5 MB zipped file)

Transdutor on MySpace.
Transdutor on FaceBook.

The Perfect Summer Soundtrack: Juanitos’ surf guitar rock from France!

Juanitos - Best Of album

Artist: Juanitos
Album: Best Of
License:  Creative Commons.
Released on Jamendo

The problem with so much free music on the web is:  it’s like playing the lottery. Most times you’re gambling and losing on any given download. But then there are days like today — when a cynical old music downloader like myself feels like he hit the jackpot!

What elicited such a reaction? The Juanitos’ Best Of album which collects 11 of the most upbeat surf guitar rock music I’ve EVER heard. And it’s made by a group that (supposedly) operates out of the French Alps. Say what? Of course, I can’t be perfectly sure because the liner notes on their Jamendo download page are all in French.  And I’m too thrilled by the music to bother Googling them. Let the music speak for itself.

The album is the motherlode of all the summer tunes you’ll ever need this year. You’ve got Spanish lyrics, English phrases, pure ’60s surf guitar kinda like Smash Mouth as played by the Ventures, surf rock mariachi as pieced together by the Los Criminales Mariachi Band of East L.A. (I made that up), rockified bossa nova by Santana’s mutant half-brother, and even oriental(?) reggae!  Juanitos music is a load of energy, humor and good vibes. Combine that with a beach towel and you’ve got summer all bottled up in your iPod. Download your vacation here.

DETAILS:
11 MP3s encoded at 192 kbps.
Total album zip file is 45 MB in size.
Total running time: 33:14

Download page on Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/41987

Juanitos official website (as far as I can tell): http://www.juanitos.net/