Like its earlier Downstream entry (see the highly recommended “Le Saint Jean,” January 7, 2004, here), Soundvial’s “Steven Head” MP3 has all the makings of a short indie film — well, a very short indie film (at just over …
Kwook, with his nonsense syllable of a nom-du-MP3, knows that much as a word repeated ad nauseam becomes almost alarmingly meaningless, a sound repeated on end becomes a potent rhythm track. The self-descriptive “Washerloop,” off his four-song Immiscible EP on …
Promise to not make a habit of it, but this week’s Friday Downstream link is the same as last Friday’s: the BBC’s Mixing It radio show, at bbc.co.uk/radio3/mixingit. Same link, but new show, as each Friday brings a brand …
An hour-long live set by Ben Recht (aka Local Fields), recorded earlier this month at the Enormous Room in Cambridge, as part of the weekly Beat Research club night, has been put up online. Recht pithily summarizes the recording as …
Another day, another international netlabel with deep archives. The Germany-based Stadtgruenlabel has been doing free monthly releases of minimal techno all this year. And though much of it is more techno than minimal, more chunka chunka than sublime churn, an …
One of the beautiful things about electronic music that’s derived from conceptual art is that it provides its own readymade metaphors. In other words, in the absence of traditional musical form, we have the musician’s m.o. to lend sense to …
While there is much on r_garcia’s four-song Travel by Light Rail MP3 EP (available for free from the Kikapu netlabel) that leans heavily on the sort of techno-exotica that seemed brave and new when Aphex Twin first recorded such things …
The Mixing It radio show on the BBC (homepage here) is one of the network’s best, at least as experimental electronic music is concerned. Today’s broadcast (yes, today’s — ah, the immediacy of the Internet; it’s already archived in …
Björk is one of ambient/electronica’s great fellow travelers. She’s a pop vocalist at home with the avant-garde, and her work demands to be heard alongside leading digital lights in both realms, through sheer force of aesthetic will (those favored barren …
Since the Downstream “free music” department on Disquiet.com debuted, in October 2003, there have been some 140 or so individual entries. They’ve ranged from single downloadable MP3 files to entire streaming live performances, from tidy EPs to extended DJ gigs. …