24 January 2012

R3TR05P3CT3R - "Stop ACTA - Music Is Free"

Not as good as the title (5/10)

Unfortunately the title is the best part of this song. This is monotonous breakbeat, without particularly creative samples, rhythms or melodies. It can be checked out, but I doubt anyone would be impressed.

[Artist's Myspace]

Creative Commons License

Tanya T6 (Devyn Rose) - "Pieces"

Music for elevators (5/10)
Sexy, sweet, energetic and business savvy are all adjectives that describe Pop/R&B’s newest sensation Tanya "T6". Tanya a.k.a. "T6"'s talents go way above and beyond the typical artist. She not only entertains and captivates her audience with her sexy voice, provocative lyrics and amazing six pack, she is also a leader at the forefront of her own movement.

Generic pop / RnB / hip hop product crafted and targeted at clients looking for utility music. I must say it really delivers in this regard, as it sounds exactly like everything else in this genre and it is recorded on a professional level. Mainstream radio stations and elevator vendors should be delighted.

Being simply a sonic product, not a work of art, it is completely devoid of any artistic value. But this product is of very high quality and may be sold without hesitation from the "Premium goods" shelf, not from a discount basket.

[Artist's Website]

Creative Commons License

Shattering Planet - "Depths Of My Mind, the" [SP]

WANTED: Better samples (5/10)
Shattering Planet is my alias for my experimental music. I hope you find it to be enjoyable.

If you do enjoy any of my song or albums and you have a Jamendo account I would greatly appreciate reviewing any of my albums as well as becoming my fan so you get notified of any new music I release. Also remember: You can use any of my music on YouTube videos as long as it isn’t commercial, but please give my band credit for the song. Thanks!

THIS SONG IS IN LOW DEFINITION! AN HD VERSION CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/105386.

This was my first song I ever wrote and published. I hope you enjoy it!

The melody is much too simple for my liking, but that's the matter of taste. On a more objective note, the quality of samples is terrible. Particularly a flute sounds totally artificial and unnatural.

However, if it is your first composition, it is not bad at all. Many popular artists started from much lower level. Work hard and who knows?


Creative Commons License

16 January 2012

DJ Blackwidow - "Lucid Dreams"

Good electronica/techno (7/10)

All songs written, produced, mixed and mastered by DJ Blackwidow.
This CD basically was an experiment as I was writing and testing new songs for my compilation CD. I wanted to try new styles and new approaches to various sounds I had in my head. The DJ Blackwidow sound comes full circle on this one. Enjoy!
Special thanks: DJ Jax, Schmedhead, Buffalo, Juice, Gabe (for allowing the BlackJaq remix of his song to exist), Nikki, Jenny, Soundgirl Sue, Erin, Jay, mom and dad.
Remember to check out further CDs by DJ Blackwidow, BlackJaq, and DJ Jax...all available on Jamendo.
2007 BlackJaq Studios

Good electronica/techno album. Some tracks are better, some are only good - overall, a nice recording, worth recommending.

[Artist's Myspace]

Creative Commons License



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.

13 January 2012

Melchiades Estrada Band, the - "Music of Youth"

Simple, catchy, too long (6/10)
Album de jeunesse. Toutes les musiques présentées ici ont été composées entre 14 et 19 ans par The Melchiades estrada Band.

The return of the '80s. Most of the tracks are nice - simple but catchy. But for me the album is too long - not all the tunes are equally interesting and somewhere around the 16th track one gets slowly bored.

However, this album proves that you do not need expensive equipment to make great electronic music. Of course, you can hear from the first second that it has been made on a home computer from the '80s. And so what? The sound is not everything. The melodies, the feeling are usually more important. And for these tracks the "cheap-old-80s" sound is like a spice in a dish.

[Artist's Myspace]

Creative Commons License

11 January 2012

Abogix (J.K.), the - "History Of The Necronomicon, the"

Too ambient for me (6/10)
BITTE SPENDET FUER MENSCHEN DIE AN TOURETTE ERKRANKT SIND! JEDEN CENT WIRD VON MIR AN DIE HILFSORGANISATION "CANNABIS PATIENTEN GERMANY" WEITERGELEITET!
Necronomicon-the book of all evil!
Tja,was gibt's da noch zu beschreiben? Reinhören und die Geisterbahnfahrt kann loshegehen! Ach ja,das Cover wurde auch diesmal wieder von WarMock ...diesmal aber in zusammenarbeit mit mir selbst gemacht...also ich machte die Teufelsfratze auf dem Buch das auf dem Cover zu sehen ist...ja und der rest,der grossteil übernahm dann wieder mal der gute WarMock! Thank's Amigo!

Of course Master Abogix never goes below the certain (high) level. However, this album is too ambient for me - saying ambient I mean calm and monotonous. Not much is happening throughout some tracks, apart from the diabolic speeches - what is another drawback for me. I am definitely not keen on including speeches in musical tunes. It distracts attention from the music itself.

Nevertheless, I encourage you to check it out, because as I said the quality of this recording is still very high and it can appeal to you, if you are an ambient fan and inclusion of speeches is not a disadvantage for you.



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.

Creative Commons License

[Artist's Myspace]

10 January 2012

Silence Industry, the - "Edge Of Illusion, the"

Songwriting skills vs production skills (7/10)

The 4th release from The Silence Industry. This time The Silence Industry can be heard refining their unique sound which combines elements of post-punk, industrial, noise, dream-pop, psychedelia and goth-rock. "The Edge of Illusion" is a reference to our dispossession and our struggles to overcome it: a theme that runs throughout the release.

It is sad and frustrating. Because this band truly knows how to write great gothic rock/metal songs. Even if they borrow heavily from Fields of the Nephilim, these tunes are so good that it would not be a problem.

So why is it sad? The reason is all the work and talent they put into songwriting is wasted because of lack of production skills and/or equipment. This album sounds like recorded in a bucket full of water, but with the mikes placed not only outside the bucket, but also in another room. The mix is flat, with all the instruments forming an undistinctive mass of dull sound. The vocals are particularly awful, unintelligible and buried deep in the background. Yuck.

I pondered how to rate this work and I am giving it 7/10, but only because the songs themselves deserve 9 or even 10. The quality of sound deserves 2 or 3. One could say it should not matter - Jamendo is not for professionals and I should rate only the quality of songwriting. But what if poor production makes the recording almost unlistenable? Should I award 5 stars to the album that I can barely listen without my ears aching? No way. That is not going to happen.

Re-record this album, guys, and I will be happy to give it full 10 points.

The album has been released on Jamendo as well as by the now-defunct netlabel Ekleipsi and is available for downloading at the following locations in mp3 and ogg formats:
You can also download it directly from the artist at Bandcamp in a variety of formats, including a lossless FLAC version.



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation at Jamendo or Bandcamp. I would choose Bandcamp to support sharing lossless music.

Creative Commons License

[Artist's Myspace]

Nationale2 - "ElectroService"

Minimalistic approach, yet quality kept at the maximum (10/10)

9 years after the release of 1 opus of ElectroService 1 on the label UCMG, Nationale2 offers the album "ElectroService." We have kept the 4 tracks from the EP most other tracks of the same ilk. What lovers rejoice electro old school !

Minimalistic approach, yet quality kept at the maximum from the beginning to the end. Intelligent electronica, not for disco freaks. Just brilliant.

Thank you for sharing such a great recording for free.

Creative Commons License



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.

09 January 2012

Hobby Horse - "Dry Flower"

Not bad, but doesn't fit my taste (6/10)

Ep comprenant 6 titres, enregistrer en novembre 2006 par Pierre David.
Nade : Guitare et Chant
Sylvain : Guitare et Chant
Rémi : Betterie et Choeurs
Vianney : Basse et Choeurs

The musicians are skilled, but I do not like the vocalist's singing manner. There is no passion in her voice, she sings as if somebody pointed gun at her head and made her do it. There are no catchy melodies and the noise is not powerful but dull and boring. I love noisy music but it has to appeal to me because of its qualities. When there are no melodies, we should be able to feel the "power of noise" - the overwhelming desire to smash a chair on a wall and break windows with your head (a great example would be the band "Therapy?"). During this recording I had only an overwhelming desire to go to sleep.

There is one exception - the first track "Alex". This one is really fine. But not because of the singing manner, but because of the great riffs.

Their sound is heavily influenced by Sonic Youth, what can be seen as another drawback or a recommendation depending on whether you are a fan of Sonic Youth or rather originality.

Creative Commons License

05 January 2012

Floating Mind - "Krak" [EP]

Interesting minimal techno (7/10)

Floating Mind is Roberto Vitali, the man behind monoKraK.
first release on the netlabel from Geneva (Switzerland) mainly oriented in ambient and minimal techno music.

Interesting minimal techno, characterized by repetitive sound patterns. Making such music is difficult, because it is easy to fall into boredom, if things get too repetitive. Floating Mind succeeds in almost all the tracks utilizing broken beats and strange samples - successfully building disturbing atmosphere. The one exception is the tune "Loving U", which seems to drag on forever with annoying vocal samples in the front (if I hear "I'm still loving you" one more time I'm gonna go postal).

The album has been released by the monoKraK netlabel in mp3 format and is available for a direct download as well as at archive.org.


Creative Commons License



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the netlabel and its artists with a donation.

04 January 2012

31 fevrier..., le - "Vous penetrez dans une piece dont les murs sont couverts de circuits et d'ecrans de controle divers"

Mediocre achievement (5/10)

Il est là... servez vous.
ecoutez le, critiquez le,
aimez le, detestez le.
Mais surtout, dites le.
Ici, maintenant.

Good technical skills are not always connected with a composing talent. The tunes on this album are just average - the band plays exactly the same as thousands other nu-metal bands nowadays. So the result is rather boring, because you are not surprised with anything. A solid work without the soul. I also have to mention drums, which are particularly bad, with overwhelming annoying hi-hat in front. Yuck!

Slightly better than average:
1 Bonanza
2 Koto le satellite
6 Z.2 (this one is only a small electronic interlude - but a surprisingly good one)

Creative Commons License

03 January 2012

Baiki - "Do It Yourself"

A promising act - check it out if you like folk rock (6/10)

The title of the album soon imposed itself :
We had no label, so we threw ourselves in self-production
We had no distributor, so we went into self-distribution
We had no promoter, so we self-promoted
We had no website, so self-webmastered

Knowing we could only rely on ourselves, we named the album after this self-attitude. And to push the concept further, we declined the imagery of a multinational DIY furniture store to create the cover of our album. It was nothing more than a gimmick, no bad intentions… We must confess that the end result was remarkable thanks to the combined talents of 2 friends : Michel and Chan. So we had a good laugh though that didn’t last long. This multinational got really upset. The end result was that we had to bring their minds at peace and promise to put an end to our misdemeanour and commit to stop annoying them again in the future.

This CD was therefore “released” in a fairly confidential way in Belgium at the end of 2003. Nevertheless, there only remains a handful of this “outlaw collector”.

And then hope came from the South, from Montpellier to be precise. A modest label, Musiquémo took “Do It Yourself” under their wings and signed a licensing agreement. A new cover was created, the CD repressed and bang “Do It Yourself” now proudly sits in the music shop racks in France since mid-February 2005.

This is quite an interesting work, blending rock, pop rock and folk rock, based on heavy use of acoustic instruments, with the singer trying to sing in four different languages. I do not know if it was such a good idea, because I have the impression that because of lack of language skills his performance is much weaker than it could be. This is definitely true with my native Polish, but Spanish also sounds very unconvincing, as if he had much trouble with proper pronunciation.

Nevertheless, it is a promising act, with a potential to grow. For the time being some tracks lack good melodies, the others have them too obvious and simple. The ugly cover of the Polish folk standard "Sokoly" shows clearly that they should work much much harder on their arrangements and ability to transmit musical energy through their recordings.

Still, I listened to this album with interest and I put them on my watchlist, hoping they will improve. Check them out if you like folk rock.

Creative Commons License

[Artist's website]

02 January 2012

Various Artists - "Behind The Corner"

Very good drum & bass compilation (9/10)
We would like to present our first release : "Behind the corner" as a FREE twelve tracks compilation. Melody and liquid side of drumandbass from such a great producers like Dissident, Drone, Radicall, Atmospherixz, Ultracode, Silrbfish and more. Enjoy !

Very good compilation of independent electronic music. This is the first release of the netlabel Absys Records and right from the start they set the bar very high. The album is oriented mainly on (but not limited to) drum & bass. Some elements of breakbeat and nu jazz can be easily found too, making the record more diverse and interesting. All the tracks are top quality, so if you like intelligent electronic music, do not hesitate to check it out.

The album has been released by the Absys Records netlabel and is available for downloading at the netlabel's website in mp3 format.



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the netlabel and its artists by purchasing goods in its shop.


Creative Commons License