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/

How To Destroy Angels

Trent Reznor has formed a new band called How to Destroy Angels that also features his wife Mariqueen Maandig and frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross.  The band's self-titled debut EP is due to be released in July, but you can get a sneak preview of the album via a series of short video clips (as well as a full-length video for "The Space in Between" - if you do decide to check the video out, just be aware that it is rather gory and not at all for the faint of heart) on their website.  At this point I don't know whether or not the EP will be available for free: Reznor has been very generous with his recent releases, so it wouldn't surprise me to see a free release; on the other hand, the first single, "A Drowning", is currently only available for purchase, so the EP may very well follow suit.  [Update 2010-05-27: Looks like I spoke too soon - the band themselves have confirmed that the EP will be available for free download on June 1; you can pre-order the free download - i.e. sign up to receive an email when it is ready to download - from their store and also download "The Believers" right away.  Nice!]

However, multi-tracks for both "The Space in Between" and "A Drowning" have been made available on the Nine Inch Nails remix site, so with a small amount of effort you can actually make your own versions of the two songs.  The multi-tracks can only be downloaded using BitTorrent; if you are unfamiliar with torrents, a wealth of information about them can be found right here.  In order to do anything truly useful with the multi-tracks, you will also need an application like Audacity to edit them.

What you do with the files is really up to you - I like to play around with multi-tracks and create my own remixes when I have time for it (shameless plug: if you search for "durga2112" on the remix site, you can listen to a few Nine Inch Nails remixes that I made a couple of years ago), but so far I've only just listened to both of these songs as they are.  "A Drowning" has, for the most part, a very mellow, almost chilled out, sound; musically, there's a bit of The Fragile and Ghosts in there, but Mariqueen's dreamy vocals take the song into another plane altogether.  "The Space in Between" is much darker, but it still has the general feel of a slow Nine Inch Nails song with female vocals.  Overall, I think both songs are excellent, and I'm quite excited about hearing the full EP when it comes out - whether or not it's free, I'll be picking it up for sure.

I hope you enjoy these multi-tracks, and if you decide to do something creative with them, please leave a comment here to let me know where I can check it out.  Happy listening!

URLs:

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/home.html

http://remix.nin.com

http://btfaq.com/serve/cache/1.html

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

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

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: Christmas Carnage Vol. 1

NOTE: This download is no longer available.

Hey there! With Christmas now past, I guess it is time to start posting about free music of the non-Christmas variety again. If you decided to check out some of the Christmas music I posted about in the last month and a half, I hope you enjoyed at least some of it; if not, then thanks for your patience in the meantime. I've had a great time discovering free music this past year and helping to make it available to people who might not have otherwise discovered it, so it's nice to be back here again.

Oddly enough, though this is my first post on this blog after Christmas, it was one of my "free Christmas music" searches that initially caught this offering, and no wonder - the compilation is called Christmas Carnage Vol. 1 and the cover art features a skull wearing a Santa hat. At first I thought that this would be a collection of Christmas songs done metal style, but a quick look at the track listing revealed otherwise. Rather than being a compilation of Christmas songs, this is a Christmas gift of a compilation of metal songs from artists on the Indie Recordings label - and a pretty cool one at that. Here's the catch, though: it's only available for a few more days - until January 1, 2009, to be exact. So this post will be a slight departure from my usual style - instead of offering a detailed review of the album, I'll just point you to the website so that you can download it yourself.

With 14 tracks clocking in at nearly 80 minutes, Christmas Carnage Vol. 1 is an excellent compilation of independent metal with a good range of styles - much of it is quite heavy, as you would expect, but there are also some mellower moments and some progressive moments that add a nice variety to the album. The entire compilation can be downloaded either as MP3's or a lossless format (not sure which one, as I went for the MP3's) and includes full artwork for a CD jewel case should you decide to burn your own copy. Check it out, and happy listening!

URL:
http://www.myspace.com/indierecordings