Lost In Sound - VA Compilation #004

It's quite hard to write a little review on this profuse and rich release of 45 tracks (yes, 45, you read right) in such a variety of styles... There is a bite of everything, glitch, techno, electro, piano, dub, dubstep, psydub, you name it... There are also killer bots with laser sight, but you'll hear them soon enough. I better warn you though, that their unique eye can cut through about any material, so watch out.

This compilation was put into being by the Lost In Sound collective as a means of celebrating the comeback of their website and online musical catalog in 2015 (in spring, as you can guess). After contacting more than a hundred artists, they were sent those fourty-five pearls of musical craftsmanship. And there goes a collection of tracks shifting gracefully between up and down, light and dark, bounce and flow. Trippy, futuristic, strange, shwifty...

And entirely free of charge !

You can spot some names we already talked about some times like Mindex, Pericles, bioLumigen, Erothyme and Kalpataru Tree. So much tracks to add to my playlists I cannot even begin to think about it clearly. Ah, if playlists could talk...

Well I'll leave you on this very interesting thought. See you next time.

Oh and don't forget to take a look at LIS's website, there are many a musical pearl to find there. Not all is free, because they do not specialise in that field, but there are some very good things to find. I've just begun to dig the vein myself...

Rec_Overflow - Unemployed

If you're in the mood for a really peculiar kind of album, if you'd like a trip down the last pit of hell and back to the shimmering silver linings of the clouds, watching cyber-meadows down below with eagle eyes, then you'll probably like to listen to Unemployed by Rec_Overflow, an album that goes where you wouldn't think it would, tinkering with the styles that you already know to take them to new heights and depths. From dubstep, gloomy electronic music to chillstep and onirique chill, then back to acid electro and otherwise underground techno.

Out at Crazy Language Records, Unemployed can also be enjoyed by people who have a job, but I must warn you that, being this special, it won't please everyone at first. So let us pause a moment before we press play to concentrate a bit, and then...

Swallows Fly Low - Only Now

Here's a little treat for the ears, something a bit cavernimal, strange, but to which I could listen in any circmumstances. Swallows Fly Low, because it's going to rain, delivers a small EP full of beautiful dreamy atmospheres, long halls at the end of which you can see the sun setting endlessly, and weird noises sprinkled here and there. This is really the kind of music I allow myself to categorise with a question mark, because it is really from another world

I'm coming back to the ancient layout for a bit, because I saw the new one did not look so good on the Facebook page, although it is way more practical for me. Well, I'll go back to it sooner or later.

Huron - Pictures From The Past

There are a lot of interesting things to find and hear at Crazy Language Netlabel, after Astravel by Sk'p, here's Huron, with a long and subterranean album, raising strange ghostly atmospheres from the past to make us shiver in the present. I picture myself entering an ancient electronic xenotemple hidden in the arctic ice while listening to this music. And while I'm at it, you should definitely go take a listen at all the CL catalog, everything is free, and very... well, experimental.

Gergaz Netlabel - Beat Garden Compilation 3

If you like to vary the pleasures of life, then you love to listen to various artists. What a coincidence ! I do too ! Just like the first one and the second one, this third Gergaz Netlabel Beat Garden Compilation is packed with strange experimental sounds from afar, broken rhythms and power. Yes, power, in a way, the power to chill you down to below zero, where everything becomes icy white and glasslike like a glass asp looking to bite you with musical fangs and stimulate your geniculate ganglion to let you fly, fly, fly.

Mute Speaker - Post Block

I wanted to share this album with you, then I realised it wasn't free anymore, then I asked Mute Speaker about it and he put it back on name your price download.

This is quite the excellent release, packed with experimental hip-hop, electronic probes cast into the depths of musical space, and still this question mark that gets all its sense with this kind of sound. Well okay I think track 6 is a little to modern pop r'n'b oriented but the rest is really worth anything you can give.

By the way I want to take a few minutes to tell you about donations. I know this word can be scary and that it seems that everybody always wants a little bit of your hard-earned money, but it shouldn't be that way.

Donations on Bandcamp help free music stay free. Getting a Paypal account seems like a pain in the @$%! but it is really very easy and fast, and then, you can really show your appreciation and support directly to all the artists of the independent music world. You can become a part of it all and make a difference in the free-music world. You don't have to give a lot, but know that each penny you give also goes to increase the number of free-priced download possible for each release (and I didn't know that, Mute Speaker just told me).

Do not give up giving.

Lucky One - IIMXI

Strange and experimental music, taking bits and pieces from every style and putting it together, Lucky One creates one amazing piece of work. Sometimes fast energic and even aggressive, sometimes slow, beautiful and dreamy, you never know what you're going to find. This one album reflects his creative mood of the year 2011, a long long time ago, when everything was so different.

Erothyme - Coincidentia Oppositorum

I'm in an electronic mood, but to be even more precise I have ten minutes of free time, and so I decided I'd use them to listen to Erothyme's Coincidentia Oppositorum, one of the first releases I downloaded on Bandcamp, and also probably the first that had me create an "electro" folder, where I now put all this music that is so electronic and impossible to classify. Erothyme's music bounces, that is for sure, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, with a touch of groove and two ounces of glitchy material, hey presto, you've got yourself a very good blend of electronic music, and for free, mind you.

But what am I saying ? I have to admit I have a tendancy to put everything I cannot clearly classify in the "electronic" genre, but as electro has a sound of its own, it is clearly out of topic. Erothyme's album is (although you won't notice it at first) pretty relaxing, with a nostalgic and sometimes a little weirdly experimental atmospheres.

This album is from 2009, three more releases from Erothyme have appeared since then, two of them are free-priced. If you like this one, you might as well check them out.

Edit : The blog will change a little bit from now on. I realised quite a few things that weren't right. I'm going to delete some albums. In my sharing frenzy I wanted to share a great quantity of music, and sometimes forgot to listen to an album completely, some, I now reckon, are not so good and still shared, some are ultimately lord and sleep on my hard drive.

Some genres are going to change names, some are going to disappear or fuse themselves with others. Mushtronic becomes "?" for lack of a better defining word, Downtempo fuses with Chill, Progressive is gone for now, because it isn't necessary yet. Last but not least, there will be only one article per week from now on, wednesday evening, it will improve its quality, the site will unclog itself a little bit, and that will give enough time to enjoy each album at once. The design could change as well, and become less like a dark magic cave, and transform into an icy colorful greenish grotto, we'll see.

Edit : Well it seems this album is no longer available on Erothyme's Bandcamp page, I really don't know why, but you can still listen to and download it by following this link to Beardology Records.