Cranial Soup

Free Music Download: New Century Classics – Natural Process

2010-03-25T19:32:00.001-04:00

I came across this great post-rock album on my travels yesterday.

It's from a Polish band called New Century Classics.

Every track is great, from the first to the last. This is how music was meant to be. It's not like the albums produced by most of the artists signed to the major labels where it is one or two good tracks and the rest are just filler.

This is all good.

And it gets better…

The artist allows you to name your price and pay what you think it is worth, including $0.00 if you don't want to pay or are not quite ready to support their work just yet. And it's high quality audio files. Not only can you name your price, you can choose your file format and bitrate, too! You get your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, OGG, AAC, and more.

So take a listen and then go get the album.

Free MP3 Download: Eldad Lidor

2008-09-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

One of the great things about the internet, as a music lover, is that I get to discover all kinds of good stuff that I would not likely hear on the radio in my small suburban town in Northern NJ, or likely find a CD for, at the local mall.

For artists, it allows them to reach out across the borders of their countries and find a new audience. It allows independent artists the opportunity to market themselves and their music, without having to resort to signing up with some RIAA record label that is more interested in money than artistic quality.

One of these independent artists is Eldad Lidor.

There isn't much information available in English about this artist, but it seems he is a relatively famous one within his own country of Israel, having composed the musical score for some movies and television programs, among them a 1989 Israeli film called Crossfire (Esh Tzolevet).

He has also been the executive producer of at least one movie, a 1999 Israeli film called Shiv'a Yamim Be'Elul.

He's a real go getter, and puts a lot of effort into reaching out to potential fans on Last.fm. It was there that I was contacted by him and asked to listen to his music and tell him what I thought. (I love when artists spam me with their tracks, especially when they are really good.)

But being on a slow computer and connection, I can't stream audio and can only listen if there is a track I can download. After explaining this to him, he pointed me towards the only tracks he has available for download on Last.fm.

Going On is a short (2:18) but very good instrumental, a lonely highway kind of tune that I could imagine as the background music of a modern western movie, as the hero rides off into the night in an old beat up convertable. Or maybe playing as one stands alone, on a subway platform in New York City, in the middle of the night, watching the empty trains go by.

My Father Memoris - I am not too sure how to describe this one except to say it reminds me a bit of a cross between Mike Oldfield, Yanni, and an 80's electronica style commercial for the Bates Motel. It's a little bit spooky in some parts, and the percussion gets rather interesting towards the middle of the track.

Eldad also has another track available for download called Relationships, along with a number of others you can stream on his MySpace page. You will need a MySpace account to download, though.

If you like what you hear, please consider supporting artists by buying an album, seeing a concert, or telling a friend, especially when you find a really good independent artist like Eldad Lidor. Let's all help artists like him become successful, worldwide, without them having to resort to selling their souls to an RIAA affiliated record label.

Music Downloads Will Now Be Blogged

2008-05-28T00:36:00.005-04:00

In the past, I have added my Last.fm music finds to my playlist and embedded that in a player on the sidebar. Everything that I added could be downloaded, full songs, for free.

To cut the time it takes for my blog's pages to load, and because Last.fm's player has issues, I am going to start making posts for my music finds and get rid of the player.

If you have never bothered to listen to my playlist before, don't worry, you won't miss out on past music finds, as I'll be tossing in posts of past finds here & there till I am all caught up and everything has been blogged.

My taste in music is primarily instrumental. I can't stand songs with stupid lyrics. And for the most part, I like music that creates a mood, and doesn't interfere with my thought processes.

Most of the stuff I listen to is progressive rock, post-rock, ambient, or new age. Of course there are exceptions, and that applies to the 'no lyrics' rule, as well.

To kick things off, I refer you to my post on Last.fm about the gazillion Kitaro tunes I found, that are all downloadable.

For those not familiar with Kitaro, he is a famous Japanese artist that plays some very pretty, relaxing, new age, instrumental, synthesizer stuff. It's some great coding & studying music that won't break your concentration. What I like best about his music is the calming effect it has on me. It is so soothing, that I find that I do not become frustrated, as easily.

And with close to 50 downloadable tracks, that should keep your ears & your bandwidth busy for awhile. Just click the song links on my Last.fm post to go to each song's page and download them from there. The download links will be beneath the players.

And don't worry if you do not have a Last.fm account. One is not needed for the free music I will be referring you to.

Relax & enjoy!

Children of the CPU

2008-02-10T15:38:00.003-05:00

Hailing from Vancouver BC, Children of the CPU is the electro-pop duo of Cameron Shay and Veronica Rossos.

What is there not to love about this artist?

First of all, great name...but it gets better...

Their first album is called Back to BASIC, as in the programming language, of course.

And the album cover is awesome, featuring a drawing of 2 children playing Q*bert on an Atari 2600!

Their music is pretty cool too. It's kind of like funky game music combined with Poe.

And just when you think they couldn't get any better, I have saved the best part for last...

You can download the entire album for free, in (DRM free) VBR MP3 format!

All 12 tracks!

Why?

In Cameron Shay's own words:

"Some people have questioned the wisdom of giving away our entire album for free on our website, but don't worry Mom and Dad, we are still eating well and making rent every month! They got me wondering, though, where my desire to share our music comes from and I realised that it is a direct result of my parents having bought me my first computer, a VIC-20, and then later a Commodore 64 in the mid-80s. Having a C-64 in particular triggered a couple of things: it fostered a DIY attitude because I was able to teach myself how to program games (Lawnmower for the VIC-20 and Tricycle Derby for the C-64 ;) and make electronic music (albeit rudimentary), and it opened the door to a vast community of sharing and trading and making friends. In a way this website and album are simply the extension of those times and attitudes. I spent hundreds of hours on this album over the past couple of years learning how to program the synths and record the midi and live instruments and vocals and mix the tracks and improve the sound and master it all, and then I spent many more hours designing and building cover-art and the website, and it was just like all the hours I spent figuring out how to draw sprites and get them to move around in a game on the C-64 with music and sound effects, and now that it's done I just want to share it with people, just like we used to do back in the day through BBS networks and with our friends. So thanks Mom and Dad for starting me off with those computers, I know you were worried about all the time I spent in my room on those things and I guess that hasn't changed much, but it's all a learning process and that's fun and it makes me happy and now it is making a whole bunch of our new friends/fans happy too!"

Like I said before...what is there not to love?

http://www.childrenofthecpu.com

Halo theme: Corpomix

2007-04-02T04:00:00.001-04:00

If you didn't get enough of Corporeal in my last post, here is some more:

If you would like to download the MP3, of this, they have it here on their website: http://www.corporealmusic.net/forthehalofans

Tons of Free Legal Music MP3's

2007-01-15T23:18:00.002-05:00

In an effort to broaden my musical horizons, and discover stuff I may never have heard or heard of before, I have been wandering around on Last.fm.

I discovered a few .mp3 downloads on my suggestions page and decided to look up the artists on Last.fm. One of them had a link to their page on another site.

A marvelous discovery!

Some of these artists have their stuff covered under a Creative Commons license that allows you to share them freely. So download what you like and fire up your favorite P2P application and share them with your friends, if you want.

Try this:

Where it says "Bändin nimi:" type in something you already like.
You will get a short list of results of artists that list them as an influence.
Go click where they put your artist's name as a link.
You will get a whole page of results.
Click a link from the left column.
On the artist page, click where it says 'download' at the top.
You will get a .zip file full of mp3's.

Enjoy!

http://www.mikseri.net/artists/search.php