Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek

Peter Broderick:

An American born musician and composer most known as the violin player in the Danish band, Efterklang in their live shows. He's recorded and toured with many bands and musicians including She & Him, Horse Feathers, Norfolk & Western,Laura Gibson and many more as well as being a regular session musicians at various recording studios.

He started Violin at age 7 in high school, and soon became interested in all different kinds of instruments, where he started to learn the piano, guitar, banjo, mandolin, musical saw and anything else he could find. In 2007 he was invited to play alongside one of his favourite bands, Efterklang, so he moved to Copenhagen and joined them, since then he's played live alongside them all over the world and often being opening act for many of their live shows.
(Recommended Albums - Float and Home)

Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuyderveldt):

A male composer from Arnhem, Netherlands who makes electronic music without using a laptop or computer to generate sounds, he does this my recording various natural sounds including soundscapes,various acoustic instruments/sounds as well as feedback noise and glitches. His general sound is quite droney and soundscape but he also creates completely different sound worlds where there is only sounds of mechanical objects and crackles for example his album 'Box Music' a collaboration with Stephen Vitiello, in which the titles are all the objects he used in that particular track e.g Bells, Books, Tin Foil, Buttons.
(Recommended albums Dauw and Box Music)



Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek:
With Peter mainly on piano playing melodic and sparse chords as well as playing on other various acoustic and electric instruments and Machinefabriek on instruments and sound recordings creating slow drones they each perfectly counterplay off each other, no sound sounds too different to each other. And you often wonder if these two sounds from two completely different worlds were made for each other.
The album starts with a slow soundscape, enveloping you to stop whatever you're doing and to focus on all the sounds then peter introduces his Steve Reich/Philip Glass/Ludovico Einaudi-esque phrases on the piano then mixed with Peters humming which gets sucked into Machinfabriek's Soundscape world, it truly is one of the most emotional songs I've heard in a while (Track 2 - Planes) . You will not be disappointed with this album.




"For those who want to contribute to the efforts of labels and artists please consider purchasing mp3s (or flac) here

http://diogenes.greedbag.com/buy/blank-grey-canvas-sky-0/

We’re doing a “3 for 2″ offer for Christmas on all our catalogue until the end of this week.

http://www.diogenesmusic.com "





Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek - Blank Grey Canvas Sky - 58mb

LINK

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Damero

Damero is a female singer and Electronica musician from Berlin, Germany.

She's on the record label 'BPitch Control', if you haven't checked out who's on their label, I would recommend you do so, if you like this artist.

When she was young she had a classical music education in East Germany and later on in France, Italy and then U.S.A. She then took singing lessons and at the same time collaborated with different musicians in the German independent (at the time) electronic scene like Apparat and Modeselektor.

The music is generally a mix of slow synthy pads and glitchy crackle and pops blended with thin,crisp synths and simple beats which creates a smooth yet slightly hectic environment, but mixed with her voice she seems to calm everything down. This is a great album to relax too because of her voice and slow glitchy sounds (e.g. Track 4 + Track 6) but you also have tracks which you could put on where you need something a little more up-beat (e.g. Track 1,2 +10).




Damero - Happy In Grey - 60mb

LINK

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Osmos (MAC USERS ONLY)

Hi,

It's been a while since I last posted...and honestly, I kinda missed posting on here...so I'll do a few more posts to keep this page alive.

"Enter the ambient world of Osmos: elegant, physics-based gameplay, dreamlike visuals, and a minimalist, electronic soundtrack.
Your objective is to grow by absorbing other motes. Propel yourself by ejecting matter behind you. But be wise: ejecting matter also shrinks you. Relax… good things come to those who wait.
Progress from serenely ambient levels into varied and more challenging worlds. Confront attractors, repulsors and intelligent motes with similar abilities and goals as you." (http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/)

I've been playing this game loads recently, every time I need to zone out and chill,but also wanting to be entertained and challenged I play this. This is the first time I've wrote about a game, and I rarely play games.

The first thing that attracted me to this game was (of course) the music. Soundtracks by Julien Neto, Biosphere, Gas(High Skies), Loscil. If you know these guys you now know what kinda vibe this game is heading for.

The Visuals are great ,they perfectly match the sounds, you're a small ball "mote" in an ambient world and the aim is to grow by sucking the energy out of smaller motes. It's a modern twist of that fish game,where you're a small fish and you have to grow by swimming around and eating smaller fishes, or the first few levels of 'Spore'. One of the great things about this game is that if you can either restart the exact same level OR restart the level but randomising all the elements so you can try the same objective it in a different setting/world. Don't let the simple objectives fool you, they WILL get harder and more challenging and you may even be tempted to throw your computer out of the window (like me),but stick to it.

The game is made by a select few people, not a big company (Even though these people were from big game companies). So the game only costs $10 yes...$10...
They have released a PC version as well as MAC.But I've got the MAC version.

(I wrote that whole post without saying ambient - woop)

Hemisphere Games - Osmos - (21mb)

LINK

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Albinobeach

It's my Birthday today, and I'm posting you an album. Yeah? What of it?



Albinobeach are a 3-piece instrumental rock band from Johannesburg, South Africa.They aren't that big, but they've released an EP and right now it's sold out...but they're working on a new album.



Their sound is usually quite heavy but often using hypnotising melodies (See Track 1 - Okavango Delta). The drums are quite simple yet powerful and sometimes have little surprises around the corner. The bass is usually very low to make space for the guitarist to do his thing. For one guitarist the sound is quite contrasting from smooth melodies with, what I have to guess is, layers of looped chords progressions to slow violin-esque background sounds to bursting, in your face, crank it up to 11, distortion.

It’s kinda hard to describe this band as you can tell they’ve taken a lot of influences from bands they’ve listened too, and they’ve applied them to all their songs, which is probably why every song sounds like its heading in a different direction. I could go through each song and have a go at what sound they were heading for, but that’s boring. Instead I’ll write a few names down what bands pops in my head while I’m listening to it, its probably not going to make sense but oh well…

Don Cabbalero
Pelican
Russian Circles
Caspian
Up-C Down-C….
Mogwai
Broken Social Scene
Red Sparows

They're on FORGOTTEN EMPIRE RECORDS and if you click on the Title above, it will re-direct you to their site and I'd click on it if I were you! They've got a deal on "10 CD's for $50" which is like £30! sooo £3 a CD!!

I'm off to blow my imaginary candles!



Albinobeach - Albinobeach (EP) - (40mb)

LINK

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NOTE: I have moved to sendspace. so its quicker for everyone downloading. It is still password protected and still a zip file. (READ INFO TOP RIGHT)

Are you Scientific? Are you American? No? Neither Am I.

Here is a post from July's issue of Scientific American Mind magazine, explaining how music has the power to make us laugh,cry and how it benefits our mental and physical well-being.

• Some scientists conclude that music’s influence over us may be a chance event, arising from its ability to hijack brain systems built for other purposes such as language, emotion and movement.
• Music seems to offer a novel method of communication rooted in emotions rather than in meaning. Research shows that what we feel when we hear a piece of music is remarkably similar to what everybody else in the room is experiencing.
• Songs facilitate emotional bonding and even physical interactions such as marching or dancing together and thus may help cement ties that underlie the formation of human societies. In addition, tunes may work to our benefit on an individual level, manipulating mood and even human physiology more effectively than words can.

LINK

What do you think?

Bonobo

I'll be going to Big Chill Festival in a few days, and thought that I should share some of what is going to be entering my head. If you live in the UK (or outside) and can afford to get there...and you're not going, you're missing out! Here's a few bands/artists that are playing -

• Alice Russell
• Breakage
• Calexico
• Chris Cunningham (Live AV set)
• David Byrne
• DJ Format
• Fink
• Fourtet
• Gong
• Helios (See below for post)
• Hexstatic
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
• Lamb
• Ludovico Eunaidi
• Mr. Scruff
• Orbital

To name a few.... seriously...the line up is MASSIVE.

Oh and Bonobo!

To those who haven't heard of this guy, no I will not be seeing a Pygmy Chimpanzee, although it would be good fun....

Simon Green AKA Bonobo is a British composer, musician and DJ. He creates the perfect music for serious chill-out sessions, great music to wind down too. Simon uses a wide variety of samples and his music, often alongside complex jazzy bass lines. His music progresses throughout his pieces, adding bass lines or instruments to the mix. Following his debut album, Animal Magic he knew his musical career has gone forward, when he got signed to Coldcut's record label 'Ninja Tune' in 2001. By 2004 he felt as if he needed to move even more forward not business wise but as a musician, so he formed a band to play live with, this included a singer, keyboardist, guitarists, saxophonist, string section, electronics and drummer. Bonobo mainly plays the bass guitar and leads the band, playing the role as conductor.

UNCANNY?!

Bonobo - Recurring The Live Session EP (90mb)

LINK

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Alva noto + Ryuichi Sakamato

This album is collaboration between two influential musicians in the electronica scene.


Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto - He's a sound artist who uses sound to create microscopic sounds to fabricate an electronic world of glitches and noises. He's known to create music from sounds people usually overlook such as the sounds of a modem, telephone pops and clicks and fax tones.
He also works as a visual artist; by using the principles of Cymatics he visualizes sound. He works without sequencers but mathematically edits his work to give his compositions precise rhythmic structures.

Ryuichi Sakamoto - He's an Academy award, Grammy and Golden Globe winning musician, composer, record producer and actor. He resides in Tokyo, Japan and New York, USA. He's more known as the keyboard player in the electropop band 'Yellow Magic Orchestra’. He’s also a film composer and has written scores and recorded music for films like, The Last Emperor, Little Buddha, Babel, Tony Takitani, Forbidden Colours, Snake Eyes, Wild Palms and many more. His main instrument is the keyboard and piano.



Together these musicians create an album that anyone's ears will like. Mixing the soft chords and delicate melodies of Ryuichi Sakamoto with the deep, minimal, glitchy sounds of Alva Noto.

Alva noto + Ryuichi Sakamato - Insen (90mb)

LINK

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Helios

Keith Kennif AKA Helios is an musician from Pennsylvania.From a young age he stared the play the drums,guitar and bass. throughout his musical career he played in a variety of bands,from rock to classical and jazz.Years later he studied Percussion at Boston's Berklee College of music

Soon after, all this molded into his moniker 'Helios'. His sound is a blend of soft,spacious guitar accompanied by slow pads and slow yet intricate percussion,along with his self taught electro-acoustic sytle of producing this really is the perfect blend of sounds.

This album "Eingya" tales influence from his interest in cinema and his extensive European travels.A blend of natural sounding instruments mixed with electro-acoustic sounds alongside some great field recording.I encourage you to get this album and to buy all his others, in my opinion they just get more and more fun to listen too.



Helios - Eingya (72mb)

LINK

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Giraffes? Giraffes!

Giraffes? Giraffes!. They are 2 guys just going pretty mental, one on guitar and one on drums. The drummer performs fast,upbeat and sometimes confusing rhythmic accompaniment for the guitarist which taps,plucks,smacks and loops his guitar like there's no tomorrow. The drummer not only drums but he plays other instruments like the glockenspiel and pots and pans. Its a mix between Heavy,Soft,Loud,Quiet,Smooth,Rough,Tomayto,Potarto.

I would love to see this band live,but unfortunately they havent released an album for 2 years, so I don't expect a tour anytime soon. but keep my fingers crossed. I also have a feeling they;ve both gone their own way.

Fans of Tera Melos, Hella, Piglet,Volta Do Mar...you get the drift...

I'm also feeling quite genereous today, and the fact I havent posted anything for a while. Ive uploaded two of their albums!

Giraffes? Giraffes! - More Skin With Milk-Mouth
Giraffes? Giraffes! - SUPERBASS!!!!
(90mb)

LINK

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Bat For Lashes

Natasha Khan AKA Bat For Lashes is a female singer. I first heard of her when I found out she was supporting Radiohead in Manchester, at the time I just had her first album and only listened to it a few times, but just recently since her new album has been released I've been listening to them both a lot. Her voice is most compelling, having a sweet,soft voice accompanied by tribal drums,Medieval instruments ,drum machines and synthesizers, great combination with help from her great band!

Below is a great quality live recording someone from Youtube sent me . It was a live performance from April 2009 in Birmingham. Although I'm not fond of encores especially 3! If she needed a break she didn't need to say goodnight!

Me being borderline OCD ,I have tagged and renamed all the files before compressing it. So it should be ready to go straight on your MP3 player.



P.S Thanks to Chaotikmind for the songs and setlist!

Bat For Lashes - Live at Town Hall, Birmingham (123mb)

Link

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Voice Draw

Next time you have a spare minute or two check out this website, everything on the website is made and designed by one guy called Ze Frank.

The link below is one of my favourite, It uses your inbuilt (or external) mic to create pictures,little pieces of art. Just scream,hum,shout,quack,whisper (my favourite) and this causes the virtual ink to move around and flow its own direction.

The majority of his little creations are based around sound or visual elements,he also has some pretty funny videos,songs,stories and projects going such as "Impress your date".





Link

American Football

American Football are surprisingly from America, specifically from Illinois. If you've heard of any of these bands/artists I'm sure you'll like this band:
Owls
Cap'n Jazz
Joan of Arc
The Geese
Braid
Make Believe

All of the bands above included one or two specific people of the Chicago Indie rock scene. Brothers, Tim and Mike Kinsella.
American Football only has Mike Kinsella on vocals and two other members of The Geese. This band split up in 2000 and Mike went his own way under the name of Owen and is still going strong.I may upload one of his albums soon.

Anyway the band...For a 3 man band their music is incredibly complex. Incorporating odd time signatures and tempos with a new (at that time) style of playing guitar that was never seen or heard in the indie rock scene.With a drummer who manages to keep all the instruments intact ,complimenting and giving enough space while the bassist add his sparse melodic bass lines.Both Tim and Mike Kinsella have been playing in bands since the late 80's/early 90's with Cap'n jazz and in that time they have learnt a lot which you can really hear as you go through their albums.



American Football - American Football (38mb)

Link

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sgt.

Yup, more Japanese music.This one is a good'un

sgt. are a 4 piece band from Tokyo that formed in 1999. You could call them post-rock but I think their sound is much more different than the usual "quiet to loud" bands out there. They mix different styles including, Jazz,Ambient,Folk, Classical.More often that not people who knows this band knows that these guys can improvise. They often go into lengthy (10-30min) improvisational spaces where the band and crowd can feed off each other and slowly travel through different moods/tempo/loudness.They're so good that they also released a live album with singer Damo Suzuki which I bought off the man himself (he's a good salesman - how could barter with a guy you've just seen and heard sing/wail/scream over a mic?!)

If this album was better produced this would probably be in my top 15 (maybe 10) favourite albums. Track 2 is my favourite song off this album listen to it full blast and I guarantee goosebumps at 10:20.


sgt. - Perception of Casualty (54mb)

Link

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Clara Hill

Clara Hill is a German born Jazz singer. Her smooth vocals mixed with electronic and acoustic instruments such as drums/acoustic and electric guitar/programmed drums/drum machines/synths and many more. This album can be as easy listening as you want,you can either listen to in the background or put some headphones on and chill out.
She uses her own vocals as backing vocals and she does it effectively,creating interesting harmonies.

Listeners of Beady Belle,Jazzanova, Wahoo and Thief would really like it.


Clara Hill - All I Can Provide (92mb)

Link

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The Boredoms

What can I say?

I'll just throw a few (often contrasting) words at you:
Loud.Quiet.Mad.Silly.Serious.Instrumental.Crazy Vocals.psychedelic.Noise.


The Boredoms - Pop Tatari (151mb)

Link

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Aoki Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko

This is a collaboration of two Japanese musicians.

Here's a sentence or two about these two people:

Aoki Takamasa - Electronica artists.Blends tiny minimalistic glitchy sounds mixed with large soundscapes, great to listen with headphones,almost like a journey through sound. As organic sounding as you can get; combining the outside natural space with the inner electronic time space.

Tujiko Noriko - Her voice is as creatively intense as the music she's complimenting. Sounding like an innocent child . She mainly sings in Japanese so I usually don't have a clue what shes singing about but the way she stretches her words,emphasizing on syllables and of course Aoki treating her voice would just send shivers.


The album blends these two great contributors in an amalgamation of sound.





Aoki Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko - 28 (66mb)

Link

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Goonies Never Say Die

This band is from my hometown of Blackpool.
I've seen them a few times and their live shows are pretty damn good.
They've just finished recording their new album which is released now for free through their myspace/website.

4 members: 1 drummer,1 bassist and 2 guitarists...

Each song has a slow but honest build-up of sound from quiet to loud.I'm not going to put a label on them,you can probably figure out something when you download the album.

The only bad thing about this band is that they don't play anywhere else other than the North West.



Goonies Never Say Die - In a Forest Without Trees (68mb)

LINK

Mark Hollis

Mark Hollis was a member of the new romantic band "Talk Talk".Him and Tim Friese-Greene took Talk Talk's synthy sound and took it to a completely different level, creating such albums as Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock. He wrote this self released album then shortly after left the music business.



Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis (110mb)

LINK

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L'Homme Puma

I've been listening to this band recently.
A 3-man band from France.They use samples,electronics and screamy shouty lyrics along with their instrument of choice - guitar,drums and bass.

Check out these noisy Parisians!


L'Homme Puma - L'Homme Puma (61mb)

Link

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Mono

Yesterday (21/03/09) I went to see Mono play at Hare and Hounds in Birmingham,UK.

After a wait in the pub,we got moved outside,after a wait outside we got moved up the stairs,after a wait on the stairs....yes we got moved in the actual venue. The long and cold wait felt like nothing when Mono appeared on stage...
I say this about pretty much every gig I go to,but it was brilliant! Although the drums and bass weren't as loud as they should be, together the whole sound coated your ears in swirling melodies. Great performance and quite a nice crowd,I don't know why but I had a MASSIVE urge to take as many pictures as possible. I'm as amateur as you can get when it comes to picture taking, I just use a normal digital camera,but some have turned out pretty well.

I recommend you turn off all your lights,close your curtains, press play and maybe play a slide show of the pictures I included.




Heres a GIF image I'm pretty proud of!

clicky click


Below is a link for their new album and some live pics taken by yours truly:

Mono - Hymn to the Immortal Wind (145mb)

Link

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Intro - The first of many.

Hallo

I'll be using this blogspot to share a lot of things that I like for which hopefully you guys will also like,this will be one of my past time activities so if you like/dislike any of my posts please post a comment so I know its worthwhile

I don't know if I'm going to be posting on rare occurrences or if I'm going to be addicted to this.We'll see! probably the latter. This is my first blog and first of any of these things I've done.

Ill be using this blogspot to post mini-reviews,suggestions, and links to music (Hosted on rapidshare - .rar files)

If you have any questions/comments/suggestions/recommendations send me a comment.