Album Spotlight: Tribe - Here at the Home (high quality MP3s - limited time)

Short post today, because these files will not be available for very long; also I've already covered it - if you caught my post about Tribe from last year, then you are likely already familiar with the album Here at the Home. Steve, the webmaster of the best Tribe site around, has decided to make that album available in higher quality MP3s for a limited time only. At 320kbps, they are of much higher quality than the 128kbps files normally found on the site, so if you've become a fan of the album, this is a great chance to obtain a better sounding version of it. You can download a 78.69 MB zip file containing all of the MP3s right here.

Here at the Home is Tribe's first album, which is now out of print.  It contains early versions of many of the songs found on their next album, Abort, including "Outside", which was featured as a bonus track in the first Rock Band game.  If you're a fan of late 80s/early 90s rock, the album is well worth checking out.

If you haven't heard of Tribe before (and honestly, unless you play Rock Band enough to unlock the bonus tracks, you probably haven't heard of them, as they unfortunately never achieved much success outside of their hometown of Boston), then this is a great chance to check out their debut album. If you like what you hear, you should definitely check out the rest of the music available on the site. Happy listening!

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/04/artist-spotlight-tribe.html
http://www.stevelathamdesign.com/tribe/mp3/hath.zip
http://www.stevelathamdesign.com/tribe/music.htm

Artist Spotlight: The Main Drag

As a big fan of both music and video games, the Rock Band series of video games by Harmonix is something that I naturally gravitate towards. I love having the chance to sing songs by many of my favourite artists. In addition to hit songs spanning the last four decades of music, the games also feature a number of "bonus tracks", most of which are from bands formed by Harmonix employees or from bands near Harmonix's headquarters in Massachusetts. One of the bonus tracks in Rock Band 2 is "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter" by The Main Drag.

A few of my coworkers and I have fallen in love with this song after having played it a few times, so I decided to look up The Main Drag to check out some more of their music. To my surprise, they actually have several tracks that can be downloaded for free, which I naturally checked out. Based on what I've heard so far, The Main Drag is a band that seems to defy categorization, but I absolutely love what I've heard so far. Their mixture of electronic, electric, and acoustic elements creates a very fresh sound that is quite unlike anything I have ever heard before.

3 songs are currently available on the band's website at RPL Audio (with a promise of more to come), including the RB2 Remix of "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter". This song is currently one of my favourites. The lyrics evoke beautiful imagery of my favourite time of year, and are a perfect fit for the upbeat, frosty sounding music. Also currently available here are a cover of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends", which features some very nice guitar work and goes through a few changes in its 7+ minutes, and "Love During Wartime", which has music that sounds like a quieter, darker version of "A Jagged Gorgeous Winter". It seems that there are 2 slightly different versions of this website, differentiated only by an underscore in the URL; the other one can be found here. I'm not sure why this is so, but in any case, the latter version features a newly recorded song called "Falling Forwards".

3 more songs can be found on the band's iLike page. Of these, I really like "Consequence", which is a beautiful acoustic guitar and piano-driven ballad, and "I'll Drink to That", a waltz with an upbeat, bouncy Beatles feel to it. "North Shore, Music Therapist" features some very nice dynamics and a dramatic feel that seems to be present in many of these songs.

That's all I've managed to find from this band so far, but it has certainly whetted my appetite for more. The Main Drag is a band that should be heard by anyone who loves music that is dynamic, carefully crafted, and thought provoking. I would highly recommend checking each of these sites so that you can hear this excellent music for yourself. Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.rplaudio.com/RPL_AUDIO/THE_MAIN_DRAG.html

http://www.rplaudio.com/RPLAudio/The_Main_Drag.html

http://www.ilike.com/artist/The+Main+Drag