Dangerously Free Sounds

blocSonic and the netBloc series

2012-11-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

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.

However, they wouldn't be nearly as interesting, were it not for their netBloc series of sampler albums. These albums collect a number of popular, upcoming and unknown 'net artists across diverse genres and give the public a sample of their music to chew on. Check out their most recent, netBloc Vol. 39: Antididonai, which came out in november of 2012 and features and eclectic mix of physical and electronic music ranging from introspective hiphop (Everpresent Future) to ... something I can best describe as experimental instrumentation trance (Judas Goat).

But the netBloc albums are just the start. blocSonic also does interviews with producers like C-Doc, and of course, album releases for individual artists such as DJ Harrison's '94 Flow.

Do check them out and enjoy!

News: PeerGynt Lobogris planning a rock opera

2012-10-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

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

2012-10-04T11:57:00.001-04:00

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

2012-05-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

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.

The album itself is a hybrid of swing jazz, heavy metal and operatic elements among other, per-song influences in a mix of English, Swedish and Latin ... yes, Latin. To say that this is a bit unusual is a severe understatement. To my knowledge, they're the only band to hybridize swing jazz and heavy metal, and the combination actually works well, surprisingly enough.

The most popular track on the album is the first, "Balrog Boogie". Though not in English, English speakers will no less appreciate the chaotic clash of styles and influences and the intricate and nearly infernal result!

"Poetic Pitbull Revolutions" plays with the classic Spanish trumpet style and turns it into something truly epic. The lyrics are English, but I'm so taken by the music that I barely even notice the lyrics on this song.

"Rag Doll Physics" has one of my favorite lyrics from the album, "if I close my eyes, would it spare me the sight of decay, corruption, how we nurture destruction, and everything that will doom a soul?" Combined with Annlouice Loegdlund's amazing voice that can hold the note on "soul" for just long enough to melt your frontal lobe, this is definitely a song not to miss.

After Rag Doll, you may find yourself needing a bit of a rest. How about a nice, soothing chant in Latin? That's "D'angelo", the next song on the album. While I'm not often in the mood for this song, when I am, it's a joy. Soothing and yet, not syrupy.

To complete the middle part of the journey, D'angelo is followed up with a sudden jolt: the violin and guitar-heavy "Velvet Embracer". Sadly, I find this song to be a harbinger of the more mainstream heavy metal that is the signature of their second, non-free album, Sing Along Songs for the Damned & Delirious. It's certainly not a bad song, and the violin work is exceptional, but it's just not my thing.

If all of this sounds like it's your cup of tea, then I suggest checking out the album on Jamendo (link at the top of the article), but be aware that their second album (Sing-Along Songs for the Damned & Delerious), which is pay-only, is a very different album. While it has many of the same elements, it's much more an example of the mainstream heavy metal genre than the experimental fusion that is Butcher's Ballroom.

Android and free music

2012-05-17T21:00:00.000-04:00

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.

The Desktop - To Phone Approach

First off, here's what I do. I have a desktop system with iTunes installed. I use iTunes because I started managing my music collection back when I had an iPhone, and that made iTunes the obvious choice. Many third-party tools like Amazon's music downloader, however, know how to integrate with iTunes, so it's not a bad hub for your free music.

To get music into iTunes I either download from a Web site like Jamendo.com and then import using "add folder to library" in iTunes, or I use a third-party tool like Amazon.com's music downloader which automatically adds its files to iTunes.

I then use the iTunes "Consolidate library" feature (located under "File->Library->Organize Library" these days) tool to copy all of the files into the iTunes music tree.

To upload to the phone, I use Google Music. The Google Music uploader can be told to automatically upload all iTunes music and playlists whenever they change, so I don't have to do anything else.

On the phone the Google Music app will play all of the newly uploaded songs, as long as they were all in formats (e.g. mp3) that Google Music can cope with.

If you don't want to use iTunes, you can skip the desktop music organizer app entirely and just upload directly to Google Music using the uploader or you can use an iTunes-like program like MediaMonkey in place of it.

Pure Phone Approach

If you want to interact with free music directly from your phone, you have a few choices. First, you can always use advertising-supported music players like Pandora, but their selection of free-if-you-want-to-download-it music tends to be pretty poor.

Thankfully, Jamendo.com, which is one of the largest repositories of free music in the world, has its own Android app, Jamendo Player. From that app, you can access lots of the music reviewed on this site, including Tunguska Electronic Music Society, Atomic Cat, and Celestial Aeon Project.

You can also download music directly to your phone, but this can get really messy, since file management under Android is only marginally better than the non-existant file-management on the iPhone. I recommend that you stick to third-party apps and using a desktop uploader app as your primary tools.

A Note About Amazon

I've talked about Google Music, above, but just about everything I've said holds true for Amazon's Cloud Drive and the associated Amazon Cloud Player app.

Album: Celestial Aeon Project: The Fall of Ragnaros

2012-05-17T19:00:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-17T10:20:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-07T20:00:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-04T21:00:00.000-04:00

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?

2012-05-04T20:00:00.000-04:00

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

2012-04-02T02:35:00.001-04:00

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

2012-03-19T00:39:00.003-04:00

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.

The first track, The Lost World, is very derivative, and immediately evokes every "cruising over the English or Irish countryside in a helicopter" travel scenes in a film. You could imagine a train chugging along, below the camera while flocks of birds rose from a lake in the distance. It may not be terribly original, but it's perfectly done, and definitely sets the mood for the album.

The fourth track, March to Glory, is the quiet before the storm that erupts into what could be a battle or the deployment of an armada. Again, a very evocative piece that one could imagine in a dozen movies.

Immediately next, Tokyo Lights really stuck my fancy. Given the title, I expected something that was stereotypically Japanese, but instead it's a bit of pop nestled inside a pleasant backdrop of upbeat ambient. I could listen to this while walking to work or reading and enjoy it thoroughly.

The eighth track, Night Hunter, brings in guest guitarist, PeerGynt Lobogris, another Jamendo regular whose work is definitely worth checking out on its own merits. The hard-rocking element to this piece that bears a very, very slight resemblance to Tubular Bells is definitely ideal backdrop for a video game clip perhaps while driving. A very nice piece of work, and a perfect blend of two of Free Music's best acts.

There are quite a few more tracks, all worth checking out. I recommend, however, that you skip the last track, and instead watch its YouTube video first, as it's a trailer for the album:

Val Davis raising funds for a new Album

2012-01-09T18:26:00.001-05:00

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.

Botany Bay: Soulful free rock

2011-12-26T16:35:00.000-05:00

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.

Their later albums from 2010 and 2011 feature Mühr's first appearances, and bring an intimacy to the lyrics that was lacking, previously. "A Better Way" from the 2011 album, Broken, is a perfect example. Easily one of their catchiest tunes, there's a melancholy to the song that's somehow uplifting... how do they do that?! The title track of the album is worthy of a movie soundtrack, giving Mühr a real opportunity to shine, along with a piano/violin duo that's wonderful to listen to.

The band cites Pink Floyd, Coldplay and Massive Attack as influences. I'd add Fleetwood Mac to that list, but I can see where they're coming from.

CBC Radio 3

2011-12-02T01:21:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-20T11:12:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-11-16T21:06:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-12T22:00:00.002-05:00

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:

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.
The 8th track is labeled Rien de Rien, but is, in fact, a duplicate of the 5th track, Non, je ne regrette rien.
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

2011-11-11T22:00:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-08T21:00:00.006-05:00

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.

Blog Review: Free Albums Galore

2011-11-08T01:30:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my first post, Free Albums Galore is no longer being updated, but the blog still exists and it's a great resource for free music of the past six and a half years. You can browse their posts by using the "Archives by Month" or "Search" widgets on the right hand side of the page.

Free Albums Galore was an eclectic resource for finding the latest in everything from Psychedelia to World music to Electronica to Prog Rock. I tried to listen to as many of these as I was able, but in the end, I only had so many hours in the day.

Some of the sources that Free Albums Galore introduced me to will become common items, here on Dangerously. Those include Jamendo (a sort of social network for music makers and downloaders alike); the Internet Audio Archive (a branch of the Internet Archive, home of the infamous Wayback Machine); and the Free Music Archive (sort of the Rolling Stone of free music archival on the Web). Along with those, Free Albums Galore introduced me to the myriad of Netlabels out there that had free and for-pay music, and I'll have to spend quite a bit of time on those at some point in the near future as well, especially the awesome and ongoing netBlocs from blocSonic!

Welcome to Dangerously Free Sounds!

2011-11-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, I got hooked on freely downloadable music, thanks to an excellent music review blog, Free Albums Galore, and ever since, I've filled my hard drives with amazing music, created by some of the most creative people I've ever heard. I learned quite a lot from Free Albums. I learned that free music has a cost, and that cost is time (for-pay music has millions of people acting as my filter, sifting out the few songs that are worth listening to). I also learned that there are permutations of musical genres that I thought I knew, which have the capacity to change the way I see the culture of music production. I've bought CDs based on free albums I've downloaded. I've written my own reviews on my existing blog, and generally, I've become as involved in free music as I had time for.

Today, I notice that Free Albums has closed down, and so it seems like a good time to start my own free music review blog. Thinking about why I like free music so much, one of the words that keeps coming to mind is: dangerous. It's dangerous for the studio business model for people to enjoy a free product. It's dangerous for your understanding of the quality and nature of music to listen to a wide range of sources of new tunes.

So, danger is in the title of this blog. Free sounds is also in the title, so over the next few posts, I'm going to introduce everyone to all of the general sources of free music that I'm aware of. After that, this blog will mostly settle down into being a general music review blog dedicated to freely downloadable music.

One note about free vs. pirated music: My definition of freely downloadable music includes any music that's distributed by its creators with the intent that others download it without paying to do so. It doesn't mean that the music is free to then share, though I'll try to point out when that's not allowed.

Pirating music via BitTorrent or other P2P networks is another thing entirely. It's not that BitTorrent itself is a bad thing. I use BitTorrent to download operating systems and updates for software along with some free content that's distributed that way. I love the protocol and the tools, but I'm not encouraging people to pirate music in this blog. I think the RIAA is shooting itself in the foot, and I think that the truly free music out there is a reaction to how they treat their customers, but this blog is about downloading music from authorized sources only!

OK, the disclaimers are out of the way and I'm ready to start reviewing. Let's get to it!