Some good finds recently. Not free music though.

At War With False Noise

Valgriindedfa

Rage in Eden

Twilight Records

Beast of Prey

Things are a little slow at work today, so I’m going through the drafts on this site and flushing them out into real posts. This list has been sitting around for some time.

In no particular order: Eleven records from the last ten years that have made a big impact on me in some way, mostly having to do with making my own tunes.

1. Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile (1999)
2. Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun (1999)
3. Lament Configuration: Paragon-Asia Dataflow (2004)
4. Cex: Oops! I did it again! (2001)
5. Gultskra Artikler: Goloded (2004)
6. Tujiko Noriko: Make Me Hard (2002)
7. Lustmord: Zeotrope (OST) (2002)
8. Panacea: Brasilia (2000)
9. M² (Squaremeter): The Bitter End (2002)
10. Set Fire to Flames: Telegraphs in the Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static (2003)
11. Clint Mansell: The Fountain (OST) (2006)

-

Other albums not on this list that I’d include now.

Dead Lettters Spell out Dead Words: Facelessness Erases Every Trace of Humanity (2008)

Kode9 and the Spaceape: Memories of the Future (2006)

Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters (2007)

From 2000-2005 it seemed like every netlabel that was popping up was putting out at least one, really killer, free album every few months. Has anyone else noticed that the days of the great netlabel seem to be over?

There are still a few shining lights out there, but it seems like when Fukkgod Let’s Create went away (in their familiar form at least), a lot of other netlabels disappeared as well, or started putting out sub-par material. Autoplate is no longer putting out new stuff, and the rest of Thinner has gone the route of paid downloads. Monotonik is still going strong, but I haven’t heard anything vibrant out of that camp in at least two years, not since Bliss’ “Hello Brain Goodbye Heart”. No Type offers fewer and fewer releases overall every year, and sub-labels Sine Fiction (a netlabel project that could be amazing) and Nishi haven’t had any new releases since 2007.

So what’s going on out there? Am I just not finding the good shit on Google anymore or have things really become that stale?

I’ll write more about this soon. I just wanted to get this initial part down here first.

Okay, so the point of that little rant?
I am going to delve deep into the netlabel land again and find some of the good stuff.

Neferiu Records has put out a few gems over the years, including Skybase by Dockta Valkus (Think scifi futuristic hip hop that’s not spacey, but kind of hard and a little creepy/Massive Attacky).

Merzbau-Label some nice low-fi, indie type stuff. Also helped me find Tiago Sousa’s “The Western Lands”, which excellent.

Ikea Room Plannerмебели бургас

Wicked Dubstep Mix

Interesting 3 part BBC show about British Prog Rock

Animal Psi is a great site where labels and artists can send in what they are currently releasing and it gets a little blurb on the site. This site would be perfect to me if it also had a forum of some kind, like Recycle Your Ears did back in the day.

Free Albums Galore is a blog dedicated to posting free music downloads from netlabels and artists. This site is particularly great because of the variety they post.

Must Finish is Rjyan Kidwell’s (Cex) label for putting out small run tapes. I’ve been getting these are they have been coming out, so far they’ve all been pretty great.

Autoplate is one of my favorite labels. It was there that I first found Gultskra Artikler. It looks like they aren’t putting out new music anymore, but the back catalog is still up.

N22 – Synapse.Project: Future Gods. Limited Numbered Edition of 26.

Coming soon to Noiseusse Recordings.