Once upon a time, there were proper full-length albums, which were milestone documents, often passed over in favor of singles, which captured the moment rather than cementing it. Then, with the rise of Internet culture, came netlabels, with their free, easily accessible releases — often short albums of either abstract or intensely genre-focused material, generally as thorough as a proper album, but with the immediacy of a single, due to the absence of physical packaging or retail distribution. And now, with hosting services such as soundcloud.com, comes an immediacy that’s all the more compelling — music posted on Soundcloud has the feel of a studio soundboard recording, an experiment that the musician, or band, posts, just to float something out there, sort of the way a DJ might issue a white label to give something a trial run in a club. Taylor Deupree, for example, has uploaded some tracks at soundcloud.com/12k, including a guitar-loop one that’s four minutes of highly recommended consonance: circles of soft-loud-soft tones, little pops of percussion. It’s less a song than a test pattern, and all the more enticing for its ethereal nature (MP3).
More on Deupree at 12k.com.