dimanche 30 juin 2013

Da ! Heard It Records


A strange name isn't it ? That's what I thought when Lorenzellinidemagnificiens recommended it to me, and I'm still asking myself what it means. I would like to know but... deep inside I know that then the magic would disappear.

Based in Paris, D!HI is a netlabel that carries on discovering new talents, artists, be them professionals or freelancers, original music (it is sometimes a little hard to get immersed, attention cloth-eared nincompoops), but more than everything else, they take a great step in the free culture. Just like on Ektoplazm, each album can be previewed and downloaded for free in .wav, .mp3 or .ogg.

You'll find a lot of D!HI, mostly 8-bit, weird electro, delirious experimentations, cover artworks that will scrape your eyeballs and tickle your brain substance. I already found some great releases, but, I must admit I have had trouble getting in their universe at first. Each label carries its own particular culture.

Go browse their artists and releases, and don't forget to stay curious !

If your curiosity leads you to fine discoveries, then consider donating to these guys, who after all make a great job making all this free music available to us.

mercredi 26 juin 2013

The Sand Collector - Lord of the Sun

It can be very tough to find free good metal music on the Internet. Yes, it is hard. And every day, volunteers risk their lives and ears (especially their ears) to hunt for it, for the sake of all of us. So let us observe a minute of metal in their honor, one minute, or an entire release maybe, two or three times in a row. Lord of the Sun by The Sand Collector comes from the ancient land of 2011, recommanded by my friend Raph, and brings back dark wizards, the flames of hell and the arid dunes to your sound system.

A very thick sound, heavy, but still capable of whirling around, just like a fat ballerina with an incredible amount of talent. I love fat ballerinas.


mercredi 19 juin 2013

Various Artists - BOXBEATS VOL. 2

This collection of beats from Phonophanatic artists is so amazingly good and groovy that I've been listening to its soul-soothing content all day !

It is simply one of the best hip-hop compilation I've ever heard of, thanks to DJ Mentos, featured on the release, who shared it on his Facebook page. It's easy, every track has good rhythm, good leads, good atmosphere. It puts your mind at ease. Nothing else is important.

And I haven't even listened to the first one yet !

There is always a good reason when I'm carried away, hear for yourself.

mercredi 12 juin 2013

Ektoplazm

This is a new section added to the blog. Netlabels. Under this tag you will find extensive description of good places to find free music of astounding quality. I know very well that finding good free music on the web may be a time-demanding and sometimes frustrating activity. But finding good netlabels is even more difficult.

Those who have tried to roam the list at netlabels.org know what I am talking about. Sometimes they exist no longer, their releases and artists cast into the void, sometimes they are offline, their website is so badly made that you can never find your way, and sometimes, well, it is just one lone artist starting his or her netlabel, and that stays empty for so long it gets forgotten. And thus I want to emphasise and focus on very good, lively, literally living netlabels, that continue to be constantly updated with new sounds, new artists from all around the world, and more work for us free-music diggers.

I want to start this section with the first netlabel I have ever heard of. It was during a goa trance party in Belgium. Around a fire a man approached me and started to talk about making and listening to music. He finally mentioned Ektoplazm as a place packed with good music that was also completely free. I couldn't believe it so I tried, got to their website, and began downloading everything without even listening to it. I discovered many styles I was not aware of, such as full-on psytrance, psycore, darkpsy, suomi trance, techtrance (or psytech), psydub, and others I will mention later.

This proved the first difficulty you come to with free music : everything is not good, far from it. If you are aware of that then with time and patient ears you will make your way through a lot of music that sounds the same every time, to get to the real rare pearls of genius musical expressions.  There are really good sounds to be found on Ektoplazm. When you think you've got around it, there is more to be found, and this is all thanks to DJ Basilisk and his team of dedicated music lovers, who work hard to get the site up and running.

On Ektoplazm you can browse a lot of music in the following genres : Full-On Darkpsy Progressive Downtempo Goa Twilight Psycore Morning Forest Techno Techtrance Zenonesque Experimental Psy Dub Deep Trance Glitch Suomi Ambient Minimal IDM Classic Psystep Uplifting Psybreaks Tribal and Drum & Bass

On this website I discovered artists such as Hypnoxock, HelixNebula, MentalImage, Electronic Grind and others who stay in my personal favourites, the ones I share the most, if there is such a thing.

Now visit Ektoplazm and give it a go, every album comes with an extensive description, comments, and a player to preview it in its entirety before downloading it for free. If you like Ektoplazm, then you can also consider donating to the team via the Donate link. Every little bit helps !

The same, if you like La Mojoteque, then share it with your parents and your English Literature Professor.

dimanche 9 juin 2013

DJ Mentos - Abstract Reality

DJ Mentos' latest LP has everything you thought there would be inside, such as hip-hop beats, jazzy melodies, old-school rhythms and weird samples.
Completely different from Field of Vision, yet you can clearly recognise his particular style.

In fact, I could just pick up words from the presentation of the Dusted Wax Kingdom netlabel, on which Mentos choosed to be released. They deal in "intelligent chilled grooves", check, they "are looking for that oldschool sound from young golden years of samples based music", check...

But what am I rambling about again ? I can see you just cannot wait to press play, right ? You can stream the whole album by clicking on this link, or just go there and press the long-loved download button.

Have a nice day. And yes, this article comes a sunday, this is because it has been shared to me directly by the artist, thus it appears earlier than my other discoveries.

lundi 3 juin 2013

News 3

- The first new playlist is born. As I said before, I decided to delete the old "Best of La Mojoteque" playlist, because it mixed too many genres at once and was difficult to listen to because of the alternance of short songs and long mixes. I want this to be as easy and evident as possible. So here it is, the first Mojoteque playlist packed with chilly vibes, entirely made of free or free-priced tracks and releases. Just click on the picture to the right to start the playlist. It will be continually updated, so don't forget to turn on shuffle mode !

- The "About" section has been modified and updated, as well as the "Links" section, which now contains the link to my Youtube channel. Be sure to check it out !