Beatween - The Ocean Between Us

When DLoaw & Co. specially recommends an album, you never get disappointed, and here's another proof with the debut album from Beatween, a duo from "between Québec and Switzerland" made of Raycord's electronic textures and Maël's acoustic instrumentals.

Clarinet, piano, guitar and drums dance and blend in each other on downtempo beats made of flowing liquid sound.

Not a single faux pas on this album that you may well call a love at first time (I've only listened to it once and it's not even finished when I started writing the article. But there's a good chance I'll listen to it again and again in the future).

VA - Resonant Heart

Resonant Heart is the follow-up compilation to Resonant Mind, which is also free-priced. Where the first one concentrated on thought, spirit, their immortal nature and the infinite which only them can hope to touch ; this present one goes back down to earth, to the core of the planet and human beings, to shake our hearts and make them resonate with strange rhythms, and melodies that go back and forth between the skies with thousands of stars, and the pools of mud with thousands of tadpoles.

The talent of all these artists combined creates a unique atmosphere, a blend of styles. Desert Dwellers welcomes us, chanting from far away, Kalya Scintilla plunges us into mystical swampy grounds, Mr Squatch digs for spices that titillate our nostrils and enable space travel, Gibson lets us try his laser harp, Biolumigen bids us farewell with his peculiar style...

This album found while looking for more free music from Mr Squatch has a lot of good surprises in reserve.

I only found one little thing I did not like, but so small it serves no purpose to talk about it.

Focus on what is good.

Mr Squatch - Please Squash

I discovered Mr Squatch's music with the track 'Regrowth' on the 'Up The Duff' compilation. It's been quite a long time and I never took the time to look further until today, when I stumbled upon this collection of Squatchtastic hits of 2008-2011-ish.

His musical style immediately made old memories come back to me, memories of a sizzling hot beach dotted here and there with a bit of shriveled trees, a big stage close to the water, adorned with an enormous sound system on both sides, shaped like a mystical swamp-dwelling creature, guardian of the primordial mojo. And the sound it made was so perfect, so typical, swirling and swinging, deep...

Please Squash takes its roots firmly on a solid base of techno music, stretching its electronic tentacles in all directions, from deep to psy to tech-house, with some discreet glitchy influences here and there.

Dedicated to those still looking for summer.

New Apple Taste - The Brand

It has to be said, bands from Canada do have a nice sense of rhythm. After X-Ray Zebras and The Stormalongs, New Apple Taste is the third canadian group I know that has graciously decided to get involved in the free music business.

Hailing from Montréal, these five musicians and two MCs (or emcees, as they like to say it) like to get down and play jazzy funky groovy rock instrumentals with screaming guitar solos, sax and his brass friends (and his problems with the law), drums getting crazy, in an overall atmosphere of pure musical affinity, which sometimes feels like a jam session recorded in a smokey back room in a bar somewhere, with sometimes rapped lyrics getting along.

Which by the way made me think a bit about the X-Ray Zebras, but just a bit.

Feels like a night at the stray cats' crib, with electricity and hip-hop added.