Girl Talk - All Day

Girl Talk's All Day is a mindblowing mash up of 374 different songs (seriously - you can see the whole list of sampled songs right here), overlapping and segueing seamlessly throughout the course of the album's 71 minutes.  The site states that the album "is intended to be listened to as a whole," and I would highly recommend doing so.  I tried listening to bits and pieces of it just to get a feel for it, but nothing about it really clicked for me.  At first, I thought that maybe it was because I don't seem to be familiar with the majority of the sampled music.  However, when I finally got a chance to listen to the entire album in one sitting, I found myself enjoying it more and more the longer it played.  By the middle of the album, where U2's "With Or Without You" is used as a backdrop for a couple of songs, including Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", I was already amazed by what I was hearing; when the "Layla" coda showed up a few minutes later, my mind was officially blown.

There are no breaks in the music at all, but it is structured in such a way that it builds and releases many times over the course of the album.  While I find that my favourite moments (such as the ones mentioned above) involve songs that I know and love, the sense of anticipation is also a hugely enjoyable part of this album.  Now that I've heard the whole thing a few times, I'm also having a lot of fun listening for bits and pieces of songs that I know are in there somewhere but still haven't managed to hear; the two Van Halen songs, in particular, are driving me nuts, as I still haven't recognized them anywhere on the album.

The album is available in both MP3 and FLAC formats, and as either separate tracks or one seamless file.  For the optimal experience, I would recommend grabbing one of the seamless files, especially if you don't have something that is capable if playing gapless audio; the nonstop flow of music really is one of the album's strong points.  One final thing to mention is this infographic detailing the start times of each of the samples; it's optimized for the separately tracked version of the album, but it's still a very cool resource (and if I don't hear those Van Halen songs in there soon, I'll definitely be taking a closer look at the infographic for some assistance!).  Happy listening!

URL:

http://illegal-art.net/allday/

Bad Religion - 30 Years Live

This will probably be one of my shortest posts ever, as I am simply too unfamiliar with the music to properly comment on it, but at the same time, I realize that it's a big enough deal to be worthy of a post.  Bad Religion have released a free live album in celebration of thirty years together.  The album is called 30 Years Live, and you can download it by signing up for their mailing list.  Once you get your email, it will have a code that you can use on the Bandcamp website to download the album in the format of your choice - the default is MP3 320k, but you can choose lots of others, even FLAC if you want to be able to burn your own copy in CD quality.

My brother Mike (who wrote a post on this blog about Metallica a couple of years ago) is a pretty big fan of Bad Religion, so he's much more qualified to talk about them than I am.  He says that the album has "one heck of a setlist," and that the first and last songs, which are from their debut album, "sound light years better here!"  Also, if you visit the band's page on the Epitaph site, "you can click on the album covers on the bottom of the screen and download 1 or 2 songs from almost every single one of their releases. and that includes a few of their best songs, i.e. 'sorrow' from The Process of Belief. altogether you can download enough for a really nice little unofficial greatest hits record."

Okay, so this wasn't as short as I'd thought it would be, but that's mainly thanks to Mike.  I hope you enjoy the album, and also the free MP3s from the record label's site if you decide to check then out.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.badreligion.com/mailinglist.html

http://www.epitaph.com/artists/artist/5/Bad_Religion

Artist Spotlight: The Machine

The Machine is an excellent Pink Floyd tribute band that allows recordings of their shows to be hosted on the Live Music Archive.  At the time of this writing, there are 22 shows available for download in a variety of formats - namely, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and VBR MP3.  So far I have downloaded three shows, and they all sound great and are quite lengthy; each of them clocks in at just under three hours.

The Machine covers a huge variety of Pink Floyd material.  All the staples that you would expect are here, like "Money", "Another Brick in the Wall Part II", and "Comfortably Numb", as well as more obscure songs; notably, they play songs from The Final Cut, something Pink Floyd themselves never did in concert.  They even play songs from the two David Gilmour-led albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, which kind of surprised me as those two albums do not seem to be very popular among Pink Floyd fans (The Division Bell happens to be my favourite album of theirs, though).  All of the songs are played incredibly well - to my ear, there's not a whole lot to distinguish them from the real deal, making them very authentic sounding.

This post has been written in memory of my father, who passed away very suddenly last month.  Music was a huge part of his life, something that he passed on to both of his sons, and he was the biggest Pink Floyd fan I have ever known.  I love you, Dad.  I wish you were here, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

URL:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheMachineLive

Song Spotlight: Moonalice - "Down The Road A Piece"

Well, that was fast.  The second song from Moonalice's second studio album, "Down The Road A Piece", has been released.  Once again, it can be downloaded directly from the band's website in MP3 and FLAC formats.  The title of the album now seems to be Online Only. Only For Free., at least according to the tags in the MP3 file.

 

The song itself is a very cool blues-based boogie tune that features some awesome solos from the piano and guitar.  I hope you've been enjoying this album as much as I have so far, and I'll be back whenever the next song is released.  Happy listening!

 

URL:

http://www.moonalice.com/music/ 

Song Spotlight: Moonalice - "It's 4:20 Somewhere"

Back in September, when the Smashing Pumpkins announced that their next album would be released for free over the Internet, one track at a time, they received quite a bit of press about it (as well as a big increase in the number of visitors to this blog searching for a "free Smashing Pumpkins album"), and deservedly so - it's definitely a different way of releasing music, and it's nice to see major artists trying things like this.  However, it appears that Moonalice have beaten them to the punch, having recently announced the release of their second album, Free, one song at a time over the Internet.  The first of those songs, "It's 4:20 Somewhere", was just released last weekend, and can be downloaded directly from their website in 128k MP3 and FLAC formats.

 

I first wrote about Moonalice back in June.  Since that time, I have continued to follow them on Twitter and Facebook and have just been fascinated by them; last week, they stated that they "got rid of our manager, publicist, and label in favor of Facebook, Twitter, and [their] website" as an experiment in social media.  I don't think too many major artists would be willing to do something like that, so I support their initiative in as many ways as I can.  Of course, it helps a lot that their music rocks, as all the social media experiments in the world wouldn't be able to help them otherwise.  "It's 4:20 Somewhere" is no exception - it's a great mid-tempo rocker with a laid back feel, excellent guitar playing, and gorgeous backing vocals.  It's a great way to kick off their latest experiment, and I can't wait to hear where they go from here.

 

I hope you enjoy this song; if you do, please stay tuned for more new songs from Moonalice.  I'll most likely be posting about each track as it is made available, although future posts will probably be shorter than this one.  Happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://www.moonalice.com/music/ (for the song, plus lots of other free music)

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/06/artist-spotlight-moonalice.html

http://www.facebook.com/moonalice?ref=ts

http://twitter.com/Moonalice/

http://www.moonalice.com

Album Spotlight: Noise Addict - it was never about the audience

From out of nowhere, Noise Addict's it was never about the audience has come along to become one of the best albums I have heard this year, free or not.  This is a collection of 15 songs in various eclectic styles, many of which are very catchy.  After one listen to the album, two songs really stuck in my head, and they stayed there until I listened to it again; I listen to an awful lot of music, so for anything to be this memorable, it has to be pretty special.  One of these songs was "Big Ups", which features barbershop-esque backup vocals ("da doooo BOP!", etc.), a drumbeat that occasionally stutters, and a soaring chorus.  The other was "Lasagne", which features songwriter Ben Lee's 7-year-old stepdaughter on lead vocals; the impromptu nature of the song and all of the laughter in the vocals makes it a joy to listen to. 

 

Subsequent listens to the album have revealed more gems.  The opening track, "That's How It Goes", takes a quirky look at the life of musicians, with lyrics like "Bands keep making music 'cause they didn't go to college, and as people are not suited to working in an office."  The multilayered, lower-register vocals in "Get Well" remind me of Brad Sucks.  "The Faster Side of Normal" adds strings to the mix, to absolutely beautiful effect.  "I Heart Your Band" marries a garage rock sound with lyrics about a fan's undying love for a band, even during such periods when they thought they were U2 or added a horn section.

 

The album closes with "Let's Do Our Thing", which is unlike anything I've ever heard before.  The verses are instrumental, with understated guitar solos taking the usual place of vocals, while the choruses feature layers of vocals, piano, and other effects.  It has such a warm, gorgeous sound, but it really needs to be heard to be believed - it's that unique.

 

it was never about the audience can be downloaded in a variety of formats; the default is 320k MP3, which weighs in at 80 MB, but "Audiophiles and Nerds" may wish to download it in other bitrates (I chose VBR high), or in other formats such as FLAC, OGG, or Apple Lossless.  An email address is required, which subscribes you to the Noise Addict mailing list, but they say that you can unsubscribe from it at any time.  Happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://noiseaddict.net/

Album Spotlight: Chris Tenz - Forlorn Memories

I download far more music than I would ever have the time to write about here.  It all gets placed into a foobar2000 playlist called "Blog".  The size of this playlist is ever fluctuating, with things getting removed from it after I have either written about it or decided that I don't like it enough to write about (when I say "the best free, legally available music on the Internet", I mean it - if I don't like it, I won't post about it); currently, it contains just under 24 hours of music.  I try to listen to at least some of this music every day.  Sometimes I know what I want to write about, so I focus on that music; other times I set it to shuffle, and when I find something that really catches my interest, I begin taking notes on it in preparation for a future post.  Tonight I was listening to a few tracks from an artist that I hope to post about soon, but then the shuffle kicked in and served up something totally unexpected in the form of Chris Tenz's Forlorn Memories.

 

I initially downloaded this album two weeks ago after reading about it on the Internet Archive, but it wasn't until tonight that it actually made its way to my ears.  The album's page at the Internet Archive seems to have been taken down [update: it's back up - I guess I caught it at the wrong time], but I was able to locate it on the Soft Phase website, which seems to be working fine.  The description of the album by Tenz was what drew me to the album in the first place:

 

“Forlorn Memories is designed to be just that, the re-capturing of memories
and associated moods through wordless sound. The album is designed to tell
a story through emotion, in chronological order. Using old tastes, smells,
sounds, and sights, I would attempt to bring myself into the mindset of
various key moments that influenced me in some way, and attempt to
create those feelings again with the use of audio.”

 

The very idea of memories is something that has always fascinated me, so the subject matter immediately caught my interest.  I also like the fact that he doesn't attempt to explain the story at all, and with songs only titled as chapters (with the first track being a foreword), the interpretation of the album is left entirely up to the listener (for the record, interpretation of songs - let alone instrumentals - is not one of my strong points, so I will go no further along this line of discussion).  The album's nine tracks are all very mellow, beautiful, and dreamy sounding - in fact, I decided to leave it playing while I was putting my baby back to sleep tonight, and it worked very nicely as lullabye music.  The soothing sound is achieved mainly through a delicate interplay between acoustic guitar and piano, although other instruments and sounds play important roles as well.  There are no sudden changes in tempo or mood - each song evolves and unfolds gradually, taking as much time as it needs to tell its own part of the story.

 

The individual songs from Forlorn Memories can be downloaded as separate MP3 files, and the entire album can be downloaded either in MP3 format, as a 56 MB zip file, or FLAC format, as a 105 MB zip file.  As a debut album, it holds a lot of promise, and I am really looking forward to hearing where Tenz decides to go in the future.  Happy listening!

 

URLs:

http://www.archive.org/details/sfp05

http://softphase.org/netlabel/releases/sfp05

Artist Spotlight: Justin Townes Earle

I have been a huge fan of Steve Earle for many years now. I am currently enjoying listening to his recently released album Townes, which is a tribute to Earle's friend and mentor, Townes Van Zandt. This album is not the only thing Earle has named after the late singer-songwriter - his first son, Justin Townes Earle, also bears that name. It is perhaps not too surprising that Justin has chosen to pursue a career in music. When he was a teenager, he made a guest appearance on his father's album El Corazón, playing guitar the rocker "Here I Am". He also appears on Townes, this time singing a duet with his father on "Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold".

I initially found it rather amusing that Justin appeared on the album "courtesy of Bloodshot Records", but after thinking about it a bit, I think it's great that he is forging his own musical path, rather than just riding on his father's coattails. Justin has released three albums of his own in the last few years, and last.fm is currently hosting two free MP3s from the second album, The Good Life. The first one, "Hard Livin'", is a fun country romp, while the second one, "Who Am I to Say", is a beautiful ballad. His Wikipedia page mentions that he has played at South By Southwest for the last 2 years, and a quick trip to the SXSW website yielded a third free MP3: "Midnight at the Movies", the title track from his latest album, which is another beautiful, laid-back country ballad.

Justin has also recently given permission for recordings of his concerts to be distributed via the Live Music Archive. At the time of this writing, there are 21 complete concerts available for download in multiple formats, including MP3, OGG, and FLAC. The sound quality of these recordings is not always perfect, but if you are a fan of live recordings, they are well worth checking out. Right now I am listening to the 2008-12-24 show from The Cactus Cafe in Austin, TX, and it sounds great - the recording is very clear, and the performances are excellent.

For someone who bears the names of not one, but two musical legends, Justin Townes Earle has a lot to live up to; from what I have heard so far, he is doing very well for himself indeed and has a very bright future ahead of him. I'm really looking forward to hearing more from him, and I hope you enjoy this music too. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://www.last.fm/music/Justin+Townes+Earle/_/Hard+Livin
http://www.last.fm/music/Justin+Townes+Earle/_/Who+Am+I+To+Say
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Townes_Earle
http://2009.sxsw.com/music/shows/schedule/?a=show&s=88839
http://www.archive.org/details/JustinTownesEarle

Artist Spotlight: Moonalice

I was drawn to today's featured artist in a rather unconventional fashion. Shortly before I started using Twitter, I read an article about a band that "Twittercasted" one of their concerts - in other words, they recorded their concert, and after each song was finished, the audio was encoded into an MP3 and uploaded to the Internet, at which time a link was posted on the band's Twitter feed. A pretty neat idea, I thought, but since I had no idea who this band was and I wasn't on Twitter at the time, I didn't think too much more of it at the time. A few weeks later I did join Twitter, though, so I decided that I should look this band up to see what they were all about.

After a bit of searching (in particular, I needed to come up with the word "Twittercast", after which the search was fairly trivial), I found that the band was called Moonalice. I began following their Twitter feed, and I also checked out their website to learn more about them. I immediately recognized one of the members of the band as G.E. Smith, who, among other things, is the former musical director of Saturday Night Live; I used to love the brief snippets of his playing that would be shown before and after the commercials on that show, so that gave me a really good feeling about Moonalice. My next stop was their music page, which lists an astounding amount of studio and live tracks to download, along with the following, extremely cool message:

The music you download from this page is free for your listening pleasure. If you like our music, pay it forward to your friends. Turn them on. It's about the music. If you feel so inclined, let us know who you are.

There are 4 studio tracks available for download. My favourites of these are "Blink of an Eye", which, with its laid back sound and female lead vocal, brings Fleetwood Mac to mind; and their cover of Steve Earle's "I Ain't Ever Satisfied", which is given a wonderful treatment - I love the way the song mellows out in the third verse and then slowly builds back up into the chorus. All 4 of these tracks are available as both 128k MP3 and lossless FLAC files. If you check out the band's iLike page (also available here for Facebook users), you can find a fifth track entitled "Listen to Those Eyes", which is a cool little rocker.

As cool as those studio tracks are, the live tracks are where things really get interesting. At the time of this writing, there are 17 complete concerts available for download, including the first 2 Twittercasts (called "Tweetcasts" here). Some of the concerts are very lengthy - I downloaded one that is more than 3 hours long - and contain a nice mix of original Moonalice songs and cover songs. Some of the covers I've heard are the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", the blues standard "Eyesight to the Blind", Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and the classic truck drivers' anthem "Six Days on the Road". The diversity in their selection of cover songs should give you a hint as to how diverse their own music can be. Another thing that is not apparent just from looking at the track lists of the concerts is that these guys like to jam - a LOT - with song lengths regularly approaching 10, 15, and even 20 minutes. One of the highlights of a few of the concerts I've listened to is "Tell Me It's Okay", which repeatedly builds up and drops back down, and features some beautiful guitar solos from Smith.

If you still ain't satisfied and want even more free Moonalice music, you would do well to check out their Twitter feed, where they are still doing Twittercasts. I have yet to catch a live Twittercast, but I have been able to llisten to a few "Zombie Twittercasts", in which they take a show from their archives and upload the MP3s via Twitter beginning at 4:20 in a selected time zone (some past start times have been on Greenwich Mean Time and Newfoundland time - the latter being based on a suggestion of my own), usually on Fridays. However you decide to check Moonalice out, I hope you enjoy their music. I also hope that Moonalice continue to be as cool, genuine, and accessible as they are now. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://twitter.com/Moonalice
http://moonaliceband.com/
http://moonaliceband.com/music/
http://ilike.com/artist/Moonalice
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/artist/Moonalice?_fb_q=1

Album Spotlight: NINJA 2009 Tour Sampler

And the free music continues to come our way courtesy of Trent Reznor and seemingly everyone who gets involved with him. I've previously covered various releases from Nine Inch Nails, both official and semi-official, here before. This time, in preparation for NIN's upcoming summer tour with Jane's Addiction and Street Sweeper (a new band featuring Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame) - dubbed "NINJA 2009" - an EP has been released featuring six previously unreleased tracks, two from each band. The NINJA 2009 Tour Sampler EP is available for download from the official NINJA 2009 website; all you need to do in order to obtain it is provide an email address, which "will be kept confidential and will not be used for spam."  The EP is available in a variety of formats, including MP3, FLAC, WAVE, and Apple Lossless. 

The Nine Inch Nails songs come from the recording sessions for 2005's With Teeth. "Not So Pretty Now" is uptempo and aggressive, while "Non-Entity" is a slow, brooding track that would have fit in quite nicely on The Fragile. These songs have previously been played live, but this is the first time the studio versions have been made available. Jane's Addiction contributes re-recorded versions of "Chip Away" and "Whores", both from their 1987 self-titled live album; these versions have been co-produced and mixed by Trent Reznor. The Street Sweeper songs have an interesting sound that should appeal to fans of Morello's past work - the rapped vocals are more laid back than those of both Zack de la Rocha and Chris Cornell, but the songs have a familiar groove to them. "The Oath" even gives a nod to The Beatles' "Hey Jude" with its "Na na na na" outro. I'm really looking forward to hearing more from these guys.

In another awesome move, multi-track files for the two Jane's Addiction songs, as well as a third Street Sweeper song, "Fight! Smash! Win!", have been made available on the NIN remix website, while the multi-tracks for the two NIN songs will be made available in a few weeks. I notice that a few people have already posted some remixes of the new tracks, and I am sure that many more are on the way. If any readers of this blog decide to make their own remixes, why not post links to them in the comments here so we can all give them a listen?

If you're even a casual fan of any of these bands, I think this EP is well worth the time it takes to download it. For my part, I'm a major fan of Nine Inch Nails, so the two NIN songs are of most interest to me, but I've also really enjoyed the chance to listen to songs from another legendary band (Jane's Addiction) and an up and coming band (Street Sweeper). Go check it out for yourself, and happy listening!

URLs:
http://www.ninja2009.com/
http://remix.nin.com
http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/01/artist-spotlight-nine-inch-nails.html

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/03/album-spotlight-nine-inch-nails-ghosts.html

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2008/05/album-spotlight-nine-inch-nails-slip.html

http://totallyfreemusic.blogspot.com/2009/03/album-spotlight-nine-inch-nails-another.html

Album Spotlight: Nine Inch Nails - Another Version of the Truth

In early December 2008, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails revealed, via his blog at nin.com, that he had planned to film a show in 3D and release it theatrically and on DVD, BluRay, etc. Unfortunately, the record company he approached regarding producing and funding refused to cooperate, but only after months had gone by since he had asked them. Without enough time left on the tour to do the filming comfortably, even with alternate production and funding, Reznor chalked it up as a lost opportunity. However, the next day he stated that the band's upcoming performance in Victoria would have a "very relaxed camera / camcorder policy." This policy was also in effect for the Portland and Sacramento shows later that month.

At this point, NIN fans began organizing an effort to have the band's show in Las Vegas recorded by dozens of fans. A website was created at http://thisoneisonus.org/ to keep people up to date on their efforts to create a DVD documenting these shows as a gift to NIN fans. Just before Christmas, Reznor hinted that a "small holiday gift" was in the works; on January 7, 2009, this gift was revealed to be over 400 GB of high definition film footage from thee separate, complete shows of the recently completed tour. "If any of you could find a LINK to that footage I'll bet some enterprising fans could assemble something pretty cool," said Reznor, before adding, "Oh yeah, you didn't hear this from me." Links to torrents of this footage were posted on the message board at nin.com.

So there you have it. Trent Reznor himself was encouraging his fans to download footage of his concerts and make "something pretty cool" out of it. That's good enough for me, especially since this may be the closest thing to an official live release from this tour that we will see.

Now, I don't normally post about videos on this blog, and I don't intend to start now. Fortunately, the hard working folks at thisoneisonus.org have created a professionally mastered audio version of these concerts and made them available for download. The release is entitled Another Version of the Truth, just like the eventual video version will be, and it consists of two main parts: Las Vegas, which was created from a variety of fan audio sources from the Las Vegas show, and The Gift, which was created from the footage supplied by Nine Inch Nails, edited and mixed "to get the best of each show." In total, there is almost 4 and a half hours of music between the two parts, with songs spanning NIN's entire career.

Trent and his entire band are on fire in both shows, making a lot of the songs sound even more aggressive than the studio versions. For the most part the arrangements are left untouched, but there are some nice moments like the extended intros to "Only" and "Echoplex". The biggest exception is "Piggy", which gets reworked as "Ghosts Piggy", coming after a set of songs from Ghosts I-IV; Josh Freese's drumming at the end of this song is amazing. The set lists for both shows are nearly identical, with only a handful of songs differing between the two. As far as sound quality is concerned, Las Vegas sounds a little more distant and has more audience noise, which is to be expected since it was made from fan recordings; The Gift, on the other hand, sounds like a professional live album. I think both recordings certainly have their own merits and both deserve to be listened to.

Another Version of the Truth is currenly available via BitTorrent. I don't believe I've ever covered torrents here, so some explanation may be in order for those unfamiliar with the protocol. Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide covers the topic in more detail than I ever could, so go please go there to read all about it if you need to; if you still have any questions, let me know and I will be happy to answer them. Once you're all set up to handle torrents, you can download either the MP3 version (320kb) or the FLAC version. Neither one of them is a small download - the MP3 version is 623.33 megabytes, while the FLAC version weighs in at 1.76 gigabytes. The time you spend downloading either version will be well worth it, though. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://thisoneisonus.org/

http://dessent.net/btfaq/
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2332174 (320kb MP3)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2332180 (FLAC)

Album Spotlight: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

Well, as promised in the last couple of singles that Nine Inch Nails released, heading to www.nin.com on May 5th yielded yet another great treat, this time in the form of a new album that is totally free to download. The Slip is the 27th official release from Nine Inch Nails (as you may already know, official Nine Inch Nails releases, including albums, EPs, and singles, have a Halo number assigned to them; The Slip is numbered as Halo 27) and was released on the website with the following message from Trent Reznor: "thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me."

After the ambient, haunting, all-instrumental Ghosts I-IV (which was only released 2 months ago), The Slip represents a return to more familiar sonic territory. All of the NIN trademarks are here: vocals that range from a barely-heard whisper to a full-on scream, frenetic drumbeats, pulsating synths, guitars that are sometimes distorted past the point of recognition, and beautiful piano lines underscoring it all. It's definitely not as adventurous as Ghosts was, but given Reznor's message, I think a more traditional sounding album was exactly what he was going for.

The poppier sound of With Teeth and Year Zero can still be heard in songs like "Discipline" and "Echoplex", both of which are among the strongest songs on the album. "Discpiline" has the same kind of dirty-disco sound that "The Hand That Feeds" had, making it danceable and totally rocking at the same time. "Echoplex" also brings The Fragile to mind, being somewhat mellower and more guitar-driven.

Some of the drum sounds on this album are also particularly noteworthy. I especially like the sound of the drums on "1,000,000" - I can't recall the drums on any NIN song ever sounding so alive, and since the song starts off with nothing but drums, it really grabs the listener's attention. The following song, "Letting You", has some of the fastest drumming I've ever heard on a Nine Inch Nails song; they sound more programmed than live, but they really contribute to the aggressive feel of the song.

The Slip's emotional centerpiece comes in the form of a suite of songs that starts with "Lights in the Sky", a quiet, piano-driven ballad with some of the most gut-wrenching lyrics Reznor has ever written. It leads smoothly into "Corona Radiata", a lengthy instrumental piece that has two distict parts to it. The first is somewhat ethereal sounding, with the main melody played on what sounds like a heavily muted and processed piano; the second is very dark and ominous, with droning guitars, rising and falling synthesizers, and lots of noise, ending with what sounds like a scream that gets silenced just as quickly as it began; I think there are perhaps still some Ghosts making their presence felt in this song, which is fine by me. Another instrumental piece, "The Four of Us Are Dying", follows, this time with more of a Fragile feel to it.

Also included with the download is a PDF with liner notes and artwork for every song. As I mentioned in my review of "Echoplex", the artwork is very intriguing and looks like it could be a part of something bigger. Perhaps most intriguingly, the artwork for "Letting You" includes an element from the Year Zero artwork - does this imply a relationship between the two, or is it just a cool symbol that Trent wanted to reuse? Whatever the case, it is clear that, even if he is cranking out new music ten times faster than he ever did before, he has put an enormous amount of thought and care into the preparation of this album.

All in all, The Slip is one of the nicest surprises I've received so far this year. It contains everything that I like about Nine Inch Nails and is a great reminder of why I love this artist so much in the first place. I can't recommend this album highly enough, so if you are at all interested, please go download a copy for yourself and let me know what you think. Happy listening!

URLs:
http://www.nin.com
http://theslip.nin.com/

Album Spotlight: Smashing Pumpkins - Machina II

Sometime in the mid-1990s, I decided that I didn't want to listen to any music that was really popular at the time. I was a teenager and just wanted to be as different as I could be. I had my own favourite artists, mainly in the metal and progressive rock genres, and I figured I was fine listening to what I liked. Unfortunately, about a decade later I began to realize just how much great music I had shut myself off to, and for the last few years I have been doing a lot of catching up on music that I had missed out on. That can get expensive at times, so it's always nice to find some of that music available for free.

One band that I was always kind of a casual fan of is The Smashing Pumpkins. I liked a lot of the songs that I heard, such as "Today", "1979", and "Tonight Tonight", but never really enough that I wanted to buy any of their albums; I'm sure my elitist attitude didn't exactly help. I'm sure I'll eventually get around to obtaining some of their albums, but recently I was delighted to discover that one of their albums was released for free on the Internet. The album is called Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music and was released in 2000; until their reformation in 2007, it was actually their final studio album.

Not only is it free, but it is also a very good album. There is a lot of heavy rock, such as the rapid-fire album opener "Glass", the slower "Dross", and a cover of James Brown's "Soul Power". There are also a lot of more melodic songs like "Real Love", "Go", and "If There is a God". Also included in the download is a collection of "B-sides" to the album, which include alternate versions of a few of the songs, including a beautiful piano & vocals version of "If There is a God", which is one of the true highlights of the album. Some other highlights of the B-sides include "Slow Dawn", a melodic, mid-tempo number with a wonderfully warm sound, and "Try", a nice poppy song.

Now, because of the nature of this album's release (only 25 vinyl copies were made and distributed to online Smashing Pumpkins fans, with instructions to redistribute it on the Internet for free), there are a number of sources to download it from. I don't know if any of these sources is better than the others; the one I have does sound a little muffled, but it is definitely listenable and doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the album at all. The Wikipedia page about the album lists the following sources:

SmashingPumpkins.com (160 kbit/s CBR MP3) (doesn't seem to be available now) 
Billy-Corgan.com (320 kbit/s CBR MP3) (no longer available)
ThePumpkins.net (192 kbit/s CBR MP3)
MetroChicago.com (192 kbit/s CBR MP3)
Archive.org (192 kbit/s CBR MP3)
Archive.org (Q101 transfer, FLAC, OGG and MP3)
Archive.org (Virgin transfer, FLAC, OGG and MP3)
SPIFC.org (192 kbit/s CBR MP3) (seems to require a password now)

Please let me know in the comments what you think of the album, The Smashing Pumpkins in general, or your opinion of what is the best download source for this album.  Happy listening!