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Listen. (Free Albums That Rock)

by Jeremiah Sturgill, posted on July 13, 2007 — 5 comments, filed under Music, Multimedia, Nonfiction

One of the zanier aspects of the Internet is how people who would otherwise be disenfranchised are continuing to discover how it allows for thoughts, images, videos and sounds to be disseminated to nearly anyone at a cost that nearly everyone can afford. Welcome to the future: an egalitarian and global marketplace of ideas. Sounds great, right?

Well, not really. Far too often, the wonder of what the Internet could be is tarnished by its less glamorous reality: spam, viruses, pop-up ads, search engine manipulation, inarticulate rantings by basement-dwelling troglodytes made brave by way of anonymity, pornography, flamewars, reclusive cyber communities with arcane systems of communication that exclude outsiders as effectively as any gated community’s army of rentacops… It’s a scary place out there, one filled with minds that maybe, just maybe, you don’t really want to have a meeting with after all.

Then there are wonderful artists like the musicians listed below.

Fearless Freaks album cover - fair use thumbnailThe Flaming Lips

One of the hippest of the hippest Indie bands, The Flaming Lips are probably still most famous for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. But they forever gained an even larger place in my heart when they put up a short album called Fearless Freaks online, available at no cost. It consists of a number of live tracks compiled to be given away at the premier of a documentary about the band.

All Wrong EP cover - fair use thumbnailBlack Kites

It’s called All Wrong, but it sounds all right to me.* Trippy.

* Sorry. I could not resist.

Deerhoof logo - fair use thumbnailVarious Artists

Kill Rock Stars is one of those labels that can do no wrong, and it certainly does not hurt that reputation when they go and do things like posting a number of covers of Deerhoof songs up on their site.

Little by Little album cover - fair use thumbnailHarvey Danger

I remember downloading this when it first came out a few years ago. It looks like their site has not been updated in a while, and that makes me sad. But the music on the album Little by Little is still pretty darn catchy, and a couple of the tracks are excellent.

Compensator for the Accelerator album cover - fair use thumbnailFuck Yuo I Am A Robot

Their album, Compensator for the Accelerator, is electronic, and I don’t really do electronic. But people seem to like them. Maybe you will too.

(Note that the name is not misspelled; they are indeed called Fuck Yuo I Am A Robot.)

OKX album cover - fair use thumbnailVarious Artists

Here we have OKX: A Tribute to OK Computer, an album consisting of covers of songs on Radiohead’s famous album OK Computer. So go get ‘em while the getting is good, okay?

(Computer.)**

** Sorry. Couldn’t resist that, either.

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4 Comments

1
posted by devlocke, July 13, 2007

Errr, not to quibble or anything, but OK Computer is an album, not a single.

Kill Rock Stars is no SideOneDummy, but I guess they have a couple of decent bands.

2
posted by Jeremiah Sturgill, July 13, 2007

Updated to correct the obvious re: OK Computer.

I was tired, okay? I knew that. Really. I did. I mean, I downloaded and listened OKX and own OK Computer. I was just tired and trying to get something up here before crashing after work.

So, other than that, did you listen to any of the music? Did you like any of the music?

Didn’t know this at the time of the post, but at Gogol Bordello’s myspace page, you can stream the entirety of Super Taranta, their new album. (G.B. is on SideOneDummy Records, for those of you who aren’t Josh.)

3
posted by devlocke, July 13, 2007

No, I went to the Kill Rock Stars website to see if I could remember who I liked on that label, and then I remembered how horrifically unskilled and pretentious indie-rock people are when they try to write. Reading the band descriptions made me hurt, so I am now going to go buy some dinner and drive around listening to Concrete Blonde and trying to forget about it.

4
posted by Jeremiah Sturgill, July 13, 2007

I don’t particularly mind the descriptions on the KRS site; the hack in the marketing department writing copy for the website doesn’t really affect the sound of Deerhoof or the Decemberists and so forth.

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