Free legal albums!

The Dada Weathermen is a folksy music project by a guy from Paris. The vocals share great similarity of those of Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), but don’t let that put you off! The music is pretty similar, but it has a lot more to it. More atmosphere and more melody. We even have some bluesy influences thrown into the equation.

The music is mostly peaceful and delicate. Pretty stuff that makes you feel calm. The strings section is used to great effect, making the music that bit more interesting.

If you like Bright Eyes you’ll like this, and if you don’t like Bright Eyes you may very well like it anyway!

Sminky is an artist from Siberia that tries to keep their gender a mystery. I assume they are female however due to the same female providing vocals on all tracks, so I shall refer to them as female throughout this mini-review.

The music is very hard to define. The tags on the album when I downloaded it said dance, and I figured that, although that really doesn’t do it justice, it’s the closest one can get to describing the music. Ambient would also be a good genre to put it in, although it’s certainly not completely ambient and has some more exciting-sounding parts.

My description here is not doing it justice at all. I guess you have to listen to it for yourself. It’s dancey, it’s ambient, it’s got fun moments and it’s pretty. That’s still not a good enough description, but it’s the best my lack of eloquence can offer you.

Epta Astera are, in my own opinion, a doom metal band with folk metal influences from the US. I say “in my own opinion” because the band claims to be primarily a folk metal band, but from listening to this record the doomishness of it is all too clear. It reminded me of Virgin Black and Draconian, except this only contains male vocals. It has a very operatic sound, and a massively strong sense of atmosphere. We have the creepy operatic vocals, the use of a wide variety of instruments (I recall hearing a didgeridoo in there a few times!), the depressive atmospheric guitars…this has it it all. The folk metal influence is clear, but I don’t think you’ll argue with me about it being a doom metal record once you have a listen.

Don’t let the fact Epta Astera is from the US put you off, also! They’re from North Carolina, which isn’t exactly a place you’d associate with this type of music, but they don’t hold back on the atmosphere at all. I was sure they’d be Scandinavian, but they’re not, and they’re still impressive indeed.

Obviously this type of music isn’t for everyone and certainly isn’t among the most accessible in the world, but if you’re into doom metal, please check it out. You won’t regret it.

This is the band’s second album. You can download their first on their website if you enjoy this one.

This is the first album I’ve posted here that I couldn’t get a picture for (excluding The Hostiles, although that was because the record had no album art). Because of the lack of a picture many of your eyes won’t be caught by this post, which is a shame, because out of all the rap I have posted on here so far, this is my favorite.

It’s got a very…”underground” sound. It’s quite obviously not only influenced by rap music alone, and a lot of different instruments and sounds are thrown into it. I personally hear a pretty strong Del Tha Funkee Homosapien influence throughout the album (especially in the second track Mission From God), although you may totally disagree with me there. The music is highly diverse regardless of what you may deem it is influenced by, and the two guys that make up Braintrust provide some pretty damn good vocals, rapping together in harmony (and sometimes in unison) with great effect.

The Bailout is the first release from Just Plain Ant’s record label, Just Plain Sounds. It shows a lot of promise for the label. Download it here.

Abscondo is a folk musician from the US who is currently residing in Slovakia. He is also part of another folk project, named Sungod Abscondo, and from what I gather they play very similar music – ie – acoustic folk music.

This is music by one man and his guitar, and it is both peaceful and emotive. His voice is very similar (in my opinion) to Brian Molko, the lead singer of Placebo, although Abscondo’s voice is somewhat softer.

The stand-out track for me here is the title track Stages, although everything on it is well-crafted music you’d quite happily listen to in a coffee shop or a similar relaxed, small venue.

FUCKING HELL! THIS IS INCREDIBLE

I try not to get overly caught up with what I adore and what I think is pretty good in these mini-reviews, because I’d rather my readers could take my opinion seriously rather than seeing me as some obsessive bitch…but…I don’t think I can calm down from this record. Without a shadow of a doubt this is my favorite thing I have posted, and also without a shadow of a doubt it is the best album I have heard all year from any band, free or not!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to imply it’s for everyone; if you’re not into third-wave ska you very well might not appreciate it…but if you are, or if you’re OK with trying it out, well, it’s as fun as joyous as they come!

Talco are an Italian ska-punk band, and have been about since the end of 1999. Apparently they have 2 other albums, although I have only found one other at the moment of typing this (though I’m sure I’ll find the other one with a bit of searching). If you’re interested in the other albums, simply just leave a comment and I’ll get them to you!

So yeah, anyway, all the songs are in Italian, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest. What matters is the sheer energy of the music. It’s uplifting stuff, and I demand that you try not to dance and smile along to it.

As I have said in a previous post, I am massively into ska-punk, and it’s one of my favorite, if not favorite, genres…and I tell you this again because this record struck me as hard as Mad Caddies and Streetlight Manifesto did when I first heard them, and these two bands were, until now, my favorite third wave bands. Impressed would be an understatement…I am gobsmacked at how BLOODY AWESOME this record is!

No no, this is not the bland pop-rock band! Our Cartel here is a hip-hop producer from some place called Long Pond in the US. Each track features a different MC (well, almost…some have featured on a few tracks) and therefore each track has something fresh to offer.

It’s a pretty good record, and if you’re into more mainstream rap you’d probably enjoy this, since I feel this has more similarities with more mainstream stuff than it’s underground peers do. Nevertheless, it is a good record filled with good-sounding rapping and highly listenable background music. Worth a listen regardless of your preferences (well, supposing you like rap, that is!).

Casey Meehan is on the same record label as The Notes And The Scratches, and although they have pretty different sounds, they both play sweet, enchanting indie music…music that captures the attention with such an ease that it doesn’t have to be in-your-face. The record label is Rockproper, and you can find more free downloads on the website, although, of course, I will most likely be posting my selected favorites from it in the future anyway!

So anyway, back to the band in question. They have a rather interesting sound, and they describe themselves as a working-class orchestra, and though I’m not sure how working-class they may be, the orchestra part is pretty obvious! Along with the guitars, drums and piano we have a violin, saxophone, trumpet and clarinet all thrown in there. It’s a record that, I guess, has quite a large degree of focus on the instruments, meaning there are a few instrumental tracks thrown in there, but, although there serve as nice little interludes between songs, the true beauty of the album only shines through from the instruments and vocals combined. We have male and female vocals thrown in there, and they are incorporated to perfection.

This is my favorite album out of all the ones I have posted over the past 3 or 4 days, so if you can’t make up your mind about downloading stuff and think I have an awesome taste, go for this one!

Kiff’On are a band from France (and they sing in French, let’s make this clear. I know some people aren’t too big on not understanding what they’re listening to) who play a sort of funk/rock fusion, complete with dancey rhythms and a nice brass section. They’re fun and full of energy, and although I wish this record was longer (it’s only 18 minutes) I have enjoyed it greatly anyway.

Personally I think music like this is best in a language that the listener understands, but the French language of it does make it more interesting, and it’s still a good little album regardless.

If you like this and want to check out more by the band, check out their other album here. Click “telecharger” and, if you want it for free, just close the payment window (not that I’m telling you to not pay…just do as you wish; both are, of course, totally legal!).

Mick Boogie and Terry Urban are remix/mashup DJs and are making quite a reputation for themselves. I have uploaded 2 albums for you here. The first is mostly a mashup record (although there are a few remixes in there) filled with Grammy nominees. Most of the mashups work pretty well, especially those of different genres, and I’ve listened to it a good few times already.

The second record here is their most heavily praised mixtape to date, and is filled with mashups of Coldplay and Jay-Z. It works really well, and if you’re like me and find Coldplay dull as hell, this most certainly makes them listenable. It’s really well done, and if you want to check out either of the 2 records here, I’d suggest this one.

If you think “OMG AWESOME” and want to sample more of these guy’s work, you can! All the mixtapes are available here (scroll down and look at the right side). I could have just linked you to this site in the first place, yes, but the Viva La Hova link doesn’t work on it, so I decided to track down a torrent of it, especially for you good people (see the effort I put into this thing?)! I don’t know if the Grammy one works on their site, but I had it uploaded before I discovered this page, so I figured I might as well post the link here!