FREE MUSIC: Hip-hop album inspired by Duncan Jones' MOON

I try to keep things positive around here. The last thing the Internet needs is more snark, hate and negative energy, so my rule of late has been to ignore the stuff I don't much like. Which is easier than it might sound.

I was hesitant to share this link at first, because I didn't much care for it. Not only that, but I found it's inspiration, the Duncan Jones film Moon, to be a bit overrated. It was a competent, bright movie that was only sporadically engaging and (IMHO) seemed a lot more novel than it really was because it was surrounded by crap like the Transformers movies.

BUT (and here's where I bring back the positive vibes) ... just because I didn't like it doesn't mean you won't. So, here it is: Selene, a concept EP by Richard Rich and Max Tannone (and features elements from Clint Mansell's film score.) It's a five-track album available for free download, no strings attached. I've pasted the Soundcloud streams below.

Selene by Max Tannone

Free Music: Cee Lo Green's FOOL FOR YOU

Cee Lo Green has a free download available at his official website. It's a tune called Fool for You and features Melanie Fiona. All you have to do is kick in your e-mail address to get it.

Fool for You is available over at www.ceelogreen.com.

FYI: Fiona's second LP, The MF Life, is due this summer.

IG-88's 57 Chevy (Mary Shelley Overdrive remix)

 Not too long ago, mc chris had a contest to remix songs from his three "Part Six" eps. He posted the stem files for download and let fans have at them. The results are available for download over at his website.

Not among those downloads is an effort by Mary Shelley Overdrive. The contest ended Sept. 6 ... but the band didn't wrap their remix until this week.

From the MSO website:

"As usual, we dragged our asses. We're trying to get our new album done and the remix thing just got pushed to the side for a few days too many. We wanted to do one of the Star Wars songs and decided ti pick the one about IG-88. He's like the bounty hunter who always gets picked last in gym class, so we thought we'd show him a little love."

IG-88s 57 Chevy is available as a download over at their official website. Or you can get it directly from Soundcloud below.
  
  IG-88's 57 Chevy (Mary Shelley Overdrive remix) by Mary Shelley Overdrive

FREE MUSIC: Han Solo by mc chris

Over at mc chris' Facebook page he warned fans that there would be an announcement at midnight. First it looked like the news was that t-shirts at his website would be $10 for the next 24 hours, which is a pretty good deal. He followed that with even better news: a free download link to a new song called Han Solo.

I don't know how long the link will be active, but for now you can get it by clicking here.

And don't miss out of the t-shirt sale here. He's got shirts featuring werewolves and zombies and shit.

(Note: I didn't have any art to go along with this post so threw together a quickie cover for the song. If you hate it, don't blame mc. He doesn't know it exists.)

Free Music: MARY SHELLEY OVERDRIVE

South Carolina's Mary Shelley Overdrive has released the next track from their on-going free album Penny Dreadful Valentine. It's the fourth of an undisclosed number of songs to be released track by track as free downloads, and is titled A Delirium of Fireflies. The previous songs can be found at the website for the album. All the songs are available for bloggers to share however they choose.


DOWNLOAD THE SONG FROM SHAREBEE BY CLICKING HERE.

Free Music: VALENTINE WOLFE

South Carolina's Valentine Wolfe has posted it's latest collection of original music as a free download at the band's website. Titled Invitation to the Masquerade, the EP features four new songs: Sweet Oblivion, Valse Macabre, Blood of the Rose and Nightflower.

To get it, head on over to ValentineWolfe.com, sign up for their mailing list and receive a direct download link for a ZIP bundle that contains all four tracks and the album;s artwork.


The band also has a free EP from 2009 still available for download, a collection of remixes and instrumentals from it's previous album Five Nocturnes. Together, the two albums add up to more than 70 minutes of music.

Meanwhile, you can purchase Five Nocturnes directly from the band by following this link. It's just $8 ... what are you waiting for?

Free Music: MARY SHELLEY OVERDRIVE

Beginning in late July, South Carolina's Mary Shelley Overdrive began releasing it's new album PENNY DREADFUL VALENTINE on various sites around the Internet. The band is releasing the album track-by-track, debuting songs on individual websites as free downloads before making the tracks available at a webpage devoted to the album.

So far they've released songs at The Manchester Morgue and the Dread Media podcast. The third song, an Alien-inspired tune titled "Derelict," is now available for download at Building a Drain to House the Insane.

The band has quite a few other albums available at various places around the blogosphere, including an EP featuring a cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "This Ain't the Summer of Love" that I'm pretty sure was co-produced by crystal meth. There's also an LP of original songs for sale at Amazon that references everything from Galaga, The Crow, porn, Satanism, commie astronauts and werewolves.

Free new song from DANZIG

 On a Wicked Night, a song from Danzig's forthcoming album Red Deth Saboath, is Amazon's free song of the day. Get it here, no strings attached!

And pre-order the full album, due later this month, here.

Rocking and Rowling

There’s a weird musical subculture out there that rarely gets mainstream media attention: Wizard Rock.

While the idea of Wizard Rock goes back to the days when headshops were still evolving into comicbook stores, fans of Harry Potter have ramped things up to the Nth Degree. There’s so much of this music out there that, given enough time, it might come to rival Horror Punk (though I kinda doubt it.)

While booking bands for a recent charity fundraiser I came across some Wizard Rock (or Wizard Folk, in some cases) bands that I thought I’d share. Keep in mind that I’m not especially a fan of Harry Potter — but I still think this kind of creativity is worth discussing. The links will take you to their MySpace pages.

Note: The bands listed below are just the tip of the iceberg. The websites for each of these bands will likely lead you to dozens of other Wizard Rock artists. The age of some of these artists can be sometimes startling.

The Half Kneazles, of Chapel Hill, N.C., describe themselves as "a wizard rock band consisting of two friends, Nancy and Abby. Quarter Kneazles....and nerdy high school girls." I’m not exactly sure what a “kneazle” is, but that’s not surprising. I had to visit Google to understand some of the lyrics to the mc chris song “Neville.”

The Blibbering Humdingers are a husband and wife duo in Cary, N.C. who perform Wizard Rock, Potter Filk, Celtic, Medieval, Renaissance, and original folk music. Their original music actually pre-dates the Potter books by a few years, and were inspired to try their hands at Wizard Rock after seeing Harry and the Potters.

Hawthorn and Holly, of Charlotte, N.C., don’t have much to say about themselves at their website, but do take the time to outline the goals of WRock: To encourage young people to read, and to encourage young people to be involved with music.

The Remus Lupins have one of the more interesting mission statements: “… here are the songs from the Pensieve, the songs from Remus' mind, from every perspective, borne of these stored memories, and infused with werewolf energy. This is Wizard Rock for those who can handle it.”

The Moaning Myrtles are Lauren and Nina, a piano-based wizard rock band from Hillsborough, N.J. “The idea for the band was sparked in November 2005 when we saw Harry and the Potters play a live show and Lauren brought up how many new wizard rock bands had started.” As I mentioned earlier, these acts are only a few of the Wizard Rock acts out there. The Moaning Myrtles have played with the likes of The Whomping Willows, Draco and the Malfoys, The Parselmouths, Ministry of Magic, and others.

Review: How to Destroy Angels

Here's my fundamental problem with Christianity: the math jut doesn't add up.
Once you accept the notion of an omnipotent, eternal power, you have to accept that the nature of eternity eclipses everything else. A infinite god simply can't create something that exists outside of itself so, consequently, everything that exists is a part of that same being. If you accept that, then concepts like good, evil, free will and individuality become meaningless.

These are the thoughts I was entertaining while listening to How to Destroy Angels, a new musical project launched by Trent Reznor. Like Jack White, Reznor appears to have grown bored with the music that pays his bills and seems to have something to prove to the world. What he doesn't seem to realize is that it's almost impossible to create something that doesn't contain some essential — and visible — part of you.

Jack White has no less than three bands with record deals: The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, all of which kinda sound like each other. The further down the line White took these projects, the more efforts he had to take to mask his creative voice. But nothing he's done so far really hides his input into these bands, though. Even putting a female lead singer out front and handing his guitar to someone else has done little to disguise his presence in The Dead Weather. They still kinda sound like The White Stripes.

Reznor has taken a similar step in How to Destroy Angels by turning over vocals to his wife Mariqueen Maandig. And, as with The Dead Weather, the result sounds pretty much like what you'd expect from Trent Reznor. Only a little less interesting. Reznor's got a terrific dramatic range (even if most of the emotions he excels at sharing are a little bleak) but I'm not getting that sense of range from Maandig on How to Destroy Angels' first EP. While she's got a pleasant voice, it never veers too far in any one direction.

But the fault isn't really with Maandig; it's with Reznor's songs. The album hums along at a hypnotic pace and doesn't require much more from her than the average trance tune would. The EP — which you can download from the band's website for free — seems more like the beginning of an idea than like an idea, itself.

I'm far from convinced that How to Destroy Angels will be anything other than an interesting detour on Reznor's career path. While it might sound like I think this project is a wasted effort, that's not really the case. My favorite artists are the ones who sometimes knock off the dust and try new things. If I take issue with anything it's with the pretension that How to Destroy Angels is not a Trent Reznor album. Because, from the album's first note, it clearly is.

Free Music Friday (on Tuesday)

Last week I had an installment of Free Music Friday ready to go, but got cold feet. It was a download link to Devo's Be Stiff EP, which is a pretty damn significant album that — strangely — has never been released on CD. The songs have been released individually on various compilations, though, and I'm hesitant to post illegal downloads. So I archived the post and moved on.

Today, though, I learned that Trent Reznor — the man who once jokingly threatened to postpone a Nine Inch Nails concert because it conflicted with the premiere of the last Star Trek movie — has a new album available as high-quality, DRM free MP3s. His new band is called How to Destroy Angels and is designed to be a departure of sorts from the kinds of music he's obliged to record under the NIN banner. Reznor's wife,  Mariqueen Maandig, is the band's vocalist.

The process to get this download is the same as with the NIN freebie, The Slip. Simply visit howtodestroyangels.com, follow the download link, enter your e-mail and the direct download will be sent to you.

Free Music Friday

Rue Morgue Radio Presents 

Hymns From The House of Horror

In honor of Rue Morgue Magazine’s 100th issue, the company’s radio division has put together a free anthology of horror rock. Here’s what they say at the website:

“We put our misshapen heads together and enticed a handful of the many artists we believe best encapsulate Rue Morgue into giving us exclusive mixes, previously unreleased tracks, obscure rarities and classic cuts for this morbid mixtape, hosted by Rue Morgue Radio's proprietor of perpetual darkness, Tomb Dragomir.”

Appearing on this disc at Psycho Charger, Ghoultown, The Ghastly Ones, Balzac and the great Zombina and the Skeletones. The download file also comes with printable artwork! (Thanks to Phelpster at The Manchester Morgue for pointing this out.)

DOWNLOAD HERE

Mos Dub

Possibly my favorite freebie on this list is Mos Dub, a remix project by Max Tannone that features the lyrics from Mos Def and the music of classic dub and reggae. It works a lot better than you might think.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Jane Siberry’s Entire Catalog

Jane Siberry — who I’m mostly familiar with because of her song on The Crow soundtrack — has recently made her entire catalog of music available as free downloads at her website. Not sure how long this will last (and there appears to be some issues with the server) so get ‘em while you can.

DOWNLOAD HERE