February’s Swag – Free (& Legal) Music Downloads

This month's swag was too much for one bag, and thus has spawned off-spring, otherwise known as the matching coin purse

Birds of Passage – 3-Track Sampler
Minimal/Ethereal/Drone | 29MB – 320 kbps MP3s
Pre-orders for the debut album by Birds of Passage (aka Alicia Merz) have just gone up on Denovali, with three of twelve tracks from Without The World available to download for free. I highly recommend these tracks, if not the album – sounds like poetry in motion.

 

Pillars And Tongues - Live “Sprout Session”
Drone/Folk | 32MB – 145 kbps MP3
If you know me or this blog, you know I love these guys, so I wasted all of about 3 seconds after finding out about this live session before grabbing it via dublab. Then the hour-plus it took for my ridiculously slow connection to download the full 32MB, with several failed attempts along the way. It would have been worth it even if it took 10x as long.

 

Clan Destine Mixtape
Witch House/Darkwave/Other | 167MB – 320 kbps MP3s
A massive 22 tracks in one neat little package. Standouts for me were the GHxST and Sealings (naturally) tracks, otherwise sure to sate fans of the witch house genre, or those with a curiosity for what it is/was all about. Visit Clan Destine to read up on the full tracklisting, or head straight to Beko to download the mixtape.

 

Do You Feel What I Feel Deer – Save My Heart
Downtempo/Folk/Jazz | 8MB – 320 kbps MP3
A nice folk track I found over on Bandcamp. Just the solitary track up by the artist so far, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for more.

 

Moby – Be The One EP
Electronic/Downtempo | 32MB – 320 kbps MP3s¹
A 3-track EP available in exchange for your email address. If you’re not a Moby fan, these tracks probably won’t turn you into a die-hard supporter, but worth the download to find out if they’re your kinda tunes. Get it at Moby.com.

 

From Daytrotter’s Stable…

Judgement Day – 26th February
String Metal/Instrumental | 12MB – 128 kbps MP3s
Coming in right at the end of February and the only session I downloaded this month. If that’s not recommendation enough…well, I can’t actually think of anything to recommend it further, but they are pretty darn awesome tracks. Download the session here.

 

Over at Stereogum…

Implodes – Marker
Drone/Psych/Shoegaze | 7MB – 192 kbps MP3
The forthcoming album, Black Earth, is now on my wish list, thanks to this track. Download here.

Bat For Lashes – Strangelove
Pop/Electronica | 3MB – 115 kbps MP3
A cover of the Depeche Mode song, and the soundtrack to the ad for a new Gucci fragrance. A fairly straightforward version, but nice all the same. Download here.

Boris – Hope
Pop/Rock/Metal | 8MB – 320 kbps MP3
I’ve been curious about this group for a while, so a free track seems a perfect way to test the waters. Definitely not what I was expecting, but I have a feeling I’d say that upon further exploration, too. Download here.

 

The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – Patra
Dark Ambient/Jazz | 19MB – 320 kbps MP3
This seriously good track is a cover the 1989 song by Saint Vitus; and you can grab it here. TKDE have several albums currently available via Bandcamp and/or Denovali, but this – along with a couple of others – are free to download (with the exception of handing over your email address for their instrumental cover of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s Dark Night of the Soul). Check ‘em out – it’s unlikely you’ll regret it. (Others available for free download: Black Wing Butterfly / Goya and Kava Kon Remixes).

 

 

S4E

1. Had the same problem with this zip file as I do with with the Boomkat downloads, thus I had to downgrade to 224 kbps so that the data tags could be edited.

Os Ovni – Something in the Sky

If you got into witch house this year, you’ll probably dig this nifty little blend of shoegaze, dream pop and psych, all wrapped up in a droney-witch house package by Texan duo Os Ovni.

Something in the Sky, recently released by Answering Machine Recordings, and apart from having a tripped out cover, was apparently recorded using only one instrument. Quite impressive when taking into consideration the different sounds and genres blended into the mix. The video is quite a nice trip, too.

You can grab one of 300 limited pink vinyl pressings via Answering Machine Recordings.

For more Os Ovni, check them out on Tumblr; or pay a visit to their SoundCloud page where you can listen to or download a couple of mixtapes.

 

S4E

Dark & Darker

“…like a whisper taking you back to the dark part of your memory and dreams…”

That’s the self-described music of Opium Dream Estate, a musical project founded in 2006 by Sébastyén D. I recently chanced upon the EP Through the White Landscape, which was released back in August over on Bandcamp. Gentle and haunting, perhaps a little bit like Rivulets meets Boduf Songs with a decidedly French  shoegaze feel. The EP is currently available as a free download and well worth checking out if you like the sound of ambient, gothic neofolk. You can also take a listen to any or all of ODE’s  four previous releases – Estranged Memories, Anamorphosis, Spira Spiritum Noctis and Alpha/Omega.

Sébastyén D runs the label Seventh Crow Records, which has a few other releases on Bandcamp at the moment also for free download -  a various artists compilation titled The Haunted Looking Glass; a 12-track album released on 4th November by Art of Empathy called Posthuman Decadence, another Sébastyén D project called Orchid’s Children with Last Days of Decadence and Hourglass & Waterlillies – all of which are tagged with ethereal, goth, ambient, indie, industrial and neofolk.

Only The Tress Remember is the first of 6 tracks on the release.

 

 

More dark Bandcamp-ery with this fairly recent self-titled release by SIΔMESE NOIR. There seems to be pretty limited info out there at the moment in regards to this project, which could well be the point, all I can turn up is “New York based solo project”.

The symbol in the name generally seems to indicate “witch house” these days, and I suppose it’s fairly accurate. I say suppose merely because I haven’t made much of an effort to overly familiarise myself with the genre, but I will say the more I hear of it the more I become convinced it’s actually a new name rather than a new genre. Anywho, that’s beside the point, this music is of the eerily-slow-motion type – think Chinese water torture in a haunted room that has a creepy looking kid with black eyes playing trip-hop at drone-speed and in weird loops… Translate that, if you can, into sound and you’d be in the ball park. At night.

You might be a little unsettled, but you’ll be compelled to stay. You can download it for free here.

In Quiet is the first of 5 tracks on the release.

S4E

More Mixtape Goodness

Following on from this recent compilation from Lefse Records (at Inverted Audio), is another free download bursting at the seams with musical goodness. This time it’s over at NME with their Radar Mixtape Volume 4, which features artists currently causing a bit of sensation in the “new-fangled” witch house genre. Not only that, but once again Invisible Elephant gets a well-deserved nod with the track Communication (Part II) being included (with that in mind, the name itself is fast becoming a misnomer! S4E extends sincere congratulations and best wishes for IE’s continued success).

The full tracklisting is as follows:

1. GROUPLOVE – Colours
2. Flats – Flats Waltz
3. 2:54 – Creeping
4. Porcelain Raft – Tip Of Your Tongue
5. Enforcer – Midnight Vice
6. Fiction – Big Things (demo)
7. The Knocks – Blackout
8. CEO – Come With Me
9. Invisible Elephant – Communication (Part II)
10. DOM – Burn Bridges
11. Dominique Young Unique – Blaster
12. Myles Cooper – Gonna Find Boyfriends Today
13. Ghost Hunter – Evening Drive
14. oOoOO – Mumbai
15. Best Coast – Sun Was High (So Was I)
16. Gypsy And The Cat – Time To Wander
17. American Men – AM System
18. Oneohtrix Point Never – Where Does Time Go?
19. Tamaryn – Sandstone
20. Foster The People -Pumped Up Kicks

Tons of awesome stuff to sink your teeth into; and in case you missed it the first time, click here to go get it.

S4E