Disquiet

It feels a little late for holiday music, but there’s really nothing season-specific about “Christmas 1983,” a free MP3 (download) from PanAmerican, culled reportedly from the same recording sessions as PanAm’s Quiet City album (2004, on Kranky Records, whose website, kranky.net, hosts the file). Note for the anti-Santa camp: the Kranky website refers to it as “Christmas 1983,” but the MP3 appears to carry the more secular title, “December 1983.” It opens with a heartbeat pulse and some seemingly computer-generated ambience, and soon enough a six-string enters, playing at a determinedly rudimentary pace. Occasional tones match and hold the pitch of a given guitar note, like it’s too good not to linger over — the sonic equivalent of a ghost image. Only a little quieter than that confectionary haze is some natural background noise (a little movement, perhaps a muffled voice, some shuffling), which lends the whole production a down-home appeal that contrasts nicely with (or, more to the point, subsumes) the more markedly digital elements. Midway through, Mark Nelson (who essentially is PanAm) starts talk-singing (“the streets are in ruins… “), and the combination of his detached vocals and the automation of the track sounds like nothing so much as a long lost Underworld song, like “Born Slippy” in super-slomo. The MP3 is part of Kranky’s ongoing semi-monthly giveaways. More info at kranky.net, under “news and tour updates.”

The Minus Pilots refer to themselves as “sound experimentalists devoted to improvisational aural assaults or otherwise skewed music often played slowly and quietly.” And they have the MP3s to back up the claim. Currently posted on the minuspilots.com website are excerpts from an upcoming album, Boundless Walls, and other tracks that date from the same recording period. After its static-laden opening, “An Exit” is like a great Air (or latter day Pink Floyd) tune, one with a melody that seems sweet enough, until it’s been looped back around so many times that it becomes a theme you can’t get out of your head; layers of field recordings keep the timbre dark. “Drive Yards” is a soundscape stained with hauntingly distant voices and music; aural elements swerve by, then reappear as if you’ve never heard them before, as if it had been recorded in a place from some science fiction novel by Greg Egan or Steve Erickson, a place where small timewarps are transforming the environment. “Transmission” finds a nice tension between a romantic piano line and the mechanical echo that allows it to mirror itself, when suddenly the Pilots display an unexpected bit of humor, interrupting the song with a Cold War-era public service announcement.

“Disconnected,” one of the two non-album tracks, ventures into the illbient realm of dub — a deep chasm of echo, but one with too many twists and turns to appeal to anyone just looking to zone out; it’s a purposefully bad trip, and one worth taking. The title of “Remote” comes from the TV accessory, not the emotional state so common in electronically mediated music. It changes channels like a John Zorn suite, from horror-show organ to free jazz to spare percussion, with a whole lot more in between. Like all the songs here, it opts for narrative over song form, and like “Disconnected” in particular it makes art of disjunction. Warp your MP3 player at minuspilots.com.

You come for the landscape, you stay for the rhythms. More specifically, you head over to David Last‘s webpage (somnaut.com) and download his “Landscape” MP3, a survey of grounded atmospheres that’s far more spacious than its 3:10 running time suggests. The track starts like an expansively hopeful, downright beatific organ solo, but halfway through the tone darkens suddenly. The piece hovers in that shadow territory briefly, but before you know it, Last has worked his way back up to something not unlike the track’s opening; to “Landscape”‘s compositional credit, that taint of gloom is retained.

And while you’re at it, dip into Last’s more beat-oriented material: “Chiki” has a dancehall flavor, albeit tempered with a techno-totalitarian thump, plus an automated cackle that’s somewhere between Lil Jon and Flava Flav. “Secret Society” has a Caribbean vibe, with a kettle drum melody, and its own unwitting rap cameo: that’s very likely Missy Elliott intoning, and her presence emphasizes the Timbaland-ness of Last’s productions, how they employ scratchy sample cut’n’play in a splendid studio vacuum. (We could use more ambient-leaning musicians with a taste for Timbaland.) “Springset” opts for a talking drum. “Push Pull” adopts a Middle Eastern feel; it’s amazing how well backward masking and modal musics go together — perhaps there’s an inherent compatibility, perhaps they both just bring to mind George Harrison. Download ’em all at somnaut.com/listen.html. Last is a well-traveled downtempo musician and visual artist who has worked with Alex Patterson (The Orb), Colin Newman (Wire), Malka Spigel and Hahn Rowe, among others.

The act known as Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) maintains a good track record of posting new free music most months, and the first such MP3 of 2005 is a bit of one of his dance scores (Nemesis, written for the Random Dance ensemble), remixed by DJ Danger Mouse (mastermind of the headline-making Grey Album). Apparently Danger Mouse did this “long before” Grey Album. It’s a six-plus-minute piece, uncharacteristically melodic for Scanner, even romantic, along the lines of a Hollywood spygame score, and run through with percussive elements. Track here, more on Scanner at scannerdot.com. On the dance group’s website, randomdance.org, there are video clips of Nemesis being performed (navigate to “repertory”).