Posts tagged folk

Music from my hometown Cologne - and beyond: Excellent 12 track folk sampler featuring the talents of Entertainment for the Braindead, Hello Piedpiper, Wool, Town of Saints, Honig ecc. Don’t miss this …

Winter is nearing, you can smell it, when you’re outside, at least here in Germany. Christmas is drawing nearer. Christmas will be in less than a month, can you believe it? Sufjan Stevens made music fans all over the world the wonderful early Christmas present. Take from his recently released 5-EP-Collection “Songs for Christmas II: Sliver & Gold” he compiled a free download sampler which can be downloaded at noisetrade.com. 12 tracks = one hour of festive, yet not corny at all modern Christmas music. Get it now, don’t let them annoy you with another year of “Last Christmas” trash…

(Source: noisetrade.com)

Am I wrong or is Noisetrade becoming an insider tip for promoting new releases by mainstream artists (no offence intended)? After Amanda Palmer a couple of days ago, here’s a free Aimee Mann EP, introducing her new release “Charmer” (with one track) and a couple of nice tracks from older releases.

Tracklist:

1. Charmer (from the forthcoming album Charmer)
2. Little Tornado (from the album @#%&*! Smilers)
3. That’s How I knew This Story Would Break My Heart (from the album The Forgotten Arm)
4. It’s Not (from the album Lost in Space)
5. You Do (from the album Bachelor No 2)

With due respect: What a strange band name M-PeX and what a lame album title iPhado … yet, this mix of dubstep, electronic music and Portuguese guitar music is astonishly coherent and - contrary to what I expected from a release named like this - quite an original and refreshing contribution to the very interesting Portuguese folk music.

(Source: freemusicarchive.org)

As you may have noticed, I dropped last week’s #musicmonday. I was off for a quick holiday in my home country Sardinia/Italy. Now I’m back in Germany and even if I still got a lot of things to catch up, I’ll take some time to dedicate a few words to one of the most creative, most versatile and most interesting artists (that’s a lot of “most”) in the free music world. His name is Marco Lucchi, he is from Modena/Italy. He is a multi-instrumentalist and composer that has released a REALLY impressive number of high quality releases during the past three decades (or so), most of the them are available for free and all of the are worth listening.

It’s almost impossible to pick out one “typical” release of Lucchi, as he is involved in so many different ideas and projects. To have a brief introduction of his work and his biography, it’s best to visit his soundcloud-page and read the bio there and listen to some of his past and present recordings.

I’m pretty sure, that if you have the slightest interest in experimental music, avantgarde music, folk music or ambient music, you will find a lot of music from Marco Lucchi to listen to and to enjoy. I’ve downloaded/listened to at least 20 releases of this guy and still, every new release I explore surprises me.

Here are some good releases to start with. They are not intended as a representative cross section, but simply some of my personal favorites:

1. Marco Lucchi & Ensemble – Fados 1988-2008
   
    
   (click cover to download)
   
   A collection of mainly “old” recordings he did with an ensemble of very fine musicians. The music shifts between folk, (neo-)classical and contemporary music. A simply enchanting collection.
    
2. Marco Lucchi - Mater Natura
   Marco Lucchi - Alina, un altro giorno




The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is a huge influence on some (not all!) projects of Marco. He seems to be fascinated by the simplicity and the emotional power of Pärt’s music. “Mater Natura” and “Alina, un altro giorno” (Alina, another day) are two very original attempts to rework two of Pärt’s major works (the Stabat Mater and the piano miniature Alina). You can find another Alina reference on the album Poets.




3. Marco Lucchi - The Spleen
   
   
   
   His latest release “The Spleen” (published on his bandcamp site only 10 days ago) is a wonderful example for his ability of blending ambient music with soundscapes and fragmentary melodies.

Related links:

• Marco Lucchi - Homepage 
• Marco Lucchi - facebook.com
• Marco Lucchi - bandcamp.com
• Marco Lucchi - soundcloud.com
• Marco Lucchi - webbedhandrecords.com

There’s so much awesome music in the world to discover … check out this track (roughly translated into “I’m going to go to the desert to die”) from Mexico, it might change your ideas about what Mexican music sounds like… this is simply awesome, wow!

I’ve found it on the new compilation (simply named “Compilado 002”) from Mexico-based music platform Estándar.

Get it here at the Free Music Archive (I love this site!)

And check out the first Volume of that series too… plenty of stuff to discover…

hernameiscalla:

Our new 3 track single ‘Maw’ is now available for preorder from here

also, here’s a video we made for the title track - warning, flashing lights!

Also we’re currently on tour, come rock out with us or keep up with the latest shiz over at our Facebook Page