This monday, May 26, is the official release of Calendar Songs‘ album of remixes. Calendar Songs was(is) a cool project started by the famous Calendar Girl in which she wrote a song per month (vocals and chords), and released them so that anyone could make remix.You can read more here.

A hard copy of the CD will be available for £10.00 (PayPal) and downloadable tracks at CDBaby for $15.00 (MP3, whole set). Based on ccMixter and Creative Commons Licenses, Calendar Songs is pioneer for making a collaborative free-music-remix-culture project develop into a commercial release, where all profits [will be] equally split between Calendar Girl and each Remixer.

The streaming samples available on the site are sounding good. The “I write a song. You remix. We make a record.” became true :-)

Here is one remix I really liked and was included in the CD:

do-up - Acoustic Lounge (Live)
(by-nc-sa)

bit torrent MP3 or OGG | ZIP MP3

This album has a lot of style. The music is clear, groovy, and perfectly built. There are no badly constructed ideas or not-so-well placed elements. The kitchen is precise creating a nice bed for the jazzy improvisations and original vocals. Well, I liked a lot! You can check their website, if you can read Russian.

do-up - Acoustic Lounge (Live)

1. be free

2. desert road

3. feel me

4. moody

[recommended by K.Mandla]

d’incise - Les Restes du Fentin
(by-nc-nd)

ZIP with MP3

Sometimes I feel like listening to music I already know. The satisfaction of predicting each song’s fate is powerful. Different, but equally enjoyable, is the taste of new music. It defies our brain processing capabilities, until it solves the patterns. The music then, becomes known. Sometimes, however, it is not easy to process the music, it might have unusual combinations, or too many elements which force ourselves to run over a few (or a lot) of details. There lies the joy. Hovering for the details, not random, but unexpected. Unexpected and yet, beautiful.

1. Contagieuse

2. Les absents ont souvent raison de l’être (w/ Bluermutt)

3. La décompostion de l’oisillon

4. Critique contre fausse pensée (w/ Lena)

5. L’autre liberté sans moi

6. La peur du guide

7. Objets inutils pouvant servir (w/ Hopen)

8. Everything is do dupy

9. Vacances inversées

10. Néanmoins les chiottes sont toujours trop loin

11. Ceux qui vivent des miettes

12. Marché aux puces (w/ Monsieur Connard)

13. Politique pierogis

14. La seconde vie de vos déchets (w/ Ibakusha)

Intensive Care - All The People Hear With Me

ZIP with MP3

Intensive Care is a colorful band with some colorful tunes. Their last release, an EP called All The People Hear With Me, has 2 nicely laid songs with some quite original arrangements. You might listen to Sirenhorses to understand what I mean. I really liked the vocal melodies and how the song develops, grows and fades.

Below you can read what Intensive Care is… Enjoy!

Intensive Care is not that room in hospitals where patients are treated
Intensive Care is not a handy lotion for dry skins and occasional fantasies
Intensive Care is not a famous British pop sensation’s album name
Intensive Care is not a parking space for oversized hummers
Intensive Care is not made of wood, or plastic
Intensive Care is not an alcoholic beverage
Intensive Care is from Montreal
Intensive Care is a rock band.

Sirenhorses - All The People Hear With Me

Links:
Official Website | MySpace | CDBaby

[thanks to Phil]

Jikkenteki - Flights Of Infinity
(by-nc-nd)

rar MP3 or WAV | buy

Ektoplazm, a fully featured psy trance site and netlabel, released in March’08 Jikkenteki’s second album, Flights Of Infinity. The album is a dense trip into psy featuring long tracks with that crescendo feeling leading the way. Nice dark listening for late hours!

All:My:Faults - neo.NøiR

bit torrent MP3 or OGG | zip MP3 or OGG

This release has a unique combination of industrial, dark, gothic, rock and electronica that could please even open-minded soft-music adepts. The music is intense and vocals are very expressive, creating a complex atmosphere based on distorted guitars and synths. Looking at their Last.fm scrobbles and internet archive downloads they seem to be quite popular nowadays! Worth listening!

They have been sitting on my drafts since Jan 16th, so my apologies for taking so long to post.

1. Gesenktes Haupt//Geschlossene Augen (mp3|ogg)

2. Can you hear these footsteps coming upstairs at night? (mp3|ogg)

3. Perfection is the way it’d go but it doesn’t (mp3|ogg)

4. Just the fallen again (mp3|ogg)

5. Encode the apology inside the lies (mp3|ogg)

6. The course of true love never did run smooth, my dearest (mp3|ogg)

7. One and other stab wounds destroying a life (mp3|ogg)

8. Crashed into a spiralworld (mp3|ogg)

9. You’d better watch out in a forest after midnight (mp3|ogg)

10. Alles ist gesagt (version 2007) (mp3|ogg)

Links:
website | jamendo | archive | afmusic | last.fm

Last Saturday my mom asked me to put up a playlist to her birthday party. She said she’d like something “lounge”, just some music to be playing while people chat. Former parties immediately stormed into my mind. Not really nice memories. People, usually, don’t like music I like, they think its weird, they think it’s bad, they ask me to change it, please.

Me: I don’t have any cool songs, mom.
Mom: Of course you have. Just put on anything and it will be ok.

There I went to choose some songs… disbelieving I would find any. Choices were obvious and in less then 10 minutes I had 2 days and 15 hours ready to play for the next 4 hours. I started to believe.

I set up the equipment and let it go randomly. Whooa. It was nice. Music was really nice. I really had cool songs to play.

About 60% of the artists have already appeared here, including Vate, Anawin, …and nobody cared, Antony Raijekov, Axial, ElectroLatrine, fonetik, Jade, Lunar, Oprachina, Philippe Mangold, Jonathan Rickert, SaReGaMa, Silence and Triplexity.

The night was good and I was really enjoying the random music.

However, after the cake the cold and sad reality started to show up. People asked me what is this music. People said it is weird. Some people asked to change it, please. People asked for some music they knew. People wanted to know where did I get these songs. Maybe it was the sugar.

It’s ok, they never liked it anyway. Still, they listened for some time.
And then I went off to see some furniture.

Móveis Coloniais de Acaju - Idem

album page | MP3 zip (~47mb) | buy this album

A friend of mine introduced me to this band from Brasília in late 2006. Their songs are simply crazy. A creative mix between rock, ska, samba, swing, and eastern European sounds. It is the kind of music you can (and will) repeatedly sing along with the vocals and with the instrumental part. I can say that after listening to their album “Idem” for 1,5 years, I’m still able to go from São Sebastião (where I work) to São Paulo (about 2h30 trip) happily singing their songs along the way…

Yesterday I finally got the chance to see them live! And they are great. Móveis Coloniais de Acaju (could be translated as Colonial furniture made of a mahogany-like wood) is composed of 10 skilled musicians that create a spectacular atmosphere on stage, always dancing and interacting with their audience. During the song Copacabana (one of their hits), the crowd opens up a circle and most of the band (with their instruments) get off the stage to play the song’s instrumental interlude with their fans. After they are absorbed by the crowd (and still playing the song’s climax) they magically re-appear on stage! Crazy.

They have released an official music video of the song Seria o Rolex?, you can watch it below.

Also, there are tons of fan videos with them playing live, here.

Photo by Flávio Yamamoto

As many growing independent bands from all over the world, Móveis Coloniais de Acaju know the importance of their fans and the internet to spread their music. Each musician post entries to their weblog, songs are available for download on the official site and you can also buy a hard copy of the album Idem at Amazon. You will find them at MySpace (where you can read André Abujamra’s description of the band).

Please world, listen!

Móveis Coloniais de Acaju - Idem

01 - Perca Peso

Slowly getting back…

Just here to make sure you don’t miss the 3 newest releases from blocSonic!

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Volume 11

the raw and the cooked

Mainly acoustic songs with a few digital touches now and then.

download

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Volume 12

Anaxagoras

A loosely tied release about the moon. Wonderful booklet filled with public domain texts and illustrations by Rob Pitt. Nicest booklet I’ve seen so far in the history of music!

download

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Volume 13

color in a world of monochrome

A color trip into the sound of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii.

download

Hey people,

I have received some nice material from emerging bands and just want to tell that I’m working on them. I just could not manage to sit, listen, write and publish the posts yet, but they are on my drafts!

It seems that I’ve been living two lives. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. ;-)

see you soon!