Antificial Radio Weblog. Methods of Torture

New blog.

2007-02-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

Alright folks, if there IS anyone here who still reads this, go to http://antificial.blogspot.com - that's where my new Mp3blog is. Bye.

2005-08-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

After a long, long break, Antificial Radio Weblog's active again. Among the main musical news of the past two weeks for me is the new recording committed by Gogol Bordello, which is now out in the US. For those of you who don't know yet, Gogol Bordello is a horde of gypsies from Kiev who emigrated to the states some time ago to make something they call "gypsy punk rock" and I'd say you have to hear to get. Luckily, the whole thing can be streamed from Side One Dummy's site.

And since we're at it, let's give you a few other links. Now, regular readers may know or have guessed i'm way into mash-ups and from time to time looking for some fresh and good ones. DJ Earworm is not exactly new, but worth checking out since he doesn't just mix vocals from one song and the instrumentals from an other, but rather puts together bits from many tracks. Technically, this is similar to Eve Massacre in a certain way, and if you don't know her, be sure to visit her site as well ("Sweet as Neurotic Euro Trash Indie Boys" is a classic but, sadly, not available for download anymore).

eMusic: What the... (no mp3s in this post; mp3 bloggers please pay special attention!)

2005-04-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else got this?

"Hello

I hope all is well. My name is Matt Zerbo and I handle the affiliate program for eMusic. I wanted to get in touch to see if there is a way Artificial Radio Weblog and eMusic can work together.

Your blog focuses providing independent music lovers with access to new and interesting music as well as providing exposure for emerging artists. eMusic provides the same service, only on a larger scale. We are different from the other major online music providers for a number of reasons. We only carry music from independent artists and labels, which makes our collection much more diverse. Also, we offer our entire catalog in the MP3 format free of any copy protection, which means our customers truly own the music they purchase from our service. They can burn unlimited CDs, transfer their music to any digital music player/product (including the iPod), download to unlimited computers, and play using any digital music jukebox.

[Well, so far so good... except for the grave fact that they SELL their mp3s. CDs are being sold. Mp3s aren't.]

I feel that connecting your users to eMusic would add value to your blog by offering them the ability to download the music that they love at an affordable price and from a trusted source. I would like to offer you acceptance into our affiliate program, which will provide you the opportunity to earn commission for posting links to eMusic. Becoming an affiliate will cost you nothing and has the potential to earn significant money for your blog. Our affiliates earn $9 dollars for every paying subscription started through the links posted on their sites, which is a very competitive rate.

[passage about eMusic being great and stuff cut out]

Please let me know your thoughts when you have a chance, or if you would like to move forward immediately visit [address cut out] to apply. Your application will be accepted promptly. If you have any questions about the affiliate program or eMusic in general, please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you decide to join.

Best

Matt Zerbo

Matthew Zerbo

Affiliate Manager

eMusic.com

[contact information cut out]"

I first thought it was some sort of clever spam, but nope, it wasn't, which could be noticed alone on the fact that motherfucker spelled the name of my blog wrong.

Now, obviously, I am NOT going to participate in this. Antificial Radio Weblog is not going to sell out. All mp3s that I offer are for free, and I do not believe in selling mp3s. So it would be nice if Mr Zerbo managed not to bother me with this kind of crap in the future. However, I'd like to hear some other bloggers on this subject.

"Guero"

2005-04-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't get warm with Beck's new album. I don't feel it was a good idea for him to go back to the Dust Brothers; AMG reviewer Stephen Erlewine writes that "[...] Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay" and that's right. But Erlewine finds it "mature", and I'm bored by it. The fun you had with "Odelay" never even comes up on "Guero", it lacks energy, it doesn't freak out, and Beck always knew how to freak out ("Sea Change" is an exception by the way, which doesn't mean it's bad). This new album hopelessly tries to freak out. It's the same low-fi samples, similar lyrics, the same voice and the same style, but something is missing on it.

The remixes on the "Hell Yes" EP are better, at least the 8-Bit remix of the title song. They are by far not the best thing Beck has ever made, but they're neat. The whole single has this Nintendo sound by the way, so if you like that, you'll probably have your fun with it. And you get the album version of the song as well.

I Hope You Die three times

2005-04-11T06:17:00.000-07:00

No one will deny that the Bloodhound Gang was absolute crap but somehow still fun music. "Hooray for Boobies" was actually probably the best you could make out of punk in the nineties: Just plain fun music without much sense. This is punk rock music completely disposed of any punk ideology which, at that time, was hopelessly dead anyway. Take Blink 182 or a random nineties band who are similar to them as a negative counter-example to this.

So, the lyrics for "I Hope You Die" are just ridiculous. If you saw a Ramones song called like that, you'd expect something different, and you would be right on that. There's a more shocker-based version by 16 Bit Slaughter (or just Bit Slaughter? I couldn't find any info on them or him or her on the web) though, for all those of you who are looking for some medium anger (the lyrics are the same ridiculous ones, so if you want hardcore anger, take something else). A bit cheap, but I like it. And finally, there's a nice mash-up of this song with Fatboy Slim/Macy Gray's "Demons" by Fettdog which is partly out of key, but. Available on Fettdog's site.

Meet the Feebles soundtrack, Ween

2005-04-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

I first got into "Meet the Feebles" when a guy I know sent my girlfriend and me "Sodomy", a song sung by Sebastian the Fox in that movie. I instantly liked it. When I first listened to it, it sort of reminded me of Anthony & The Johnsons' humour, only more offensive and with less kitsch. The song (as well as three other ones from the movie) can be picked up at this "Meet the Feebles" site in the "sound clips" section. Interestingly, that site is placed on the Ween domain and is created by someone called Hill, as the links section on their official site states. I couldn't find out who Hill is and how he relates to Ween, but seemingly he strongly does, given the fact that you can contact him on the site, while the link sections says it's run by Dean Ween. I never really got into Ween, but I downloaded "You Fucked Up" again another day and listened to it quite often (I had already heard it, but that was looong ago). Hearing "You fucking nazi whore" screamed in a microphone with a hysteric voice is just amusing. You can get a live version of it in their audio section.

Rx

2005-04-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

This guy sampled speeches of George W. Bush (mainly) and made songs out of them, available at thepartyparty.com. At times sloppy (which is no wonder, try to make a song out of a political speech, and I don't mean just sampling one or two damn sentences for one song), but sometimes really good sampling, funny and hell, there are even Bush "Imagine / Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sunday Bloody Suday" cover versions now. I particularly recommend "My Name is Rx" ("By the way, I wake up every day, every morning, that's my job! And it's hard work, it's haaard work, it's hard work, it's incredibly hard, believe me") and "Boys and Girls".

PS: Those are Anti-Bush songs and at times really evil parody. So if you are a rigid Republican, you could easily be offended by them. Download at your own risk, then.

Dozer, Gogol Bordello, Locust Toybox, AFX

2005-04-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

So, Dozer from dozer mp3 blog emailed me and asked me if I wanted to take a look at his blog. Now, normally, the links that people visiting this place send me are rather uninteresting: mediocre bands who want to somehow get their music promoted (bands and musicians, keep on sending anyway, I still hope to get something really interesting from you) and some strange actions like putting a "vote" sticker on the blog shortly before the 2004 US presidential elections in order to make people vote (yeah, in an mp3 blog. EmptyFree then wrote about that and although his tone was rather harsh, in general he was right about it). Well, this time I actually got a link to a good mp3 blog via email, thanks Dozer and you all go check it out. As far as I have figured it out until now, it's mostly concentrated on IDM and other electronica. And oh yeah, just in case Dozer reads this: could you put up a sort of a preview mp3 of this nintendo thing?

Anyway, Gogol Bordello have a new EP out and a free mp3 track from it up on their website (just scroll down). This one is in crap quality (only 96 kbps) but a damn good song.

Also, check out David Firth alias Locust Toybox. This is IDM music, I haven't heard much of it myself yet, but I've seen his cartoons on fat-pie.com where some of his songs are partially used as a soundtrack and some of them seem to be pretty good. He is copying Aphex Twin in a certain sense, which of course cannot lead to great results because copying Aphex Twin never leads to great results. Nevertheless, give it a listen. And take a look at his cartoons, as well, and because this is an mp3 blog, I'll particularly mention the soundtrack: lots of AFX music used in there, and there is even a flash clip to "Milkman". Enjoy.

2005-02-10T01:43:00.000-08:00

I originally intended just to make an entry about a famous rap group sampling Rocket from the Tombs, but then discovered that some more RftT related stuff has accumulated during some weeks, so now you get an entry stuffed to the neck with mp3 files. Now, isn't that something?

I hadn't noticed that the Beastie Boys actually sampled a guitar riff from an RftT song until I listened to that collection of 1975 recordings again with my girlfried during her latest vacation here. Obviously, the Beasties didn't take the 1975 version of "Sonic Reducer" but the re-recorded song from 2003's "Rocket Redux"; and here's "An Open Letter to NYC".

Then, it appears that Guns'N'Roses covered RftT's "Ain't it Fun". Rocket smoothened the song themselves in 2003, having an old Cheetah Chrome sing the song (and the last thing you want to have on a Rocket from the Tombs song is a singer with that typical old rocker attitude), but Guns'N'Roses outran them in these terms. Well, what would you expect from G'N'R anyway; but hey, they DID do a Rocket from the Tombs cover!

"Ain't it Fun" (1975 version)
"Ain't it Fun" (2003 "Rocket Redux" version)

Some anonymous commenter mentioned that "Love Love Love (I Can't Believe it)" from Pere Ubu's "Cloudland", a song which on that album possibly got the most synth-driven treatment, must have been written in the RftT days; and indeed, although no RftT version of the song is known to me, I have a Pere Ubu live recording from 1976 where the band plays the song, titled just with "Can't Believe it". The recording quality is even tolerable, you can quite well hear the arrangements.

2005-01-31T05:58:00.000-08:00

"The REAL New Fall LP (formerly "Country on the Click")", which was released in 2003, was originally entitled just with "Country on the Click", then leaked onto the net and into filesharing networks before its planned release and because of that was partially re-recorded and re-mixed by the band, so now there are two different versions of the album. I'm not sure which one of the two versions I like better, here are two songs from the album in both versions and a song which was included on the final album version only and given that another reason why it's good that The Fall did "Country on the Click" two times.

"Mountain Energei" (first version)
"Mountain Energei" (second version)

"Recovery Kit" (first version)
"Recovery Kit" (second version)

"Janet vs Jane and Johnny"

2005-01-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

The Chemical Brothers' initial big beat line, which was given up after their second album, "Dig Your Own Hole" (and their sound became boring from that point on) was something that brought post-techno dance music a possibility to actually be listened to. Of course they never got out of the orientation towards dance music, while IDM by 1995 (which was the year the Chemical Brothers' first album, "Exit Planet Dust", was released) had little to do with dancing, so they kind of looked like the younger brothers and never really were on a cutting edge of electronica. On the other hand, making music for only listening never was their goal, and as background music, their two first albums fit well. Then, if you are looking for something with a loud dirty beat and some noisy samples, you can hardly go wrong with them. Here are two of their songs for you to download.

Song to the Siren (from "Exit Planet Dust")
Block Rockin' Beats (from "Dig Your Own Hole")

2005-01-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

As you might know, "Tainted Love" was first commited by Gloria Jones in the 60s, a soul singer who is mainly known for that song and then for having married Marc Bolan; here's her version. Later on, in the 70s, "Tainted Love" was redone by Ruth Swan, featuring those two hits (in her version done by the brass section) appearing for example after "I've got to..." which were to re-appear on Soft Cell's cover and on most other forthcoming versions of the song that I know. I'm not sure whether those hits appeared on any earlier version, in any case they weren't there yet on Jones's original.
"Tainted Love" became Soft Cell's only big hit, undeservedly as it is so often, because at least "Sex Dwarf" is a good song. Their version definitely went into a darker direction and some time later, Coil came up with their goth cover, committed, among other things, with bell voices and choir synths; the hits I mentioned above strogly changed as well. Coil's version may sufficiently show why Marilyn Manson's cover was completely spare, but the last few doubting that should be convinced by the metal version done by My Riun in 1999 (which I do not like but hey, I don't like Marlyn Manson either). Have fun with the song.

2005-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

If you are into mash-ups, you could go and check out gordy Boy's "A Hidden Forest", which is Björk's "Hidden Place" mixed with The Cure's "A Forest" (which I do not have in the original version). A neat bootleg. Björk, whom I once already wrote about here, is best heard on bootlegs, as well as lots of other bootlegged stuff.

And since we're at bootlegs and were at bastardizing The Beatles in my previous post here, why not go and download The Beastles? Good mashes, and my girlfriend and an other friend of mine both claimed that they liked them more than the original Beasties stuff. Well, well.

2005-01-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

There's this band called Beatallica which plays Beatles songs imitating, who would have thought that, Metallica; you can get both of their albums on their site. Okay, you can hear that the singer is definitely not Hetfield, but it only makes the whole thing even funnier. Imagine guys with long hair hammering on their guitars and stomping on the ground with their feet, playing "All my Loving" (which in the Beatallica version is called "...And Justice for All my Loving"). Personally, I only like a couple of Beatles songs, like "Strawberry Fields Forever" (which Beatallica, pitifully, hasn't covered) and I do not like Metallica at all, but hey, this band is fun.

2004-12-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

A short entry for today, with a rather big mp3 file though. After having posted a song from Pere Ubu's first album, I think it's adequate to post one from their lastest work, "St Arkansas". "Dark" is the last song on the album.

2004-12-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

Since I posted some Pere Ubu stuff yesterday, it's the right time I guess to declare a David Thomas & Pere Ubu week on Antificial Radio Weblog. So up to and including Monday the 20th, you will be getting Thomas related tracks, and we'll start this entry with a Pere Ubu song called "Life Stinks". If there ever was such a thing as post-industrial post-proto-punk, then this is it, although this description doesn't really hit the nail on the head.

Then, even before Pere Ubu's first album, "The Modern Dance", this song has been recorded by the pre-Ubu Rocket from the Tombs.

Rocket from the Tombs. David Thomas' (on the right) hair is frighteningly long.

The front cover of "The Day the Earth Met the Rocket from the Tombs" says "LIVE FROM PUNK GROUND ZERO, CLEVELAND 1975". Here you go: Rocket from the Tombs - "Life Stinks".

2004-12-14T23:44:00.000-08:00

You all have probably heard about Nouvelle Vague. Now, it IS of course a hip, hip, hooray project loved by all those indie kids who aren't really into Joy Division, Dead Kennedys, you name it, but hey, those are fun versions anyway. Here's "Too Drunk to Fuck", and you can also listen to three other songs performed by Nouvelle Vague on their site, including "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

2004-12-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, okay. This blog hasn't been updated in a looooong while. But now! you are being provided with a new entry and from now on, Antificial Radio Weblog becomes a regularly updated place again.

Pere Ubu's sound at least should be known to many of the readers. Just in case it's not, I'm going to post some more Pere Ubu and David Thomas & Two Pale Boys songs later on. But what the hell happened on "Cloudland", the listener-for-the-first time may ask? Okay, Thomas called Stephen Hague, who at least at that time was an Ubu fan, and asked him to produce their album. They did that eighties-pop-sound-thing, and very authentically they did. So...what the fuck? Hey, if you listen a bit intently to this album, you'll hear that yes it IS a Pere Ubu album, and it's actually great. Pere Ubu's sound remains under the smoothed "Pet Shop Boys" arrangements, and you should also pay attention to "Cloudland"'s lyrics.

"Breath"
"Ice Cream Truck"

Organizatory: Just a bit closer to the end of this year which is near anyway, Antificial Radio Weblog is going to presumably give you a little series of entries running under the title "the most remarkable musical releases of 2004". Every day during this series, two songs from the respective album shall be posted.

2004-10-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Organizatory: Tomorrow, I am going on vacation to Halle, Germany, visiting my girlfriend; the vacation goes until the 31th of October. So during this time, there will be no new posts. I'll probably be able to sporadically check my mail, though, so if you want to ask or tell me something, or if you just want to know how things are going, write me. And in the meantime, check out the link list to the right, in the sidebar, in case you don't know the mp3blogs listed there yet.

2004-10-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

Sadly enough, Fad Gadget opened for Depeche Mode in 2002; ironical, considered that DM once opened for Fad Gadget back in 1980. The project, pioneering in electronic music born from the post-punk era in the eighties, has been pretty much forgotten. Personally, I'd rather listen to a revitalised Fad Gadget show from 2002 than to Depeche Mode recordings from whenever, especially considering FG didn't fuck up the old songs that much from what I've heard. The show, though, obviously did become more goth-compatible. The whole thing went in that direction after the first couple of years anyway.
Here's a live version of "Back to Nature", performed in 2002 in Bielefeld, Germany. I'll post some older Fad Gadget stuff later on.

2004-10-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

Yet again, it's Twin Tuesday here on Antificial Radio Weblog. I wasn't really hoping to find some more good AFX stuff, as far as I can remember, when I stumbled upon the "Hangable Auto Bulb" EP (both of them actually - there was a second one, plus "Melodies from Mars", which I discovered approximately around the same time); I was pleasantly surprised. Bein full of tracks of "Richard D. James Album" quality, "Hangable Auto Bulb" is an unequitably hard-to-find recording. I first thought I'd just give you the title track, but "Children Talking" is actually just too good for you to miss.

2004-10-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

EmptyFree once wrote about Laibach's "Tanz mit Laibach" from "WAT", mentioning it was heavily derived from D.A.F.'s song "Der Mussolini". Now, I've heard the Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft track for the first time today and must agree with that. In fact, this clears up something about certain lines in "Tanz mit Laibach" which I before that had found surprisingly naive:

"Americano Freunde
und deutscher Kamerad,
wir tanzen gut zusammen
wir tanzen nach Bagdad!"

Now it has become obvious that the first two lines include a reference to D.A.F. and their above-mentioned song; this cuts into the seeming naivety.
Before "Der Mussolini", I'd only known their "Die Kleinen und die Bösen". Basically and as far as I remember, it was drumming, noise and a voice that would buzz or scream (something like "Eating then sleeping then eating sleeping then eating then eating" or "Work is boring! Sex is no fun! Work is Boring! Sex is no fun!", all that in German of course), altogether quite great fun. I think I should deal with some of their later albums as well.
Here's "Der Mussolini".

2004-10-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

I feel that the unaware should be enlightened about where the tagline of this blog came from. Here's the story (of the whole title), basically: I had an idea for a title of a musical project, "Antificial Intelligence", playing with the AI term and at the same time with the titles for the (in some sense groundbreaking) Warp "AI" compilations and with the term "anti". No concrete musical projects, however, have been named so since then, but I called my SHOUTcast "radio station" "Antificial Radio", which had the known tagline taken from the title of a Negativland song (where it's referred to sound). And that's where we come to the mp3 linked in this post: "Methods of Torture". Enjoy and be sure to visit their site as well, among other things including instructions on how to download Negativland's video work "The Mashin' of the Christ".

2004-10-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Twin Tuesday! A not really rare Aphex Twin track this week, having been included on the "Classics" compilation (originally coming from the "Xylem Tube" EP) Here's "Polynomial-C". I definitely do not agree with the common opinion that this is his best track, but it's worth listening to, nicely illustrating at least parts of his work in the first half of the nineties.

2004-10-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Totally Fuzzy celebrates one year of blogging activity today, and I suggest you all walk over and check this blog out in case you do not know it yet. Personally, I'd like to mention that herr k. hasn't only put up some good tracks I hadn't known before, but also massively helped this and many other blogs gain popularity by linking hand-picked entries of other people.
My congratulations.

And here are a couple of files I uploaded on the occasion of this jubilee:

Brian Eno - "Baby's on Fire" (live) (from that live recording with Nico, Cale and Ayers)

And one by a singer of yiddish songs once introduced to me by Windofviolence (and thank to her for that):
Chava Alberstein - "The Secret Garden"

2004-10-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

We haven't had any Squarepusher tunes here on this blog yet, so I uploaded a track that many supposedly do not know: "Plate Core" from the "I Am Carnal, and I Know That You Approve" EP he did with Richard Thomas. There's a review on Feedback Monitor saying Jenkinson didn't really have much to do with the four tracks featured on it, but I find this adjudgement doubtful: The tracks sound far too Squarepusher-like. Have a listen.

2004-10-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

Due to Mr Smith, I now have all four discs of the "Entartete Musik" compilation which I posted an mp3 from on Thursday. I uploaded a rather impressive speech by Klaus Mann from 1947 where he speaks (in English) about his interview with Richard Strauss, which obviously happened during World War II and about Nazi Germany.

And in other news, some large comments providing some background information about Zappa were made to my previous entry, go and check them out.

2004-10-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

I listened to Mothers' of Invention/Zappa's astonishing debut album "Freak Out!" for the first time in its entirety today and I was particularly awed by the last track. What do I hear there? Wait. Hip hop beats? Now. What the FUCK?
I check AMG for the release year.
1966.
What the FUCK?
Was Zappa such a connoisseur of black and African music? Have I missed something? Whatever it is, it's a wild, great track anyway so I uploaded it for you: "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet".

In other news, the author of his blog has in collaboration with PL recorded Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades" just this evening. Have fun (you'll have to turn the volume up strongly but should pay attention at the end if you're using headphones):

Pan Codami & PL - "New Dawn Fades" (Joy Division cover)

Oh yeah, and R.E.M. have a new album. Do you give a shit about that? Personally, I don't.

2004-10-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Engelmacherin for introducing me to Tiny Tim with a song from his first album, "God Bless Tiny Tim". There seem to be at least two sites that claim to be his official site, and although the fact of his death in 1996 makes these claims look a bit strange, the Tiny Tim Memorial Site at least seems to have more content from what I have seen of both resources.

It appears that he was a one-hit-wonder in the sixties with "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips", definitely entirely too little attention, judging from the only song performed by him that I know so far. Listen to this wonderful version of "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight".

2004-09-30T11:17:00.001-07:00

Another mp3 I uploaded for you today is "Moritat von Mackie Messer" (also widely known under its English title, "Mack the Knife"), the famous Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht song from their, especially the latter's "Die Dreigroschenoper" ("The Three Penny Opera") - here sung by Brecht himself. You can read more about the song's history on The Straight Dope and find it on the "Entartete Musik" sampler (of which I only have the first disc).

2004-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

More Death in June. Yeah, I know there already was a Death in June post last Saturday, but I promise these will be the last Death in June mp3s you'll get here for the next let's say three months. Plus this is live, coming from a 2002 bootleg which I got anotherday and still haven't listened to completely; the songs can be found on the same two albums which the mp3s in the last Death in June post were taken from, "Rose Clouds of Holocaust" and "All Pigs Must Die!" and don't you just love the lo-fi drums and the "laaa, laaa, laaa, laaa" in the beginning of "RCoH".

"All Pigs Must Die" (live)
"Rose Clouds of Holocaust" (live)

2004-09-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Now, this next one is a fucking huge download, it's over 19 MB, but it's worth it. Faust's "Krautrock", and that's what it is: a nearly twelve minutes long Krautrock hymn from their 1974 album "Faust IV". Basically, here Faust got to their form: it's a big step from wild Amon Düülish exercises on "Faust So Far" to this.

In other news, Craig from songs:illinois told something about how strange things can happen in music industry in the comments to my entry about FSK.
And drop by at *6ize to pick up a fun Tom Waits track from 1976.

2004-09-28T03:01:00.000-07:00

It's the newly (actually herewith) declared Twin Tuesday on Antificial Radio Weblog, which basically means that, along with other mp3s of course, Aphex Twin and Aphex Twin related tracks will be posted every Tuesday right here on this blog. And here you go: I am almost seducted to say that following is an Aphex Twin rarity, but there's one thing that keeps me from doing so. AMG once qutie correctly wrote about Aphex Twin and Autechre that they are "about as close to being techno superstars as the tenets of the genre and the limitations of its audience will allow". Now, such "superstars" do not have any tracks that are publically available and at the same time could be called "rare" in 2004. Somewhere in their private basements maybe. But at least the track I uploaded for you does not belong to the most well-known AFX tracks, coming from the unofficial album "Melodies from Mars". Ten untitled tracks and two tracks that later were featured on the "Richard D. James Album"; they often sound rawer than the latter recording, but nevertheless are a must have. Here's the twinnishly playful Track 03.

2004-09-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

There's a guy in Russia who calls himself Don Gan or DJ Gan, and while his music is not really great, it's still fun at times. Some mp3s are available on krivda.net, some on his LiveJournal; I'll direct link because both places are in Russian.

"Ivan Kupala vstretilis' s Nirvanoy" ("Ivan Kupala met Nirvana") (mash-up with a band that performs russian folk songs)
"Ne Nado Shutit' s Voynoy!" ("Don't joke with war!") - Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, once held a drunken speech in Iraq where he, among other things, called George W. Bush a "shitty cowboy", threatened to sink the American continent into the waters of "The Atlantic Pacific Ocean" with the help of Russian scientists etc. Parts of this recorded speech, with "George, you shitty cowboy, fuck / Don't joke with war, fuck" and "Look, what a sky, fuck, Baghdad!", were sampled in this one.
"Apocalyptica vs. Vinni Puh" ("Apocalyptica vs. Winnie the Pooh") - I do not like Apocalyptica much, but this mash-up has got something.
"My Slchastlivy, Vincent?" ("Are We Happy, Vincent?") - trip-hop with the German synchronization of "Pulp Fiction"'s audio track sampled here.

There's more, but it's either only really understandable for a Russian speaker, like a tune with Brezhnev sampled, or not that much fun.

2004-09-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Some Death in June here. No, I did not upload anything from their first two albums, although I do agree that their best days are long over. But you all know their first two albums anyway, and as it seems to me, their later stuff is less popular. Firstly, here's a track called "Disappear in Every Way" from their 2001 opus "All Pigs Must Die!".
Interestingly, it was one of the first things I've heard of Death in June and one of the first things I liked. It isn't particularly interesting musically, but it's a good song, and I am not offended by the way it is made. Mainly because I like the connection of the deathinjunish calm with the lyrics.
Secondly, here's "Rose Clouds of Holocaust" from the equally titled album. Now, I do know that there's a big never-dying discussion about Pearce, DiJ's frontman, being a neonazi or not being a neonazi, and I think this whole discussion is based on wishful thinking. The people do not want him to be a right extremist; that's why they are hysterically seeking for arguments that would prove that he isn't. To me, it is clear that he is; if he shouldn't be, I do not see any idea behind the lyrics actually. And it doesn't even smell like irony, too. Yes, I know that art and real life are two fully different areas of acting, but firstly, we are not talking about art music like Laibach here but instead about a clear case of pop music, and pop music is often enough a sort of special case, and secondly, as I already said, I seriously do not see anything in DiJ's music that would speak for Pearce not denying the holocaust, for example, like in this song. If - if! - it should be some other idea behind the lyrics, then the whole thing just sucks big time. And I think it's decent pop music, neat songs. If you want, you can call that wishful thinking.
I also cannot see how the fact of Pearce being a neo nazi matters for the fact that the songs are neat. Not going to DiJ concerts out of ideological reasons is seemlingly a slightly more complicated case; but if one does like the music and just does not want to pay the artists because he or she thinks it's neo nazi propaganda, one oversees the fact that he or she supports this propaganda by listening to the songs. If you are able to develop a critical distance to it - and you certainly should be able to do so whatever music is involved, when being concerned with music, you should be able to develop a critical distance to the music, the lyrics, etc. - why should you avoid gigs? The only reason could be that you do not want the artists to spread their music so that it reaches the neo nazi scene, but if you want to prevent their music from spreading out, this wish comes in an immediate conflict with the fact that you actually are listening to the music.

2004-09-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

So EmptyFree once pointed me to the great Ergo Phizmiz and particularly his covers of The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" (available on his web site for free download) and of Aphex Twin. The latter are possibly the best AT covers made so far and definitely the best AT covers I've heard (soon to be rereleased on Solnze Records, also featuring - you guessed right - Messer für Frau Müller - read post about them); what I uploaded for you is an Aphex Twin cover made by The Bad Plus, which is not at all that good but still neat somehow: "Flim". Being a kind of a jazz trio, they tried to imitate the alienated drums with acoustic instruments, and to keep the rhythm. Still, it's not great; it's nice, but it bores a bit. The album which the track is taken from, "These are the Vistas", would actually be quite boring anyway if it wasn't for "Flim" and their heavily dissonant version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". May work well as background music, however.

2004-09-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

"Stained Sheets" by James White and The Blacks.

James White is the other name of Mr James Chance. I guess you couldn't name yourself and your band like that today. No, this is not 70's porn music! Free jazz saxophone improvisations never were included in a porn movie (if you know one, however, send me a copy). It's a wild mix of disco, funk, free jazz and fun samples (often described as "No Wave", while Chance himself doesn't seem to really like the term). I didn't know about White before quite shortly and first heard him on Epitonic I believe. You can get two other of his tracks there.

2004-09-21T13:33:00.000-07:00

I like Television's "Marquee Moon" a lot, and I really tried listening to parts of "The Blow-Up". Nope. I'm not sure whether they just had a bad day when it was recorded or the poor sound quality really did that much to the material, but it sucks. It's astonishingly boring compared to the studio versions of the same songs. And it doesn't seem to have the energy that a good live album of such a band has to have.
"Live at the Old Waldorf" is different. While the songs are rawer in concert, they still keep the Television squiggledness that you know an like from "Marquee Moon". Here's a live version of "Venus" from this 2003-released (don't worry, it was recorded on June 29th 1978, in the same year as "The Blow-Up") album.

Organizatory: Once again, I explicitly point you to 20 Jazz Funk Greats. This blog, as far as i can judge, started pretty much around the same time as Antificial Radio Weblog did, and I'd like to say a thank you to this probably best mp3 blog I know (why, except for mine of course) in terms of musical content. 20JazzFunkGreats brought me to Suicide. And it started with, amongst others, Throbbing Gristle & NEU!, which definitely wins my sympathy. Check it out.

2004-09-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

A track from FSK's first LP, "Stürmer". FSK or Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, said to be the favourite German band of John Peel, released their first recordings on a label named ZickZack (probably known to some people through Einstürzende Neubauten's releases), which was later to become the omnious What's So Funny About, now amongst others featuring Messer für Frau Müller (I wrote about them before). I'm not sure about FSK's later work because I've heard too little of it, but this first album, wonderfully funny and fresh, recorded with a drum machine which sounds fairly cheap to me, is worth hearing. Here's "Was Kostet die Welt" ("How Much is the World").

Organizatory: There were no posts yesterday because I was having some trouble with a virus or my antivirus software fucking up the computer system (I'm really not sure which one of the two was actually causing the most visible part of the fucking up). Sorry for that.

2004-09-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

A short post today with some Richard Hell. The Neon Boys were the predecessor band to Television somewhere in the first half of the seventies, existed a year or a couple of years and disbanded before finally reuniting as the above-mentioned group, with Richard Hell quitting before the recording of "Marquee Moon" to form the Voidoids. Here are two tracks from that EP issued on Shake Records in 1980.

Richard Hell & The Neon Boys - "Love Comes in Spurts"
Richard Hell & The Voidoids - "Don't Die"

Organizatory: I'm going to Leipzig tomorrow on Friday, so there will be no updates here on this week-end. On Monday the 20th, I'll be back; in the meantime, I suggest you frequent 20 Jazz Funk Greats, An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming and Totally Fuzzy.

2004-09-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

A classic tune from Fehlfarben's classic 1980 album "Monarchie und Alltag": "Ein Jahr (Es geht Voran)". The best thing about this song is the guitar riff played most of the time and the "Es geht voran!" line immediately following it. And a good thing about that is that you can sing nearly anything to this riff's melody. Once it's got you, you probably won't get rid of it so soon.

The Eno dispersion on music blogs seems to be even wider than i actually supposed: Nuclear Beef has been having an Eno track up for almost two weeks now. 20 Jazz Funk Greats wrote about Eno yesterday, too, also giving an mp3. This given, I propose mp3 bloggers, following the "Suicide Week" initiated by 20 Jazz Funk Greats, declare an International Eno Day (or Week). Please make your suggestions.

2004-09-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Since I have the feeling that Brian Eno was getting heightened attention on some blogs in the last few days (see totally fuzzy, itsmatt), I thought I might upload a Nol' song called "Privet (Brian'u Eno)" ("Greetings (to Brian Eno)"). I wrote about Nol' before. Now, this one is from their third album, "Severnoe Bugi" ("Northern Boogie"); it had, on the one hand, songs with lyrics and stuff on it, and on the other hand some instrumentals, and the track I uploaded belongs to the latter.

It does strongly remind of Eno, but it's certainly different, including some bayan (the frontman's instrument) and i believe some alienated balalaika (this would suit Nol' very well, however).

(Nol's frontman, Fyodor Chistyakov, in 1991)

Another one I give you is one of Chistyakov's later works, when he wasn't on drugs anymore, but instead on Jehova's witnesses and recording children songs (seriously). Rather boring stuff mostly, but here's "Pink Floyd", a track from his 1999 album "Pesni dlya Druga, Kotoryi Lyubit Rok" ("Songs for a Friend Who Likes Rock Music").

It's a mockery on "Shine on Your Crazy Diamond", played like a brave march with midi-like synths and of course with bayan. I already mentioned that Pink Floyd sucked EVER after the "Ummagumma" live album. Get this track I tell you.

I downloaded the new Björk album that so many people are talking about today. Haven't listened to it entirely (and I doubt that I will), but here's what I'll tell you after what I've heard of it.
I've said before that Björk is hopelessly overrated, and guess what, "Medulla" (or what I've heard of it) didn't change this impression. She is mediocre. Boring. And don't tell me that it's such an interesting idea for her to do a vocals-only (or almost-vocals-only) album (Take a look at Murakami for a parrallel: he's a simple storyteller. The fact that there are "unbelievable" things going on in his stories doesn't change anything about this. Instead, at least the western Murakami hype tried to keep him up as the writer of the end of the 20th century. This guy just writes neat stories without depth; the sort of books you'd take with you on a train if you just want to read something distracting and non-challenging for a couple of hours). It's a nice idea, yeah. But this album is not more interesting than her previous works, it's unreflected; I actually wonder why the hell she decided to do a vocals-only album because neither it's an all too consequent implication of her previous works nor did it change anything about what she does. Could be tolerable background music. Yeah, the expression of feelings, whatever, we all know that. Could you please fuck off now.
Oh yes, I guess I should give you an mp3 from "Medulla"... Here you go. "Where is the Line".

2004-09-12T03:34:00.000-07:00

I once dug out a sampler called "70s Italian Gangster Jazz"; not that it had anything to do with jazz, it now actually came out to be a compilation of soundtracks for 70s gangster movies (scroll down to the Lucertola Media release), which I presumed before anyway.

So it's bad soundtrack music. Wait, I like it. It's awfully moody. Me & my girlfriend thought up a movie outline while listening to it. I couldn't help but upload all three "Violent Rome" versions by Guido & Maurizio de Angelis.

"Violent Rome" (first version)
"Violent Rome" (second version)
"Violent Rome" (third version)

Organizatory: I'm trying to limit the traffic and the volume which the mp3 files take on my server, so from now on, the mp3s will be available online for two weeks.

2004-09-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

On to other bootlegs. I wasn't really into Pavement for a rather long while; maybe the reason for it was that I pretty much began with their later stuff. I liked some songs, like „Shady Lane“ or „Major Leagues“, but that was it. As far as I remember, "Slanted & Enchanted" lay around for a while without really being heard. Maybe it later was because I expected Pavement to sound like Sonic Youth too much, and they didn't. They also didn't sound like Nirvana (By the way, I do think that Nirvana was a good band. It's not a depressive-teenager past. It's just that they had good songs. You have to admit that their songs were good. I know exactly that when nobody can hear it and no one of your friends is around, you listen to "Dumb", once a year, with pleasure. Or do you play the whole record, and afterwards, you dig out the "Unplugged" album? And then, possibly, you head on to "Bleach"? Admit it). And then, their first album somehow stroke me, and I believe the first song to strike me most of all from the album (which, generally, undoubtedly is good) was "In the Mouth a Desert". Today, I uploaded an early live bootleg version of it for you, from the famous "Stray Slack".

Their two first albums were a nice "goodbye to the rock'n'roll era". Dancing on the grave of rock music with guitars is what builds up a parallel to Sonic Youth there (although they were different from SY). Strangely enough, they bored with pop rock (especially on the last two of their recordings) from then on.

2004-09-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

I found an Eno/Byrne bootleg entitled with "Bush of Ghosts demos" the other day. When listening to parts of it for the first time, I was somehow disappointed because the demo versions didn't strongly differ from those included on the final album and it even appeared to possibly be a fake, with an interview piece added to the beginning and some hissing effects laid over the record. It came out though (after comparing the version of "Regiment" available on the album and the one on the bootleg) that the recording apparently consists of actual demo versions, some tracks even having been newly added. Searching Google didn't give too many results; "Bush of Ghosts demos" may be identical with "Ghosts", which bootleg is mentioned on Talking-Heads.net.
What I uploaded for you is the demo version of "Regiment". The bass is tuned stronger than on the album version (which, on the other hand, could be a result of the shitty quality), which makes it work slightly more aggressive. So yes, it does differ from the album version. Slightly, slightly. If you need any more proof for it before you start downloading, hell, it's in an other key.

2004-09-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

How about some post-easy listening? Never heard of it? Well, this is what Messer für Frau Müller call their music, and I find it's a fitting title. They use samples from soviet as well as western television and radio programs and plays, films, music records etc.; all this laid over some bigbeat/bigbeat-electronica. Here are two tracks from "Second Hand Dreams"; the first one's the one sampled in the flash animation on their site.

"The Best Girl in USSR"
"Our Address in Web: www.fraumuller.spb.ru" (They sampled Kraftwerk in this one)

Organizatory: The problem blogger.com has with mp3blogs.org seems to have still not been fixed for me.

2004-09-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

While you all are hopefully waiting for the new extended CD release of "The Name of this Band is Talking Heads" to finish downloading or to be delivered to your house, I have uploaded two tracks from it for you. In case you are NOT familiar with what this album is, get it immediately. Talking Heads were quite different in studio and live; their irony was somewhat more bitter on stage, which in a certain sense surely was consequent. People go to such shows mostly when they already have heard the albums; given that they have understood the irony of this music, you may then present it more atrabiliously in a certain way. Both tracks I uploaded have been newly added to the album's CD version. Here you go:

"The Book I Read" (from the first disc)
"Warning Sign" (from the second disc)

2004-09-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'd like to point you to Legendary Pink Dots' "Nouveaux Modes Exotiques". Epitonic has it up as well (with lower bitrate, 128 kbps, as far as I remember), along with some other LPD mp3s ("Inside" from the same album is sort of nice, too - Scroll down to "Chemical Playschool 10"). Jim Haynes wrote that "Chemical Playschool 10" was "oddly enough, a pretty coherent album of trance rock gems that draw heavily from the krautrock trinity of Can, Neu, and Faust"; now, you can argue about whether those three actually were, as they are called there, "the krautrock trinity", but the track actually has some kraut-rockish elements, although it's definitely far away from krautrock.

Organizatory: Thanks to herr k. & his totally fuzzy for constantly linking my blog in the last few days. I'm not sure whether he's currently particularly supporting mp3 blogs hosted on blogger.com which, like me, are still having problems with mp3blogs.org or whether it's just that he likes the mp3s I put up in my recent posts, but anyway, much less people would download them if it wasn't for him.

2004-09-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

Time for some Kraftwerk rarities, and this one is from a live bootleg from 1981. That's the same year in which "Computerwelt" was released (the gig was played already after its release), and a studio version of this song can be found on it (as well as on the awfully dull "Mix", made ten years later. You must admit it, it WAS dull. It was exactly the type of commercial-techno-influenced early-nineties electro pop you do not want to hear; and that made to THOSE songs. I do like "Electric Café" quite a bit, although it by far wasn't as interesting as their previous albums and it lacked those low-key reserved Kraftwerk vocals with the exception of "Der Telefon Anruf", but "The Mix" was horrible. I also cannot understand why the hell people who do know Kraftwerk's albums recorded in the 70s and the early 80s would go to a Kraftwerk show in 2004. Come on, going to an autopsy gig? Just to see those guys stand around on the stage? It's a mystery indeed). It's "Computer Liebe", and I like the singing quite a lot.
I also remember having had a couple of rather early Kraftwerk live bootlegs, but I am not sure whether I still have them anywhere on CD. However, if I should find them, I'll post something from them.

2004-09-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

When I wrote about Akvarium, I forgot to link to a recording which pretty much falls out of the line of their regular records and which is also rumoured to not have been recorded by Akvarium at all. It consists of four instrumental tracks, quite free-jazzy at times, called "Muzyka Obschestvennyh Tualetov" ("Music of Public Toilets"). Nevermind the artwork because it came much later; the original recording didn't have a cover at all. You should get along on the linked site because the tracks are numbered; the server may be rather slow from time to time, so if the speed is below 1 K/sec, try again later.

Organizatory: My entries seem to have stopped appearing on mp3blogs.org and Web Nymph. Is anyone experiencing similar problems? The feed seems to work perfectly.

2004-09-05T04:52:00.000-07:00

I promised it and here they are: Two Gogol Bordello tracks, one from each studio album.

"Nomadic Chronicle" (from "Voi-la Intruder")
"When the Trickster Starts A-Poking (Bordello Kind of Guy)" (from "Multi kontra Culti vs. Irony")

Musically, the second track (and the second album generally as well) is closer to (gypsy) punk rock. Get them both. It's a shame they are so little-known.

2004-09-04T05:08:00.000-07:00

I already wrote about Bobby Conn once. What I gave you then was an apparently improvised short semi-song he played on a television show. What I give you now is '69 Année Erotique, actually a Serge Gainsbourg cover and an absolute must hear.
It wasn't included on any of the four Conn studio albums, nor can it be found on any Conn EP, but instead on the "Camp Skin Craft Now Wave" sampler. The presence of Jim O'Rourke is quite sensible (He produced and performed on "Rise Up!" as well), but it's Bobby Conn nevertheless. Get it.

2004-09-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

The next one is well-known; it's from Buzzcocks' "Spiral Scratch" EP, and I think that that recording and "Time's Up" definitely were their best. Not that what they did afterwards was bad. No, I like quite a few of their later songs, like "Harmony in my Head", and I do have "Product". Quite a few songs still were good. But it didn't have that we're-sixteen-we-cannot-sing-and-we-cannot-play-but-we-do-it-anyway-because-we-want-to flair anymore. Yeah, I know they weren't sixteen at the time of "Spiral Scratch", and they weren't even eighteen, but nevermind. They sounded like they were. This schoolboyishness I think is something I missed on Sex Pistols' "Nevermind the Bollocks..." because it's something I like about the British punk explosion. Maybe it's also that it sort of too much met every cliche of the punk explosion, which it quite naturally did because it, well, started it, but hey, I got into the whole punk rock story from the "wrong" edge with the Dead Kennedys. And after that, I heard the Buzzcocks' "Singles Going Steady" and pretty much at the same time X-Ray Spex. Later on Wire's great "Pink Flag". So the Sex Pistols came at the end and didn't impress me too much. Hell, I know how "Anarchy in the UK" goes, what more can you ask for?
Here's "Breakdown" from Buzzcocks' "Spiral Scratch".

2004-09-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

Amon Düül II. I listened to "Yeti" another day; it reminded me of Ummagumma-live-album-Pink Floyd (by the way, they sucked ever after that recording, but itself, it was great) and Akvarium (I linked some of their stuff and a couple of cover versions earlier). Download the improvised "Yeti Talks to Yogi"; maybe I'll upload more Amon Düül & Amon Düül II stuff later on.

2004-08-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

Hard'n'Phirm's "Rodeohead" apparently wasn't left unnoticed, but maybe some of you guys haven't heard it yet. If so, go there and hear it. Click on those two little cowboy guys to download the mp3 file. They seem to do whole shows where they cover lots of Radiohead songs entirely, but this one's a medley. If you are too lazy to find out which songs' pieces appear in it, you can get a list on Greenplastic. Yeah, it's making fun of Radiohead. It had been twice-overdue, hadn't it?

2004-08-31T08:02:00.000-07:00

Now, very few people know that there's some serious underground action going on here in Düsseldorf, and I mean the music made by two guys. One of those guys is the author of this blog, also known as Pan Codami, the other one is PL. I uploaded two files, recorded with a rather huge interval in between; both recordnings, however, are connected by their french-to-frenchish lyrics so they may go together. In the first one, "Le Malheur", I played the piano and PL spoke; in the second one, "Gainsbourg", I spoke and PL played the piano. I hope you have some fun listening to those & many special thanks to Henri Michaux (scroll down to read "Repos dans le Malheur"). Also, special thanks go to Latanya for having once posted that poem by Michaux.

2004-08-31T06:40:00.000-07:00

When listening to mash-ups, haven't you ever thought they could be a liiitle bit more original at what and how they choose to mix? Hearing Eminem's rap mixed with 5000 different pop songs isn't really enthralling after a while. Now, I advise you to go and take a look at Eve Massacre; I especially recommend "Sweet as neurotic euro trash indie boys" (thanks to Engelmacherin for having once shown that mix and thus Eve Massacre).

2004-08-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

My relationship to the Smiths is sort of chappy. I mean, the one song they had is kind of neat. Sometimes it is. Yeah. But I don't feel like listening to a whole album full of this song, no thanks. Now, but how about the Smiths sung in Ukrainian? Uploaded one of the Ukrainians' Smiths covers, "Batyar" ("Bigmouth Strikes Again"); I like listening to it rather than to the original version.

2004-08-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

Ever heard La Düsseldorf? If not (or if you've never heard this particular track), download "Düsseldorf", a the-number-of-minutes-consists-of-two-digits-song from their first, self-titled album. It's NEU! without Michael Rother, so definitely get it if you like Krautrock. Sounds a bit like NEU! would jam with Faust.

Oh yeah, PL recently told me there was a store here in Düsseldorf where you can get La Düsseldorf recordings for 3 euro, while NEU! recordings were much more expensive. Strange things happen indeed.

2004-08-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Now, the following link is to an mp3 so awfully bad that you just have to hear it, especially if you know Akvarium and Boris Grebenschikov or at least speak Russian and German. It's a translated version of a song from "PSY" called "Luna, Uspokoy Menya", sung by some guy named Alexej Samordin. Click on the "Mond, beruhige mich" link in that small list to get it. The singing there is painful. Awful. Hey, it's a good laugh. The site is painful generally.
Get the original version (Again, I'm linking to this mp3 file directly because the site where it's on is in Russian). And speaking of Akvarium, I suggest you get these two Akvarium albums from Pustye Mesta:

Akvarium - "Radio Afrika", from 1983.
Akvarium - "Deti Dekabrya" ("December's Children"), from 1985.

Yeah, the site is in Russian, but you'll probably get along if you find out where the track list is (which is not too difficult, it's a numbered link list there). Yeah, I know you probably don't feel like downloading two albums sung in a language you don't fucking understand, but I tell you to give it a try. In case you like the stuff, note that there's a rather huge amount of Akvarium and Grebenschikov albums on Pustye Mesta, but get those from the eighties first. There have been very few good things by them in the nineties and the 2000's.

There's a neat cover version of "Gorod Zolotoy" (get the Akvarium version first in case you don't know it), probably the most well-known Akvarium song, though not written by Grebenschikov but by Alexey Hvostenko, on Antimult.ru (by VIA Antimult). Click the second mp3 link on that site to get it.

2004-08-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

I like the fact that compilations often tend to include little-known songs by at least more or less known artists, or little-known songs by little-known artists as well. The three mp3s linked in this entry are all from the "Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music" compilations, volume 1 and volume 2.

To begin with, here's an mp3 I promised to upload in a comment to an entry by Loki: Autechre's "Bronchus One.1". As I said in the comment, it seems to be a pretty rare track; "Bronchus 2" can be found on Incunabula, but I'd have to listen to both tracks to become sure in how far both tracks differ from each other and right now, everybody else in this flat seems to be sleeping. "Bronchus One.1", however, is from 1991 and it perfectly shows how far ahead of all the IDM people (once again, except for Aphex Twin, but I find it difficult to call what he did and does now "IDM") Autechre were even in those early days.

We all know that Sonic Youth went in more or less pure avant-garde in the nineties on those SYR recordings, number 1-5; not sure which other more-or-less-pure-avant-garde recordings they had in the nineties. However, here is a track that appears to come from 2001 and that isn't included anywhere else but on the samplers named above: "Audience". It's crowd noise, apparently recorded in 1983 and then mixed in the studio later; this is more-or-less-pure-avant-garde, so don't bother downloading it if you just want to have a typical Sonic Youth song.

The next one is from 1930; it's the rather well-known "Wochenende" by Walter Ruttmann. Read more about it on SFSound.org and download it if you are interested in Dada.

2004-08-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'm just listening to the new Mouse on Mars album. Much more voice than even on Idiology and constant references to common electro pop; basically, it's their usual track, but it somehow sounds quite boring. I'm not completely sure what exactly happened to them, but I have the impression that this could well be the end of Mouse on Mars.
Here's the first track from the album, "Mine Is in Yours".

2004-08-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here's one track from the 60's Italian Beat compilation once recommended to me by Mr Smith: La Setta's "Bloodhound". Doubts have been uttered that it was really the 60's, and it seems a bit of a mystery indeed. However, it's rock'n'roll action from the times when rock'n'roll action was still possible.

2004-08-23T04:54:00.000-07:00

There was a great russian Band called Nol' and there are two songs in semi-okay bitrate to download from a fan site (I'm linking to them directly for the site is in Russian):

Kommunal'naya Kvartira ("Flat Share") (studio outtake)
"Bugi Vugi Kazhdyi Den'" ("Boogie Woogie Every Day") (Maik Naumenko cover)

I uploaded two more of their songs and here you go:

"Pesnya o Nastoyaschem Indeyze" ("Song about the True Indian")
"Vperyed Bolty!" ("Bolts Ahead!")

I suppose most of you do know Laibach's "Life is Life" cover. If you know the John Peel sessions version though, you are either a Laibach freak, a John Peel freak, or you just stumbled upon it more or less accidentally (something I did, as far as I remember). It's worth listening to in any case, so get it.

2004-08-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

I listened to that Gogol Bordello live bootleg last night and it's great stuff. Out of 15 songs, 10 did not appear on either of the two previous studio albums, thus showing how the forthcoming album could probably become. I uploaded one of those songs which seem to be new: Immigrant Punk. Yeah, it's gypsy punk, fuck the so-called "world music" (thanks to PL for providing that link).
There are also some sample music downloads on Gogol Bordello's official site, some of them (well, at least one) being whole songs. I'll probably upload a couple more of G.B.'s songs later on, one from each studio album.

Some of you do and some of you probably do not know about The User. Here are two tracks from their "Symphony #1 for Dot Matrix Printers":

Part #10
Part #13

Fairly interesting stuff, and a good "counterfeit" of IDM and minimal electronica at times. You can get three more of their tracks and a video clip on their site.

2004-08-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

Negativland's "My Favorite Things" is now up. You probably know the song, yeah. Come on, Coltrane did it.

Organisational: This blog needs some promotion. So promote it folks, or if you came across this and know how to promote it best, write me about it. If you like this place, post a link into your blog, livejournal, whatever.

2004-08-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of DOKAKA when writing a comment about artists and bands making cover versions. This is japanese a capella humming; I have his version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which is making great fun of Nirvana. You can get it along with other cover versions on Soundclick.com.

And here's another a capella band who covered "Smells Like Teen Spirit": Noorkuu. Browse the "Albumid" section to find it on their site, ready to be downloaded.

2004-08-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

Quite a long while ago, I browsed Epitonic a little bit and, along with some other, mostly boring, things, found Transmo. Download the stuff from "InHale". Ficht still doesn't seem to be signed anywhere nor has he got a website, I searched Google for "transmo", "transmo ficht" and "greg ficht", but only found the Epitonic site, some companies and other stuff which apparently had nothing to do with the musician Transmo.

Speaking of Epitonic, here's a somehow-nice track by Threnody Ensemble to download; not overwhelming, but neat.

There are three tracks by Iran available on Epitonic, and definitely get the great "Pick-Up/Stillborn". There is a second album released in 2003, "The Moon Boys". I'm still not sure about that one, because I can't remember really hearing it, but get their self-titled debut.

2004-08-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the Jim Noir song I promised to upload and post a link to in the last entry.

There also are three other mp3/ogg files I uploaded. Firstly, a track from the Dead Kennedies' 2004 released live album, "Live at the Deaf Club 1979". This version of "Kill the Poor" relatively strongy differs from the studio version on "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables" and is definitely worth listening to. Speaking of it, "Live at the Deaf Club" contains probably the best version of "Holiday in Cambodia" I've heard. Slow and, unlike other live versions, especially the one on "Mutiny on the Bay", clear. Seems a great live album generally from what I've heard so far from it, much better than "MotB". Get it.

Secondly, here's something I stumbled upon not so long ago, and that's Richard Cheese, a guy who makes lounge cover versions of popular rock and pop "classics" and hits. Not that interesting in general, but here's a version of Nirvana's "Rape Me" that is fun somehow. There's a live sample video clip of that on his website, along with some other downloads, but I watched the clip and didn't bother downloading the rest of the stuff he's got up there.

I found the Bobby Conn song I've been told about for a couple of times even very long ago that he sang on the "Wah-Wah" show on the German music channel Viva Zwei when it got cancelled (both the channel and, apparently, the show). Here you go: "Death to Wah-Wah". In case you don't know Bobby Conn or still haven't heard any of his albums, get them all. I'd recommend to get "Rise Up!" and "The Homeland", his 2004 album, first; the stuff is not impossible to find on Soulseek.

By the way, linking to the Bobby Conn website and checking whether it really is bobbyconn.com, I found out that the site is finally ready. Among other things (it's not that much, or is it just Mozilla?), there's the "Angels" video one can watch (to do so, go to the "Music" section), which is not quite as great as the "Relax" video though, and a link to an interview with him there.

"Splendid: How can you -- if you're this worked up about it -- how can you step back and...

Bobby Conn: Because you can't make a serious... the only alternative would be... If there was a serious, really gripping protest record, like musically gripping, emotionally gripping, I haven't heard it yet."

2004-08-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

So, welcome. This blog will be about music.

To begin with, here's something I just managed to get on Soulseek: 386dx' first album (the one with non-russian songs). There are some mp3 as well as .ra files on his website, be sure to get them. The second album consists of classical russian rock or "rock" songs' cover versions and is named after a popular compilation series, "Legends of russian rock". Probably not that interesting for the western listener, especially as it's basically the same story, only with russian songs. If you have heard the files put on this guy's site and found them fun and/or interesting, get the whole album from me on Soulseek. My nickname's vidimka and I may add you to my list until you have downloaded the album since this is hard-to-find stuff.

In other news, Jim Noir now has a website. He released a nice EP called "A Bird Sings in Wool" on the free netlabel called Hippocamp, but now seems to be going to become signed (or already being it) on a not-so-free label, so the EP is put down. However, I'll upload one of his songs, "Split Personality", during the next days. Take a look at DRGS as well, the band that Jim Noir is or was a member of. Their "DRGS Presents 'Laburnam Live Chipmunk Orchestra'" EP is available on scene.org. The first album is said to have been a 100 copies release, but I still hope a guy I know is going to get it, and then I'll get it from him.

That's enough for the first entry then.