Free Shit: Candybag, Johny Salami, Lord Retro, It-Alien, p7+mmd, aegis/zabu, ME

More good stuff this week! READ ON
048 – Candybag – Hypercube

EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)

UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS UNTS

Helen Trevillion has a new site design and a new location.
Her site still has the old videogame remixes most of you know and love
her for… except Angel’s Dear. But I don’t really want that up on her
site anyway, it’s old and bad 😛 The site now features a “watch”
section where you can view some videos featuring her music. Please
download everything on her site because she is a fantastic composer who
makes beautiful music. Also, this is totally not something I say often,
but buy her CD. You will like it.

Ah finally, a letter from a fan of my column! This is what everybody should be doing.

“Hey OverCoat,

Wassup maing? Seeing as the free music thread died, & you have
a new column out, I thought I’d shoot you a pm to let you know about a
new album being released… probably when you get this, by this guy I
barely found out about. Here’s the myspace link

http://www.myspace.com/lordretro

It has some clips of the music, & it should have the link to the album, FLAC even, today.

Later lates,
David”

Jabdah3.sid

Electro SID by aegis and zabutom. It’s… well… European sounding 😀 Get XMPlay and the .sid plugin [best] or ChipAmp for WinAmp to play this file.

It-Alien – A Moment Elsewhere – III
Big and complex seem to be It-Alien’s favorite things, something I’ve noticed listening to his tunes. This 14 minute electronic/orchestral piece is very progressive and very technical. He would also like to specify that “there are some sample-based instruments in the song: the bass, the drums, the guitar, the hand percussions, the xilophone and the arpsynth are not made using VST technology.” And that’s the power of schlongs. Er, Renoise.

Pilot7 + mr_mark_dollin – Red Sands
I think all that needs to be said is that it sounds like the Zerg music from Starcraft. lulz

Garden Art (48.4 MB Compressed Archive)
SOC ALBUM +1! Contains two guest tracks by Skrypnyk and one guest track by Hollowtone, who also just released an EP called “op8

THX2U Joker for the mail, THX2EVERY1ELSE4 the free music! See you next week.

Free Shit: Ansiform, Malty Media, Monodrive, Juri, Plugexpert, Sefiros

Lots of good stuff for you this week! My sources have pulled through to create some fantastic material. Read on to see.
ansiform – qetoret (gong fog)
Starting the column out with some great ambient. Clocking in at 16 minutes 15 seconds, it’s the longest single track on ansiform to date. Which is good, because ambience should usually last at least that long 😀 It’s an ominously-toned track, a soundscape filled with a mix of ancient Chinese and tribal Australian textures. Highly recommended if you’re familiar with ambient or the ansiform label, also if you want to try something new and unusual. This is now one of my favorite releases from the suspiciously anonymous ansiform group. I also recommend “Artroom,” “Have You Seen Me?” and the”Memories EP.” And yes, you’re not supposed to know who actually created the ambience. Personally that concept appeals to me, which is why I have a release on ansiform. Guess which one!

Malty Media – Bracken Bed EP
h0l/Simon tells us this is a collaborative effort between familiar mono artist Aquaboogie and a “long-time electronic musician and Japanese resident” Jet Jaguar. Well, right off the bat, it’s certainly an interesting combination. You’ll find that, for some reason, the EP starts off like a drunken country music performance at a cheap bar, somewhere deep in the American heartland. Malty Media, take that for what you will :). It quickly evolves into the familiar-to-monotonik-fans crazy IDM that you’d expect from someone like Khonnor, with oddball sample mangling [for texture!] being the key element of the music. The focus is on being weird in this EP, for sure, and it makes for a fun listening experience. If you enjoy this I would recommend a few other releases on Monotonik, by Grandma, Khonnor, and Gaza Faggot [hint: same person].

Monodrive – Follow the Wind
EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)
The newest Reunion Studio release is by Monodrive. It’s labeled “dnb” but despite that, is quite subdued and more like a quick chillout, with light, airy synths and beats. “Follow the Wind” is a very suitable title for this breezy track.

Juri – Thought it was Love EP
“This ep is similar to a short story, sad and beautiful at the same time. If you have read “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, then you know what this is about. -Juri” Ah, Electronica / Other, the best kind of music! Even though Electronica isn’t considered the real term for electronic music [but Traxinspace and Myspace do, for some reason]. I find myself drawing comparisons to one of my own EPs, “The Sky Is Never Dark Anymore EP [also free!],” which has a similar tone and style, but of course my music sounds much more “stripped down” and minimal, as usual. Unfortunately it’s not downloadable, though I asked Juri about a download and am currently waiting for a reply. For now, though, it’s available to stream on his myspace page.

Sefiros – Under the Roots
Sefiros is a bit of an enigma to me. For reasons different than his music though. Actually, his music is pretty straightforward. If you want a quick description, it’s a blend of epic orchestral and electronic patterns layering and unlayering themselves at a kind of droning pace, with high quality and a full sound. This album is no different, except for the fact that this shota version of Trent Reznor improves with every release. Give it a try.

45 Min Plugexpert Backup Dj Set
This is a link to the thread on the Renoise board, which contains a tracklisting and download link. If you can’t get to the board, here’s the link. Basically just a quick and dirty DJ set plugexpert mixed up to make sure there was something to play if he fucked up during a live set. Fun mix of glitch, jungle, and breakbeat.

That’s all for this week, but boy that was a lot! It should at least last you until next Sunday night, when – who knows – my latest album might be done and [of course] freely distributed. Tell yo friendz!!!!

Expect possible down-time.

LOL U MEEN THEREZ TIMEXS WEN THE SIGHT IZNT DOWN?LOLOLOLOLOL

srsly. If you haven’t heard, I’ve been in a bit of a finacial bind lately, and the hosting company has just sent me an e-mail saying they failed to bill me think month due to “Do Not Honor”…which basically means I’m way broke. I’m not when the site will go down, IF it goes down at all, but if it does it will be back by Thursday-Friday. If it DOESN’T go down by Thursday-Friday…well then you can bet it won’t be going down at all…

Just a heads up.

Free Shit: Evoke Tracks, Sakari Infinity Redesign, SGX, Creepy Simon

It’s Sunday night, let’s get some LINKS! The last week has unfortunately been kind of… weak, but there’s still a bit of material to share.
This weekend, a demoparty in Germany, Evoke happened. A bunch of my Renoiser friends went [read here] and had a blast. I’ll have to wait for MAGFest for something like this, but there were plenty of compos with plenty of great stuff. In the thread on the Renoise board, there’s links popping up to songs made by the crew that attended.

dblue – tehvoke!
Yes, that dblue. I don’t hear Glitch used anywhere though. A pretty cool SID-like dance tune, with good energy, deep bass, and sexy lead. Also a speak n spell. Reminds me of Machinae Supremacy without the metal :3

keith303 – myanmar
This is an AWESOME drum n bass track. “the vocals originate from a three second indian chanting snipped which is totally copyrightless and got alienated to the max. wink.gif as the party crowd didn’t seem to enjoy this very much, maybe you or somebody else can.” I dunno why the hell the party crowd wouldn’t enjoy this, I certainly am. This is the kind of sound you’d expect from a pro – awesome synths, sounds, and good mixing.

That’s all for the Evoke music for now. I might have more music from this event in next week’s post.

Sakari Infinity, an original game music site, has a new design, and with the exception of the HUEG header it looks pretty good. Click around and you’ll find some neat tracks for use in videogames.

SGX – Have No Tyrant, which I linked to last week, was uploaded to Reunion Studio. SGX and Reunion seem to be getting along very well together. This is his third single on Reunion so far.

In other news, Simon reads my column, and so should you and all your friends. I wonder what I’ll find if I follow referral links like him…

Trax In Space 2 Out of Private Beta

From the front page:

The team at Trax In Space is proud to announce we completed the private portion of our beta testing and the site is now officially open as a public beta. Check back often for new features and changes to the site.
This is a good followup to my last news post. Trax In Space 2 is the second iteration of one of the original “music community” sites like mp3.com or stationmp3.com were. However, Trax In Space’s community was largely demoscene/modscene based, allowing for users to upload their mod files to show to other people. It got so huge that the original site shut down because of astronomical hosting bills. But finally, it’s back, and similar to the first in terms of functionality and userbase. This time around, though, I have an account there. As do some other people you may recognize in my friends list.

Free Shit: This week in Free Music

Hi guys! I’m starting a column. My legions of fans will already know this, but I love free things. My studio, sans the computer, is practically built on salvaged or bargain hardware, free samples and free VST plugins. So it’s no surprise I don’t like paying for music either, especially when there’s so much talent out there releasing for free and breaking new ground. This column will be primarily about electronic music, though sometimes I might find something cool in a completely random style.
Just so I don’t have to play catch-up, I post everything I find inside the Free Music Thread, publically viewable on the OCR boards. I’ll still update the thread though [and others may finally post something?] so keep an eye on it if you want. The point of that thread and this column is to blend people from OCR and VGMix into other sites that offer free music, but aren’t necessarily a remix site.

You’ll notice that I have only a few netlabels that I visit, though sometimes I’ll hear something from somewhere else that I think is cool.

Let’s at least do a recap of the recent weeks, because I have a lot of cool stuff to share:
‘Renzu – Reiha EP’
“Chicago-based Renzu, a professional 3D animator and self-described ‘animation nerd’ and composer of rather deliciously lush IDM soundscapes. And the ‘Reiha EP’ is just a sampling of his layered, deceptively complex electronic music stylings.”

Kaneel, live set at Empo[empo-something] on 2007.07.13, with pictures!
A good mix set of Kaneel’s tunes, his normal style of glitched breaks and IDM. Also, smoking is bad, except in France.

ansi037 – Rebirth
Latest ansiform release, done by a friend of mine, but ansiform is an anonymous netlabel so I can’t tell you who it is :D. Ansiform, by the way, is a great ambient netlabel, so if you’re into totally relaxing and turning into a vegetable for hours, get their entire archive. I also have a release on ansiform 🙂 see if you can find it.

BeatBattle 5 entries
Renoise’s official yearly competition. There were 54 entries and I got 52nd place. OverCoat with a shitty song, or everyone else with really really good ones? You decide! I recommend downloading in place order until you start getting to the shitty ones. Where the line for that is drawn though, is up to you.

Kahvi multi-artist compilation, “Summer Selection”
Hot off the heels of Butano Beats, another multi-artist Kahvi comp. which I also recommend, comes the Summer Selection. Apparently “Kahvi was on summer break, but that doesn’t stop me [4T Thieves] from putting out a nice VA with a selection of quality tracks in the meantime” so this’ll be the last release until fall, as far as I know. This is a great comp, but when they say “Summer Selection” they really mean dark downtempo ambient and chillout, with great synth textures and dreamy sounds.

Ckid – Down With Ghosts
Latest Monotonik release, a lo-fi electro-indie rock with extensive distortion/noise abuse and light vocals. Simon says “Full of chanted and whispered vocals and an evocative, almost
shoegaze-centric attitude to idm/electronics, ‘Down With Ghosts’ starts
with the semi-conscious drawl of ‘From A To Z’, before the title track
crosses subtle beats with drifting vocals, and things flow swiftly on.”

His descriptions are always bizarre like that. That’s why we love him :3

Hollowtone – op8 EP
Short, 3 track ambient EP, by OCR forumgoer Radiowar. 1st track is a minute and a half of glitched up song-skipping, but the other 2 tracks are pretty cool, if a little normal, ambient textures.

GaMeBoX – Mindstorm
Cool dancey track with extensive soloing and cool heavily-modulated chippy synths.

SGX – Have No Tyrant
Electro stuff with trip-hop/big beat breaks things and strings and synths and stuff like that. He thinks.

If you think something is worth mentioning that I [likely] have forgotten, please comment on the news article linking to the release! Also, let me know how awesome I did on my column plz.

A Very Nerdy Non-Canonical Captain S Christmas

It’s Christmas in…August as PBC Productions and Captain S return with a 15-minute special.


From screwattack.com

Description from the website:

“You’ve waited more than 2 months for a new Captain S episode. Well, today is that day! When Santa Claus is kidnapped by the Game Genie, it’s up to Captain S to try and save Christmas. What he finds when he arrives in Video Land is an unexpected prisoner who turns out to be a tad ornery. However, it quickly becomes apparent that without the help of this Nerd, he may not be able to free Kris Kringle. Don’t miss the buddy flick of the summer, 4 months in the making!

And please visit screwattack.com and support the guys that helped bring Captain S to the masses!”