Negative Sound Institute

Dava Sobel was featured recently on indieish CC track of the day. His music is released by Negative Sound Institute, a net label with a catalog that offers a variety of ambient treats:

Dava Sobel: Berzelii Park
Closet Ballerinas: Roaring Silence
Gurdonark: Galveston Island in December
Thomas Nunnally Trio: After Image (2)

Alcian Blue

What a beautiful noise... and I missed it -- Alcian Blue just split up after 10 years of making music. They've released an album this year, and left a beautiful legacy of shared music, including these:

Never Go Away
Angelica Take Me Down

DJ Maer

I continue to enjoy mixes by San Francisco local, DJ Maer. He is involved in several net music websites, including OEM Radio and the Dub Beautiful Collective net label.

Samples:

DJ Maer: Where No Dub Fears To Tread

Adham Shaikh with Shankar: Tongu - Mbira Remix (Live)

Dora Flood

Heard Dora Flood on reloda, they're a Bay Area band. I love my local talent. They've shared their whole catalog... unfortunately, I must wait for the new CD. Forget about shoegazing -- there's a lot of stars to count here... from Deep Purple, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, The Guess Who, and all the way up to Radiohead.

A chronology from five releases:

1301 EP: Faith in Doubt
Walk A Light Year Mile: Black Widow Walking
Lost On Earth: Mafioso
Welcome: Starflower
Highlands: Stargazing

Four more tracks from the new We Live Now CD at Dora Flood's myspace page.

Streampad Web Music Player

Earhead#101111 has joined the ranks of the 1700 bloggers that elbo.ws aggregates. I found some very useful posts in the forums there, including one about Streampad.

Streampad is an ajax/web2 style music player that has some overlap with Songbird in it's usefulness for finding music on the internet. I particularly like the Streampad playlist feature. I can organize music I've found without having to download it or open winamp, and sharing is easy.

So, without further ado, please press the big play button in the SP Player you see here. Watch out, pressing pause stops the music, but not the download -- click refresh if you want the music and the download to stop.

My first SP playlist: Michael Franti. You must know someone that would love to find music for peace in their Xmas stocking???? Buy it at Michael Franti's music store.

Free Download of the Day

Many sites with large catalogs have either a featured artist of the day, or a free MP3 download of the day -- or both. I like them because it's a good way to follow who or what is new in all genres. Four I follow are:

indieish.com -- cc:365 -- track of the day with a Creative Commons license, usually accompanied with a link to the netlabel release.

GarageBand -- Face Off, actually two free tracks a day, plus the added twist that you get to vote (registration required) for your favorite. One voter wins around $200 worth of gear every day. The favorite band of the day can go on to win a recording contract. (Warning! highly annoying intro on Face Off page -- turn your volume down!)

Napster -- track of the day (registration required, unless you solve the puzzle). They have the last 7 days available for download.

emusic -- just today's track. I find that emusic has the selection I enjoy most.

Creative Commons goodness

I saw two posts in the last couple of days about artists that mash up other artists work on videos uploaded to YouTube. One on Digital Music Weblog and this one on Brown Sweater, White Cat, created by CCmixter contributor gurdonark who mashes up a Lisa DeBenedictis tune with a selection of CC photo's from Flickr:

There's also some fan made videos of Sigur Rós on YouTube.

She, Sir

She, Sir is a Texas band I heard on 3hive. Thankfully, somebody is picking up where My Bloody Valentine left off.

She, Sir: It's My Way of Staying Connected

Blue Foundation

Spotted this on The Digital Music Weblog... another great Danish band raises it's head on the internet: Blue Foundation -- lots of tunes there to listen to on their web player.

Update May 31, 2009: Blue Foundation disabled embedded video's -- but it's definitely worth a click.

Surf Music Day

I've been stricken with surf music fever. It started with The Whys and Pollo Del Mar on Sunday, and it's been continuing unabated. I didn't realize Surf Music is so big in Japan, they call it Eliki Boom (electric boom), and the Ventures can still fill a stadium full with devoted fans!

This Eliki Boom may not be podsafe, but I found it on a radio station website, so I'm going out on a limb here because 1) it's from 1967, and 2) you just have to hear it:

Takeshi Terauchi and The Bunnys: Theme from Symphony No 5

Radio WMFU has more from Takeshi Terauchi here and here.

Q. Is there Podsafe Surf Music.
A. Yes. Lots.

The Mermen (a favorite local band) have more than 50 live concerts at archive.org including a couple from Burning Man.

The Mermen: Little Stinky Kitty (burning man 2004)

I came across a Surf Radio station at SoundClick that features hours of listening, plus downloads including:

The Amino Acids:

The Whys Invade San Francisco

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity... a Japanese Hula Girl Surf Band playing Wipeout! at the Hotel Utah... and I saw it! Pollo Del Mar was there with them...

Pollo Del Mar: Cutlass Supreme
more shared music at their website.

The Whys: Sunset Party

The Whys perform Wipeout! by the Surfaris:

Under Byen

Under Byen is a Danish band I heard on 3hive. Under Byen means "underneath the city"... it's dark down there...

Under Byen: Plantage