31 May 2011

Martinibomb

Martinibomb is sharing their catalog for free! WHAT?! I KNOW! RIGHT?

You knew you could score some of their tunes on Comfort Stand and one on Oddio Overplay. Now you have hit the mother lode!

30 May 2011

Stealing Orchestra - Deliverance

Stealing Orchestra have been amazingly generous contributors to the free music world for a decade. The orchestra has provided a prolific free netlabel (and at Free Music Archive) featuring their work and the works of fellow Portuguese bands.

DELIVERANCE is Stealing Orchestra's new album. It is a master work, a massive opus that begins with the big bang and delivers us to the present day. It is amazing. The first time I heard it I was stunned, so I am here to recommend it to you. Preview the album at Amazon or iTunes.

The goal of Oddio Overplay is to unite listeners with artists who share free music. Every once in a while, promoting a commercial album is a good reminder that artists would like to eat or to have the means to dedicate themselves to support themselves with their work.

DELIVERANCE is not an album to buy only in thanks to Stealing Orchestra for all the free music they have given us. It is also an important album you will want to hear, a vast philosophical composition able to pull you out of yourself and the present moment and into something cosmic and larger than all of us.

digital download: Amazon, iTunes || physical cd: Louie Louie

From the press release:
After seven years, Stealing Orchestra gain new life and announce their return with their third feature-length album, DELIVERANCE. The new album contains nine brand new tracks and celebrates the 10th anniversary of the band's netlabel You Are Not Stealing Records.

Stealing Orchestra are joined on the new album by Rodrigo Leão (Madredeus) and Ana Deus (Três Tristes Tigres). DELIVERANCE can be found in digital format on iTunes or Amazon and in CD in Portuguese stores, Louie Louie, or through the band....

The last release of this Portuguese band from Porto was the EP BU in 2004. Since then, the musicians have dedicated themselves to various side projects, including X-Wife, Genocide, Motornoise, GG Allin's Dick, Tres Tristes Tigres, Mécanosphère, Dr. Phibes & The Ten Plagues of Egypt, FRICS, and Two White Monsters Around the Table. Members have even collaborated with musicians like John Zorn, Damo Suzuki (Can), Steve Mackay (Stooges), Massimo Pupillo (Zu), and Pamelia Kurstin, among others.

This "liberation" is the culmination point of several years of distilling ideas, compositions, recordings, and sound research. Unlike previous albums, where manipulation and sound collage assumed a key role, DELIVERANCE celebrates a new attitude of the band, promoting a creative process involving several elements where it is impossible to distinguish between what are samples and what are the real instruments.

The result is thus a more organic and fluid composition, which must be heard as a whole: the drama in "Evitando o Cinismo (Avoiding Cynicism)," the loss in "Enquanto há Memória (While There is Living Memory)," the harsh beauty of the Tras-ss-Montes province [Americans suck at geography, so explaining it is a province here for the dummies] in "Um Reino Maravilhoso (A Wonderful Kingdom)," the popular violence in "The Glorious Moment of Popular Catharsis & Revenge," and the hope in "Earth Provides Enough to Satisfy Every Man's Need." In the last song, "Getting Him Out Of Creation," we listen to an excerpt of an interview with the philosopher Colin McGinn, on THE ATHEISM TAPES (BBC, 2004). Then back to the beginning of everything: explosions, the thunder, the violent birth of the Earth, and the first sounds of water and life, ending in Man, the Machine, and Chaos. Stealing Orchestra suggest us to forget God and see the creation of a world that was born by itself and not by Him.
DELIVERANCE is a deeply emotional album, full of faith and idiosyncrasy (but always without him around, of course), waiting to be discovered and rediscovered again and again.

DELIVERANCE is, at its core, an album made with love, without asking permission, and without any fear of pointing out new directions where we can hear everything we have heard before in totally different ways. DELIVERANCE will never be "World Music," but it is not afraid to admit that it is music from around the world always true to its roots.

With 13 years of existence, Stealing Orchestra edited their first demo in 1998, POSTCARD PEOPLE, which earned them the attention of critics and six awards at that year's edition of the defunct Prémios Maquete (Demo Awards). Two years later, the group launched their debut album STEREOGAMY (NorteSul / EMI-VC) which expressed the group's fascination with cinema, collages, sound manipulation, computer game soundtracks, and obsolete machinery capable of producing the most unlikely sounds.

In 2001, the album É PORTUGUÊS? NÃO GOSTO! began a new phase in the band's career. Released by the newly formed netlabel YANSR (the first Portuguese netlabel and one of world's first), this EP challenged traditional means of publishing and played with the prejudices about "what is ours" (from our country Portugal). The title speaks for itself, IS IT PORTUGUESE? I DON'T LIKE IT.

The last full-length release before hibernation, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BAND (Zounds / Sabotage), took their universe further and continued to celebrate music as a weapon. At this time the group had reached the status of a cult band in Portugal. A year later, they released THE HAUNTED AND ALMOST LOST SONGS 97-98 - a collection of previously unreleased lost songs recorded during 1997 and 1998 - and BU! - an exorcism in the format of an EP of their paranoias, fears, anxieties, and excitements.

Special Guests:
Ana Deus (“Enquanto Há Memória” and “Sem Tempo Para Tudo”)
Rodrigo Leão (“Finding The Right Self-Schema”)
João Filipe (“When Conspirancy Theories Become Mainstream”)
Stealing Orchestra are:
João Mascarenhas, Fernando Sousa, Gustavo Costa, Pedro Costa, Henrique Fernandes
digital download: Amazon, iTunes || physical cd: Louie Louie

29 May 2011

'70s Power Pop Redux


Ah, the late '70s were the glory days of power pop punk when bands like the Clash and 999 were kings. Power pop descended from those originals appears today in the form of The Killers, Hot Hot Heat, The Strokes, The Walkmen, Franz Ferdinand, The Hives, Interpol, and a slew of others. It's a sound that I personally am all too happy to hear again. Punk and New Wave kids in suspenders, ratty Lower East Side band shirts, or thin ties, it was fun pop with a punch.

The album PATH MASHER by My Mind turns back time to '76.



license: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States

28 May 2011

Instrumental Albums Licensed for Reuse in Video

Filmmakers, podcasters, and music lovers, here is a real treat. This is a collection of more than 500 tracks on free albums predominantly, if not totally instrumental. All are licensed for reuse in derivative works, such as videos and podcasts. The albums are presented in no order and cover a broad spectrum of music and sound.



photo: Michael Connors

photo rights: You are allowed to copy, distribute, transmit the work and to adapt the work. Attribution is not required. You are prohibited from using this work in a stand alone manner.

27 May 2011

Kicking It Old School



Zs by Higgins and Rococo by The Paparazzi are two albums in serious overplay here at the headquarters that might just work their ways into your head and heart, too. Brace yourself for the '70s, and then relish every bit of it like spending the day in bed.

Taste for yourself




licenses: both Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

25 May 2011

Eargasms Eight

Great news! Vertical House Record Store in Huntsville, Alabama, USA has released another fun Eargasm compilation! Eargasm Eight packs in 24 songs plus the great opening bonus track celebrating "Huntsville, My Hometown." Loving it!!

The Eargasm series is organized and designed by local homegrown Huntsville artists and features local musicians, many of whom perform at the shop. Alabama is one of the best places on Earth today for new surf, bubblegum, and rockabilly. You can hear those influences on Eargasms Eight, as well as rock, hip hop, folk, and power pop. Vertical House Record Store can hook you up with more from all these artists in their shop or by mail order, too!

Support your local independent record stores! All the best to this cool couple!

license: traditional copyrights assumed

24 May 2011

Bjork Tribute Album

Our personal favorite among Bjork's albums is the sample packed, energetic POST. Stereogum loves that one so much that they organized artists' fascinating interpretations for a tribute to POST with input from Bjork herself.