PREFUSE73 MP3: For every dozen folktronic tracks that find a nice, lowkey, occasionally trippy melodious zone between laptop digital synthesis and old-tyme lackadaisical stringed instrumentation, there’s but one upbeat song like Prefuse 73‘s “Pagina Dos Featuring the Books,” which hones a digital equivalent to bluegrass’ caffeinated kick. This superb little cut, off P73’s Surrounded by Silence, due out on March 21, is built from the sparest of materials: a cycling pluck of guitar, a smattering of arid beats, and these candid spoken-word snippets that lend the cut the urban-stoop soul of something out of Tommy Guerrero’s catalog (or, for that matter, one of Terence Blanchard’s soundtrack’s for Spike Lee, albeit with an amateur hum in place of the trumpet). It’s a delectable cut, from an album that’ll feature Kazu (of Blonde Redhead), Aesop Rock, Gza and Masta Killa. (The just-out single, “Hideyaface,” features Ghostface and El-P.) So, why’s the MP3 available for free in the first place? Apparently the last newsletter from Bleep.com, the online music retailer run by the Warp Records label, suffered some technical trouble, and this track is being given away as an apology. The newsletter said the file’s for subscribers only, but now the spring 2005 edition of the newsletter is archived on the Bleep.com site, along with a link to the track. Get it while the offer lasts, at warprecords.com/bleep/newsletter.
Month: March 2005
Awkward MP3 Set
Definitely check out Awkward‘s new Suicide in Installments entry, Dreamt, which inserts a pop impulse into a range of more experimental sounds, finding a middle ground between melody and drone (“Brokt”) and livening up some stuttering beats (“Untitledtwo”). Those are arguably the two best cuts on a set that varies widely enough to be mistaken for a various-artists compilation. To its credit, SII doesn’t burden its releases with the additional files so common to netlabels, but a little more information wouldn’t hurt. What we get is an album and a title (which is which might even be confusing, though the site’s news page explains all) and the names of eight cuts. Check it out at suicideininstallments.com. Some more info and related links at Awkward’s myspace.com page.
Lithuanian Netlabel MP3
The netlabel format by its very nature frees individual tracks from the sets in which they appear. The word “album” seems outdated, since netlabels generally take no physical form, just floating music on the Internet and waiting to see who downloads it. Generally this is accomplished with release-specific webpages, allowing for individual track downloads, along with weighty “zipped” archives of the complete release, often including jpeg images of square-format “cover” art. At surfaces.tinkle.lt (that’s “lt” as in Lithuania, not “it” as in Italy), the Surfaces netlabel has found a way to keep its releases whole, at least initially. By way of example, for MonoCulture’s excellent and recent Lawn World, it provides one track for download on its lonesome, the elegant “Losing the Thread,” a long strain of glitch Morse code, with a maudlin-sweet overlay of toy piano, a very beautiful treat in all. To hear the rest of the album’s eight tracks, you’ll need to download a 40mb file and unstuff it. What treasures are locked inside? (More on MonoCulture, aka Nick Eymann, at urbansprawlrecords.com.)
Jeanrenaud MP3
And, yes, another fine download from the Internet Archive’s Other Minds catalog, over at archive.org. This time, a live recording of the solo “Hommage” by cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, an exercise in electronically enhanced layers, reminiscent of David Darling and Hank Roberts. Jeanrenaud is best known as the former cellist of the Kronos Quartet. The 20-minute file is only downloadable via FTP, but the site provides clear instructions; just search for “jeanrenaud hommage.” Recorded last year at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco.