Snakehips - "Minnow Johnson, the" [EP]

Bland RnB (5/10)

SNAKEHIPS is the music of Ollie Dickinson from North London. For live or DJ Bookings, Remixes, Collabs, a chat or hate mail: omdickinson@hotmail.com Soundcloud / Facebook / Twitter Rather bland, boring and repetitive minialbum by a British DJ, exploring the abyss of generic RnB and hip hop. It is available as a free download on mediafire.com, but really... just go somewhere else. There's too much good music everywhere to waste time on this. Of course, a truly dedicated fan of these genres may choose this over good music - everyone has a free will, after all.

Villiers, Jacques de - "Sleepsongs"

Very calm ambient (4/10) This album was self-released by the young artist from South Africa - Jacques de Villiers. 49manekinow and online distro series tries to help with promotion of interesting underground music. Sleepsongs is a short album filled with sleepy, minimalistic, warm drone / ambient and piano sounds. Great soundtrack for past Valentine day. This is very very calm music. Too calm for my taste. It's so slow and quiet that it's just boring. Only for dedicated fans of orthodox ambient. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Artist's Myspace]

Nuoh - "Roztarte w pyl"

Boring drone ambient / noise (1/10) With great, great pleasure we would like to recommend newest NUOH release. This is music which tell stories you wouldn’t like to hear.. Experimental, Minimalistic Tape music at the highest level. Those records was made in fall of 2003, we think it's a great soundtrack to weather maelstorm in Poland. Boring drone ambient / noise. At least boring for me, as it is not my favorite genre. Still, I find some works appealing. But not this time, so it is only for dedicated fans of the genre. Others will fall asleep quickly. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Artist's Webpage / Myspace]

Wolski, Michal - "Discoteque" [SP]

Failed attempt at 8-bit or just bad techno (2/10) Discoteque Pinkkong's "mala dama" is not enough? So here you are! This time Michal Wolski - toward plastic label's merriment - flings "discoteque" to a machine of 49m. Michal, surrounded by more powerful equipment back-up than ever before, takes you to the disco, in which some teaser swiped all colourophones and a rhythm of dance to couple of dying of boredom pairs is determined by a hard bass line... Monotonous techno beats, awful plastic sounds of cheap keyboard and ugly flat mix make for really tiring recording. And don't think I mean a deliberate lo-fi effect that 8-bit artists achieve by using primitive synthetic samples. 8-bit can be funny, fresh, catchy and fun to listen to, if only made by a talented artist. If Wolski wanted to make an 8-bit piece, he failed badly. If he wanted modern techno sound he failed even more. Any pros? Thank Zeus, it's short. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Myspace]

Pablolek - "Altamar"

Boring ambient (4/10) Quiet experimental, astonishing and fresh release from Argentina. Boring ambient. Only one track is not bad: "003.linfatico". The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format. [Myspace]

Nie, dziekuje - "Spacery"

Not so good... (4/10) What does drummer do when he is fed up with hammering on hides? He became an enginer of space travelling... in a walking tempo. How much does the devoid drums ambient-experimental heaven of Michal Witkowski offer? You will find it out right now. If people are stars, then the space is crowded is in places. There are also nebulas of calm and pianos of emptiness. The first walk from the second is separated by four deep breaths. Because in autumn the rhythm is unnecessary to stroll. It's some experimental ambient. Unfortunately, the experiment has failed. Only two tracks (04 & 06) are listenable, while others are boring, chaotic, without any thought behind them. Not to say about ripping or compression errors present in some places. :-/ The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Myspace]

KraftiM - "Flaxas" [EP]

I didn't like it... (6/10) Awaiting the new album, here's a little excursion inbetween. These rather meditative tracks are based on saxophone play from Alfred from Benin. KraftiM took the liberty to play around with those waves. Objectives were to give a dreamy, introspective and relaxing reading from the playing from this great african artist, who generously provided me with these special wavs. Thanks Alfred. WarMocK is the German artist who made the great sleeve and let the sax shine. Thanks WarMocK. I really didn't like this album. This is just the type of KraftiM's work that I cannot dig, no matter how hard I'd try. This album is 100% pure ambient. Everyone who read some of my reviews knows that it's not my favourite genre. On the other hand, there are ambient works that I adore (or maybe somebody dares to question the ambiance of "Selected Ambient Works" by Aphex Twin? Nobody? I knew it.) Typical for true ambient, you won't find here any beats at all. Just long atmospheric passages without the beginning or the end. Oh, did I say atmospheric? I should say sleepy... boring... monotonous... repetitive... uncreative... OK, maybe you could say "unfolding the atmosphere of boredom", but that's not exactly the thing I expect from ambient works... My reviews are usually rather analytic, while others prefer to write about their feelings raised by the music. So, this time let's talk a bit about my feelings. Listening to this album I felt like I was a husband of a saxophone player, who arrived at the club to pick up my wife after rehearsal. Unfortunately, I arrived early and the doors were locked, so I had to wait outside in strong wind and pouring rain for my wife to finish playing. I didn't want to disturb her, but I heard that she wasn’t even playing any particular melody. It seemed like she was just tuning her instrument or just fooling around to kill her boredom playing accidental notes, while she waited for me after the rehearsal had ended. After 20 minutes and 11 seconds of listening to these accidental sounds, which in a strong wind were sometimes louder, sometimes almost couldn't be heard at all, I had enough. I love my wife's playing on a sax, but this mess-from-behind-the-wall in any way couldn’t be called listening to music. So, after the said 20 minutes I finally banged on the door and my torture ended. I wanted to give this album 6/10 rating. But as you see - I didn't. Why? I don't know. Usually I rate the albums that I don't like, because I don't believe in writing 100% objective reviews. The art you experience is always filtered by your preferences, emotions and thoughts and cannot be judged completely objectively. You can say something is professional, stylish etc., but you shouldn't (and you can't!) rate it without taking your feelings into consideration. Potential listeners are also human beings, not robots, and it could be useful, when they'll read "I personally don't like this album, because it does not fit my taste" or "it's too noisy" or "the subject of songs is unpleasant". Maybe they also don't like explicit lyrics or noisy music or have a similar taste to the reviewer's. The true masterpiece will defend itself, despite a few negative reviews. But this time... I don't know, maybe it's a matter of extremely enthusiastic reviews, maybe extreme vulnerability of KraftiM ;-)... And maybe I feel this can be something great that I just don't comprehend or I'm not able to appreciate... So I don't want to spoil general rating of the album? Maybe... So, to end this much-too-long review: believe the others and check this out... And if you won't like it, don't forget to write a negative review. So I could stop feeling so lonely down here. ;-)

Royalty-free music for professional licensing [Myspace]

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

De L Afront - "433"

Repetitive ambient (4/10) 433 - the second ep of our friend from france (De l afront) it`s an over 10 minutes of sad, melancholic, dark, droney electronics and ambient sounds which will take you for a trip in the darkest secrets of your mind. This music is a perfect soundtrack for an black theatre play and it realize its role in Molotov theatre. The young artist one more time proves that the experimental sounds from france are on the highest level. Dark ambient mixed with noise, full of drones. Unfortunately quite boring and repetitive. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.