Free Music: Interpretations & Trip-hop by Any Other Name

Let’s start this three-part offering of links to free music with the double-scoop ATCO: A Tribute from Xiomara, a musician from San Francisco.

Radical re-workings of rap are a dicey game, often producing novelty (which isn’t automatically bad) but usually cringe-inducing. But once in a while, the right performer picks the right material and does something genuinely interesting with a style of pop music not necessarily suited to cover treatment.

Xiomara spritzes Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” with a nearly a capella first verse to show off her Depression-era blues voice that, appropriately rides into a sort of gypsy-jazz breakdown at the end. The flipside puts a daydream drift across “Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a watery, soft and positively sensual reading of ATCQ’s already drowsy tune. The original is a request, Xiomara’s reading is pure promise keeping.

Get it, spin it, dig it.

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Electric Wizard’s legend is mostly true. The English doom metal act has conjured a certain strain of creepy, occult-shaded metal sludge so filthy that listening to them can still feel transgressive. But turn off the amps and most classic metal, and a fair amount of doom, can sound like folk-blues that trades in murder-ballad imagery.

So what happens when a talented fan scrubs the druggy fuzz from Electric Wizard’s music? Acoustic Wizard answers that with some of the scariest campfire jams you’ll ever hear. The first two volumes, each with three tracks, are called Please Don’t Sue Me, which seems unlikely as we imagine the members of Electric Wizard would be all over this. It’s an act of pure love, with wonderfully gloomy results.

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Electronic music site Earmilk calls Goldbloc’s Black Gold EP “one of the best slept on acts of our time." The term “slept on” seems to have lost its potency in this era of music consumption. After all, there’s so much new music that even dedicated genre fans are going to miss out on something. It’s just too hard to keep up. That said, Goldbloc really is a fantastic duo from Boston.

As our headline says, the four songs comprising Black Gold are trip-hop. Whether Goldbloc calls it that doesn’t matter. Don’t go in expecting the languorous, end-of-the century angst of Portishead, nor the jazz-lite chillout sound that made coffee houses seem cool in the late ‘90s. Seriously deep bass rolls with midnight menace beneath slightly glitchy treatment of vocals that recall the post-coital rasp of Elin Kastlander from jj. This is where soul music should be today.

You can download the EP for free by liking them on Facebook. We got a download error message, but that’s just Facebook being willfully difficult. You should be able to see the Dropbox link where you can grab the compressed zip file. Roll up.

Dip Your Bowl Into the Cosmic Cauldron

We don't know a whole lot about the blog The Ghost of the Weed Garden, and we like it that way.

The person or people behind it go by an owlish tag that looks like this: {{{{o\/o}}}}

As you might imagine, that anonymity delights us.

On the site are music mixes  you can stream or download, scanned artwork from the covers of horror, fantasy and science fiction paperbacks, as well as covers from cryptic, sometimes self-published looking books on magick, philosophy and other occult oddities.

Honestly, it's the sort of stuff that would have made a much younger Typing Monkey freak out and think about church.

The most recent music mix posted on Weed Garden is titled "Cosmic Cauldron." And as the site itself says, it's packed top to bottom with "Psychedelic, Acid Folk, Kosmische, Electronic, Occult, [and] Haunted VHS."

We spun it today and it fit the sunny autumn afternoon just right. As the evening brought chilling fog, "Cosmic Cauldron" swirled with creepy acid folk, devilish weirdness and a few good dabs of resin-smeared psych.

Have fun.

Folks

"For You who loves the folklore" says the tagline on the music blog Rare World and Folkore Music. [Caps theirs. --ed.]

We figure that's us, so we dug in and oh boy, what a spread! Some of the download links are expired, and the posts are about as sporadic as The Typing Monkey's. But those complaints don't even register when there's so much there to explore.

If you don't loves the folklore, perhaps you are a bold and daring media consumer who enjoys listening outside of your comfort zone. Click, scroll, read, download, listen, repeat. The blog's contributors (Varvaras, apelsin and Folklore Maniac) are doing the Lord's work.

We'll be right back after these messages

We've all been quite busy working on our annual reviews and preparing PowerPoint decks to present to the board of trustees in hopes of securing a budget to keep this thing going for another fiscal year.

As is often the case, while we're locked in a conference room arguing for our very existence, news is breaking. Farewell Duck Dunn. Au revoir Chuck Brown. Good bye  Donna Summer. We'll miss you, Robin Gibb. There are likely others we're forgetting.

Instead of barraging you with links and YouTube clips of the dearly departed -- we trust you've been inundated with such things already -- The Typing Monkey will post this vintage clip of singer/songwriter Roger Whittaker performing his tune "New World in the Morning."

If you don't know Mr. Whittaker's work, it's not hard to find him. He's an under-appreciated gem from the era of Judy Collins and Cat Stevens.


[courtesy of geralddonais]

Free Music: The Great Tribulation

The Typing Monkey is never too proud to admit terrible, awful, really unforgivable mistakes. Back in July we should have instructed you to immediately click over to CD Baby or various other online retailers and purchase a copy of The Flood Brought the Fire by The Great Tribulation.

But did we? No sir and/or madam, we did not. A grievous error we will attempt to rectify by pointing you to the band's BandCamp page where they are currently giving the 10-song LP away as a free digital download, thus saving you the hassle of ripping the CD and dropping it into the MP3 player of your choice.


We trust that you will do the right thing and buy the CD too, or even buy the MP3s from CD Baby. (Give one set to a friend!) Or just preview the album online and buy the physical CD.

What you'll get is a crackerjack bunch of tunes from the Ann Arbor "folk noir" quartet. Their particular strain of elastic Americana treads all over the 20th century without laying claim to a particular decade.

Flood unspools as a collection of short stories, evoking the same feelings as a tail lights shrinking in the dark or that weird mood you fall into when the leaves start to turn and coffee tastes a little better and dammit it's going to get cold soon.

As we discussed back in March, "Sure as the Rain" stands out among the crowd, a classic quiet storm that has likely already soundtracked the conception of a future generation of miserable registered voters. But pay close attention to the various stringed instruments circling one another at the start of "Better Left Unfound" and give yourself over to "When a Stranger Kisses Me." Lovely.

Go now.

"No point in running'"

... or Look What Dr. Fred Did

We are obligated to like things that our friends and family create. Knowing the artist behind a work of art makes us more likely to say "yes" to something we wouldn't normally seek out or pay close attention to.

Reader you have been there: A friend gets a gallery opening, publishes some writing, the band they're in plays a show, a dance recital. Love and pride and sometimes a desire not to wound makes us embrace the the effort if not the result and sometimes that's more important.

And then there are those rare instances when the result is good and worth sharing and talking about, not because you know the creator but because you know the creation.

The Typing Monkey enjoys a fair amount of kismet when it comes to talented family, friends and associates. We knew Dr. Fred Beldenstein's songwriting stirred at smoldering coals of heart-damaged music, and his previous efforts climbed closer and closer to that glow.

With his new-ish band The Great Tribulation, Dr. Fred has reached the light via his song "Sure As the Rain." It's a comforting bit of musical reassurance and understanding that these are, to crib a line from Jon Stewart, hard times, not end times. [How ya like that, Fred? -- ed.]

Singer Jeni Lee Richey doesn't sell the lyric so much as offer it because she understands that we need it. The voice, the words, the syrup of the slide guitar all reach out and pull you into an oddly personal shelter before Dr. Fred's quiet-storm guitar opens up and gushes. They call it "folk noir" and "dark country" -- sure. American to the core and as honest as a pair of dirty hands.

Go to the band's Facebook page and scroll down to the entries for Feb 23 to hear "Sure as the Rain" and visit their Reverb Nation page to hear more from The Great Tribulation.

Where Were You?

The End Times played their final show on Friday April 16 in a dark loft snuggled deep in the mixed-industrial spaciousness of Georgetown, a south Seattle neighborhood where the soot and jet-fumes set the right mood for the trio’s stark, Southern gothic sound.

Patrons sat quietly, leaning in as Abi Grace sang, supported by Fred Beldin’s acoustic guitar strums and the woozy curls of slide guitar from Tyson Lynn. The End Times show felt like a church service -- a little Robert-Mitchum-in-Night-of-the-Hunter, but mostly comforting in a “we share your pain” way.

Grace’s voice has the specific charm of the graveyard cherub -- she’s plenty sweet but the words she’s singing ain’t necessarily so. And as Beldin and Lynn hunkered over their instruments, the whole procession felt like the sharing of some secret that the audience knew they needed to hear.

Seeing this line-up of the band again is about as likely as seeing Elvis at the Stop-n-Shop, but that shouldn’t prevent those who never witnessed a live performance from picking up The End Times LP (or buying the download).

This is folk, for lack of a better label, but not of the life, love and unemployment variety. Sure, These Are the End Times could class up your local coffee joint, but you’re better served spinning this on those mornings when you sit in the kitchen and sip something stronger than French roast. It’s thinking music for the wandering mind.

Good work End Times. Seattle still needs you, so thanks for the document.

***

Post Script
Opening band Pillow Army did their Americana-pop thing -- a surprisingly loud collection of stringed instruments, drums and sometimes flute. If you thought the orchestra nerds from high school didn’t dig the rock, Pillow Army has something to play for you. Bookending The End Times on the late side of the night was The River Empires, an Albany, Oregon outfit (drums, bass, keys/guitar, vocals/percussion, vocals/keys/et al.) that knocked out an impressive set of chamber pop that edged into mid-‘90s Britpop territory. Quite good and a shame that they not only played to a mostly empty house, but had to pack up and drive for four hours back home after their set. Ah, the rock & roll lifestyle.

Going to Hell Again

HELLSONGS
Hymns in the Key of 666
(Minty Fresh)
Recasting heavy metal songs as crisp modern folk with chalky female vocals isn't ironic or post-anything. The two genres share much thematic content. After all, if you're going to write a song about a train and you're not a Mississippi Delta blues singer, then chances are you're a folkie, or Saxon.

The Swedish trio chose smartly for at least half of their 10-song LP. Two compositions from Iron Maiden -- "The Trooper" and "Run to the Hills," both tales of brutal combat and the futility of war -- work so well in folk form that the line between original and cover version blurs. And the previously mentioned Saxon tune about the mail-carrying train ("Princess of the Night") reveals its nostalgic core once the amplification and denim are removed.

Musically, Key of 666 holds up for a good stretch. The rococo soloing of metal translates nicely into simplified, plucked acoustic guitars and icy piano. Peeling away the pummeling rhythms also exposes the blues and rock structures at the core of early metal and the new wave of British heavy metal.

One of the trio's biggest surprises comes from the face-value reading of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It." Though it never reaches the level of coal-miner union fight song, it does make you realize what a crafty songsmith Dee Snider is. And they put light raga decorations on AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," giving a fine impression of '60s hippy noodlings in Eastern divinity.

The inclusion of Europe's "Rock the Night" is puzzling to American ears. Also, Hellsongs should have known not to touch the overexposed/over-covered "Paranoid." Really, with such a bounty of Black Sabbath material to plunder, why that one?*

Reference material: It's difficult to learn of Hellsong's premise/gimmick and not think of the French duo Nouvelle Vague. That's okay, because Hellsongs likely has the same shelf-life. Who knows what folk-metal enthusiasts think of Hellsongs, but heshers who love classic metal might check out Hymns in the Key of 666, now that it's finally available in the U.S.

*At the time of this posting, Hellsongs' MySpace includes their version of "Warpigs" and it's vastly superior to their bland take on "Paranoid."

Seasonally Effective

BIBIO
Ambivalence Avenue
(Warp)
The press materials for Bibio's fourth LP claim that his switch from the Mush label to Warp "reflects a difference in musical output." This is one of those rare instances in which the PR one-sheet is correct.

Bibio, aka Stephen Wilkinson, sings on the majority of the 12 songs comprising Ambivalence. Granted, he uses his voice as another instrument most of the time, masking the clarity of his lyrics, but it's a big step for a man who previously hid behind his hypnotic guitar exercises. The bigger change here is the move toward actual songwriting.

Previous compositions relied heavily on Bibio's brassy guitar picking, looped into brittle melodic cycles. They were not without their charms, but here he's opened up the melodies and stretched them out, creating a broader spectrum of moods and pushing himself into unexpected territory. (His Curtis Mayfield falsetto ribbons around a freeze-dried funk in "Jealous of the Roses.")

The experimental aspects of his work -- field recordings, salvaged equipment not necessarily designed for professional use -- are all still in place. What's different is that he wields them better here. Chopped up recordings of children's voices stutter through the first half of "Fire Ant" and the separation between digital, analog and purely organic instruments is pleasantly, deliberately blurred.

Ambivalence Avenue shifts easily from sun-warmed music to fly kites by ("Lovers' Carvings" and the title track) to autumnal psych-folk ("The Palm of Your Wave" "Abrasion") while still leaving room for sampler & drum machine fun.

Reference materials: Calibrate your interest based on enthusiasm for Boards of Canada, Koushik and loads of other musicians who successfully dress muffled hip-hop beats in psychedelic finery. Or if you liked the direction J Dilla was taking before his death (e.g. "Nothing Like This") you might find new joys in Bibio's music.

A Blinding Sight to See

On the next-to-last day of June, staffers at the The Typing Monkey's Seattle offices arrived to start the work week and were surprised to find publisher S.L. Kreighton in his office already, with the door open and Donovan's "There Is a Mountain" playing on the hi-fi.

Assuming he'd ended up in Seattle on a trans-continental drinking tour, and must be nursing a snarling hangover -- though we all found his musical selection, set on repeat, an odd choice for him sober or drunk -- we let him be.

But his eventual visit to the editorial offices found him in a pleasant mood. It was the kind of cheerfulness that causes suspicion in reasonable people. He smelled of root vegetables, sap and dandelions. Our receptionist insists that the boss had a bit of glitter on his cheeks. Some of the accounting staff saw him in the lobby, engaged in an animated conversation with the janitor, with whom he may or may not have left the building.

We wrote it off as a rarity that we'd all still manage to forget in time. Then the car-rental bill arrived and with a little more investigation, we believe he may have been at the 9th Annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress.

There is such a thing. And now we're a little upset that this wasn't offered as a corporate retreat. Read an account of this year's event.

***

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
-- from "The Stolen Child" by Wm. Butler Yeats

It's Okay, He's Sensitive

PAUL BRYAN
Listen of
(Sonar Kollectiv)
At first listen, this reissue of soft pop from 1973 breezes past, light and sweet. Bryan's jazzy singer-songwriter exercises don't even merit the attention of re-release effort from a European label known mostly for electronic music, it would seem. But his story adds an intriguing layer to the proceedings, making the reissue a far more engaging idea.

Bryan, a Brazilian native whose real name is Sérgio Sá, might have cashed in on his nationality and pumped out some bossa nova or latched onto tropicalia and that would have been that. But instead he wrote and recorded a dozen AM-radio ready songs with the same smiling vibe of say, Johnny Nash and standing, unashamed, on the shoulders of beard-era Beatles, The Association and numerous California sunshine-pop acts.

His accented English and almost feminine voice makes these already delicate songs even more fragile. When he's happy ("Listen" "Feel Like I Feel") it's so in the moment, that cynicism and irony won't hold against him. And when Bryan's sad ("Why She Goes Away") he's just a daisy bending in the rain.

The obvious singer-songwriter tools of the period are all in place: soft drums, unhurried bass, acoustic guitars and a Fender Rhodes. Bryan adds string sections and frequently employs an oboe and French horn, all to good, wistful effect. His particular appeal grows with repeated plays, which leads this all to the main concern: Why didn't he hit big outside Brazil?

Listen of was clearly aiming for North American ears. "Feel Like I Feel" sounds an awful lot like Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" [released the same year -- ed.] and he's no fruitier than the other tender-hearted men who filled the airwaves during his time.

Maybe this time, Paul Bryan.

Reference material: Listeners unafraid to admit they enjoy The Association's "Never My Love" and know that owning an album with a cat on the cover does not compromise their authenticity can pursue Paul Bryan's Listen of with confidence.

Over the Counter

CLINIC
Do It!
(Domino)

Liverpool's scrub-suited, lysergic quartet remain compelling with album number five, so perhaps it's time for Clinic to take a bow and leave fans begging for more. Then again, Do It! is probably the most daring collection of songs the band has assembled.

Clinic still blast trebly noise across mesmerizing rhythms to make anxious pagan rock. But Do It! often replaces the learn-as-you-go wind instruments -- such as the clarinet and melodica that wailed through 2004's Winchester Cathedral -- with subtler guitar work and a broader range of tempos.

Their primitive beats however, can't and shouldn't be stilled. The crafty opener "Memories" sounds like two songs taking turns at the microphone, with a fuzz guitar, autoharp and 4/4 stomp trading off with childlike organ, bass and maracas. And "Shopping Bag" is all reed-splitting sax skronk racing to the finish against three chords hammering on the guitar.

But there's a full-on slow dance number, appropriately titled "Emotions." Though singer Ade Blackburn's wired-jaw vocals don't make it easy to know exactly what he's feeling.

Yes, it's all very much a druggy walk through the forest, from the Velvet Underground tango of "High Coin" to the carnival at the end of the universe in the end piece "Coda." Maybe Clinic has a sixth LP in them.

Reference materials: If you always wanted Moondog to make a garage-rock record, or really dig fellow Scousers The Coral (especially Magic and Medicine) then you'll enjoy Clinic.

(Or maybe you just secretly wish Clinic would write a new soundtrack for the underrated feminist horror film Season of the Witch.)