The opening cut on Simio Superior’s Como na Radio (from the Portuguese netlabel test tube), simply titled “2,” is the sound of one pachinko machine rocking. Well, it’s the sound of one musician, Andre Abel (the label’s website translates his …
Ryuichi Sakamoto, the peripatetic Japanese musician of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence fame, has been playing a game of telephone with various electronic-music luminaries, including Towa Tei, David Sylvian, Christian Fennesz, Hector Zazou and, most recently, Christopher …
Like many composers in Hollywood, Jeff Rona has a far more complicated filmography than simply a list of major motion pictures and TV shows. Before scoring the Traffic mini-series, he contributed cues to the Traffic film. Before collaborating with Lisa …
Vortex is the name of a French duo whose take on European free improv is so fragile that it approaches the quality of aural background happenstance. All its choppy breathing and clanky, purposefully awkward playing rarely registers above a certain …
When the brief write-up at the Kranky Records website, kranky.net, describes its most recent free download as “a live version of the song, ‘Coral Gables’” from Gregg Kowalsky’s forthcoming debut full-length release, Through the Cardial Window, due out in …
A few days ago, Robert Fripp uploaded a heavenly, two-minute bit of looped guitar to his website, dgmlive.com, “Tone Probe III” (MP3). Some related recordings are available for purchase at a buck a pop here. In related …
The rise of bleep.com, the online music retailer that doesn’t impose any DRM (so-called digital “rights” management) on its files, potentially signaled the decline, if not end, of free downloads from the growing list of labels associated with the …
ELECTRO-ORGANIC MP3S: A cough, of all things, lends some context. As if to underscore that what you’re hearing is, in fact, being performed live, amid several of the downloadable tracks by Doogie (aka Nathan Mclaughlin) at his website, fluxed.net, …
Yet another twist in composer Koji Asano’s weekly free downloads, at kojiasano.com. When the second weekly file was uploaded, the first one disappeared, suggesting that subsequent entries in the series would be available for one week only. But that …
You can’t get much more minimal than a song in which a slight twitch in the downbeat is as close as the piece comes to a hook. And that’s exactly how Mark Hamn chose to begin his phenomenal Function Buttons, …