Catching The Waves

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

2009-12-21T19:36:52+00:00

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.

Etch-A-Sketch 2.0

2009-12-16T23:41:08+00:00

In some electronica genres, such as IDM and Drum 'n' Bass, the drums skip, stutter and generally do everything but come up with a Unified Field Theory. The percussion to be found in Dreaming In Pieces by Hypnagog walks another path: it's well-behaved, mid-tempo dance/trance stuff that won't scare the horses. However, the synth work deserves a restraining order, an ASBO and an ankle bracelet. If Hypnagog hasn't pored over every atom of Air's magnum opus (and the most popular slice of French dinner-party electronica ever) Moon Safari, you can paint me yellow and call me a daffodil. The four tracks on Dreaming in Pieces are coated with layer after layer of melodies, diversions and digressions, all wrapped up in an analogue sensibility that en(psy)trances the ear.

During my rigorous selection process (it involves Guinness and meringues), the right half of my brain would whisper: "Meh...it's a bit leaden. It's ok, I suppose." But every time I reached for the "Destroy World" button, the left half of my bonce would butt in and exclaim: "Ooh, that glitch was unexpected. Hey, what's happening to the tempo? Wow, here comes another ice-cream of a synth. Crikey, is that three melodies at the same time? Funky, too."

My strait-jacket is tailored, you know. Only the best for CTW.

From the first few seconds of Still Dreaming, it's clear that Hypnagog (Felix Greenlees, an Australian earbender) is holding true to his stated intention to combine downtempo psychedelic breaks and IDM with his own style of psychedelic dance music. Pads, synth lines, squeaky stabs, IDM pitch-shifting: it's all there. And you get a rather nifty bassline. Job done.

Funkdiddle is full of aural cream cakes: a persuasive use of pitch-shifting and reverb in the introductory percussion section and, amongst other attractions, lots of analogue squelches. Its groove comes mostly from the walking bassline and micro-drumrolls, while the tempo variations and the cheerful, bluesy organ solos got me to the finishing line faster than a dysentery-suffering Usain Bolt chasing an Andrex puppy. Given the chance, I'd have popped Funkdiddle in your friendly CTW media player.

Next up is Tiny Little Pieces, starting with an audio sample that discusses the Biq Questions in life, followed by six minutes of soothing Spanish guitar, unpredictable diversions into glitch lay-bys, endlessly melodic synth doodling and mercurial tempo changes. It should be plain by now that this is a "headphones album"; there's so much superb work in Dreaming In Pieces that it demands your full attention, even though the overall effect is like reclining in a hammock and sipping a daiquiri. Like I said, think Air.

The last track, Reflections No.2, sounds as though Hypnagog ransacked every sine-waveish preset in his synth collection and played music that made him happy. This track will be at home in a beachside bar's dirty old stereo or in an audiophile's temperature-controlled, earthquake-proofed record collection.

And that's what I like so much about Hypnagog's release. It's as superficial or as deep as you want it to be, thanks to its constant melodic invention, restless search for smooth new sounds and a clean, spacious recording.

I hope you enjoy the album as much as I have. Bye.

*thinks*

I've forgotten something, haven't I? Ah yes, the sounds. Tut, me and my memory. Well, er, it pains me to say this but Up Records, in their otherwise razor-sharp Australian wisdom, supply only a zipped album, which means that visitors to their website can't hear their music.

*facepalm*

Fear not, Dreaming In Pieces is also featured at Ektoplazm, the suitably-psychedelic-but-I-still-got-my-shit-together-man psytrance portal/netlabel, so I'll just grab an mp3 from there and...

*headdesk*

No, no mp3 files there, either. However, at least they do stream one song, Tiny Little Pieces. So go here to hear it. Incidentally, Ektoplazm do a very good job of catering to fans of free psytrance, as their charts, download figures and frequent updates will testify. It's a fun place to visit. Chapeau, gentlemen. The website's appearance can be described as... trippy.

*slapshead*

Actually, you'd be better off at Hypnagog's MySpace page, where you can listen to all four tracks and press his Paypal button. Go on, send money around the world. Do it enough and you'll get a bailout. Heh.

Harrumph. While I am very grateful to all netlabels for their dedication and hard work in releasing CC music, I must say that persuading some of them actually to part with their music is akin to tickling trout. Fernando Fonseca's (Hi F!) recent rant on this subject ruffled a few feathers. He's mostly right in what he says, though I would have phrased things rather more gently; after all, I'm a confirmed coward gentleman. Fernando himself is vastly experienced in netaudio, helps to run the excellent PublicSpaces Lab netlabel and has linked symbiotically with the internet. Think probes and aliens. Ouch.

Yes, I know, CTW is a minefield of CC netaudio information. And I'm handsome. Control that jealousy, people.

Hypnagog - Dreaming In Pieces EP (link to zipped album in MP3, FLAC and WAV)

Hypnagog website

Up Records and Ektoplazm

The Glue Factory Beckons

2009-12-12T09:20:25+00:00

It has long been my intention to make Catching The Waves superfluous to requirements. Some of the snarkier of you out there may have thought that that day was reached at least a couple of years ago, but it has come to my attention that there are now quite a few folks who are actively promoting the cause of CC music, whether they be musicians, netlabels or CC portals. I'll keep CTW going for a bit longer, but I think it's only fair to remind my rabid, locust-like readership that there are plenty of people who do what CTW does and more, only far more frequently and much more professionally.

*Millions of voices cry out: "Freedom!"*

Not convinced? I give you Exhibit A: Phlow's Advent calendar. (I've burbled on about Phlow before, and about how they're a force for good. If CC music ever joins the mainstream, Phlow will hopefully be at the heart of it.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that if you're interested in Creative Commons music and would like to know more, you could do a lot worse than pop over to Phlow right now and open a few windows in their beautiful Advent calendar, which contains various netmusic luminaries' "Best Creative Commons Music Moments in 2009". Hidden behind each window are five-track mixtapes, five recommended netlabels and five recommended albums for 2009. In short, you'll find many interesting things to hear and explore, thus helping to make CTW less relevant and more redundant, something that my bed and sore ears are only too happy to admit.

But be warned: Phlow's standards slip sometimes. Don't believe me? I give you Exhibit B: click on the outmoded recording format and enter a world of pain.

Cough, Please

2009-12-05T00:15:54+00:00

These six tracks by Melbourne musical urchin Synaecide are a grimy compound of electro and, I'm sorry to have to use this term in the presence of women and children, IDM. They're also louder than a drag artists' karaoke night. Not knowing whether Synaecide sports an outrageous afro, I can't say if he follows Phil Spector in all things - but his production values mimic the incarcerated producer's famed "wall of sound". Your ears will fill with as much gritty electronica as they can take. This would quickly become tiresome were it not for the fact that the music is dynamic; there are breathers, changes of tempo and most welcome changes of volume, thus ensuring that Scientifica remains engaging.

First off, there's some delicious sampling work in Venom (feat. Anamé), where a cigarette lighter never sounded so good. The whispered vocals seem a little low in the mix until Anamé opens her lungs and the track soars, backed by chilly background vocals and synths that might as well have been replaced by a recording of barrage fire.

Stuttering and bit-crushed vocals feature heavily in The World Is High, a serving of gritty IDM that, like a few of Synaecide's compositions (see the reviewed remix of Halogen's Length and Brecht) doesn't really hit its stride until the track's midpoint. But it's worth the wait.

Dissolve (feat. Dima Shafro) gets through a few distorted, angsty vocals before dropping a rather catchy electro riff. It doesn't do much else, but it's almost a relief to find a relatively straightforward electro track slipped in between the chaos that surrounds it. After testing it to destruction in CTW's Sound Pound (you don't want to know), I've come to the conclusion that the amount of enjoyment derived from Dissolve, and specifically its layered high/low synth riff, depends on the volume at which it's played. Try going to 11.

Today's recommended track is The Penny Drops, in which Synaecide, thanks to more sampling cleverness, literally spends drops a penny like it's going out of fashion. Electronica fans will enjoy the coinage abuse and go on to appreciate the growling, juddering yet jaunty electro bass, a tangled lead riff that would feel at home in the soundtrack of a filmed Philip K. Dick novel and the eventual appearance of a call-and-response riff - another characteristic but pleasurable compositional motif of Syn's. File under "Gifted". Right - deep breath - it's SoundCloud player time:

The rapid-fire chiptune arpeggios that mark the start of Close Bracket (feat. Apache) soon team up with glitchy percussion, yet both quail when faced with an epic electro-sort-of-trance wall of sound, and a clever-clever vocal that just about holds its own with the electronic fireworks. It's energy on a stick.

The title track delivers yet more electronica impressiveness: drums that splatter all over the place, a (Great) wall (of China) of synths, high strings and a gnarly bass, which, taken together, will result in complaints about poor sportmanship in World Cup qualifiers ringing in the ears.

It seems that Synaecide, curse him, is blessed with the ability to churn out memorable music that walks the fine line between "bloody noisy" and "invigorating". Want further proof? Try his Scientifica II, an estimable track from the equally estimable Continuum, a compilation of brain-spankingly ambitious IDM from, er, the IDMf netlabel. (Continuum deserves a much, much longer review but I'm kicking it out of bed because I need some sleep. Don't look at me like that - taxis don't come cheap.) Suffice it to say that the IDMf crew and members, to drop into London vernacular for a moment, are having it large.

For those of you who require sparkly things to attract your attention, please see below. Ooh, shiny.

My thanks to all at IDMf for the consistently entertaining releases. I'm sure they'd have to lie down in a darkened room if anyone from Teh Internets were to send them a "thank you" email. By the way, does anyone else think the term IDM would be more palatable if it were pronounced "iddum"? No? How very dare you. Mark my words, you'll all be sorry.

Synaecide - Scientifica (link to zipped album & individual files)

Various Artists - Continuum (IDMf007) (link to, etc.)

IDMf netlabel

That Wallpaper Has Got To Go

2009-11-22T17:21:04+00:00

To Baaaarcelona, in celebration of a top-class football club netlabel that has been banging in the goals pumping out excellent releases for quite some time and has now achieved the miraculous and got Carles Puyol to cut his hair reached number 50 in their release schedule. End of football jokes.*

InoQuo has come over all giddy and released a nine-track compilation of top-class minimal/techno. Like just about every other netlabel album in this genre, Kvindek doesn't conform to CTW's infamous first law of dance music (the first of my minions to post a comment stating what it is will receive a free CC track from CTW's vaults), but that doesn't stop it from containing studio wizardry and buttock-seducing rhythms. To demonstrate, I'll recommend the first track as I'm fond of the aural tricks it plays. You get classical guitar, reverbed and chopped voices, and tooting synths - and that's just in the first few seconds, before a ridiculously close-up high/low frequency stab is plopped in your ear. It then proceeds to groove with the help of the aforementioned elements and the addition of pitch-shifted tubular bell-like...oh, hell, why am I burbling on? Suck it and see:

Sr. Click - Tamagotchi

Hermético's Nueva Fórmula doesn't actually break new ground, but what it does it does very well. A bumping bass, abrasive snare, tannoy-like vocals, tiny little glitches (a feature of the entire EP - there's nary a moment that hasn't been worked to within an inch of its life) and a fast pace ensure that this will burn the calories. Turn up the volume and it comes to life - as does En Casa De Paola by Monokao, whose kick-snare-repeat-till-unconscious mantra drives the minimal nail into the ground with a big techno hammer, restrained only by the occasional speak-and-spell vocal. The excellent mastering overcomes the compositional simplicity through sheer power. It's a banger.

But it's not all dark dancefloors and sticky t-shirts. Modular by Saccobros is one of those minimal tracks that, if you squint a bit, could be described as electronica or even ambient, because the usual percussive framework is swamped by a Nintendo-ish flurry of triplets that swells and contracts with hypnotic rhythm. It's like listening to an electronic seashore.

Mercurio by Manuel Romero starts off ordinarily enough, but little glitches, snatches of conversations, electronic growls and whatever else he can conjure up with, at a guess, Ableton software soon alerts the listener that here is an amazingly dense track that flourishes when heard through headphones. Take it home, loosen its dancefloor clothes and you'll find that it's wearing a glitchy bra and ambient knickers.

Apologies for that last sentence and to Project Swirl and Licuadora System, whose tracks, though well worth hearing, have been brushed over because I'm about to hit my mental Twitter word limit. It's nothing personal. And despite some rather delicious jazz electric piano, Grau's Miles is, well, miles too long.

Everything apart from the hi-hats in Mikel Mendia's Takumar seems low-passed, giving it a suitably understated feel for Kvindek's last track. I liked the drop about a minute and a half in, where the track comes to a halt only to restart with an echoing snare drum flam and tiny snippets of ...cutlery. Such moments are sprinkled throughout the album. Like a hairy wart anything with hidden depths, Kvindek took time to grow on me. Turn up the volume to let the excellent recording quality shine, give it a few spins and see if the same happens to you.

InoQuo - Kvindek (Various Artists) (link to zipped album & individual files)

InoQuo netlabel

*Ah, mes amis. Le Coupe du Monde. Quel dommage, hein? By the way, if you're wondering about how musicians and netlabels react to getting prodded by CTW's smelly finger, here's a reaction shot from the inoQuo staff (I may be lying about this). Can't you feel the love? CC music: you know it makes sense.

A Nice Bit Of Crackling

2009-11-13T20:40:53+00:00

...is a rather quaint way of expressing admiration for the female form. It can also be applied to an appreciation of dusty, ambient-tinged trip-hop, such as you'll find in Beats for the Subverted by London turntablist Dustmotes.

The album's liner notes for the ten tracks claim DJ Shadow, Unkle and Portishead as influences. I'm not sure about the last two artists, but the similarity to the soundscape of DJ Shadow's influential Endtroducing is undeniable, particularly in Annica. There are no songs as such: Beats is a mood album, so look elsewhere for dramatic changes of key or tempo. The recurring compositional motif is a slow drum loop backed by an echoing electric/acoustic piano chord. A hissing, crackling sparseness (otherwise known as trip-hop cat-nip) is to the fore so much that sometimes, as in Attrition #2, there's more ambience than actual trip-hop, lending the album depth as well as groove. The white noise, hiss, reverb and vinyl static of the final track, Outro, is something that would more often be found filed under "drone" than "trip-hop".

However, as befits a turntablist's opus, Beats for the Subverted is a platter of relaxing grooves formed mostly of vinyl-based samples caked with overdubbed bass and percussion. In fact, it would be a late-night album par excellence, were it not for the extracts from famous political speeches littered between the mellow breaks, blended piano chords and ever-present vinyl crackles. The vocalists include such young up-and-comers as Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Your MC for my recommended track, Les Main Sales, is none other than Malcolm X. Oh, go on then, have another smooooth track, Animals, complete with a less than cheerful quote from George Orwell's Animal Farm and a surprise guest appearance from SoundCloud's increasingly ubiquitous media player. [Also via CTW's media player. I can multi-task with the best of them.] So, have a crack at Les Mains Sales and Animals and see what you think:

Who knew political subversion could be so cool? Don't tell Fox News about Dustmotes A.K.A. Paul Croker or we'll all be for the high jump.

Ferdowsi features reversed sounds (a favourite technique of Dustmotes, according to the notes), a mystical, Middle Eastern atmosphere and a very American quotation from none other than Ulysses S. Grant. Told you this was subversive. Trust me, if you like Ferdowsi, you'll be in need of more free exotic trip-hop in the form of 1000 Sounds Lotus by The Orientalist.

The chief strength of Dustmotes' album is its atmosphere. Some albums feel artificial and cold; this feels analogue, warm and cosy. For instance, Forewarned's bass plumps pillows rather than pinches posteriors, and its jazz trumpet barely raises more than a mournful wail - yet they're substantial enough to complement the chopped guitar chords and another professional drum beat. You're welcome to explore the remaining tracks and ignore my laziness at not mentioning them.

My thanks to Dustmotes and Public Spaces netlabel for their efforts, but it's time for a caveat. For some unfathomable reason, the tracks on Beats for the Subverted are not available as mp3s. Yes, that's right; you can't get it in the world's most popular audio format. Now, having downloaded and listened to rather a lot of free albums over the years...

*calls therapist on speed dial*

...I'm still amazed at the lengths to which netlabels will go in order to make it awkward for would-be listeners to get hold of, er, you know, the free music. Audiophiles will love the Wav and FLAC options - and normally I'd give a round of applause for such forethought - but most people just want to download and press play, thus making mp3s a necessity. Could PublicSpaces Lab add another download option? Pwetty pweez? The more people who hear the album, the better.

Stop the press! Although PublicSpaces inexplicably don't provide a link, individual mp3 files are available from archive.org here. I'll add the mp3 stream for Les Mains Sales and Animals to my review. Many thanks to @lukelibrarian for living up to his name.

Dustmotes - Beats for the Subverted

@dustmotes - please send him a "thank you" tweet if you liked his scrumptious album.

Public Spaces Lab netlabel

BBC via CTW

2009-10-28T19:20:50+00:00

EDIT: I, er, forgot to include links to the videos. Mistake now remedied. *Blush*

Good lord, there's no sound to this video. Has CTW gone stark raving mad? Have the BBC's editorial standards finally fallen through the floor?

[/60s Batman]

Fear not, my media munchkins. The BBC has released this video as part of their efforts to film a major new series, Digital Revolution, that will analyse the impact of the internet on an unsuspecting world. I've made a chump of myself on the DigRev website numerous times through self-contradiction and concentrated blathering, and you're more than welcome to do the same.

Yes, yes, you cry - but what about the video? Well, the video (actually a "rush" or unedited film) was released under the BBC's special Digital Revolution Licence, which is similar to a Creative Commons licence, but with a less catchy acronym. The Beeb want you to download it, chop it up, remix it, mash it, generally have your wicked way with it, embed it on your website (should you so choose) and then return it, rosy of cheek and slightly flustered, to the Digital Revolution website, all in the spirit of openness and sharing that makes the internet such a *cough* kind, gentle, unassuming and forgiving place. DigRev's Dan Biddle tells me that you can also download a higher quality .mov file without the BBC logo, if you don't want your opus to be sullied by any mention of the planet's finest broadcasting organisation.* Please note: the download or embed link is immediately underneath the video on the BBC website.

Watch the film and you'll see some stunning images of a design classic that moves beautifully, shows serious stamina, asks searching questions and would be just the ticket for a period drama. Aleks Krotoski isn't too shabby, either.

But there's more you can mangle. How about 12 minutes of the fluffy Stephen Fry, untouched by editorial hand or sartorial taste, burbling on about the benefits and dangers of the internet? The video & download info is here.

Or the fragrant Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, chatting about citizen media, editorial hierarchies and political activism? Go on, you know you want to. Video & download link here.

I hope you have fun playing with these rushes (and all the others). Please think about joining in the debate at Digital Revolution and helping to refine what might become the geeky equivalent to David Attenborough's Life on Earth.

*Thanks for agreeing to get Tomorrow's World back on our screens, Dan. Lunch with the Director General was most pleasant. ;)

Comfort Blanket

2009-10-26T16:57:20+00:00

I don't know about you, but the arrival of autumn gives CTW the chance to drink hot chocolate, kick clouds of fiery leaves into the air and don a snug duffel coat made of free ambient-ish electronica.

Hailing from Spokane in Washington state, USA, Joseph Snodgrass, otherwise known (and who can blame him?)* as The Lights Galaxia, is an ambient/electronic musician who has capered onto the CC front lawn with Global, a collection of four tracks that's more comforting than a mug of liquid caramel topped with marshmallows. Carl Sagan's ghost has helped fluff the pillows and smooth out the sounds. No, really.

We begin with Forever Arriving - any jokes about my review schedule will see your Internet Membership revoked - wherein the ambient voices and clattering of everyday life underpin drifting piano and synth chords that refuse to resolve until the final moments. By the end, there's nothing left to listen to but people in the street, time having come to a standstill. You won't be raving/head-banging/having it large/enjoying your banker's bonus to this record.

After that, it's - TA-DAH! - my recommended track, which is an adult lullaby that should appeal to fans of (Danish music astronaut) Trentemøller and (Oxfordshire studio rats) Radiohead. In While She Sleeps (Morning Edit), you'll hear gossamer-thin, intimate synths meld with other fluffy, pulsing synths, the flapping of butterfly wings, and pixies drumming on acorn shells. In other words, it's a very clever collection of layered pads combined with lightly percussive synths and just plain percussion that's panned across the stereo spectrum so as not to clog up the mix. How to describe it further? It's like bunnies kissing.

The Lights Galaxia - While She Sleeps (Morning Edit)

Tokyo Metro takes two full minutes of chewy, crackly, ambient strap-hanging to get underway under the power of a brooding, surprisingly funky bassline and reverberating guitar accompaniment; it ends with an ambient tail that's long enough to return the mood of the track back to the original platform. Good stuff. The soundscape reminds me of DJ Side's low-passed, reverberating Bittersweet Love EP - which is more good stuff.

The final stop on the global tour (Mr S, you can have that dreadful pun free of charge for your promotional T-shirts) is The Last Lights In The City. The central motif is the oh-so-soulful epiano blues/jazz chords that swap so slowly that there's time for separate notes of each chord to pan from one ear to the other and back again. The steady diet is leavened with more Trentemøller-ish synth murmurings. If you're in doubt: it's gorgeous. You'll have to listen to it in the shower because if you hear it whilst having a bath you will undergo a short coma and wake up with your big toe stuck up a tap.

Global is intended to be a preview of a full concept album about the increasing urbanisation of the Earth, The Cities Global, to be released in 2010; I suggest that it wets the whistle most effectively. Please keep an eye out for the album, or at least let Joseph know you enjoyed it.

The Lights Galaxia - Global EP

Luxus-Artica Records International (1st release!)

Hang on. Sit down. I'm not finished. As luck would have it, just as my dinosaur-like cerebral cortex was deciding to write about Global, I discovered that one of my favourite music blogs had already written about it. Hurrah, said I, for I'd been looking for an excuse to mention this music bolthole for ages:

Travis Noble's Hiddenplace Music is a calm, soothing blog that, unlike the mongrel Catching The Waves, specialises in reviewing ambient and downtempo music. Reasons to drop by: interesting, high-quality selections; authoritative, judicious reviews; a "blog news box" that collates CC releases, thus providing the curious visitor with hours of exploratory fun, and a restrained blog design courtesy of Travis's secret identity as a graphic designer. Oh, and there are six mixes of netlabel music to explore. I must mention the excellent Solipsistic Nation podcast that Travis put together in January, highlighting his pick of the best netlabel releases of 2008. I've listened to it quite a few times over the last year; its blend of chat and dreamy ambient music is so beguiling. Yes, 2008. Yes, I am that out of date. You should see my haircut.

Hiddenplace Music (gets a spot in *gasp* CTW's General Netlabel Sites category)

*I'm so naughty. Sorry, Joseph.

Street Busking

2009-10-18T21:12:01+01:00

We weturn to the wonderful, wassailing world of Josh Woodward to weveal that he has a bwand new album, Bweadcwumbs Breadcrumbs, for you. (This is a cause for celebration, as I hope my previous review of his work will make clear.) The convention at such moments is to recommend the new album in the hope that you will download it, unwrap it, fall in love with it and then explore the artist's back catalogue. However, being a perverse sort of blog, CTW has decided to buck the trend and recommend an older album by Josh in the hope that you'll enjoy it, etc., etc., and then explore his new album. Contrary to my usual behaviour, I do have two good reasons for this apparently deviant thought process.

Firstly, Josh has just changed the Creative Commons licensing on all his music to Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, meaning that anyone can use his music for any purpose as long he is attributed. As he says:

"You're welcome to use my music, free of charge for your projects. This includes movies, ads, podcasts, YouTube videos, karaoke, background music for your grandma's 90th birthday celebration, anything. There's no problem using them for commercial purposes. You can use them as is - instrumental or regular, or you can hack them apart to use in your songs or projects.

What's the catch? Just one: you need to provide attribution. A simple mention of my name and the song title in the credits, with a bonus if you give my website URL. If for some reason this isn't practical, it's possible to arrange a paid license for my music through Jamendo."

Such largesse means that the Woodward back catalogue is now accessible to all and sundry to do with what they will. I hope this generous decision provides Josh with the oxygen of publicity and the H₂O of cash.

Secondly, Josh has remixed his 2005 album Crawford Street, something that pleases me greatly because such a superb collection of songs deserved a livelier recording. Before I wibble on about how Crawford Street is an avenue of delights, try this for size - it's suitable for anyone who finds zoos to be depressing places:

Josh Woodward - Twelve Monkeys

That's the thing about Woodward; not only does he write memorable melodies, he pens lyrics that stay with you. Here's some of the topics you'll come across in this collection: small and big-town prejudices (Can't Take Our Love Away); first loves and living/losing the American Dream (Thanks For Coming); an actor hates the violent B-movie he's making (Shower Scene); overhearing a "domestic" next door and falling in love with the battered woman (Hey Ruth) and religious fundamentalism (The Spirit World). All that may sound worthy and dull, but the winning lyrics, sparkling guitar work and butter-smooth vocals ensure that you'll soon be swaying with pleasure, like a cobra facing a snake charmer. Personally, I think Thanks For Coming should come with a free chaise longue and a bottle of Anjou/Thunderbird/Buckfast Cider.

A quick confession: in recommending free CC albums, I try to avoid over-egging the pudding. Just because a record is free, it doesn't follow that it's any good; I prefer to let the music speak for itself. Either you'll like it or you won't.

*takes anti-hyperbole pill, fails to wait two paragraphs before operating heavy machinery*

But I think Crawford Street (and other albums like the previously reviewed Dirty Wings and The Simple Life) place Josh Woodward firmly in a long line of modern American troubadours that include Dylan, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Leonard Cohen. His music should be better known.

Another name to drop: Bruce Springsteen. If The Boss had written Big Disco Ball, a sentimental and romantic encounter amongst urban decay, he'd be blinded by his audience's lighters/camera-phones. Find somewhere quiet and let this steal a few minutes of your life:

Josh Woodward - Big Disco Ball

*still waiting for pill to work*

Visit Woodward HQ and you'll find Crawford Street's songs and lyrics, seven other albums, photos, videos and a polite request for donations and sales. If the sounds find favour with you, please think about rewarding J. Woodward Esq. for his endeavours or at least send him an email with the subject line, "I thought you were a dirty, good-for-nothing hippie but now I've put your name on my organ donor card as a recipient". Or similar. Go on, you can do it.

*pill kicks in*

I'm not sure about the Autotuned vocals and eurotrash synths on Waiting Takes Time, the last track on CS. Hey, even Homer nods...off in front of the TV. Ah, a classical allusion and modern satire in one sentence. Anyone got an anti-ego pill? Edit: someone not unadjacent to JW says that Waiting Takes Time is a parody of Cher's infamous Believe. D'oh!

Before I forget, here's the cover of Breadcrumbs because I'm not stingy and because some of you need visual prompts. ;)

Josh Woodward website, Crawford Street and Breadcrumbs

Manchester United Nil

2009-10-12T23:17:47+01:00

I like to be on the cutting-edge of the forefront of the avant-garde of the zeitgeist, which is why I'm reviewing Obscure II, an album that has been freely available on the net for just two whole ...years. Sigh. I am the antithesis of trendiness.

Right, drag yourself away from the advert for moisturising handcream that is the album cover and take note: Obscure II is the soundtrack to the depiction of dark corridors, nasty creatures and artistic blood-spatter patterns that are to be found in the 2007 survival-horror computer game of the same name. You're now surmising that you're set fair for death metal, guttural vocals and maybe even a hairy frontman exploding a hot water bottle through sheer lungpower. Well, no. There's not even an exploding codpiece, because metal this ain't. Or rock.

The reason? Obscure II, otherwise known as Obscure: The Aftermath, is the work of Olivier Derivière, a Frenchman who has studied composition and orchestration at the Nice National Conservatoire, jazz and film scoring at Berklee College of Music, and who went on to spend a year working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and some hick called John Williams. So expect to hear some decent orchestration. However, Monsieur D. also created the soundtrack for last year's Alone In The Dark, another (though much more popular) grim wade through ghouls and gore. So expect to hear some decent electronica. Indeed, the electronica elements (drums/guitar/synths) are meant to represent the "corruption" of the traditional instruments and vocals that form the meat of the composition.

I find that most cinema and game soundtracks sound necessarily disjointed given the piecemeal demands of the format. Ideas aren't given time to develop or suffer from compression due to the exigiencies of drama. Outcast II doesn't avoid that fate but it does contain some exquisite singing from the Childrens' choir of the Paris Opera (Latin text galore), forthright back-up from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and enough melodic depth to keep the listener happy. It's strange that I find cantatas, masses and requiems from the classical repertoire to be satisfying, even though they too are, by their very nature, programmatic, or to use the technical term, "bitty". Perhaps I'm just a fuddy-duddy. But I'll have to get used to it, for it seems that game and cinema soundtracks have now mostly replaced liturgical rituals as a source of employment for composers. For Kyrie and Dies Irae, read Training and Boss Fight.

Enough verbiage. There are no mp3s for me to link to (grrr), but Monsieur D. has kindly supplied a media player that will drive me to tears while I install it. You're at liberty to play whatever you like, but I'll recommend two tracks you could try first:

Infested People - This is two minutes of the Boston Quartet (members of the Boston S.O.) going at it hammer and tongs. It starts off as if Shostakovich had written a 16th string quartet, goes along at a fair clip, morphs into some Philip Glass/John Adams at the 01:34 mark and ends far too quickly. I'd love to see the score released or, better still, the movement worked up into something more substantial. It's an entertaining piece of modern classical music. There's a sentence you don't see every day.
Corruption with Rage and Melancholy - With such a terrible title, this had to be the opening track and main theme of Obscure II. It's a goodly stew of strings, ethereal vocals, electronic growls, and acoustic/electronic percussion. The voice and violin solo near the end is especially affecting. If you like this track, you should like the album.

Obscure II won the Milthon award for best soundtrack at the 2007 Paris Game Festival, and I can see why. I'd never have heard the album (which is not Creative Commons-licensed) if Olivier Derivière had not made it available to download for free, and now he has a new fan who is considering buying Alone In The Dark, all his subsequent compositions, and any Derivière-shaped soap figurines that might appear in time for Christmas.*

I apologise for cobbling together an album cover from Obscure II's game packaging but there were no suitable images to go with the zipped album file. By the way, remember that guff about composers turning away from religious formats in order to earn a living? Monsieur Derivière is currently composing an opera and a... mass. Honestly, I can't win.

Olivier Derivière - Obscure II soundtrack (zipped file only, scroll to third album on page)

Olivier Derivière - blog and flashy website

*This is, of course, in jest. I don't wash.

Four Seasons In One Play

2009-10-03T23:24:24+01:00

A description of this very modern EP requires a word that was fashionable 40 years ago: mellow. Humeka's Temperate Climate, out on Argentinean netlabel Miniatura, might well be a collection of minimal and thus lead the listener to expect nightclub exertions, but in fact it's more suitable for relaxing and cooling down. In fact, were one being extremely pretentious, m'darlings, one might describe it as "high chill". (All rights reserved. Any unlicensed use of this term is liable to prosecution and the enforced middle parting of your hair.)

The kernel of the album is Humeka's four tracks, each representing one of the four seasons. It starts with Summer Ends, whose low-passed synth and gentle crackles and pops should alert you that this is indeed temperate minimal, as in mild-mannered and restrained. It's like supper jazz for electronica fans. Innumerable snippets of sound are scattered across all four of Humeka's tracks and panned through the full 180 degree aural field, though I'm sure that some sneak round the back of the head, too.

The first minute or so of Fall Arises toys with experimental electronica before easing into an 80s-type bass line and very modern clicks 'n' cuts. You'll hear an interesting bridge of rhythmical ambient before the track meanders back to relatively down-tempo electronica. A Late Spring is a fairly anaemic six minutes of dance that needs more variety to sustain my interest.

However, Sol Sistere, Humeka's last track of his four, has a bit more fibre to it. Check out the insistent sing-song background synths and a barely discernible pad for that lovely intellectual depth that minimal fans - well, the ones that are prone to self-deception - insist exists in their outwardly plain and simple snare/kick art form. (My blushes.) Its marvellously warm yet coldly digital synth riff, subdued percussion and scrambled background vocals will aid the contemplation of life's conundrums, namely: will our first contact with one of the countless civilisations residing amongst the universe's 100 billion galaxies be benign or bellicose, and does a cure for hangovers exist outside of the fantasy world of P.G. Wodehouse?

Humeka - Sol Sistere

Cuddly, isn't it? It's got that indefinable "something" that grabs the ear and won't let go.

But Temperate Climate doesn't stop there. Humeka (a Frenchman – there goes the neighbourhood) has recruited some minimal netlabel gangsters founders to add mixes, namely Christian Walt, co-founder of Interdisco; Tilman (Klamauk), choenyi (Stereo-Type, Random Access, Kreislauf, Miniatura); Sven Laux (everything, but especially Tisch, Insectorama, Tropic, Meerestief, MV, Archipel, Miniatura, Mischievous); Grifin (Silicate) and our old friend Keinzweiter (spontanMusik), who got subpoenaed with a CTW review a few months ago. You have my permission to explore those links and see how deep the netlabel rabbithole goes.

These capocannonieri have indulged themselves, meaning that the mixes are fine examples of minimal-techno but completely oblivious to CTW's world-famous dictum re. overlong dance tracks. It falls to me to convert the First Law of Dance Music into algebraic form, where y = dance track and x = bliss.

y - 0.333r = x

Despite this, there's enough good stuff here to get you through the working week. There are no less than three mixes of Summer Ends: Christian Walt adds a subtle bass that pulses very nicely under Roll-Royce glitches; Tilman's mix features some nicely treated acoustic percussion, and Keinzweiter just can't help adding some funky global warming and his trademark dusty vibe to Humeka's calm essay. All three up the tempo and aggression, though nothing that shakes the leaves from the trees.

The choenyi Orangophilic remix of Fall Arises drops the minimal tag and threatens to be a boring house-ish workout, but redeems itself by shoving pops, burps and clanging percussion at your ears, which will flex and warp to the hypnotic, driving rhythm. Sven Laux's reworking of A Late Spring improves on the original; the swelling synths remind me strongly of the terrific Cactus Y Volcanes by Alta Infidelidad. A funky bassline that's a cross between a clavier and a slap bass injects some adrenalin into Grifin's mix of Sol Sister, but it's one of those mixes that renders the original unrecognisable and replaces it with a serviceable dance track...which, on reflection, is growing on me.

Nearly every synthesiser on this album sounds low-passed, if not muffled, providing a subdued bed of sound for the minimalist percussion that dominate the higher frequencies.* It's the most well-mannered album I've heard in a while, only grabbing your interest when you decide to give it. All in all, Temperate Climate is one of the many jewels on display in the Creative Commons shop window. I suggest you throw a brick through that window, but first make sure you wrap a “Thank you, Humeka and his cronies” email around it.

Humeka - Temperate Climate EP

Humeka on MySpace

Miniatura Records

*I have my thumbs in my waistcoat pockets and am projecting confidence in my opinions. We both know I'm bluffing.

Scores Galore

2009-09-27T14:24:27+01:00

Photo: Luz A. Villa

I'll have you know that the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) is a Canadian umbrella organisation for the Petrucci Music Library, a collaborative repository of public domain and CC-licensed music scores. "This is a wonderful idea, O handsome one," I hear you say, "and I shall be only too pleased to investigate further when the project has come to fruition. In the meantime, I'm off to explore the differences between crunk, hyphy, moob, and chopped and screwed hip-hop. Peace."

*chuckles to self*

Not so fast, my jewellery-encrusted friend. The Petrucci Music Library has been up and running for over three years, and can now offer the small matter of 17,421 works and 37,157 scores, all of which are searchable by composer name, time period, genre or instrumentation. This means, and I'm sure you're ahead of me here, that musicians now have access to scores (downloadable as PDF files) from just about any century in the Western calendar that has four figures in it. If you ever fancied exploring the Renaissance repertoire, now's your chance. Tallis's Spem in Alium, Bach cantatas, Haydn string quartets, obscure atonal claptrap* from obscure 20th century composers - they're all here, many of them with the separate instrument parts as well as the full score.

Three concerns strike you. Is this Petrucci Library thing legal? Is it useful? Won't it harm music publishers? It's time for some small print:

"As the IMSLP servers are physically hosted in Canada, IMSLP has to follow the Canadian Copyright Law. All scores submitted to IMSLP either belong to the public domain, or permission has been granted by the holder of the copyrights so that the files can be submitted to IMSLP (as is the case of contemporary composers who wish to have their works submitted to IMSLP). In other words, being legal is the point of IMSLP, and all of its content that is accessible is legally available in the U.S. and Canada. Anything not allowed in the EU is clearly marked as such."

Remember, it's your responsibilty to check a score (ISMLP has assigned a helpful copyright review code to each) to see whether it is public domain in your country, be it in Europe or the rest of the world. Fortunately, the Petrucci Music Library is actually a huge Wiki-page (as in Wikipedia) so it's easy to find the relevant information. Most major 20th composers are still under copyright; the only stuff you'll find from that era are scores released under a CC licence. Don't expect to see Shostakovich or Bernstein. The IMSLP forums are happy to help with any inquiries.

As for its usefulness - ask any musician who would like to play some of the classical repertoire's warhorses or, better still, investigate some dusty sonata, string quartet or vocal piece. It sounds like a superb way of rejuvenating some hitherto ignored works. This must be a good thing, surely?

Now, the tricky bit. Won't free access to scores damage publishers' incomes? Well, it's important to remember that, depending on the regional and legal circumstances, these scores are free for anyone to download and use. It's one of those grey areas that the internet has created. Just as I can't stop someone releasing their three-hour long Creative Commons album of electronic drones and cat genitorture, music publishers can't (yet) deny access to scores that have fallen out of copyright. The cat is out of the bag (and looking somewhat frazzled). Some of these scores are so obscure that publishers would lose money if they were to release a professionally bound edition. However, many musicians, given the choice, would also like to own a properly edited and produced copy of, say, Beethoven's piano sonatas. I like to think that there's room for both approaches. In fact, I've made room for this excellent website in the CTW sidebar under "General Netlabel Sites". Trust me, it's better than a Nobel.

One small but vital point: the Petrucci Music Library has, wherever possible, placed a link to Amazon on a relevant score's Wikipage. Wonderfully, this means that the user is pointed to a variety of commercial recordings and scores, and is thus tempted to splash some cash, a particularly good thing when dealing with lesser-known works. Who knows, the IMSLP might even be responsible for increasing the sales of some CDs and scores. This is undoubtedly another example of the internet being the best thing since man found an amusing use for grapes and hops. And no, that's not another hip-hop genre. Please consider pressing the IMSLP "Donate" button if you feel the same.

To finish, some music. (Yes, I know. I'll try to review some albums in the near future.) Here's Artur Schnabel in 1935 storming through the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.21, the Waldstein:

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 21 (Waldstein): Allegro con brio...and here's the score page at the Petrucci Music Library.

International Music Score Library Project/Petrucci Music Library

* I said that out of sheer devilry. I'm fond of atonal claptrap - in small doses.

For Cheapskate Audiophiles Everywhere

2009-09-16T00:37:56+01:00

Make sure you've made out your will. Secure pressure doors. Tighten all straps. We're going in.

Some musical cultures, particularly hip-hop, thrive on fearless sampling of others' work; laptop lotharios love to chop up vocals, melodies, rhythms and musical hooks, mangle them and then, heedless of prosecution by an irate lawyer, make something new from the resultant collage. Some take the risk for the sheer pleasure of splicing and dicing; some because they can't think of anything original themselves; some to take revenge against the musical establishment, and some (most, I would suggest) because they can't afford to pay a hefty licensing fee to the relevant artist and/or record company. All well and good if you have the stomach for it and don't mind trampling on other musicians' rights.

Fair enough, but wouldn't it be better to use samples that don't require crossed fingers and a nervous gulp? I'm thinking not only of would-be musicians and film-makers, but also teachers, students, pupils and other cash-strapped desperadoes. If nothing else, the CC sampling world is tailor-made for anyone, of whatever age, locale or background, who needs a sample for a song, a play, a radio production, a lecture, homework or a particularly annoying doorbell, to use what they need without fear or favour. Many charities would benefit from exploring what's available.

Experienced musos will be familiar with the sources I'm about to suggest, but those new to the Creative Commons culture of sharing are about to discover one of the many things that makes the internet a sink of depravity an Eden of fun, frolics and funky stuff.

*taps lectern*

Please take note of the licensing details for each sample. Some will allow you to copy, share, chop and mix to your heart's content; others will not. In most cases, a simple attribution will suffice to placate the copyright holder, but it's prudent to check. Be doubly cautious if you intend to use these samples in a commercial situation; you might have to agree to a licensing contract.

Right, here we go. Click on the images to visit the sites. (I know - a CTW technological breakthrough! I'm partying like it's 1999.)

CCMixter does exactly what is says on the tin. It supplies gazillions of CC samples (and samplepacks) that can be used for remixes galore. But there's more, he rhymed: thousands of songs, all of which detail the CC samples used to make them (thus allowing anyone to cherry-pick their favourite parts and use them in their own songs); editors' and users' picks of the best songs; podcasts; forums; oh, and samplepacks and song stems from top CC people like Brad Sucks and top, formerly non-CC people like DJ Vadim. Samples can be searched via tempo, CC licence, and just about any tag you care to mention. CC Mixter is a friendly, welcoming place. Feel free to download songs & samples, make stuff of your own, upload it and get it heard and reviewed.

You'll find lots of sound effects at SoundBible.com; it's especially handy for movie scores, games designers or people who want to scare the crap out of kids on Halloween. Take note of the two main sections: Free Sound Effects and Royalty-Free Sounds. The latter are CC & public domain, so you can use them commercially - as long as you check the licence before using.

Blips is a marvellous collection of high-quality glitchy samples, packaged into coherent collections and ripe for re-use in any number of genres. I'll let Blips describe this little gem of a site: “a repository of blips and bleeps, clicks and cuts, pops and plops”. The CC license is most generous, permitting users to employ Blip samples for non-commercial & commercial purposes. Just tell the poor blighter that you've done so.

The Freesound Project is a serious-minded endeavour that hasn't forgotten how to have fun:

The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
interact with fellow sound-artists!

We also aim to create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research. Many audio research institutions have trouble finding correctly licensed audio to test their algorithms. Many have voiced this problem, but so far there hasn't been a solution.

Freesound differs from a site like CCMixter in that it deals only in snippets of sound, not complete songs. There's an amazing array of sounds to be previewed and downloaded. Electronica fans get a free supply of heroin to try and wean them off the aural crack.*

The One Laptop Per Child project is one of those causes that brings a smile to the face. This admirable project helps children from deprived areas and countries to rip the latest stream of Inglourious Basterds research and learn and play and communicate and generally grow up to wear spectacles and too-short trousers. It warms my heart. I could bang on about the 10GB of free samples...

I'll say that again.

...the 10GB of free samples it supplies via a Wikipedia page, but OLPC does it much better than I possibly could:

Loops, Grooves, Licks, Stings, Hits, Pads, Melodic Motives/Themes/Phrases, Sound-Effects, City and Country Soundscapes..., Motors, Machines, Toys, Guns, Explosions, Swords, Armor, Cars, Jets, Pot & Pans, Acoustic and Synthetic Noises, Acoustic and Electronic Drums, Voices, Western and World Instruments, Real and Human Animals, Industrial and Natural Ambiences, Film and Game Foley, and more, more, more! This huge collection of new and original samples has been donated to Dr. Richard Boulanger @ cSounds.com specifically to support the OLPC developers, students, XO users, and computer and electronic musicians everywhere. They are FREE and are offered under a CC-BY license for downloading and use in your teaching, your demos, your research, your music, your remixes, your games, your videos, your slideshows, your websites, and your XO activities. Each of the 7000+ samples is 16-bit, WAV, Mono, normalized to -3dB, and provided at 3 sample rates - 44.1K, 22.5K and 16K.

Amazing, non? Pah. Regarding the last site in this article, OLPC is but a Sampras to its Federer, a paper aeroplane to its space shuttle and a lager shandy to its ten pints of wallop. Last but not least in this pantheon of free CC samples is the only real Tardis in existence:

Bit of a letdown, isn't it? That's the actual size of the Internet Archive's logo, so don't send your complaints to me. That tiny temple contains all the knowledge of the known universe an absolutely immense reservoir of material. I don't have the space to describe the miraculousness of the IA., or archive.org as it's commonly known. Suffice it to say that you'll find digitised historical collections (academics will be forever grateful), texts, audio, moving images, software and archived web pages. In other words, for our purposes: films, TV adverts, radio programmes, speeches, sounds, music and just about anything else that could be considered ripe for sampling.

How big is the archive? Think OLPC to the power of infinity - and beyond. I've had great fun listening to radio episodes of the grand-daddy of police procedurals, Dragnet (from the 1950s, young hipsters), wonderfully hammy recountings of the Sherlock Holmes stories and, a guilty secret this, watching old TV commercials that are at once hilarious, touching and deeply disturbing. The site is too vast to comprehend in a few short visits. Some people discover it and never leave. As always, check the licence if you intend to do more than just listen to or view the contents.

To stop these useful links being trampled in the deluge of sparkling prose that pours forth from this 'ere website, tomorrow I'll add a new (and rather ungrammatical) category to Catching The Waves: “Free & Legal Samples”. If I put much more stuff in that sidebar's collection of precious artefacts, this website will start to list. List. List. Geddit? List as in lean? List as in a column of items? No? Tough crowd. It's pearls before swine.

Anyway, I hope that all of you out there, hoodies, geeks, hipsters, tutors, pupils and grannies alike, will enjoy exploring these excellent and useful sites. Finally, as a way of thanking archive.org for its hard work, and as a reward for all of you (me included) who have made it to the end of this article, here's a short behind-the-scenes film of Catching The Waves hard at work detecting, downloading, selecting and reviewing music for your listening pleasure. The audio is in no way suitable for chopping and splicing. Not at all. Goodnight.

Living Stereo 1958

*This might not be true.

Polished Nuts

2009-09-11T22:11:29+01:00

Italian instrumental hip-hop via a German netlabel, brought to you by a global idiot: truly, the internet is an electronic group hug. Cristiano Crisci Digi G'Alessio is an Italian producer of crispy beats, as you'll find out if you listen to Shiny Brazil's nine tracks, most of which are under two minutes long - meaning you'll find them either irritatingly brief or just the right length; a sort of musical biscotto, if you will.

Signore G'Alessio's musical signature seems to be a "tape-stop" effect, used most noticeably in the opener, Lo french touch, where it's frequent deployment could be interpreted as an extremely slow form of "ducking", music production fans.* He's not afraid of a dominating, if not downright overpowering, snare drum. (Less is more, in my ever-so humble opinion.) While it's not the most ground-breaking EP I've ever heard, there's enough tasteful sampling and mellow 70's soul flavour to keep cheapskate Creative Commons hipsters happy long enough to tie their cravat and dance in front of the mirror.

Today's suggested track is a slow groover and will serve as an aperitif to your weekend/chocolate & TV binge/recovery from a traumatic hangover/jailbreak:

Digi G'Alessio - Messicani sulla luna

The flutes, brass and organ really tied the room together, didn't they?** Messicani sulla luna leads nicely into something funkier, Il Tiratoio, with a bass that only just sneaked past the mixing desk. The other tracks on this unabashedly cheerful and upfront collection of hip-hop are as frothy, fun and fleeting as, er, beer froth. I'm still waiting for the latest edition of Similes for Dummies.

Shiny Brazils owes its passport to the check-in staff at iD.eology, the Cologne netlabel that will release anything as long as it takes James Brown's advice: whatever it is, it's got to be funky. This week, the Cologne crew has released two more free albums as well as Shiny Brazils, thus giving you two chances to turn up your nose at CTW's recommendation and confirm, as if you really needed to, that I'm an idiot and you're a hip-swingin' mutha from the crushed-velvet side of town. Either way, you whine win.

Digi G'Alessio - Shiny Brazils

Digi G'Alessio on MySpace

iD.eology netlabel

*One of CTW's traditions: every now and then I try to display some musical knowledge and always come up laughably short.

**Ah, The Big Lebowski. The internet issues a free DVD to every new blogger. It's true.

Time Off For Good Behaviour

2009-09-06T12:16:06+01:00

Some CTW readers might have been frustrated recently by reading my reviews of the fabulous Professor Kliq here and here only to find that they can't listen to the praiseworthy music. To cut a long story short, Patrick Haour, the very nice if tremendously hirsute Head of Music at Jamendo, suggested to the Prof that it might be a good idea to withdraw his albums because they contained a few samples taken from commercial works and therefore contravened the original artists' copyright agreements. The Prof duly complied, and hence I had to leave notes on the relevant reviews apologising for the absence of top-notch funky, ambientish Big Beat.

However, the recidivist has returned and is ready to pay his debt to society. The Prof has reworked some of the tracks from his albums and compiled them into a completely fluffy, legal and non-litigious collection of tracks entitled Community Service 2005-2009. As a certain shame-faced muso admits at the end of Apt 808, the first track on the album: "I, er, got an email from Patrick and, er, [nervous chuckle] yeah, looks like we got some cleaning up to do." Cue the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Heh.

A minor quibble: the album's mastering level seems a little high compared with Le Kliq's previous records, and occasionally there is a preponderance of high frequencies that are a tad harsh on my battered ears. This might be a consequence of the tracks' remodelling or, more likely, my impending decrepitude but worry not; overall, they're still a pleasure for the eardrums.

Having spent no little time on reviewing his previous criminal records - look, there's no way I was going to resist that pun, so deal with it - I'm not going to bore you further with my opinion of the Prof's retooling of old works. All I will say, apart from the fact that Der Kliqster must be the love-child of James Brown and FatBoy Slim, is that you should kliq (Ach, CTW, you kill me viz dis ting you call “hughmer”) the list in the Jamendo player and play Bust This, Bust That and The Most Beautiful Day. (RSS subscribers, you'll just have to don rubber gloves and strip-search Catching The Waves if you want to hear the music.) After that, thank the heavens for the wonderful world of Creative Commons, download Community Service (2005-2009), and share it with your friends, families and parole officers. You might also consider leaving a small donation at Professor Kliq's Jamendo page to help him with his rehabilitation into society.

Remember, play these tracks first (click on the album's title and you'll get a pop-up list): Bust This, Bust That = big beat/electronica nirvana, and The Most Beautiful Day = big beat/superb downtempo funk/nutty voiceover. If you don't play them before the other tracks - well, I know a guy called Otis who's feeling a little lonely now the Prof is free to walk the streets.

Professor Kliq - Community Service 2005-2009

Professor Kliq website

Jamendo

Knit One, Pearl Two

2009-08-31T15:02:00+01:00

So, being an internet hipster, you'll be wanting a bit of the ol' boom-bap. Rise from your slumbers and emit a half-baked "yay", for fLako (German beats via Berlin & London) and Noir (New Orleans rap) have combined to produce Pearls, a six-track EP released by the righteously funky Kwatro netlabel.

Disappointingly, only two one of the tracks are is available to hear outside of the zipped free full album. Kwatro are so hip it hurts, but it's awkward to get hold of their music. Pearls is available via a zShare account, which will strike fear into anyone not particularly au fait with the net - like my good self. It's ostensibly a matter of following the download instructions, but that's not the point. Netlabels, trust me on this: we surfers (ok, me) are mostly simpletons - if you want your releases to be heard, make it easy for visitors to download them. Netlabels with a one-click download system are the way to go, though I'd like to make it clear that I'm extremely grateful to all and sundry for the free music. End of moan. Are we still friends? Handshakes? Hugs? How about a quick -

*slap*

Sorry. I got carried away.

Back to the sounds: Milky Way is a low-key tale of crime and commerce backed by fLako's understated rhythm and smooth soul; Paparazzi sees a Hammond organ massage a dreamy background vocal and a gentle beat before Noir crashes in, as rappers do, with a snare drum and his opinion of fame and fortune. Edit: Paparazzi is now available only as part of the zipped album file. Don't hit me.

fLako x Noir - Milky Way by flako

While fair tracks, I would have chosen some of the other four on the EP to entice listeners, particularly Cosmic Theory and the head-nodding wOoop, the latter title doubling up for the sound you'll make when the beat drops. None of these outings are longer than three minutes so there's little chance of the beats outstaying their welcome.

Now, you might be one of the many who love hip-hop and find nothing more immediately satisfying than a dusty drum-beat that's tighter than my budget, but who ...hate rap. C'mon, own up. Noir makes a good job of spittin' (Yeah, kids. CTW is down with the, er, lingo) on Pearls, but, like it or not, some people want to get to the main course without interference from a maitre'd. What to do, what to do? I know, let's see if fLako can help to find us some beats that don't feature bad language and...

Sigh. Still, that's the only swearword on the whole fucking album, wherein you'll find twenty (Recession? What recession?) snippets of instrumental hip-hop goodness. Most of the twenty tracks on The First Space Shit On The Moon are less than two minutes long, yet they're not just extended loops; they're instrumental hip-hop miniatures that are wonderfully varied, from the rankin' Shake It Harder to the slinky Crying On The In. What vocals there are consist of the merest snippets that act as a musical counterpoint rather than the dominant theme. Whether you're a hip-hop listener or producer, there's a lot to enjoy and learn from. How much variety is there among this fistful of beats? Let a master wordsmith paraphrase for you:

All right, we got white boom-bap, black boom-bap, Spanish boom-bap, yellow boom-bap, we got hot boom-bap, cold boom-bap, we got wet boom-bap, we got [sniffs] smelly boom-bap, we got hairy boom-bap, bloody boom-bap, we got snappin' boom-bap, we got silk boom-bap, velvet boom-bap, Naugahyde boom-bap, we even got horse boom-bap, dog boom-bap, chicken boom-bap! Come on, you want boom-bap, come on in, boom-bap lovers! If we don't got it, you don't want it! Come on in, boom-bap lovers!

You can't beat Shakespeare.

But there's a small problem. You've guessed it - only two tracks to hear outside of the free zipped album. These are Sparkling Dust, a cheerful, dub-ish slice of boom-bap, and Desert Ride, a dusty beat with a hint of rock music - a track that'll hint at the variety to be found on The First, etc. Again, they're not the tracks I'd have chosen, but we all know that I am to discernment what ice-cream is to athleticism.

fLako Sparkling Dust by flako fLako Desert Ride by flako

The loose, almost sloshed, nature of some of the rhythms and synth sounds remind me of the previously reviewed Comfort Fit, whose new commercial release, Polyshufflez LP, is available from Tokyo Dawn Records. (Incidentally, TD's 24-carat back catalogue contains an almost unknown entity: free and genuinely good hip-hop. Run, Forrest, run.)

My thanks to the good volk at the always superb Phlow, where one of their many album discussion threads pointed me to fLako. So, if you don't mind braving the aforementioned pestilential download scheme, please scoop up these two lovely slices of beat-based distraction from real life. Stick your chest out and have a go. After all, it's one small shit for man...

fLako x Noir - Pearls (scroll down the page, find the download link, go to zShare, press "download" and wait 50 seconds. Bleurgh.)

fLako – The First Space Shit On The Moon (straight to the zShare link)

fLako and Noir on MySpace.

Kwatro netlabel

Enjoy It While It Lasts

2009-08-25T00:34:54+01:00

You'll see from the title of his quirky album that QuarterBIT, a talented cove from sultry Barcelona, has loosed his floe of ambient on the icy waters of the internet without so much as a glance at his spell-checker. Ah me. You should know by now that free music can't afford sub-editors. Besides, this is the internet; anyone can make a tipo typo.

There's not much point in listening to this on your daily commute unless you have high-quality noise-cancelling headphones. The Antartica Files is a pure ambient album, by which I mean that it's all field recordings, so it'll get bullied by extraneous real-life ambient sounds like planes, trains and automobiles. And other John Hughes films.

Hey, where do you think you're going? Come back here, buster. Listen up. I know it's ambient. I know it won't make your rump do the rumba. Nevertheless, if you're feeling a bit jaded about music or you love sounds for their own sake, try one track - then I'll let you go. As you'll hear, there are few more beautiful sounds in this world than church bells, especially the deep, round, full chimes that appear towards the end of Church. Lovely.

QuarterBIT - Church

Just about the only track here that sounds overtly manipulated is Harbor Harmonic, where seagulls compete to see whose mournful screams sound most like a mellow Eddie Van Halen. It's either a marvellous layering of different recordings, some tasteful pitch automation, or Hitchcock was right and the birds are up to something.

QuarterBIT - Harbor Harmonic

This being ambient, there's an obligatory inclusion of crashing waves. Most ambient beach recordings tend to concentrate on the higher frequencies; not so in Antarctica Surf (correct spelling!), where you'll feel the weight of hundreds of tons of ice-cold water pound a pebbly shore.

Parade features some jolly car horns and a trad jazz band that will go in your right ear and out your left like a hot knife through ICan'tBelieveMyGreyMatterIsSoPliable Butter.

A female relative of mine (who has dropped a couple of ankle-biters) says this type of album is good for someone who is with child. Perhaps she's right. Mind you, I think she was listening to something a bit more vigorous a few months earlier.

There are so many details here that will tickle the tired ear: a motorboat that sounds like a wallowing warthog; a droning fly; snatches of conversation; footfalls; querulous sheep, a clanking gate (a nice way to end the track Sheep); and water, water, everywhere, be it running water (At The Glacier), lapping waves & bubbling streams (The Ice Island) or churning, frothy pools (The Waterfall).

I hope the above verbiage gives you an idea of what to expect. I suggest you find a quiet corner, press “play” and let the magic of audio transport you to everyday but wondrous places around the world. If you need more of the same, stick your head out of a window and listen anew.

There will be some strange people out there who insist that music should include esoteric things like instruments, notes, melodies and rhythms. Yeah, I know; weird. Still, CTW is a fat broad church so I've done something startling and included a second album for your delectation.

This classy compilation of burgeoning ambient artists is the most recent product from the same label, PublicSpaces Lab, that released The Antartica Files. As this is not a proper album review, it's fitting that the album is named Ceci n'est pas une pipe. The sound quality is excellent throughout, there are some winning tracks lodged between the plethora of ambient sounds and drones, and four dimensions (time & space) and the truth (laziness) are forcing me to cut this review far too short.

Somio has pulled a flanker with San Feliz, a track inspired by numerous sojourns to northern Spain. It's far too upbeat, cheery and hip to be described as ambient. But we won't complain, will we?

Somio - San Feliz

And despite lettering that's driving my Anglo-Saxon keyboard round the bend, Løser's Núr is definitely worth a listen. The unimportant stuff: drones, trip-hop, ethereal vocals, camera noises. The important stuff: it's good. If you like ambient-ish downtempo grooves with a dash of electronica, this'll be your pint of porter.

Løser - Núr

Not bad, hmm? Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe also comes with an excellent booklet that gives lots of information about the contributing artists, including one QuarterBIT. And that's it. C'est tout. Run along, gang. You might get some music next time.

QuarterBIT – The Antartica Files (link to zipped album)

QuarterBIT on MySpace

Various Artists – Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe (link to zipped album)

PublicSpaces Lab netlabel

Nice Legs; Shame About The Face

2009-08-17T15:22:21+01:00

Yes, that is an actual (and full-size) album cover. Yikes. Moving swiftly on, pray place your head between two large loudspeakers and say “wibble”, for Max Cavalerra is here to shatter your earwax with five tracks of bangin' techno.

The majority of Cavalerra's The Bigger, The Better EP eschews the groovy complexity of minimal for more straightforward dance beats: the holy trinity of snare, kick and hi-hat stick closely together and move in a group from “fast” down to “take a breather” and back up to “crush the dance floor”. To illustrate, allow me to recommend the immensely heavy opening track, Impact, wherein various noises off reverberate around a lone synth stab and a simple yet irresistibly catchy kick/snare/bass combo. Play it on a meaty sound system and watch your windows wobble.

Max Cavalerra - Impact

Similarly, the follow-up, Function, uses a "melody" consisting of just the one bass note repeated endlessly. Swathes of white noise and high-speed flummery threaten to swamp the relentless techno beat but that aforementioned religious trio keeps on keeping on. Hey, it's techminimalhousedance. What did you expect, a fugue?

In Memory of Violett is actually more, er, minimal than techno. (Self-contradiction is my speciality. It's not. It is, really. No, it ain't.) Some synths waft about in a chilled-out manner and make good use of the aural spatial field, although the intricate percussion still runs on rails. Like the rest of the album, it confirms CTW's well-known First Law of Dance Music.*

Energetic, forthright, insistent: all adjectives that apply not only to CTW's manly odour but also to 1000ccm's six and a half minutes. I must report that this tech-house track is full of the usual culprits. Yep, expect bass drops, low-passed breakdowns, hi-hats that move your noggin back and forth and the odd piquant vocal snippet. It's not overly original, but nor are olives - and I love olives.

Using the same punctuation-notation as a questionable but interesting chess move⁺, What The Bell?! is a track that shows Cavalerra's production chops. Surprise, surprise, there's some delicate chimey stuff nestling in the background of the seemingly well-mannered minimal-tech that constitutes the track's first half, but the chief attraction is the introduction of a chewy, electro-acid synth line that gets all glitchy over its bad self. It reminds me of the electro badass rather super Tom Neville. This is a good thing.

Right, it's time for me to skip gaily through the daisy-drenched uplands of free netmusic only to return at an unspecified time and waistline measurement. In the meantime, I suggest you dump The Bigger, The Better in your mp3 player, swap its egregious album cover for a picture of Beyoncé/Britney/The Hoff/Alastair Sim, and wait for your headphones to flap up like the ears of a surprised basset hound. Netlabel music can have that effect.

Please think about sending a "thank you" email to Max, who is probably busy DJ-ing Munich to a standstill, and/or Broque.de netlabel, which should be thinking hard about adding a PayPal "tips" button to its whiter-than-white website. Thank them for all the lovely sounds. But not the pictures.

Max Cavalerra - The Bigger, The Better (link to zipped album & individual files)

Maxcavalerra.com

Broque.de netlabel

*All dance tracks are a third too long. You know it's true.

+Knowledge of this stuff has not affected my love-god status in the slightest.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

2009-08-04T19:14:29+01:00

Sorry about the small album cover. Come on, you've missed my traditional difficulties with graphics, haven't you? At least there are waves.

Paper Navy is a four-piece band from near Nashville, Tennessee, that draws its inspiration from be brave, you can do this Country & Western and American pop from the 70s. I think they've drawn their instrumentation from the past, too, because there's not a whiff of a synth, digital effect or anything with a microchip in it. Doctor Who could smuggle All Grown Up into a Nashville record shop circa 1972 and no-one would be any the wiser.

Pleasingly for those of us with OCD, today's recommended track, Swan Song, adheres to its title and is the last track on All Grown Up. It's a charming, foot-tapping folk song with a surprisingly bleak attitude and a jaunty whistled riff that will rest awhile in your cortex before continuing its search for a spaghetti western it can call home. (Somewhere, Sergio Leone is gnashing his teeth in frustration.) Have a listen via the first appearance at CTW of Bandcamp's media player:

<a href="http://papernavy.bandcamp.com/track/swan-song">Swan song by Paper Navy</a>

(Apologies to feed readers: Google Reader hates me. Please visit the link at the end of the review or visit CTW and get grimy.) Apart from being unable to resist whistling that riff for the rest of the week, you'll notice from the lyrics that there's none of that twee "my jiggling dashboard Jesus will guide me through the roadworks of life" C&W nonsense. (Please note, anonymous angry internet person, that CTW respects all creeds from devout to aetheistic. I'm so fluffy.) Instead, All Grown Up takes an existentialist but pragmatic view of life. For instance, I Can't Read essays the following thought: Do we persist out of fear/The afterlife ever near/I'd be remiss were I not a critic/So God save the cynic.

The title song is a lament for childhood by someone who isn't too keen on adulthood. It's child-like guitars, rocking singalong chorus and Beatles-ish backing vocals will soon have you singing All Grown Up at work, shortly before you curl up in a foetal position and force the boss to call social services. But I regress digress.

If you're a fan of the album Homecoming by that quintessentially American folk-rock band of the 70s, America, then make a bee-line for Factories, where Shawn Anfinson's folky vocal harmonies about bitter-sweet love and longing should remind you strongly of that classic bit of, er, Americana.

Make Time is just about the simplest, most everyday love song I've ever heard. How's this for a lack of artifice: I'm not a superstar/but I can cut the grass and clean the car/And I'll make time for you/I love the woman I'm married to. That's either the apogee or the death of romance. Answers on a postcard, please.

To save this review turning into a boring list of song descriptions, allow me to be lazy inform you that in All Grown Up, Paper Navy have produced an album that is more than the sum of its twangy Telecaster-laden parts; it's a beautifully produced set of hummable songs that display a questioning sensibility about modern life. Not all albums need the latest whiz-bang effects to make their point: music fans know that there'll always be a place for good melodies, harmonies and lyrics, pure and not so simple. Now, having avoided doing my job properly given this lovely album a thorough reviewing, it falls to CTW to encourage you to send some "thank you" emails to Paper Navy and ask Shawn how the band managed to record the tracks in his laundry room and yet still produce such a sparklingly pristine set of underpants songs.

I apologise for being so witty overdoing the strikethrough gag.

Paper Navy - All Grown Up (link to zipped album and individual songs in most formats)

Paper Navy website

Trail Mix

2009-07-25T17:53:08+01:00

Raised in Bogotá, Colombia and of Japanese descent, Nobara Hayakawa is trained in jazz singing, holds degrees in Graphic Design and Fine Arts from Universidad Nacional de Columbia and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and is currently a lecturer at two Colombian universities. But I won't hold that against her; CTW accepts anyone, no matter how clever.

In the first track out of six, Trail, Ms Hayakawa sings in Japanese and wordless vocals; the latter are used for most of the album (with a splash of English), so all you monoglots out there can relax. It's about "the love/hate pendular movements that one experiences under the effects of a caprice” and there is indeed a little tension in the stunning wash of vocal harmonies that dominate this song. The luxuriant vocals are panned either side of the insistent, tinny percussion that nags away as though someone was tapping on the computer screen to get your attention.

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail

Now you know that Ms Hayakawa can hold a note or three, you might expect some decent singing in the next track. Clever you; you're right on the nose. In fact, there are some lovely swooping vocal phrases that are strongly reminiscent of Kate Bush. What you might not expect is a hoover, even though the track is named Hoover Love. Take your mind out of the gutter. It's surreal to listen to this charming song's tick-tock percussion and piano and then hear a vacuum cleaner start up in the background, begin to roar like a jet engine and then, for a few enchanting seconds, match the song's pitch before slowly fading away. If nothing else, it'll change your opinion of carpets.

Alas is a gentle vocal workout with a soothing piano accompaniment and synth embellishments. Towards the end of the track, a bass pad underlines the wistful atmosphere. Nobara responds by exploring her lower vocal register.

To Desalejar, where the listener will enjoy some crusty distorted vocals, a memorable synth melody and another lovely bed of vocals. Again, her swooping lines, overt emotionalism and willingness to incorporate unusual ambient sounds into her songs lead me to think that Ms Hayakawa is a Kate Bush fan – and that's before I mention the steam whistle coda. Of course, I might be wrong. We all know that I'm an idiot.

The hums and ambient noises at the start of Fuzzy Lady are interrupted by an amplified, reverberating slow drag down a guitar string - it's the nastiest sound you'll have heard since your least favourite teacher last scraped chalk down a blackboard. It's followed by a piano, the obligatory enchanting vocals and - to continue the earlier household cleaning theme - a washing machine. There's also a voiceover from an ancient detergent advert, jazzy piano chords, cooing vocals, sleepy guitars and a drum machine that sneakily ups and drops the tempo as the mood takes it. Would you expect anything less? I didn't like Fuzzy Lady at first, but subsequent listens have revealed it to be a beautiful piece of ambient-ish, atmospheric electronica.

Finally, the first minute of Homelessness, consisting as it does of lacklustre synths and distorted rumbling, is rather disappointing, but its second is fortunately hijacked by a very low-fi drum beat and an ear-meltingly gorgeous melody – sung in English, no less. It was written "after reading too much Paul Auster and crying too much for the same ghost". Artistic hangovers are evidently more spiritual and productive than my cheap and nasty alcoholic ones.

There's no Donate button on the album's release page at Intervall-audio, but the netlabel does have a shop dedicated to German & Japanese electronica, mainly from Düsseldorf & Tokyo, so feel free to let your wallet run amok. Nobara Hayakawa's website is similarly absent of shiny money buttons, but I'm sure she'd be delighted to receive a few emails saying how her album has made the world a better place. She's also on the lookout for musical collaborations, so don't be shy.

My thanks to Phlow, Free Albums Galore and everyone else who has already commented on Trail. I have never claimed to be original - just handsome.

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail EP (zipped album and preview mp3s on netlabel release page)

Nobara Hayakawa - Trail EP (zipped album and full individual mp3s, baby, at archive.org)

Nobara Hayakawa home page

Intervall-audio netlabel