Favorite Netlabel albums: Part III

Well, It's been months since I posted anything really substantive here. Not only did life get busy, but I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by a lazy, defeatist, can't do attitude towards writing anything here. It seemed like too much effort and not enough time or energy, and I felt I just didn't have the ability. I'm trying to fight back against that mindset, though, so today I'm writing a substantive post here. This is one of the many further posts I promised a while back, a further listing of some of my favorite netlabel releases of all time:



Drifting in Silence - ladderdown (tonatom) - This is a great album of melodic, cinematic electronic music that ranges from ambient to straight-ahead, driving, high-energy electronica. The presence of these upbeat but still melodic tracks is one thing that really distinguishes this album from a lot of other netlabel music. The pieces are very well written, nicely recorded, and emotionally engaging. The album is also nicely paced, tending to alternate back and forth between the slower and more upbeat tracks, which keeps you from being either overwhelmed or lulled to sleep. Among my personal favorites tracks are the opening track, "uphillbattle," which is comprised entirely of what sounds like strummed, heavily reverbed electric guitar; "process of now," with its stunningly beautiful, melancholy piano melody; "wakeup," a driving number with gnarly keyboard sounds; and the closing track "between the lines," a beautiful piece of atmospheric, melancholy ambient that effectively incorporates a choir. The track "shadow" actually has vocals, and though I am not particularly crazy about them, it ends with a cool bit of sampled dialogue. All in all, this is a great, very listenable album that stands out in the world of netaudio. The follow up album, "Truth," which is a purchasable release, is a much more ambient affair, is also good and features reworked, renamed versions of some of the material from this album. There is also a third album "Fallto," which I have not really heard yet. These last two are both available for purchase from the iTunes store.



Jap Jap - Blue Shimmery Fall (archive.org) - Originally released through the now defunct Maetrixsolution netlabel, this is a great album of bright, melodic electronic music. It is hard to classify this album stylistically, but there are elements of ambient, IDM, chillout and even a shoegaze influence. I have seen it compared to Ulrich Schnauss, which doesn't seem like a bad comparison, though it has it's own unique sound. Sometimes, parts of it also remind me a bit of the Boards of Canada. Personal favorite tracks are "In a Bright Light," a nice piece of warmly glowing, mid-tempo ambient/electronica with a nicely mixed in vocal loop; "Only You," floating ambient electronica with a mid-tempo IDM beat underneath that evokes sunny afternoons; and "Now that You're Here," a more upbeat but still very atmospheric piece that features some nice electric guitar cords and a great vocal part at the end that I always find moving. There are several other very good tracks on the album besides these. One minor complaint I have about the album is that some of the keyboard souns used here veer a little to close to a cheesy synthetic sound on some tracks, though, thankfully, they manage to avoid going all the way there while some other tracks, like the above listed, avoid it altogether. All in all an excellent release.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Hope you enjoy these two great releases. I'm getting closer to the end of this series of favorite netlabel releases, but I can still think of several albums that I'd like to write about, so hopefully something new will go up here soon. Peace.

Intelligent Toys 5 on the way

It's been awhile since I posted on here. I've been busy a lot of the time and have just felt too drained to write anything whenever I'm not busy. Today, however, I received a bit of good news in my e-mail box that seemed appropriate to share here.

Sutemos netlabel, one of the most consistently excellent netlabels around, has just announced that they will soon be releasing the fifth installment of their excellent Intelligent Toys compilation series. I featured the Intelligent Toys series in a previous post about my favorite netlabel compilations. They feature many well-known and respected IDM and electronic musicians as well as the work of lesser known but often excellent artists. I have been introduced to many excellent artists and albums including Ulrich Schnauss, Quench, Near the Parenthesis, and Sleepy Town Manufacture through these compilations. The latest installment is said to feature tracks by Ulrich Schnauss, SubtractiveLAD, Ruxpin, Funckarma, Sleepy Town Manufacture, and Stockfinster, among numerous others. Hopefully the newest installment will be arriving sooner rather than later.

Good Find of the Week: free albums from Sleepy Town Manufacture and Myrakaru

One of my favorite netlabel releases of the past couple of years that I haven't written about here is Sleepy Town Manufacture's "Inspired By You," available for free download from Sutemos netlabel. Sleepy Town Manufacture excels at making beautiful, warm, melodic IDM/ambient music. He has produced enough really good tracks to qualify as a top notch artist in my opinion. Aside from "Inspired By You," he also has releases on the Monotonik netlabel and numerous tracks available on Sutemos's "Intelligent Toys" compilations. He has also released several albums that, in the past, were available for purchase.

The good news, however, is that he has now made all of his past albums available as free downloads. You can go to his website to download them or follow this link.

In a similar vein, Sutemos netlabel has just made Myrakaru's "Tammetoru" album available for free download as well. I was not familiar with Myrakaru before now, but the "Tammetoru" album was previously released for purchase by the electronic record label Expanding Records, which also released music by Benge, Sovacusa, and Maps and Diagrams. It is a good album of melodic IDM with glitchy beats, reminiscent in some ways of another of my netlabel favorites, Esem's "Scataren." If you like melodic IDM it's definitely worth your time to check it out.

Hope you enjoy these!

Earth Mantra Netlabel - a recomendation and a link

To my regular readers, I again apologize for the lack of new posting, especially for the lack of new posts that I promised a while back would be forthcoming. I have many plans for this blog, but far less time and energy, especially now that the school year is starting back up and things are much busier at my job. Have patience, and I promise that some substantial posts will be forthcoming, as I am able to work on them. Aside from the posts I promised, I am constantly finding myself bombarded with random ideas and inspiration for subjects to post about. Today's post is one such inspiration.

I want to simply offer a quick recommendation and link today, to the Earth Mantra website. Earth Mantra is a netlabel which focuses on deep ambient music. Some of you may have already discovered them from my earlier (still incomplete) post on free deep ambient music, which featured a couple of their artists/releases. If you are into deep space music, dark ambient, or other kinds of deep ambient music in the vein of Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Vidna Obmana, or the like, you should at least check out their list of releases as you will probably find something you like. You could build an entire collection of this type of music from their site completely free. Lately they have been especially prolific (which is what inspired this post), releasing something like six albums in a period of about three weeks. These include releases from the highly praised Kit Watkins, as well as a just released album by Philip Wilkerson that is supposedly in the vein of Thom Brennan styled ambient music (I haven't had the chance to download and listen to this one yet, though I am excited to hear it.) Happy listening!

Favorite Netlabel Releases: Part II

Well, it's been awhile since I wrote and posted the first entry featuring my list of favorite netlabel releases. I wrote in detail about three of those releases and said I'd write about the others as I had time and energy. So, after a six week break, due mostly to laziness and time wasting, here's the other three albums:



Colin Everingham - Skies of Error - (Enpeg Digital)- This album is distinguished from the others on my list by being the only one that you have to pay for, albeit only $2.00. Probably the best classification of its musical style would be dark IDM. It is an album I think of as "cloudy day music." It evokes for me images of dark clouds rolling in from the Northwest across the wide open landscape of Northern Illinois, where I live. That alone would be reason enough to love it, as far as I'm concerned. The sound of it is dark (though not opressively so), melancholy, and sometimes ominous.

The opening track, "In Memory, Differences Collide," has an almost wistful feel to it and makes me think of first waking up on a grey, overcast morning. After that opening, the album really gets going with the darker, more rhythmic "Subtractim," which features a chiming music box melody overtop of the gloom. "We Can Never Be" features a more ominous sort of overcast melancholy that evokes a deep sense of loss. The rest of the album largely follows suit, in varying degrees, from the template set by these three tracks. The short interlude "Similarities in Mind" features some darkly melodic piano playing, and the following track, "Corduroy Coast," features what sounds like an acoustic guitar. Several tracks feature a nice low bass sound that really adds a fullness to the music, while the beats and rhythms definitely reflect a mechanistic, Autechre type feel, but are nicely mixed in with the rest of the music, never becoming grating or obnoxious, even at the their most pronounced. At times, I am reminded of Gridlock, though with a less industrial feel. The album ends with "You Were Gone," six minutes of beatless, melancholy ambience. Another perfect album for a rainy day.



(Val)liam - Early Reflections - (archive.org)- This excellent ambient album was originally released on the Dewtone netlabel, which has since reformatted its webpage and no longer releases new music, as far as I know. It can still be downloaded, however, from Archive.org. In contrast to the Colin Everingham album discussed above, this album brings to mind sunshine and cloud flecked blue skies. It has a dreamy feel to it that evokes heat waves rising on a slow summer afternoon when you're out of school and September still seems far off in some impossibly distant future.

After opening with the relatively short "Orange Horizon," which features a vaguely ominous and anticipatory plucked acoustic guitar melody, the album moves into two seven minute tracks of wonderfully dreamy, slow, warm, ambient music, which feature what sounds like sampled bird or animal noises mixed in. While the use of such sounds can sometimes evoke images of cheesy new-age nature music, these tracks avoid that possibility, much like Future Sounds of London's "Lifeforms" album, though where that album calls to mind a trip deep into some exotic jungle, these tracks evoke something more familiar and closer to home if still tinged by the mysterious. The rest of the album pretty much follows suit from these open tracks. The acoustic guitar makes a reappearance on a couple tracks, with the rest of the album mostly featuring beatless, warm, vaguely melodic, drifting ambient pieces. The album ends with a surprise, however, as the last track, which is also the title track, starts out with the dreamy ambient feel of most of the other tracks but then quickly morphs into a beat driven, ambient trance track. Though this might sound like a jarring incongruity with the rest of the album, it actually works rather well, as the track never loses the sunny, warm ambient feel of the album as a whole and calls to mind images of flying off into the bright blue summer skies that the rest of the album has evoked so well.

I own a lot of ambient music and this album is a standout, not only among netlabel releases but in general. It occupies a unique place in being deeply peaceful and evoking the natural world without devolving into new age cheesiness, while also avoiding the detached, isolationist feeling of a lot of ambient music. It's the perfect soundtrack for sitting in the backyard on a slow, sunny, summer afternoon and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood around you.



Xerxes - The Mirror Formula - (Xerxes webpage) - If the last two albums featured were perfect for cloudy and sunny days respectively, this album is more of a night or evening record for me (Of course you can listen to any music anytime you want. These are just my subjective impressions). Stylistically, this album falls somewhere in between ambient and chillout music.

The fittingly titled "Prologue" begins the album with dark, haunting, drawn out notes and builds a sense of anticipation by slowly adding in an ominous pulsing bass line and an almost martial sounding drum part before descending again back down to the opening notes. For a comparison, think of the progression of Massive Attack's "Angel" from beginning to end, though this track is far more restrained than that one. After that introduction, the album picks up with "Pirayana," a beat driven piece of moody ambient/chillout. This is followed by "Can You See This," a slower piece of ambient/chillout music, with a prominent piano melody. From here the album is nicely paced, moving back and forth between the darker, more beat driven ambient/chillout pieces and the slower more melodic, piano driven pieces. The album ends on what might be its best track, "Christmas Layers," which falls somewhere in between the more beat driven pieces and the slower more piano oriented tracks. An unforgetable, beautiful piano melody is played over a steady mid-tempo beat. The production here, as on the other albums included in this list, is excellent.

Since this album was released, Xerxes has begun to receive attention from some record labels and has released a couple of tracks on various artist compilations which can be purchased from the iTunes store and elsewhere. This album, however, is absolutely free from the Xerxes's webpage, which features a large selection of excellent tracks available for free download.

Well, that's it for my all time favorite netlabel releases. I hope you've found this list informative and have maybe been introduced to some great music you didn't know about before. I would also like, at some point, to do a list of my favorite netlabel compilations but I don't know when I'll get to that. I'll also try, when I have the time and energy (my constant mantra) to post on other music I find interesting and worthwhile, and to inform readers about good deals and cool finds that I make. Peace.

Favorite Netlabel Releases

Here is a list of my favorite netlabel releases of all time. All of these albums can be legally downloaded for free (or nearly free) from the netlabel's web page, the artist's web page, or sites like archive.org (the place where the album should be available is given in parenthesis). As far as I know they are all still available. The listing is in no particular order. See the last.fm player for samples of most of the albums as well as some other stuff I've been digging lately.

Artist - Album (Label)



Esem - Scataren (Kahvi) - If I were asked to pick one netlabel album as my favorite, this would probably be it. This is melodic IDM music par excellence, with a warm spacious feel, beautiful melodies, skittering rhythms, and an air of wistfulness. The production is also excellent. I have all three of Esem's albums and like this one better than the other two, which I paid for. In general, I'd say this album is far better than a great deal of what can be paid for. I have about 40 GB of music on my iPod and this one gets played with a fair amount of regularity. If you like electronic music, especially melodic IDM, then do yourself a favor and go download this right now. Perfect music for an overcast or rainy day. (Unfortunately, it seems the album is no longer availabel in MP3 format, but only in OGG. OGG files can be played and burned to disc using the Winamp player.)



Sinq - Passage (Monotonik) - I'd say this one ranks pretty close to the Esem album in terms of my absolute favorite netlabel releases and might even give it a run for its money. Like the Esem album, this is an excellently written and produced melodic IDM record which often conjures up wistful feelings. This one differs, however, in having a more soulful feel on a number of the tracks, including some well done vocals on the track "Be Brave." Sometimes the music has an almost ominous feel to it, though never in a way that is oppressive or scary. Whereas the Esem album seems more like a trek through some exotic jungle landscape, this album gives the feel of being far more rooted in an everyday urban/suburban landscape, though still giving a sense of the mysterious and beautiful that lurks within and behind those everyday realities. Excellent stuff.



Stockfinster - All Becomes Music (Sutemos) - Mixing elements of electronic and ambient music with more conventional instrumentation and vocals, Stockfinster offers up a lovely, melodic album of what could probably be accurately called post-rock music. One of the things that really distinguishes this album for me is the excellent use of sampled dialogue. Whereas the use of sampled dialogue can often feel stale, too clever, or simply banal and overdone, tracks like "Dismantled" and "Duel" use long passages of movie dialogue in conjunction with the music to create a strong emotional impact on the listener. Other tracks, like the closer, "In Transit," use a single line of well timed dialogue to powerful, almost heartbreaking, emotional effect. "A Crack in Time" is another melodic track that features an excellent chorus with actual vocals, though for this listener it is somewhat marred by the long sample of some New Age guru expounding his views. A couple of other tracks also have vocals, the best of which is "Verge," which is very reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins, though with a more electronic edge to it. Beautiful and moving music. (P.S. - There is an excellent alternate version of the title track to this album available from the Sutemos compilation album "Red, Green, Blue and Other Summer Feelings," which features some great music largely in the shoegaze/post-rock vein from a number of excellent artists. I actually prefer it to the one on the album.)

Colin Everingham - Skies of Error (Enpeg)
Xerxes - The Mirror Formula (Xerxes webpage)
(Val)liam - Early Reflections (archive.org)

Somehow, it feels as if I'm forgetting one or two things that ought to be included here, but, then again, perhaps my forgetting them is a sign they don't really belong here. Sometime soon, I hope to do another list featuring my favorite netlabel compilations. I'd also like to do a list of albums that didn't quite make it to this list but that I still think are pretty super. That's it for now. (I'll add comments for the other three albums listed here as I have time and energy.)