Melodic Expectation

Ryan’s Music Picks: 18 July 2016

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 15:12:29 -0700

I love listening to music in the car; it’s probably my favorite place to pump up the jams. I was traveling last week and, even though I had headphones, I didn’t listen to nearly as much music as I would in a typical week. Music is, in a sense, therapy to me and I can definitely see how my state of mind was affected by my lack of excellent jams. So here are some for you this week:

Jamila Woods - HEAVN (only on Soundcloud)
If, like me, you’re into Chance The Rapper, you probably will recognize Jamila Woods’ voice. She is the driving force of Sunday Candy and Blessings (I) and her solo album is incredible even given the high expectations I had going into it. It turns out that she is a poet and playwright in her spare time, and that’s hardly a surprise after listening to the album. It’s a free download from soundcloud and you should absolutely not sleep on this.

Crystal Skulls - Outgoing Behavior (Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify)
This album is a low-key masterpiece. It’s perfectly smooth from top to bottom, with unimpeachable guitar work, superlative steel guitar and totally singable songs with lyrics that are silly and strange enough that you’ll probably do a “wait, what?” while singing along. A good amount of the dudes in this band later were members of Fleet Foxes but this is so much quirkier and fun( and less pretentious) and absolutely should not be missed.

Zammuto - Veryone (Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify)
The second song on this 3-song EP is the closest I had to a zen moment this week. I realize that it sounds like GLaDOS telling you to wear your sunscreen but I promise that there is something buried in this track that acts as a balm to soothe your mind.

CN - The Derelict (Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify)
Nicely complex but sufficiently weird electronic science fiction music. If you need a productivity booster, load this into your brain.

Moby - Hotel Ambient (~~Bandcamp~~, iTunes, Spotify)
Over the last few years I’ve really gotten into Moby’s ambient music. It’s not necessarily groundbreaking like Aphex Twin, but it definitely predates and has influenced a lot of the current scene of electronic-ambient musicians. This album is almost 10 years old and was released along with what is considered one of Moby’s worst albums, but it’s soothing and perfect chill out/fall asleep music. It was helpful as I was trying, and failing, to sleep in a hotel this week.

Meishi Smile - (reclamation) (Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify)
Speaking of ambient, Meishi Smile rides the line between soothing and noisy, tipping the balance to one side or the other occasionally to keep it interesting. It’s deceptively deep on subsequent listens.

Suicide - Suicide (1977) (~~Bandcamp~~, iTunes, Spotify)
Alan Vega, singer of Suicide, died at 78 last night. This legendary album’s Wikipedia page tells more than I could about the influence and importance of this album, but you should know that the influence of it is not overstated and might not be capable of overstatement. It’s punk AF before punk was even a thing used to describe music. Plus, the first (killer) track is called Ghost Rider and it’s Comic Con week, so get into it.

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (~~Bandcamp~~, iTunes, Spotify)
Turns out I own this album on CD twice. One of those CDs resides pretty permanently in my car, so I guess it’s good I have a second copy for home. This is one of my favorite albums of the dawn of 2000s indie rock and it still holds up incredibly well. Several of the tracks are stone-cold classics (the one-two punch of Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl and Cause = Time is a favorite of mine), and this album features both Feist and Emily Haines (of Metric) before either of them got big.

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The Avalanches - GIMIX

Sat, 09 Jul 2016 10:04:37 -0700

The Avalanches - GIMIX:

melodicexpectation:

Man, I hope that you have heard the Avalanches. If not, now’s the time to.

When I began life deejaying at my college radio station, they told us that, in our first quarter, we’d find discover our new favorite band; that spring in 2002, mine was The Avalanches. They’d just released their only proper LP, Since I Left You, when I began deejaying. It’s an album of plunderphonic tropical dance music put together in a way that completely recontextualizes the music–something even Girl Talk can’t touch. Their album is legendary for both the volume of samples it contained and for the delays caused by clearing those samples. While the album was in sample clearance purgatory, members of the Avalanches toured with world with the mix linked above on a hard drive and also sold it at shows. Containting several Avalanches album tracks as well as songs from everyone: Bob Dylan to Madonna to Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk), little bits jump out at you while you listen. It’s chock-full of classics that’ll make you jerk your head towards the stereo.

This is one of the best and most insane mixes in the world.

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Madonna - Holiday

Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone

The Avalanches - Stay Another Season

The Avalanches - Two Hearts In ¾ Time

De La Soul - A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturdays”

Blowfly - Rapp Dirty

Old Dirty Bastard - Baby Got Ya Money

Roy Ayres - Running Away

Kid Creole And The Coconuts - Stool Pigeon

The Avalanches - Close To You

Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic

Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The Smiths - The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

Thomas Bangalter - Turbo

Madcatt Courtship - The Kitty Lounge

Men At Work - Down Under

The Avalanches - Electricity

De La Soul - Ring Ring Ring

A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation

Daft Punk - Oh Yeah

Detroit Grand Pubas - Sandwiches

Hall And Oates - I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)

Fatboy Slim - Fucking In Heaven

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Jurassic 5 - Jayou

Dee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart

West Street Mob - Break Dance Electric Boogie (Jon Carter Mix)

Gonzalez - Real Motherfuckin’ Music

The Avalanches - Little Journey

The Avalanches - Diners Only

The Avalanches - A Different Feeling

The Avalanches - Pablo’s Cruise

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Paperclip People - The Climax

Fela Ransome Kuti with Ginger Baker - Ye Ye De Smell

Instant Funk - Got My Mind Made Up (12" remix)

Electric Light Orchestra - Livin’ Thing

Mickey Mouse Club - Mickey Mouse Club Theme

Michael Wycoff - Looking Up To You

Fern Kinney - Together We Are Beautiful

The Avalanches - Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams

The New Avalanches album is out and it’s all I’ve dreamed about. But this mix is still 🔥🔥🔥

Ryan's Music Picks: 27 June 2016

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 06:36:30 -0700

Howdy!

Hi! I’m Ryan. This is the first one of these, so I feel like I should provide some bonafides: I was a college radio DJ from 2002-2006, as music moved from CD to mp3s. I ran Melodic Expectation , a music blog focused on free albums, posting daily from 2011. I still run Lampshade Music , a music mix podcast where I trade off with internet luminary @theshrillest . I grew up listening to mostly Christian Music, and I wrote about it one time , and I think LCD Soundsystem is the best live band I’ve ever seen. Twice.

Anyway this will be weekly-ish, ideally on Mondays so it competes with Spotify’s weekly deal. I’ll try to link Apple Music and Spotify, but expect mostly links to Bandcamp and Soundcloud. (My bandcamp fan page is here but don’t look at my wishlist unless you like spoilers.) I’ll let you know when you can download something for free. I’ll try not to let vaporwave overwhelm this list, but there are some weeks where all I want to hear is glitchy title screen music from PS One games.

Here we go:

*Psychic Temple - Plays Music For Airports* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
You might be familiar with Brian Eno’s genre-defining ambient music album, Music For Airports. It’s quiet and restrained and a masterpiece. Here, Chris Schlarb’s psycho-jazz ensemble gets their grubby mits on a classic and they treat it with kindness but they definitely do not play it safe.

*Moresounds - Pure Niceness EP* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
This is dub in the UK 2000s version of the word, so expect breakbeats and heavy sub-bass. Actually, this borders on drum'n'bass for those of you who are genre purists. The standout track for me is the final track, *Dead And Bury (ft. Fracture)*, which is driven by one of those vocal samples that just sticks in your brain for hours at a time.

*Ivy Sole - Eden* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
I found this via a Bandcamp article titled The Best Albums of 2016 So Far and this was one of the ones that really surprised me. Soulful rap with some R&B from a female rapper who has bars for days. Laid back but masterful. This one is free if you choose to pay $0 on bandcamp. Probably not ok for kids.

*Kassin - Sonhando Devagar* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
Unquestionably weird but still pretty chill, this album is full of modern tropicalia. Never harsh but always experimental, this would be a perfect soundtrack to a summer party. Invite me to that party, because I want a tiki drink and this album and a summer breeze and I think I’ll be good for a while.

*HOME - Falling Into Place* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
You didn’t think I’d finish this without throwing some Vaporwave your way, did you? HOME’s most recent album is definitely less “torrented jrpg soundtrack” and more “80s cop soundtrack” to the extent that there might be actual guitar at play here. This might be one of my favorite albums so far in 2016. Costs $1 on bandcamp.

*Myrone - New York Pizza* (Bandcamp , iTunes , Spotify )
A three-track serving of synths, shredding, and nostalgia. Sounding very Smooth Criminal-era Michael Jackson without the vocals, this is one of those times where you can take music as either a loving parody or a very detailed homage. Whichever it is, it rocks. Also not to be missed is Myrone’s soundtrack to Drift Stage , an in-alpha retro racing game . It looks like the only way to download that radical soundtrack is to back development of the game , however.

OMG we’re just over a week away from a new *Avalanches* album. If you haven’t heard my favorite album, uh, ever? Then you should definitely get *Since I Left You* (iTunes , Spotify ) into your brain ASAP. Nearly as mind-blowing as Since I Left You is the *GIMIX* mix they put together and toured with before that album came out, but it looks like it’s disappeared from the internet again. Sure would be nice if someone put it online , eh? (shh!)
Ryan’s Music Picks by melodicex
http://tinyletter.com/melodicex
20055 Bluebird Glen Lake Forest, CA 92630 USA

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Sun, 26 Jun 2016 23:16:26 -0700

prestigeformat: Over at my blog, I talk about 7 free albums of...

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 13:54:58 -0800

prestigeformat:

Over at my blog, I talk about 7 free albums of mostly Christmas music out this year (and one from last year) that are all worth listening to.

prestigeformat: Go get Surf RIGHT NOW FOR FREE.iTunes/DatPiff

Fri, 29 May 2015 22:48:49 -0700

prestigeformat:

Go get Surf RIGHT NOW FOR FREE.
iTunes/DatPiff

Free Music Roundup

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 23:17:22 -0800

prestigeformat:

I love free music! Especially free music that is being handed out legally and with love. A ton of good stuff has come out recently! Check it out:

2014 was a great year for (free) label compilations. Here are some of my favorites:

Ghostly International x Adult Swim presents Ghostly Swim 2 — Mostly ambient electronic noise with beats.

Noumenal Loom Compilation 1 — Georgia underground label…

View On WordPress

I’m still repping free music on the Internet!

DUNE F∀NGS - CH∀RTS

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 14:47:15 -0700

DUNE F∀NGS - CH∀RTS

This album is pretty old by internet standards–nearly two and a half years. It’s in sort of a weird spot when it comes to genres ending in -wave. The sounds are very analog synthesizer-sounding, so you could easily call it synthwave and be done with it, but there’s the vestigial pop and Boards of Canada elements of chillwave drifting in the background, and the growing devotion to new age/ambient that characterizes today’s vaporwave keeps poking up through the pleasantly heavy beats. It’s no surprise that Alfred English (as the person behind DUNE F∀NGS is now known) is making beats for rappers and talking about his love of A.G. Cook and PC Music. Still, this album is more than just a genre exercise or archeological artifact; several of the songs are perfect summer driving music.

easyFun - easyFun EP

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 23:12:37 -0700

easyFun - easyFun EP

I almost want to just post this EP without any context, just say “here is music that you should listen to” and leave it at that. The context is so juicy, though, that I can’t in good conscience do that. Have you heard about vaporwave? It’s a genre that I’ve been writing about for a good while now, while never calling it that. It’s what chillwave slowly disintegrated into when people got into chiptune and glitch and anti-dubstep and Tangerine Dream and grainy youtube uploads of old VHS tapes of educational specials about “The Internet”. The label that’s killing it more than anyone else is PCMusic, and easyFun is a great exemplar of the genre.

The music harkens back to feelings, more than anything. It’s pure 90s techno-utopian nostalgia that’s been partially digested and then regurgitated for your enjoyment. The sounds could be sampled from Playstation 1 games or low-budget fantasy movies or edu-tainment films or softcore porn tapes or new employee training videos. Or they could be all original. But like trying to sleep after caffeine-fueled late night channel surfing (from that world before netflix and DVRs), these noises slowly coalesce into a new and uneasy whole after you pump them into your ears. It’s a weird sort of new nostalgia.

Kosumo Notto - minigame

Sun, 11 May 2014 23:57:00 -0700

Kosumo Notto - minigame

This album is only five minutes long, but it’s easily going to be the most laid-back five minutes of your day. Alternatively, this album + shuffle and repeat is an hour of pure relaxation. Kosumo Notto specializes in what he calls “save-point music” or music meant to evoke that point in a video game where you can take a breath and bank your progress. This is music as a refuge, as a space to reset yourself during a hectic time. It’s super effective!

&lt;a href=“http://kosumonotto.bandcamp.com/album/minigame” data-mce-href=“http://kosumonotto.bandcamp.com/album/minigame”&gt;minigame by kosumo notto&lt;/a&gt;

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - Produce Vol. 1

Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:09:50 -0800

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - Produce Vol. 1

Like Small Black and POP ETC before them, synth pop/chillwave/Ariel Pink disciples Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have done a hip-hop style mixtape featuring their nostalgic bubbling electronic pop. When I say “hip-hop style”, I mean a seamless album featuring a number of guests and including covers and blatant samples (including a mash up of Biggie and the Beach Boys called, imaginatively, Beach Boys Biggie).

I love this kind of thing. I am only very superficially a rap fan, listening to mostly pop-rap and whatever El-P puts out (can you believe that I haven’t covered Run the Jewels here yet???). So something that’s mostly hazy, beat-heavy pop with the occasional fun party verse over the top is directly down my alley. And it’s obviously down the alley of a lot of internet music fans, as these things keep happening and we keep downloading them. I’m not sure entirely how I feel about being directly targeted like this, but I know I like the result.

This is the kind of convergence that that internet has always promised; it’s like Afrika Bambaataa sampling Kraftwerk in reverse and in real time. The only problem with this kind of convergence here in the twenty-first century is that it’s so constant as to be pedestrian and pandering to a certain, grandularized target demographic. I’d complain more of the music wasn’t so darn good.

"In honor of next month’s 25th anniversary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul..."

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:57:49 -0800

“In honor of next month’s 25th anniversary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul are making their entire catalog available for free download for 25 hours on the group’s website. The download bonanza will begin on Friday, February 14th at 11 a.m. EST until Saturday at noon.”

- Holy shit. (via graemem)

Happy Valentine’s Day to us all.

(via bigredrobot)

pastelghost: DARK BEACH EP OUT NOW ♡ FREE...

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 13:20:09 -0700

pastelghost:

DARK BEACH EP OUT NOW ♡ FREE DOWNLOAD ♡

I’ve forced my kids the listen to this album at least a dozen times now. My two-year-old son tells me “Look! I’m dancing!” when we listen, and his sister, a kindergartener asks “Is this scary music?” after I tell her that we’re listening to Pastel Ghost.

I think the intersection there is the perfect place for Pastel Ghost to reside: it’s a little spooky and a little pixelated but mostly just magic dance/dream pop for the Internet generation. One part sand anime soundtrack and one part overclocked remix, Dark Beach is like the low-res fansub version of what chillwave should have been. We love it.

Johan Agebjorn//Sally Shapiro - Sweetened The two collaborators...

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:30:18 -0700

Johan Agebjorn//Sally Shapiro - Sweetened

The two collaborators behind the sublime Sally Shapiro disco pop songs have released a collection of remixes spanning the last six years. It’s, like the Sally Shapiro songs, a group of quietly perfect space disco tracks. Remixed artists include Lindstrøm, Glass Candy and quite a few groups that I am not familiar with, but would like to get to know. If you were looking for a soundtrack to this very late summer weekend, well, here you go.

Mr. Oizo - Amicalement In the late 1990s, Mr. Oizo became...

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 09:30:46 -0700

Mr. Oizo - Amicalement

In the late 1990s, Mr. Oizo became somewhat of a sensation with a minimal track called Flat Beat which laid some of the foundations of electro house. Despite migrating from analog synthesizers to a Mac and moving away from puppet-based videos, Oizo has never lost that funk instinct, as the four tracks on this ep can testify. Featuring a tweaky, buzzy starter track, a dancefloor killer featuring cut-up spoken vocals by Marilyn Manson (I’m as baffled as you are), a weirdo digital waltz and a disco-sample beat that just won’t stop, this free release has far more funk than one would typically expect in 9.5 minutes.

[[to download this ep, go to www.oizo3000.com and click on the computer screen. Click again when it loads and the page should inform you that Mr. Oizo’s new EP is available for download]]

Sweet Valley - SV The Williams brothers (aka Wavves and Kynan)...

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 23:35:25 -0700

Sweet Valley - SV

The Williams brothers (aka Wavves and Kynan) tossed out another of their ongoing beat tapes a few months ago. Like their other ones, it’s irreverent and a bit scattershot with unexpectedly solid beats. This one, however, is far darker than the previous entries in the series. Things get heartfelt in a JRPG remix way with Sweet Valley’s remix of Quicksand by Secret Colors, then things move off into a darker realm. SV becomes the music Burial would have made if he’d grown up on the beach in sunny Southern California with a Super Nintendo instead of a ZX Spectrum: dark, distorted but still candy-colored with some lingering palm trees.

SV by Sweet Valley

Friendzone - Poly/8AM Combining equal measures of noise, warm...

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 23:37:00 -0700

Friendzone - Poly/8AM

Combining equal measures of noise, warm emotional ambience, pitched-up samples, massive bass and over-the-top snap beats, Friendzone has discovered the exact formula into my heart with this freely-available single for their upcoming album. It’s easy to be cynical about yet another group of white guys on the internet making beats, but Friendzone keeps pummeling my soul with their tracks and it keeps demanding more. I haven’t had such an emotional connection to something that makes my C-RV rattle this much in a very long time, and I can’t wait for more.

Chalkboards - Chalkboards I like music that makes me smile....

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 09:30:22 -0700

Chalkboards - Chalkboards

I like music that makes me smile. Music that’s just joyous and sincere without a hint of irony is sometimes hard to come by in these post-modern days. Taking a page from Balún’s electro-wistfulness and applying it to the rambunctious but effective combination of Game Boy + guitar + drums like Anamanaguchi and Slime Girls, Chalkboards bring full-force hearts and sparkles on their self-titled debut. Woven with love and drenched in ones and zeroes, Chalkboards lives in the continuum between sentimental and kick-ass. The germination of this music (nanoloop tracks shared by a boy and girl via a LinkCable) is legendarily nerdorable but the sounds that grew are neither treacly nor socially awkward. What I’m trying to say here is that Chalkboards hits me in just the right place and it makes me very, very happy.

Blind Slime - Dark Vibrations (In The Sky) In the past few...

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:30:35 -0700

Blind Slime - Dark Vibrations (In The Sky)

In the past few years, I’ve been slowly getting into music with a certain atmosphere. It’s basically psychedelic ghost music, but, you know, not totally all gloom and doom. Sort of like an Edward Gorey book colored by schoolchildren with crayons. Blind Slime pulls off the same attitude in this EP–it’s scary and spooky but in a mystic forest way rather than a pit of hell way. This is the kind of music my brain queues up when I read Tolkien or especially Chris Roberson and Mike Allred’s hipster-zombie book, I Zombie. It’s not halloween yet, but deep summer nights are tailor made for this stuff; get it now.

Dark Vibrations (In the Sky) by Blind Slime

ARM WTCHS FNGRS - ☯ Essential Tremor ☯ It’s easy to judge...

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:49:00 -0700

ARM WTCHS FNGRS - ☯ Essential Tremor ☯

It’s easy to judge a free internet release by its cover/name/title these days. But let’s ignore the weirdly retro-90s-CD-ROM-art cover and the all-caps, partially disemvoweled name and the title with unicode symbols in it. Just for a second. Putting aside from those genre signifiers, it’s a pretty interesting selection of tunes. Not overtly glitchy or slavishly retro, the music still evokes the birth of all-digital music and the collapse of the perfection associated with that. ☯ Essential Tremor ☯ (can’t ignore that title now) doesn’t quite get past sketches and announcements into 100% hot jams, but it’s a hell of a debut ep and I’ll keep playing this until there’s more to hear.

☯ Essential Tremor ☯ by ARM WTCHS FNGRS