The mediaf!re Thread 2010: This Time It's Personal

[KvP]

Classic.

[Catacombs]

Rules:

No hot-linking images or albums. You can re-host images at http://imageshack.us.

Ensure your tags are correct and that you have specified both Artist/Album in your post.

Upload your files in either a .zip or a .rar archive to mediaf!re.com, in multiple parts if the album is over 100mbs. The reason for this is that we know mediaf!re is safe and efficient and allows multiple downloads. The ads on other sites, such as Sendspace, are known to contain viruses on the page. Get yourself checked out.

Post your link using code tags. It's the # icon above the policeman emoticon. This prevents the links from being traced back to the forums, lowering the chance that the wrong people notice the thread, potentially threatening Jeph with legal action.

Also, please do NOT request albums. This includes requests for re-uploads; if you miss it, try looking for it somewhere else.

Repost the rules at the top of each new page.

[A Wet Helmet]

I saw these guys last night.   Middle Class Rut-- or MC Rut if you prefer-- is a noisy, post-punk (for lack of a better genre) duo that creates a whole lot of sound for just two guys.   A crack-addict-skinny drummer with "FOR SALE" tattooed on his chest in four inch tall letters and a J'Lo inspired headset mic coupled with a Melody Maker playing guitarist who (at least last night) was trying like hell to look like Darby Crash.   How can you go wrong, right?

Having had this EP for awhile, I was honestly expecting a Melt-Banana sized pedal board and a whole lot of knob fiddling  before, during, and after every song.  It didn't happen.  A couple of guitar swaps and one instance of knob fiddling was all I saw which makes me wonder...  How do they get all that sound?


Middle Class Rut - 25 Years EP

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?m0ywntqmz2z

[pogonrudie]

Sounds great, thanks.

[scarred]

Plastic Beach

just noticed track 12 cuts out in the middle... can i get an up on that? *puppy dog eyes*

[Zombiedude]

Fine jeez alright hold on

shabang

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?zyigmmhwmzm

[scarred]

you're the prettiest

[DMart]

I make a share:

Fritzwicky - Time Flies (2009)

[a thing]

Local (Melbourne) band, of which I am a member. Making CD attempt number 1.

We put them in a shoe box, hoping someone would give them a good home - but the time has come let go and release them into the wild.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/download.php?t1ndfktjngm

Our influences include Zappa, Volta, Faith No More and the Wiggles - though they don't come out so much in these recordings. Bit of a variety here - Ian is a hip-hop tinged alternative do, Bam is a much more basic and rhythm driven pop-punk-ish (?) tune, Index 13 jumps around a bit (but ends on a nice relaxing note), and L'allemand Souirant is kind of melodic and i guess a little more emotional (?!?) than the others... or something.

(god damn I hate describing music when I've had anything to do with it)

You're a pretty cool dude for putting this up for free

I am genuinely uncertain about whether that comment was genuine or not.. but hey, a free bump's a free bump!

Anyway sorry for hijacking the thread a little, but I've noticed we got a few people downloading this - if anyone would like to shoot through opinions or anything please PM me, we're always looking for feedback.

Cheers guys - and in the spirit of the thread, I now give you:

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Calibration (2008)

Anyone who has grokked the deep magical hoodoo from Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's solo projects knows he's nothing if not prolific. In 2007 alone he issued a 12" EP with former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki, the barnburner Se Dice Bisonte, No
Bùfalo album, and a five-track EP with spoken word artist, novelist, essayist, and expatriate American artist Lydia Lunch — on three different labels — and composed the soundtrack to the Guillermo Arriaga film El Bufalo de la Noche. All of this was apart from his recording, writing, and touring duties as lead guitarist of the knottiest, most admittedly self-indulgent band in rock. Calibration is the logical successor to his Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo set (an actual rock tribute to Arriaga's film) and the Mars Volta's Bedlam in Goliath, which was released on January 29, 2008, a week before this. That said, don't expect this to be simply a follow-up album in the same vein. Rodriguez-Lopez is far too mercurial for that to be the case. This one is almost equal parts loopy, knotty progressive and experimental rock and electronics. Yes, all the members of the Mars Volta are present in various places, but so are Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante (as "vocalist" on "Glosa Picaresca Wou Men") and Money Mark (on synths on "El Monte T'aï" and "...Is Pushing Luck" — with Cedric Bixler-Zavala from the Volta on vocals) as well other friends and numerous family members. The influence of artists like Frank Zappa on Rodriguez-Lopez in terms of both his truly amazing guitar playing as well as his manner of composing actual rock songs is uncanny.

But the guitar is only one element that Omar uses on Calibration. Given that this was recorded for N2O, a label known for its DJ mashups (DJ Starscream from Slipknot is also on the roster), Rodriguez-Lopez uses more electronics on this set than he has ever employed on his solo projects in the past. The way in which they are used, however, is anything but "danceable." They add noise, texture, dimension, atmosphere, humor, and even terror. Check the soundtrack-like feel of "Grey (Cancion Para El)," with its user of various televisions, guitars, Kim Humphries violin, and overdriven pedals to stretch time and even the sense of dimension in the piece. Dynamics are turned inside out, and this begins as a lament, and perhaps ends as a funeral travelogue, but in the middle? Entire sonic universes get jarringly complex. The guitars sting and play off one another as disembodied voices and noises from television programs past and present shift through the soundscape, sometimes violently. Frusciante chants like a deranged Zappa in the backdrop about the devil until the tune gets cut in the middle of a phrase as "Sidewalk Fins," with its sinister, acid-damaged sense of foreboding, tension, and doom, slowly creeps into the center. Thomas Pridgen's drumming is a signature in this piece, as breakbreats, Tony Williams-like drum rolls, and fills cross the middle of the mix and are painted by Omar's Rhodes, guitars, and drum loops. "Lick The Tilting Poppies," where Omar is singing, playing bass, guitar, synths, clavinet, and of course guitar, is accompanied by Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez and Humphries in an unhinged cruise through the nightmare side of dope-a-vision. The melody and lyric, both in Spanish mode and language, evolve into something grand, majestic, and utterly beautiful. The album ends with its longest track, "Las Lagrimas de Arakuine," with a simple quartet as Omar plays guitar and synths, Juan Alderete de la Peña plays bass, Pridgen plays drums, and Marcel colors with more synths. It's a long drum- and guitar-driven jam that feels in its own way out of place on the set, until a bit later on. It's haunting, intense, spaced-out, and is a transcendent work of futuristic beauty and melody. If Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo was Omar's rock & roll tribute to cinema, this is its doppelgänger in reverse, an aural cinema of sound that offers a new direction for rock that is not only listenable for all of its excesses and indulgence, but compelling and actually emotionally moving. Calibration is Omar's most adventurous yet most realized moment as a solo artist thus far, and given his other work, and especially the Mars Volta's Bedlam in Goliath, that's saying plenty.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/download.php?um4ohmwul42

[Zombiedude]

genuine

[DarkAvenger]

If this was posted then I missed it:



Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

The Brutalist Bricks

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?3yinw2w22ct

[SWOON! at My Gravitas]

Not really a mf!re link, but there is a good sludge band called Thou that has their discography available for free download on their website.  The website design is pretty bad, but if you just keep scrolling down you'll come to the downloads section.

Their two full lengths, "Peasant" and "Tyrant" are more atmospheric, while the buttsload of EPs they've done are heavier and dirty as fuck.

[amok]

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

The Brutalist Bricks

yesssssssssssss

[De_El]

Thou are legit. I like them a lot. I played some of their stuff on my student radio show last year when I was playing all stoner/doom/sludge/drone metal

[medicatesleep]

400 Blows - Black Rainbow

"This three piece (Skot-vocals, Christian-guitar, Ferdinand-drums) hails from Los Angeles, CA. They've been playing together for about 5 years. They describe themselves as an anti-melody band. Probably because the drummer and the guitarist lock themselves into taut, relentless, rhythm heavy grooves. The vocalist then skillfully bobs, weaves and jabs his way around these syncopated, complex compositions of noise with his caustic brand of story telling. Their live performances are well known for being extremely tight, powerful, and unique. The sole guitar player flanks the stage with two 100 watt half stacks that provide for an interesting blast of sonic intensity. The long awaited follow up to "3.19.98", "Black Rainbow" is now available through Rehash Records. Not exactly anything you'd expect. Simply a distinctive fusion of power, rhythm, and energy. This is 400 BLOWS."

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?dmor0zgtm0w

[KvP]

Skot

Skot

Skot

Skot

[Zombiedude]

There are weirder names.

[Scarychips]

S E L F H E L P -- T H O M A S (2009)

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nyjz3yzzdgm

Thomas Gill, the mastermind behind T H O M A S, hails from Toronto and is best-known these days for being the guitarist/percussionist who accompanies Owen Pallett on tour. When he has a break, he usually tours with his own music, his own band. Differing from Owen Pallett symphonic/orchestral pop, Thomas Gill makes straight-up pop. It is both catchy, soulful, humourous and goddamn good. Live, he plays the guitar magnificiently and has no trouble falsetto-ing and singing in his normal voice right after.

[geodescent]

Natural Wonders - Thunderstorms: Soothing Sounds of Nature (1995)

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?o5lowokj1vz

Story
Some back-story is available about the Natural Wonders stores that used to be in some malls. Just Google "Natural Wonders - Thunderstorms" and take a look at the Ask MetaFilter link. I can't really place the true release date of the CD, but I know mine was listed as 1999 on the back cover, as my tags will show, but it may have been released as early as 1995. Others say the CD was released in 2000. I guess on this one you have to make up your own mind on the release date. Also, I have different album art (from a 2006 version) embedded into the MP3s than posted above, because at the time I tagged them, the above album art did not exist online. This release is very rare as far as I can tell.

Description
There is no annoying accompanying music; it is just the thunderstorms. These MP3s were encoded by me in 2008 via Exact Audio Copy at 192kbps Stereo.

Track 1: Big Sur, California (30:01)
Track 2: Florida Everglades (30:00)

[Zombiedude]

The Soviettes - LP

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?wltzg12vqtm

The Land of the Clear Blue Radio

Andrew Jackson Jihad - People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?yzz5cncnith

Rejoice!

[E. Spaceman]

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?mzgncjytkeo

Jailbreak - Thin Lizzy

[De_El]

Phil Lynott wants YOU


to download that record. And so do I, cus it's great.
I know back in the day they were considered "hard rock" or whatever, but I tend to think of Jailbreak more as power-pop than anything else.

[E. Spaceman]

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?w4mmnmqgwzf

VA - Raiders of the Lost Dub

A selection of fine dubs mostly by Sly & Robbie but with some other choice artists.

[Kai]

I have Raiders of the Lost Dub on vinyl. It is excellent! Highly recommend it to everyone and anyone forever.

[SirJuggles]

I kinda struggled over this since I know requests are specifically frowned upon by the rules. By in today's newspost Jeph mentioned a band called Fang Island that I've never heard of and can't seem to find but sound right up my alley. If it's at all possible I would be highly interested in picking up their new self-titled CD?


In order to keep this from being simply begging, I'll share something that I'm rather fond of:


The Pillows - Addict (FLCL Official Soundtrack)

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?bowynj0a4zn

Addict is the first soundtrack from the anime series FLCL. Most of the music is by Japanese rock group the Pillows. The rest is by Shinkichi Mitsumune, a composer. This first album includes music which can be found in the FLCL anime series. Compared to the 3rd album, these songs can for the most part be seen as instrumentals.

I love FLCL, and a large part of that was due to the wonderful music. It's rather upbeat rock for the most part, with a few darker or more mellow pieces for ambiance. Scenes in the anime were actually animated to correspond to the music as opposed to the other way around, and each piece has unique emotion that can be tied to a moment from the animated series.

[Zombiedude]

Fang Island - Fang Island

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?immemtmjkzn

[Scandanavian War Machine]

I'm glad somebody did that, because I was about dive into the internet to find that shit so I could upload it myself.

I've never heard of Fang Island but the man uploaded The Motherfucking Pillows for us, so he definitely deserves it.

[Zingoleb]

Andrew Jackson Jihad - People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World

Ahhhhh, thank youuu

[MrBlu]

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?w4mmnmqgwzf

VA - Raiders of the Lost Dub

A selection of fine dubs mostly by Sly & Robbie but with some other choice artists.

EVERYONE SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS.

[David_Dovey]

Even me?

[Mr. Tool]

Brasstronaut - Mount Chimaera



I uploaded their EP “Old World Lies” awhile back, and it’s at over 200 downloads so I imagine there’s at least a few people around here interested in the band’s new full-length.

Here’s a track from the EP if you need a taste of their sound

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?mwymnngnemm

[scarred]

yeaaaah I was about to upload that

[trr005]

Brasstronaut - Mount Chimaera

I uploaded their EP “Old World Lies” awhile back, and it’s at over 200 downloads so I imagine there’s at least a few people around here interested in the band’s new full-length.

Here’s a track from the EP if you need a taste of their sound

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?mwymnngnemm

These guys are fucking good.  Thanks for this and the EP.  Great find...very awesome.

[MrSteevo]

Brasstronaut - Mount Chimaera



I uploaded their EP “Old World Lies” awhile back, and it’s at over 200 downloads so I imagine there’s at least a few people around here interested in the band’s new full-length.

Here’s a track from the EP if you need a taste of their sound

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?mwymnngnemm

They're doing their first U.S. tour, should check them out if they're in town near you.

[KvP]

Slugabed - Ultra Heat Treated EP

Slugabed's peculiar strain of squashed and rigidly fashioned instrumental hip-hop has infiltrated heads for months now. In fact, his particularly masculine brew of square wave stomping dates back to 2008, so it's a little odd to think that this, the Ultra Heat Treated EP on Planet Mu, will only be his second solo 12-inch.

It nonetheless both underlines his accomplishment to date as well as marking a confident stride into the arena of competition. Right from the off, with the title track squeezing out a jagged-edged bass riff, Slugabed wanders like an overexcited child through a forest of Easter eggs; haphazardly jumping off the beaten path, checking every hiding place. Strong, slow drums frame the breakdown on "Ultra Heat Treated" as Sluga adds wispy synths that lift the ear back into the whirling of the bassline when it reappears. The two other more up-tempo numbers, "Skyfire" and "Pressure," display his talent for thumping drums hard, forcing his punishing love of heavy-as-hell simplistic rhythms right on you whether you like it or not.

The remaining three tracks on the EP aptly display a keen ear for synth colouration and melody—even if they're all primitive computerized RGB in hue. Taking the toy town sounding, pony production value of some of skweee music's shining lights as a starting point, Sluga pours his own compression-happy technique into his song workings, letting the distortion of the drums pull the focus rather than the throwback novelty of some of the resounding 8-bit sounds. "Goulash" is the epitome of this style: Slugabed literally booms out his kick drums and thick, LFO-heavy basslines over synths that have been lifted straight out of Sega's early '90s "end of level boss" music library.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nwm5nezj5ry

Lusine - A Certain Distance

Is Jeff McIlwain, the Seattle techno producer who works under the name Lusine, starting to go pop? Maybe. A little. Sort of. Is this a bad thing? Not at all—in fact, it gives A Certain Distance, his second full album for Ghostly, more reach than 2004's Serial Hodgepodge, and not just because he's working with vocalists more. This still sounds like a Lusine album: it's still largely abstract, still in McIlwain's tonal comfort zone, still partial to timbres that scan as lustrous to techno lovers and as kind of grey to non-partisans. Where Serial Hodgepodge bumped its share but still felt a little camera-shy, A Certain Distance is grabbier than its title suggests, and that is, often, down to the singing.

"Singing," of course, is a relative term here, since McIlwain likes to smear and serrate the human voice as much as he does the clipping beats, curdling static and glossy keyboards that make up the rest of his work. As you'd figure, the types of voices he likes best have a kind of foghorn breathiness: two Distance tracks guest-star Vilja Larjosto, a Finnish singer-songwriter, whose work here is pleasant but lacks bite; another, "Gravity," features Caitlin Sherman. Apart from "Two Dots," though, few of these voices, including whomever it is making his/her way into the relatively straightforward (and rather beautiful) "Crowded Room"—maybe McIlwain himself—do much enunciating, at least by the time it reaches our ears. McIlwain is a subtle and smart producer, and while sometimes he can seem more subdued than is necessary, there's a lot to uncover here.

Particularly in the album's second half—tracks six through eleven are where most of the meat is. "Gravity" is subtly funky, pitter-patterned hi-hats over irregular-just-so pulse, while McIlwane cuts Sherman's voice into a series of stroboscopic, charged, percussive confetti-patterns. "Baffle" builds and builds some more for until it's slowly but gently swallowed your headphones, before receding quickly. "Every Disguise" is curling and enveloping, its micro-sound-bites traipsing evenly, apart from a stray bit of static that goes on just far enough past where it should to set the whole thing slightly off. And on "Double Vision" a ruminative keyboard figure in foreground seems to play with its own timing, dragging before landing on the beat and making it sound new each time. Then some others join it, and they help.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?xitgttwzzdj

Amµnition Sampler

It certainly seemed as though, for a good few years at the turn of the millennium at least, the inheritance of the 90's IDM "movement" was changing hands from the descendants of acid techno to a particular substrain of drum and bass that came to be known as "breakcore". The reasons for this were at least somewhat obvious - "classic" IDM and breakcore tended to share a certain gonzo sense of humor, and the luminaries of the breakcore scene displayed a knack for virtuoso composition, particularly when it came to drum programming. Unfortunately it was not to last.


Planet Mu's Amµnition compilation of breakcore's brief heyday makes a good case for why people might've felt that the genre held promise. At the time, Planet Mu was home to breakcore's leading lights, notably Winnipeg's Venetian Snares and Massachusetts avant-garde composer Keith Fullerton Whitman, recording under the name Hrvatski, and the full range of the label's breakcore and jungle catalogue is on display (excepting Hrvatski, unfortunately). The compilation mostly consists of clutches of tracks from particular artists mixed together seamlessly, though the version I have is technically unmixed (all tracks are separated). The first 6 tracks are a sampler of Venetian Snare's early works, and they showcase Aaron Funk's mind-boggling drum sequencing prowess, particularly the classic "Whiskydrunk". Short "sets" by Hellfish and The Gasman proceed before a 4-track sampler from the oeuvre of legendary junglist Remarc, and a jungle/breakcore workout from the ever ridiculous Shitmat. From there the disc closes out with a smattering of selections from Planet Mu's 12" singles of the period.

As a means of introduction to the more IDM-tinged corners of the breakcore scene as it was, Amµnition is as good a resource as you're likely to find. There was some good stuff being released at that time. Unfortunately it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that the trend wasn't going anywhere. Aside from some very notable exceptions, breakcore really just had its one mode - giddy, spastic freakout. That was fine for a time, but the medium proved too restrictive for any sort of real growth, and so it faded into irrelevance, or worse, was assimilated into the awful (but sometimes so-bad-it's-good) "gabba" culture so beloved by Dutch guys with dreads. Venetian Snares, Planet Mu's first breakout star, still hammers out roughly an album a year (sometimes more) but his most acclaimed work has been that which has moved farthest afield from breakcore, namely the essential jungle-meets-Hungarian classical music experiment Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, Hrvatski has gone back to ambient drone music, Planet Mu itself has been reinvented as a formidable institution in the dubstep scene, and the new IDM scene appears to be coming from LA's abstract hip hop producers. But for those curious as to the recent history of left-field electronic music (who aren't opposed to a bit of abrasion) Amµnition is something worth looking into.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?hiqmm5jjzuy

System - Peach Fuzz / The Voices

MC and drum & bass scene stalwart Mark System settles into his production guise for dBridge's Exit label with two techno tinged drum & bass rollers. "Peach Fuzz" is set off by an indecipherable automaton chant that sets the tone for its rigid robot funk style. Synth chimes, buzzers and riffs revolve around the central motif of the machine-like voice, tic-toc beats and subby bass, while the occasional and unexpected growl gives the track a looming sense of danger and excitement that is never fully released. The monotonic groove and the stark minimalism in the end are too much: While it's a catchy DJ tool, "Peach Fuzz" is a bit forgettable on the whole.

"Voices" is on a similar tip but here the arrangement of melodic elements and breakbeat science help build a much more memorable and better tune. What starts off as a steppy bass and beats combo slowly progresses into a breakbeat-driven number as the menacing and shadowy vibe gives way to a wistful sense of melancholia. Sounding like glitchstep wunderkind Martsman hooking up with the Metalheadz crew back in 1997, System juxtaposes and mixes up different sides of the drum & bass ethos resulting in a new and exciting blend.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?wuyiqzu2nhj

Floating Points - People's Potential (white label)

Snagged this one on vinyl just as soon as I heard about it, but the quality of my rip was not satisfactory so I had to wait for somebody else to do better on this one.

Floating Points continues his forays into dubstep's undiscovered territory with this blank label single, released at the beginning of the year. The loose, jazzy sound that has put him on the radar of various tastemaking types (Avey Tare, Thom Yorke, etc.) is on full display, but as Floating Points goes this is not nearly as essential as some of the other stuff he's done. The main problem as I hear it is a lack of payoff - I felt like I was waiting for a crescendo that never came. I suppose it's meant for the meat of a DJ set ("mere dance music", if that's a bad thing). That's certainly how Yorke used it in his BBC1 radio mix, throwing in a bit of the middle portion of "People's Potential" in the middle of the mix. The song itself is classic (well, "classic" in the loose sense) Floating Points - heavy jazz elements, particularly in the skipping organ / piano strikes, with a rather unusual acid-y bassline thrown on top. Not a bad song by any standard, just a not-particularly-showy song. Not to damn it with faint praise, of course. Give it a listen.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?uiqq2yt5mzo

Subeena - Solidify

Due either to UK dance culture or the tight economic times (or maybe both), a great chunk of Planet Mu's output in 2009 came in the form of 12" vinyl singles and EPs. One of the advantages of this approach (aside from a lack of filler material and a rapid rate of releases) was that the relatively light commitment required led to a diverse and impressive array of producers releasing material, from hot new talent like Floating Points, Burnkane and Ikonika, to old heavyweights like Terror Danjah and Pinch. From the former pool comes Subeena, a young London producer who's been around for awhile but has only recently been gaining attention for her sleek, futuristic techno/dubstep sound. "Solidify" is sleepy, syrupy R&B chillout track with rippling Rhodes-like synth a nice heavy low end, while "Analyse" is a nice 2-step / technopop throwback to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. I days. Highly recommended.

For those interested, Subeena also released a free mix for FACT Magazine, and it is really excellent stuff - http://www.factmag.com/2010/01/22/fact-mix-117-subeena/

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?uqldntndira

[blaha 41]

Miles Kurosky - The Desert of Shallow Effects

The Beulah frontman makes an album that sounds like Beulah if Beulah had a TON of time on their hands to play around with arrangements and effects. I've only given it one listen so far, but it was a better listen than most albums I've heard so far this year.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?ylwnl1zqbgd

[meanwhile]

Lemonade - Pure Moods EP (2010)



sample:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-3hN8P3JEw
link (not mine):

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?jmq0jowzlvd

[Koremora]

Gentlemen! Behold!

Liars: SISTERWOOOOOOOORLD (CD rip, deluxe edition)



Disk 1

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?zqruqnjy3zh

Disk 2 (Remixes)

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?em4wjxnzwvi

BTW, the packaging on the deluxe edition is fucking delicious. Awesome gatefold hardcover book style with accordion-fold landscape picture backing. Plus, it comes with an envelope with a print of the band and a developed picture and film slide of a location in LA taken by the band. All unique to the package you bought.

[Zombiedude]

Kaki King - Junior

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nyzunjewddc

I pretty much agree with scarred on this album

Just grabbed the new Kaki King. Sounds like what would happen if Tegan and Sara started doing hard drugs with Laura Veirs. Translation: fucking awesome.

edit for rocking track youtubage

[Zombiedude]

Holy crap Liars is awesome

[De_El]

Miles Kurosky

squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[scarred]

Miles Kurosky - The Desert of Shallow Effects

...an album that sounds like Beulah if Beulah had a TON of time on their hands to play around with arrangements and effects.

BUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH

[vickster]

Drive By Truckers - The Big To Do

Code:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KMY0TSOZ

Just saw these guys again last week.  If you're not familiar with DBT and their music, give it a whirl then buy their records.  They are great storytellers.

[scarred]

Fang Island - Fang Island

I really can't decide if I like this or not. It'll occasionally click for a minute or so, but then they start "whoah"-ing and whipping out beastly metal-esque guitar riffs and I have to suppress the urge to tape 40s to my hands and punch the elderly.

[Zombiedude]

That's a shame because it's an awesome album.

[amok]

Mind.in.a.Box - R.E.T.R.O.

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?yjmhyzzjdkm

'8 Bits' (Most of the album is instrumental, this is one of the few with vocals)
Review

[Zombiedude]

Anaïs Mitchell - Hadestown

Singer and songwriter Anais Mitchell wrote the first draft of her “folk opera” Hadestown in 2006 with arranger Michael Chorney and director Ben T. Matchstick. After numerous drafts and performances, it is set in stone here. Hadestown retells the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in an America of hard times economically, socially, and politically. (There is a hint of the great Depression as a setting, but only a hint.) The cast includes Mitchell as Eurydice, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) as Orpheus, Ani DiFranco as Persephone, Greg Brown as Hades, Ben Knox Miller (The Low Anthem) as Hermes, and the Haden Triplets — Petra, Rachel, and Tanya) as the Fates. The large band includes Rob Burger, Jim Black, Josh Roseman, Nate Wooley, Todd Sickafoose, Marika Hughes, and Tanya Kalmanovich, to name a few.

Hadestown's narrative, like the myth, steeps itself in ambiguities more than dead certainties. It moves past dualities of good and evil, life and death, hope and despair, while examining how commonly held beliefs about class reinforce poverty, how our desire for security is complicit in giving away our freedoms, and what real generosity in love actually is. Nowhere is this more evident than a Brown showcase number, “Why We Build the Wall.” (With the cast/chorus unintentionally answering Woody Guthrie's “This Land Is Your Land” anthem that would make him weep with grief.) There isn’t a weak track here, but high points include “Our Lady of the Underground,” sung by DiFranco; the fierce, yet tender “How Long” with Brown and DiFranco; both parts of Vernon’s “Epic,” Mitchell's and Vernon’s “Doubt Comes In,” and “I Raise My Cup to Him,” by Mitchell with DiFranco. Everything here is ambitious, nothing is excessive. The music ranges with classic American folk forms: country gospel, ragtime, blues, and early jazz, to approximations of rock, swing, and avant-garde — all of it immediate, accessible, and inviting. Vernon’s vocal range — husky baritone to sweet falsetto — does justice to Orpheus. Only a singer like this could write a song beautiful enough to rescue his lover from the Underworld. Mitchell doesn’t make herself the star, but is nonetheless. She is convincing as Eurydice; her lyrics are poetic, and her melodies unpretentious, yet sophisticated thanks to Chorney’s arrangements. This 57-minute work goes by in a flash. Artfully conceived, articulated, and produced, Hadestown raises Mitchell's creative bar exponentially: there isn't anything else remotely like it.

Way Down Hadestown

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?izjgjzmz12y

[Harun]

Jónsi - Go (2010)



i.e. sigur rós dude's solo album

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?1z4xyztyqn4

[Lunchbox]

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard Band - 'em and I
http://www.myspace.com/jefflewisband

Code:

http://www.mediaf!re.com/?2iton2mjytw

Jeffrey Lewis is an American singer/songwriter and comic-book artist, part of the Anti-folk movement. Several of his musical influences have been acknowledged in his songs such as The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song, concerning the song by Leonard Cohen, and The History of the Fall.

anti-folk, singer-songwriter, indie, lo-fi

"Eighty per cent of success is showing up," quipped Woody Allen, to whom fellow neurotic New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis has often been compared. That would at least explain Lewis's lack of mainstream success, because more often than not he's too busy unravelling his anxieties around a battered acoustic guitar to bother showing up. If past Jeffrey Lewis albums count as showing up, then it's showing up hungover, in a crumpled suit, with bits of toast in his beard.

'Em Are I, then, is Lewis's fifth proper LP and, after years of acclaim in anti-folk circles, it's his first that has at least one eye on the mainstream. It also contains what is pretty close to a straight-ahead pop song in Broken, Broken, Broken Heart, a handclap-strewn ditty that wouldn't sound out of place on With the Beatles. Well, that's if the Fabs had ever sung about trying to break their own hearts by leaving them out in the rain.

Despite higher production values (ie it wasn't recorded in a tumble dryer), this probably isn't going to be the record that propels Jeffrey too far beyond his army of devoted followers. Truth is, he doesn't know how to do commercial. This is a guy who interrupts gigs to recite from his pictorial history of communism in North Korea, whose last album consisted of nothing but covers of anarcho-punk band Crass and who once wrote a six-minute song that told the story of the struggling artist through the eyes of someone being raped by Bonnie Prince Billy on a New York subway track. His songs may be many things - mind-boggling in scope, laugh-out-loud funny, wonderfully moving - but a threat to Lady GaGa they are not. more...

Reposting this because I went to see these guys last night and it was the best thing, thanks for this upload man.
I had a chat to Jeff after the show and pretty much he is the sweetest nerdiest guy ever. You could just listen to him talk for hours.
I bought his comic and read it on the bus! It is laugh out loud funny which is bad for bus reading.

[KvP]

I'm too lazy to download and re-up, so I'm just going to link off-site if that's alright with you (if not, fuck you)

Jay Reatard vinyl rips. I think Ian makes a pretty good case for why these are better than the shitty CD masterings. I think it sounds a lot better too.