Free Music Collection: December 2011

Gifts worth giving are often intangible, even unspoken. They’re felt—sensorial moments; sights, scents, and sounds. They’re cherished because they bring happiness, or clarity or solace; they can lift, reawaken or recast a light from the past. They become who we are. True gifts, both given and received.

We hope you will find new sounds, new joys within ours.

Free Music Collection: December 2011

Smoke Don’t Smoke

• Giraffage – Comfort: Finely crafted beats overlaid with a blanket of lush ambiance, as comforting as a warm blanket in winter.
• Egyptian Maraccas – This Is So Random: A massive mixtape of our favorite producers, making new things out of old, making us feel hot and steamy.
• It is rain in my face. – TAWS: Speaker Snacks Records keeping its untainted record going with this eclectic album from Brooklyn producer Matthew Jones.
• Glass Vaults – Into Clear EP: Soundscapes to set the stage for your mental escapades, through cerebral valleys, over metaphysical mountains capes.
• Hollow Pigeons – Birthdays: Birthdays flows soft and lightly from start to finish, bringing us what can only be an impressive start to a hopefully long life of blissful production.
• Symmetry – LYFSTYL 006 Mixtape: Compiled from some of my favorite bloggers, a mixtape to get you in the mood for a cooler season.

Friends With Both Arms

• Invisible Children 2011 Benefit Show Mixtape: My homies over at IC put together a mix for their benefit show, if you’re in the LA area this Christmas, you need to hit this up. This year features The Mountain Goats, Fruit Bats, Ivan and Alyosha and more.
• Head Underwater Whitehurst Frwy Mixtape: You can always count on Jimmy for a good mood-mix.
• Caribou’s ATP Mix “Nightmare Before Christmas”: If you can’t make it to the Nightmare Before Christmas ATP Music Fest, you can grab Caribou’s mixtape of it and pretend you’re there. That’s what I do in lieu of you know, actually going to shows.
• YOUNG ATHLETES LEAGUE – NTMIX002: I felt cooler after listening to this. Have you checked out Neighborhood Tapes yet?
• David Lynch & ‘Big’ Dean Hurley Mixtape: So David Lynch made a mix for The Stool Pigeon. That’s crazy, right? (Stream only)
• MFR – HOTT Mix: You can always rely on MFR for bold helvetica posters and mixtapes that have all the hits. This one makes me forget November’s already passed us by. (Stream only)

Think or Smile

• Korallreven – ‘Ra Ra Rave On’ Mixtape: Swedish sun-strokers dig into their 90s techno 12″ crates and drop the needle on FSOL for Self-Titled Magazine.
• Maayan Nidam live at Lessizmore: house music. love music.
• Dreampeter – Mason Jar (single): Ann Arbor experimenters combine to elevate the dream world.
• RxRy – SLPR (suite): this is for the night. and the attentive: only first 50 emails to RxRy receive download.
• Arae – The Longest Night: “a journey through introspective beatscapes and finely-tuned vocal samples.” – Flashlight Tag
• Low Light Mixes – drowsy: a sonic cocktail of Percocet & Vicodin.
• Ambassador Engine – Subtraction, Elation, Hydration.: guitar-scapes traversing moments of natural clarity and far off lands of distorted skies.
• Headaches – I Wasn’t Born Yesterday EP: theme and variation. ambience and rediscovered textural loops within.

Stadiums and Shrines

• M. Sage – Music for Interior Shadows: Colorado’s Matthew Sage dove into a stack of old records with the idea of finding minimal chunks of sound and turning them into absent compositions. What resulted is a pure and tragic, era-bending experience. Those dark corners that sharpen each hall, the cold mirror still cued with a makeup box at its feet, the dust covered gramophone, and the lamp who’s bulb has since long passed; she’s air-waltzed away forever…
• Bad Passion – Doin’ It Slow: Extra cool, minty fresh boy/girl dialogue on a floor-level mattress. No lights, probably candles, definitely a little weed; they plot of stealing cars and covering Beach House.
• Foxes in Fiction – Guest Mix for Diamond Atlas: The angel Warren crafted a beautifully eclectic 30 minute reflection of his favorite headspaces and healing music, accompanied by personal and well-considered thought pieces for each song. He goes Azeda Booth into Arthur Russell, and my heart warms.
• Ricky Eat Acid – seeing little ghosts everywhere: There’s a whole world inside here. Like a toy world, with toy pianos, and little toy ghosts flying around, everywhere, under the 8-bit stars. It feels like ones we knew as kids and then somehow forgot. But Sam Ray didn’t, thank you Sam.
• Unravel – I Knew This Would Happen: Some brass wind chimes begin to dance, a harp joins in. A giant hand tweaks from above, like club remixing the whole sequence. Then a robot on a hilltop recites the first verse of Kayne’s “Love Lockdown”… maybe this Unravel person did, but I certainly did not, *know this would happen*.
• Casual Ocean – Goodbye Money: Lester Brown is back, as Casual Ocean, suddenly a soothing, twisted tenor on an R&B kick.
• Vinyl Williams – Lemniscate: Had we known about this pysch summit back at its August release date, we could have been climbing in tie-dye tank tops and saluting the sun with pixie dust. Actually, there are no seasons in space, so we’re good.

Support music you love. See shows, buy physical releases, show love.

Note: Due to bandcamp’s terms of service artists are required to charge a minimal price after a certain number of free downloads. If  that’s the case after our posting you can always stream it and if it moves you, support them with a purchase.

Free Music Collection: November 2011

One of the most versatile of gemstones, tourmaline, exists in nearly every color, from colorless to black. Some spend lifetimes collecting, searching for a cesation to their appetite. For the happiest no such end is in sight. We revel in the hunt. Music is our gemstone, off-the-beaten-path, our tourmaline.

Free Music Collection: November 2011

Think or Smile

• Ra Cailum – Finding My Way: early 2000′s hip-hop samples drifting into the present beat scene.
• fthrsn – Hysteria: (retro)Futuristic tropical r&b. $
• sloslylove – Can’t Get Enough: nostalgic dreamtape jams. $
• Monster Rally – Coral II: The Remixes: this year’s classic Coral re-worked by Teen Daze, Yalls, Teeel… $
• Memory Tapes – Modcast #95: 23-minute mix of all new, all original Memory Tapes music. synth-laden, laid back party pop.
• The Stuyvesants present “The Finer Things”: hip-hop soundscapes paying homage to the 70′s.
• Silky Johnson – HATER OF THE YEAR: slo-mo beat tape.
• CFCF – NIGHT BUS II mix: half asleep, watching the passing headlights brighten and fade.
• My Dearest Killer… – Unholy Rhythms Halloween Mix 2011:  a giallo soundtrack of covers/reworks of artists favorite horror films.

Stadiums & Shrines

• Max Alper – American History Sex [via FMLY Group Hug]: Stunning work. “Split into three chapters, the album provides three radical perspectives on the theme of inherent progress in maturation and becoming a part of the natural order among the self. Each chapter serves as coinciding explorations into time, and the methods in which varying applications of sounds can invalidate temporality altogether.” – Noah Klein
• Heathered Pearls – Occupied Sleep: “a meditation on hypnosis, through a highly textural experience of beat and capsule periods of shifting ambiance.” – Dwight of GOTC
• Each Other – Taking Trips: Underrated Nova Scotian factory-pop act Long Long Long has ended, but luckily now we have Each Other. **Let’s Get, High** $
• Chocolate Girl: A two-page-deep soundcloud of retro-rhythm and blues lounge-outs, via our beloved beat-finder Flashlight Tag.
• Hartzine on Beko DSL Compilation: “Challenger, go with throttle-up”—those tragic last instructions from 1986 now introduce one well-curated present time compilation by French website Hartzine, which includes an Ela Orleans’-ed “Beat Goes On” and a ‘Live at Shea’ capture of Philip Seymour Hoffman (which sends me back to a special place).

Smoke Don’t Smoke

• Born Gold – Bodysongs: Freak glitch beauty from the newly transformed Canadian pop warlocks.
• Dreams – Feelings 4 U EP: Everything else changes, but funk is eternal. $
• Dusk Warrior – Overdrive Sunrise: Library music, you’ve heard it before, you just didn’t know it.
• Flashing Red Lights – Faster Horses EP: Part rock and roll, part innovative electronic production, all in all: really good. $
• Kodak to Graph – Visio’l EP: From start to finish, the EP soundtracks life in the sleepy town of Pensecola, FL where Michael Maleki lives. And having lived in Florida for some time myself, I can tell you, he’s doing the place a favor. The production is impressive, and the sounds are thoughtful and smooth.
• Thrupence – Unfinished Business Beat Tape: A twenty minute dream, guided by soft beats and forgotten smooth jams.

Friends With Both Arms

• Aquarium Drunkard – Ghostcapital II: Ghost Capital out of Portland, makes a kickass mix for AD. Really dig this one.
• Stereogum Monthly Mix – October: Obligatory Halloween Mix!
• Get Off the Coast – Dope Halloween Fuck: Obligatory Halloween Mix pt. 2.

Support music you love. See shows, buy physical releases, show love.

Note: Due to bandcamp’s terms of service artists are required to charge a minimal price after a certain number of free downloads. If  that’s the case after our posting you can always stream it and if it moves you, support them with a purchase.

 

Free Music Collection: October 2011

With narrow gaps in the cloud cover leading the way, we set off on our monthly mission of sound collection. Our eyes become ensnared in the magnetic reds, weird-soul oranges and obscure yellows in a seemingly endless canopy of greens. On the road back we share tales of glo-fi funk, birthday mixes and thought escalators.

Join us, for journeys are better spent with friends.

Free Music Collection: October 2011

Think or Smile

• Teen Daze – Dream. Sleep. Wake. (Forty Once Clothing Mixtape): beautiful soundtrack for the title suggested activities.
• Underwater Seacreatures – EP: glo-fi funk imagined under the chill waves of the sea.
• Spirit Sisters: select tracks to drift off to.
• Landon Speers & Katie (BRAIDS) – Mother: 12 minutes of magnetic energy charged with meditation.
• Good Sport – And Now We Are Talking EP: drowsy layer-cake of sample pop.
• First Friday @ Pilot Light Mix 9/7/11: assortment of party-fi from Persona La Ave, Walsh and the like.
• Star Slinger – Altered Zones Mix Aug 2011: for heated nights. with an appearance by old school Bone Thugs.
• Monroeville Music Center – Le Progrès EP: zelda tires of his quest, turns to making music.

Stadiums & Shrines

• KYNAN – Garbage Beach: Rusted underwater space station polluting shoreline with shrapnel secrets of the weird-soul ooze, everyone wide-eyed and high, tie-dye sunbathing, smiling green.
• Sad Souls – Apeiron: Apeiron (ἄπειρον) is a Greek word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite. Apeiron is also a light LP of thought escalators and spiraling guitar drone.
• Sugarglider – Nobody: A rare strain of odd pop found in Edmonton water; they traced it back to the Wilson residence, where a guy named René recorded demos in his bedroom under a small, spinning disco ball.
• Swim Ignorant Fire - Last Days: Take your first turn at damaged ambient, bare left up the sonic expressway, take a hard right over the guardrail, then go directly into the fire.
• Gathered Ghosts – Gathered Ghosts: Guitar, autoharp…ocarina based potion from the basement of Craft Spells man Javier Suarez. Oddly enough the sweetest flavor is called “Gasoline”.

Smoke Don’t Smoke

• Water Babys – Water Babys: here to create, not ponder.
• Fleeta – Flockerands: chillbeats for your head.
• Body Parts – On Purpose: obscure melodies for your fun times. $
• Flume – Other Peoples Poetry Mixtape: soft beats to glide you and guide you.

Friends With Both Arms

• Joe Doddard DFA Mix: Hot Chip’s Joe Doddard made an hour-long mix for DFA’s Radio Mix Series. I appreciate the Brandy-love.
• Speaker Snacks Turns 2!: One of my favorite Colorado-based music blogs turned two, then made a mix for it.
• Stereogum’s Sept Mixtape: Caveman, Family Band and Blouse- some new artists I’ve been into this season. There’s a few more goodies in there too.
• Low Daytrotter Session: One of my favorite bands, Low, recorded a Daytrotter Session and it is beautiful. Moeller describes the band as, “pieces of a night, the remnants of a day that keep you up until all hours.”
• Feist – Metals (stream): I know, I had to. I mean- I’ve gotta keep up the more mainstream position that I hold in this collection of obscure musical finds, right? Plus, I do love Feist shamelessly, and will take every opportunity to spread the love. Enjoy!
• FWBA – 25th Birthday Mix: To celebrate my 25th birthday, I put together a little mix of some new artists I’ve been into this season.
• Restless Soul Mixtape Series Vol. 6: My friend Billy plays in a hardcore band from Toronto but has an impeccable taste in music. He puts together mixes on his tumblr that feature some of my favorite artists.

Support music you love. See shows, buy physical releases, show love.

Note: Due to bandcamp’s terms of service artists are required to charge a minimal price after a certain number of free downloads. If  that’s the case after our posting you can always stream it and if it moves you, support them with a purchase.

Free Music Collection: September 2011

As the sun sets yet again this time taking with it summer’s warmth, we survey our surroundings, soaking up all we can in the fading light. We instinctively set our compass to the land rich with sounds, free for the taking, and meet at our monthly point of intersection to share our findings. Slow disco, wandering psychpop, space jazz, post-elevator music, all gold in our eyes.

We hope you enjoy the bounties.

Free Music Collection: September 2011

Think or Smile

• Heathered Pearls – Hints of Musk (mix for ghostly): that slow disco love sound.
• Thundercat ‘Shenanigans pt.1′ Mixed by Flying Lotus: space-jazz bass monster.
• Legowelt – The Teac Life: raw as fuck autistic Star Trek 1987- Misty Forests- X-FILES,- DETROIT unicorn futurism made on cheap ass digital & analog crap synthesizers recorded in a ragtag bedroom studio on a TEAC VHX cassettedeck in DOLBY C with an unintelligible yet soulfull vivacity.
• Wolf+Lamb & Soul Clap – Greatest Tour Hits Mix: hour and a half of slow, house laced soul. enjoy on your roof with friends.
• Jezus Million – Sway EP: switching to hip-hop experiments after making bedroom bliss as Teenage Reverb in a former life.
• chris△re – a brief history of the future: a collection of warm crackling beats. $
• Les Filles Et Les Garçons – EP “Les Filles Et Les Garçons”: french electropop.
• Kinrisu – Lucent Animal Chimes: experimental Parisian bedroom folk.
• Porcelain Raft – Gone Blind Remix EP: aired out remixes by Memoryhouse, Memory Tapes + others.
• Emay – Mind Altering Dynamics [Instrumentals]: hip-hop pacer.
• Jeremiah Jae – Lunch Special 4: new, old, rare, and completely raw joints for your mental palate.
• WALSH – Don’t Want 2 Fall In Luv: heavy electronics from Nashville beat pro (ft. Persona La Ave). $
• VisionAir – A Vision EP: dublin space funk.

 

Stadiums & Shrines

• Korallreven – A Dream Within A Dream: Swedes take on some of their favorite songs with their own inception logic in “a wistful glance over the shoulder as summer fades into our dreams.”
• Lasership Stereo – Soft Season / Meet Local Singles: 2 EPs (one free, one streaming) of steamy, down-pitch jams, to set the *late night* mood.
• It is rain in my face – Wishbone: Matt Jones—introspective melody weaver, strum-beat soundscaper—on everyone’s favorite digital label, Absent Fever.
• Música Pop Desempregada – MPD027: vários – 21 anos de MPD: A 21 song salute to the “unemployed pop music movement” in Portugal assembled by Música Pop Desempregada (who sport an eleven-point, blood-signed manifesto). Grainy, odd, light dreams, heavy dreams, lone desert space cowboys, Enya covers…
• The-Drum: The scattering on this soundcloud is rich with bent ‘n’ broke R&B vocals and that sort of dub-infused trickery that pairs well with headphones.
• Jjango Cleefworth Morriconez – The Poquito Pioneer: A bootgazing concept album (which arrived by mail, wrapped in a map) about a man driving through the desert, finding refuge “among the roadside vendors and immigrant folktales on his way to the home of his youth in the Salton Sea.”
• The Bell Peppers – Cooking With Bell Peppers: 50s era swing from Manchester, delightfully misremembered with more distortion and drugs.
• S&S Guest Mix – Kumon Plaza: Dylan Khotin-Foote’s assignment was simple: pull together anything under the sun. And like the shining student of orbital electronic that he is, he turned in a report entitled Tears of the World At Large Bottled and Sold at Super Markets, documenting 8 choice items (including Balam Acab, Azeda Booth, Kuhrye-oo, and more) on a trip through atmospheric manufacturing.

 

Smoke Don’t Smoke

• Goldrush Music Festival Compliation: an impressive bout of new tracks from all the amazing acts performing at Goldrush!
• Pepepiano – KING: experimental space jams.
• Teen Daze – Daytrotter Session: stripped down Teen Daze as beautiful as the day he was born.
• Abadabad and Stoner Showers – Makeout Beach: split tape for summers end $
• Skeleton Zoo – The Busride EP: post-elevator music? world-wide sourced samples in a beautiful cacophony of sound.
• Evenings – Lately: a sleepy beautiful dream $
• Black Coffee & Stephee Pie – Spin EP: another solid collab.
• Parallax – a mix by smoke don’t smoke: hopefully something to get down to.

 

Friends With Both Arms

• Pates Tapes // Rhythm & Blues – “It’s In His Kiss”: Everytime I get tired of my itunes, I put on a new mix streaming on PatesTapes- a collection of vinyl-to cassette-to digital mixes that have all sorts of cool genres. My favorite is R&B- and anything Betty Everett (see: “It’s In His Kiss” mix)
• The Dandy Warhols – Daytrotter Session: hey, no one really cares that this was posted on Sept.1st, right? Right?
• Indie Music Filter – Volume 8: My friend Chris runs Indie Music Filter out of Toronto. He puts together the best mixtapes. Check out Vol. 8, it’s a goodie.
• Invisible Children Roadie Mix: Every semester when our volunteers head out on the road, I make them mixes for the road. These are my last mixes, as I’ll be heading back up to Canada. Mixes are split between more melancholy night driving music and upbeat jams.
• Peter Wolf Crier – Garden of Arms: Stream the new PWC record. Record of the year! I’m biased, I know.
• Drums – Portamento: Stream the new album, out Sept 6th.
• We All Want Someone To Shout For’s Best Songs Of 2011: This pretty much covers it for any indie/pop song you might’ve heard about in the past year. I found this list by looking for the new Real Estate track – so good.
• Wild Flag – Wild Flag: stream the new Wild Flag record over at NPR.
• The Balconies Mixtape: Toronto band The Balconies made a mixtape for the music blog – Artist Mixtapes.
• Sound Advice 109 – Alexi Wasser: Alexi Wasser runs imboycrazy.com and made a mix for The World’s Best Ever “Sound Advice” mostly about boys.

Support music you love. See shows, buy physical releases, show love.

Note: Due to bandcamp’s terms of service artists are required to charge a minimal price after a certain number of free downloads. If  that’s the case after our posting you can always stream it and if it moves you, support them with a purchase.

 

Free Music Collection: August 2011

As this never-ending flow of free music washes in on an August tide, let’s look to our recruited collectors and see what shells left lasting imprints in their sand—from notorious mashups to lo-fi croon-wave, here’s a variety of findings to soundtrack your final month of summer bliss.

Free Music Collection: August 2011

Think or Smile

• Space Ghost – IT’$ $UMMER MIX: warped tracks of all sorts for your mellow summer eves.
• Space Ghost – Space Ghost EP: swirling space beats.
• Kuhrye-oo – Forty Ounce Mixtape: notoriously mashed & mixed.
• Monster Rally – Crystal Ball: psychedelic surf. $
• Monster Rally – I Paint My Mind DJ Series: some great sunshine psych-pop, soul, tropical and classic hip-hop.
• WAX MONSTERS – Ancosta: Oberlin synthpop. $
• Torkelsen – Torsnes Beats Vol. 1: beat tape out of Oslo. $
• Araabmuzik mixtape: mvp of the mpc. bass up, top down.
• Guerre – Darker My Love: soul for your electronic being.
• Ra Cailum – Bite Marks: zoned out to chilled out.
• Lewis – Summer_in montana: slow simmering sounds.
• Nakagin – elsewhere: beats over textures drawn from ambient soundscapes. $
• ASIP – Traumbient: hypnotic, melodic, deep and atmospheric.
• astrangelyisolatedplace mixes: ambient, electronic jackpot. scores of mixes.

 

Smoke Don’t Smoke

• Chrome Sparks – My <3: Probably the most crucial download you can make. Soulful and infectious beats for life in general. $
• TV Girl – Benny and the Jetts: More upbeat contagious jams you’ll have on repeat all summer.
• Doah – Prime: Lo-fi croon-wave.
• R E A L M A G I C – R E A L M A G I C: Yum.
• My Friend Wallis – On Hawaiian Time: Experimental beauty. $
• Yin Yang : The Golden Age of Hip Hop Revisited: A LYFSTYL mixtape with some serious remixed hip-hop gems.
• Rivka – Rivka: Mildly dark dream-pop, good for spacing to. $
• Pandit – Steady Nerves and a Strong Heart: More genius from Lance Smith. Heartfeltedness at it’s core.
• JRG – You’re With Me: Summer haze.
• Yalls – Yalls: At last a collection of the inner mind of Dan Casey. These will have your feet moving in moments. $

 

Friends with Both Arms

• Wugazi – 13 Chambers: free download of the Wu-Tang + Fugazi mashup. Nice!
• Lollapalooza Mixtape by The KickDrums: I’m preparing for Lolla this year..
• Jessica Lea Mayfield on World Cafe NPR: songs from the saddest girl in the world.
• Release The Sunbird, ‘Come Back To Us’ First Listen NPR: this is my friend Zack. This is his new solo record. It’s something really special.
• Wolf Parade Frontman’s Solo LP: streamin via Spin. First listens: into it.
• Grimes – Daytrotter Session: Amazing session.
• Sonny & the Sunsets AD Session!
• Four Tet and more remix Radiohead: in anticipation of release of 12″ singles of King of Limbs remixes.
• Stereogum Presents… STROKED: A Tribute To Is This It: A tribute to The Strokes ft. Peter Bjorn & John, Real Estate, Owen Pallet and more.
• Summer of Friends With Both Arms Mix for F O R T Y O U N C E C L O T H I N G

 

Stadiums & Shrines

• Petrels – All Things In Common: Neoclassical drone inspired by history. If it weren’t so moving and vastly serious, I’d be tempted to dub this Wikipedia-wave.
• Moon Glyph – 2011 Sampler: An impossibly heavy psych sampling from the wonder that is Moon Glyph—a Minneapolis-based cassette and vinyl label with its head way up in the sky.
• Two Bicycles – Window: Cameron Book’s new home opened the window, and ten fresh gusts of that Two Bikes air came swirling in. File under: ambient/guitar/sleeping under a tree.
• Yung Life – Youth’s Hours: Drum-built pop gems of the no-wave variety…caffeinated punk here, 80s teen movie there. $
• Beko + Crash Symbols Mixtape: “A hefty slab of noise and pop” brought to us by Dwight of GOTC/Crash Symbols and Beko Digital Singles Label. Tons of rare species on this thing.
• Rainbo Video – Shadow Relics: Framed around an expedition to Antarctica, Shadow Relics is a minimalistic ride to the brightest of ices. $

 

Support music you love. See shows, buy physical releases, show love.

Note: Due to bandcamp’s terms of service artists are forced to charge a minimal price after a certain number of free downloads. You can always stream it and if it moves you, support them with a purchase.