Nymphomania - "Unashamed"

Dark ambient of the highest quality (10/10) From the artist: Earthy meditation loops of processed voice, bass guitar and wind chime, which resound unceasing throughout my new home by the woods. An album for eating nectarines and grapefruits in the early morning. The sequel to "In Spiral Expression". From the label: This is a real trip into mind. The fractal image of the inner self. A kaleidoscope of visions that have a meaning, but you should be sure, because taking the wrong path leads you nowhere. The labyrinth built by one's mind may look confusing, but it gives the hints - just listen. And never touch that green switch! All instruments programmed and played, vocals, music written and arranged by Josh Landry. Artwork by Mike Winchester. Dark ambient of the highest quality. With long drones flowing slowly through time and space. Only sometimes strange sounds of ethnic instruments or tribal chants remind you that you are taking part in some kind of a primeval ritual. This record is hypnotic and repetitive, but never boring like so many bad ambient works. Highly recommended to both ambient fans and people looking for a good introduction to this genre. The album has been released by the artist himself through his Bandcamp store under the "name your price" scheme. You can download it there in a variety of formats, including a lossless FLAC version. This release is copyrighted. It has been also reissued by the Russian label USC (United Studios Corporation), under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. On their website you will find links for downloading the album for free from several file storage websites, but only in 320 kbit MP3 format. They inform that "By downloading our files from links below you directly support artists and label". By the way - they release music on physical CDs too. SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation through Bandcamp.

[Artist's Soundcloud]

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.

Subterrestrial - "Goddess of Atvatabar, the"

Interesting but too repetitive dark ambient (6/10) The debut album from this San Francisco Bay Area artist, The Goddess of Atvatabar is inspired by the 1891 hollow earth adventure novel by William R. Bradshaw and leans heavily on dark ambient, tribal ambient and middle eastern musical themes. The Goddess of Atvatabar is a self-released web album and is available as a free download. This is an interesting dark ambient recording, although too repetitive for my liking. I like experimenting with dark atmosphere and strange sounds. The drawbacks are the said repetitiveness and absurd sound volume differences, forcing a listener to adjust the level throughout the album. For me the best tracks are nos. 01, 02 and 07, because they are not overly repetitive. If you like highly repetitive type of ambient, you can safely add 2 or 3 points to my rating. I guess using a word "repetitive" in every sentence, when reviewing a repetitive album is somehow repetitive, I mean, is somehow OK, isn't it? Apart from Jamendo the album is available at archive.org on Subterrestrial's own "netlabel" channel - possibly in better quality, because Jamendo is notorious for very low quality of their mp3 files. Please note that this edition is governed by a different CC license: . I guess it means you can choose the one that better suits your needs. [Jamendo mirror @ archive.org] | [Artist's Website] | [Myspace]

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Various Artists - "Newcastle Sampler"

Interesting hardcore techno compilation (6/10)

All Tracks Built In Newcastle, Australia Published By Len & Jen Music (ASCAP) Distributed By Soundbase Music Germany Newcastle Sampler is a compilation released by the label Bastard Loud Records, presenting several acts from the Newcastle hardcore techno scene, recording for the famous label Bloody Fist Records. This is an interesting album, offering quality tunes, and although I personally dig only two tracks out of six, the compilation remains a great insight into the history of hardcore techno. My favorites are Nasenbluten - Treadmill and Disassembler - Ants. They are fast, aggressive, disturbing, but without being too repetitive and without overuse of speech samples - two weaknesses of so many hardcore techno tunes. The other four do not fit my taste, being haunted by the said flaws. They represent the type of hardcore techno, which is totally boring for me, despite its aggressiveness and high tempos. Still, they should appeal to hardcore hardcore techno fans out there. If you happen to be one, you can safely add some points to my 6/10 rating. I guess this album is very rare now, but if you happen to run into it somewhere along the links, be sure to check it out, if you are a fan of hardcore techno. And do not forget to visit the official Bandcamp website of Bloody Fist Records, where you can listen to and buy some other releases from this label.

Nationale2 - "Painful Experiment"

Intelligent minimalistic electronica (8/10) Painful Experiment is a resolutely electronica album. It was entirely composed with a Roland MC-303, a vocoder MAM VF-11 and a speak and spell. Painful Experiment is probably, to date, the concept of the more intimate Nationale2. Folded back on itself after the loss of two years' compositions, because of the crash of a HDD, he began a return to the source with the machine's most controversial by the purists when it was released. Intelligent minimalistic electronica. When someone is creative, he does not need much equipment. Thank you for sharing your work. [mirror @ archive.org] SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation on this page - use the button "Donate" in the upper left corner.

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

Nationale2 - "19901999"

Nice straightforward techno (8/10) The album entitled 19901999 is a compilation of songs composed between 1990 and 1999 that were never marketed. N2 has selected titles that took the most heart and not lost any of their power despite the passage of time. Nice straightforward techno - minimalistic, but not primitive. Just check it out. [mirror @ archive.org] SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation.

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

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.

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

Uncertainty Principle - "Bathe In The Black Sun" [SP]

Nice doom atmosphere, but too repetitive (7/10) "The Nulll Collective" is a group of like-minded artists from around the world who are sick of commercialism and artistic conformity in both the world at large and in the microcosmic wasteland of underground extreme music. Through NULLL Infra, the NULLL collective will periodically release their music as free downloads. These tracks are all previously unreleased and will also be made available on CD. The April Infra release brings a long-awaited massive droning funeral dirge from Uncertainty Principle. Multiple guitar layers guide you to the surface of the black sun, and beyond. This is a drone-based instrumental doom metal song. I like this genre and I quite enjoyed this work. But I can see its shortcomings. The tune is too repetitive - lack of vocals doesn't help here. Instrumental pieces require a little different style of writing, as to compensate for the lack of a vocal line. Usually, one of the instruments is brought to the front, playing a distinct melody, the purpose of which is to substitute the singer. Here we have only a long wall of drones, which may soon become boring for a listener who is not a dedicated fan of the genre. Not much is changing or happening throughout the (very long) track. Finally, production sucks a little bit. The sound is not selective, what adds to the tiring effect of this work. You can also download this album for free in a lossless FLAC version from archive.org (OGG version is also available there).

Royalty-free music for professional licensing [Artist's website]

This piece is accompanied by a video, which can be downloaded at archive.org.

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

Ana Never - "Ana Never" [remastered and rereleased]

Depressive post rock (8/10) At first, we would like to say THANK YOU for Goran and all Ana Never crew for makeinkg possible to show this beautiful release in Poland. You'll find some more info in a release booklet. It's great pleasure to have a chance to re-realase and distribute this album in Poland ... few more words about release soon ... now just enjoy with listening this stuff. Extremely sad, deep and anxious dose of experimental, post-rock, ambient music from Serbia. This is depressive atmospheric post-rock of really high quality. Perfect as a soundtrack for suicide attempts. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format. You can also buy it directly from the artist at Bandcamp for as low as $3.60 - no money goes to the fuckin' RIAA. If you like the music - do it! Support the artist. A lossless FLAC version is also available. The version released by 49manekinow contains two bonus live tracks:

[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.

Rastadeush - "Night Is Too Short"

Energetic techno - but not all tracks are equally fine (6/10)

second release at 49manekinow.net [49mannequines.net]. dirty astmatic terror electro-tech/techno from south silesia in poland. "night is too short" is LP recorded in 2006 by young silesian hooligan RASTADEUSH

It's energetic techno, mixing breakbeat, electro, dance - but not all tracks are equally fine. Almost half of the album (01, 03, 08, 10, 13-14) contains primitive, repetitive dance and electro pieces. But the rest is much much better - still energetic and danceable, but catchy and creative at the same time. So I still recommend checking this album out - some of the tracks are top class. Rastadeush is really talented, if only he stopped trying to satisfy primitive disco lovers.

The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.

[Myspace]

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.

Rastadeush - "Dirty Girl Dance" [SP]

Good and bad - where's the ugly? (6/10)

The aim of this EP is to prepare you for my new album Hard Beat Dilla. It consists of 2 tracks. The first was composed with my mate mr.H (a representant of the same streets as me)and the second one- with my old friend (not only mine) to listen is enough. The title track is terrible. Simple monotonous beat broken from time to time by ugly disco vocals repeating one phrase over and over again. It just drives you mad. However, no. 2 "No one knows" is great. It is powerful techno track with funny samples from the Polish children cartoon "Reksio". It is energetic, cleverly mixed, catchy, with crazy feeling. Download it ASAP. The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format. [Artist's Myspace]

Zemlja Broj 9 - "Polja oscilatora"

Hypnotic but too repetitive (6/10)

[Artist's website]

Zemlja Broj 9 is a dose of culturally-mixed music which provokes a sense of madness and ensures a mysterious moment of forgetfulness. The group with background in the Balkan cauldron serves a totally different kind of music than it could be imagined in this side of the continent. The mellifluous guitars in combination with babelicious and full of energy sound of drums drive to insane and sheer sensoric bliss which will stay in your memory for a long time.

This is noisy rock heavily based on distorted guitars. It is mostly instrumental, with some tiring mumbling vocals on several tracks. It is hypnotic, but for me slightly too repetitive. Still, it's an interesting work. The best tracks are:
1 Prastava Voznja
4 Discowall
5 Polivoks 9

The album has been released by the 49manekinow.net netlabel and is available for downloading at archive.org in mp3 format.