Wednesday is tax day, so I thought you might be able to use some free music. I don't mean questionably legal file trades or streams or random MP3s delivered via Seeqpod or some other search engine--I'm talking about the Free Music Archive, which launched in beta over the weekend.
Often, sites with tons of free music have a low-quality bar--either they cater to beginning bands, or they're used to promote leftovers and outtakes that artists couldn't otherwise sell. But at first glance, FMA appears to be different.
It's curated by serious music fans, including New Jersey's WFMU, the undisputed national leader in unusual music, as well as Seattle's frequently awesome KEXP, and includes lots of live-in-studio performances on these and other stations.
There are artists you might actually have heard of, like Robyn Hitchcock, Daniel Johnston, and Vivian Girls. And, keeping with WFMU's heritage, the "Experimental" category isn't just an afterthought but a rather major part of the site, with a whopping 1,340 downloads. All songs are licensed for a wide array of uses, including sampling and remixes.
Can't get enough? Want new downloads as soon as they become available? Try subscribing to the site's Twitter feed.
Happy downloading! Remember to leave a tip.
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New Jersey radio station WFMU--which may well be the best radio station in the world--has a blog called Beware of the Blog. The other day, they posted an MP3 file from listener Steve McLaughlin containing all the Beatles' U.K. albums, digitally time-compressed into a single hour. (No Magical Mystery Tour because it was a double EP, not an LP.) It sounds a bit like the sped-up President Bush speech at the end of Godspeed You Black Emperor's vinyl version of Yanqui U.X.O., only, it's the Beatles.
Then, some enterprising listeners took the McLaughlin MP3 and decompressed several sections of it back to their normal speed. The results...you just have to listen.
If I were in charge of the New Musical Genre Naming Committee (NMGNC), I'd call this type of remix a "microdot" remix. I can't explain what the word means, but that's what it sounds like to me.
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