Welcome to the Free Music Archive (Beta)

The Golden Festival is a massive Balkan and East European music and dance bacchanal. On January 14th, WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise presented its fourth live broadcast from the event's main stage in Brooklyn's kitschy and fabulous Grand Prospect Hall. The Grand Ballroom was one of four stages, and the two-night event featured over sixty groups. This year, the Free Music Archive will host archives from all four stages.

We're starting the Golden Festival 2012 Collection with the Atrium Room.

Black Sea Hotel (pictured) is the Brooklyn-based vocal quartet of Corinna, Joy, Sarah and Willa. Their set included traditional songs learned under a plum tree in Bulgaria, but with their own distinct twists and arrangements, since many of the songs were originally sung by larger choirs.

Brazda (pictured) is a New York-based Balkan band that plays fresh arrangements of traditional repertoire from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, and beyond. Like many of the groups, they have provided information about each song in their set including translations. I was surprised to learn that "Yiati Foumaro Kokaini" has lyrics that translate to "That crazy rascal, cocaine smoker For my troubles, now I smoke cocaine."

Black Pus is the many-armed beast of a solo project from Brian Chippendale, one of the most distinct musicians and visual artists of our time. If you're not already familiar with the sounds of Black Pus, you may recognize Chippendale's many-armed drumming style and masked mic-in-mouth vox from his duos Mindflayer and Lightning Bolt. A co-founder of the storied Fort Thunder artist collective, Chippendale still lives in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence, in a former mill building where lately he seems to be writing a new Black Pus song almost every night. So while we're wrapping our heads around 2011's Primordial Pus (Load Records) -- not to mention the limited edition CD-R series of Black Pus 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0 -- there's already a seventh Black Pus album ready to pop.

The live set on Marty McSorely's WFMU program is a special treat because, though he is a prolific musician, Black Pus doesn't tour nearly enough to quench our thirst for Pus. The set was expertly engineered by Ernie Indradat, and the interview covers recent collaborations with Björk and the Flaming Lips. Chippendale also talks about how he assembled such a unique setup, including an oscillator pedal that was originally a gift from Shinji Masuko of DMBQ. When Marty McSorely asks "What is Brian Chippendale's Black Pus?" Chippendale responds that it's reggaeton. He goes on to elaborate on a range of influences from the free jazz assault of Peter Brötzmann's Machine Gun to the unpredictable rhythms of Sightings and Black Dice (who started out as a hardcore band in Providence around the same time as Lightning Bolt).

In some circles, Brian Chippendale is known as much for his fine art, comics and graphic novels as for his music. His visual style can be experienced as part of every Black Pus and Lightning Bolt release. And, as those of you who are on the WFMU swag mailing list may have heard, Brian Chippendale designed an awesome biker t-shirt for WFMU's marathon which begins later this month!

Previously on the FMA: doncbruital (Angels in America) on Anarchic Self Reliance: Black Pus

For more, check out the Black Pus blog, which just debuted this trippy surrealist video for "I'll Come When I Can," off Primordial Pus.

Tracks to Sync is series of mixes curated with the online video producer in mind. Along with a few new faces, this playlist features updates from artists who'll already be familar to FMA regulars. License and artist info below, and if you're new to the Creative Commons licenses that facilitate online sharing, we've gathered links to great resources in our Music for Video portal.

The Freak Fandango Orchestra is a multi-ethnic band from Barcelona who recently performed at Barbés Brooklyn and release music under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Oddio Overplay first introduced the FMA to Lee Rosevere, a Canadian composer who approaches music informed by his professional broadcast experience. His latest album was imagined as a soundtrack to Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories (link). [CC BY-NC-SA]

Ending Satellites from Bayonne France mix music with photography in a journey between pictures and melodies. Be sure to get the free deluxe version of their new album for its accompanying artworks! [Creative Commons BY-NC-SA]

The OO-Ray took part in disquiet's Instagr/am/bient: 25 Sonic Postcards in which artists composed music to accompany each other's insagram photos, using sonic and visual filters to explore the intersection of technology, aesthetics, and artistic process. [Creative Commons BY-NC-SA]

junior85 aka Tony Higgins has struck up a very cool collaboration with filmmaker Danny Cooke, which began here at the FMA and we wrote about last year. Danny commissioned a new soundtrack for his latest film about letterpress and movable type. Junior85's soundtrack to Upside Down, Left To Right - A Letterpress Film is now available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license to inspire new works.

Blear Moon also inspired a Danny Cooke film, as featured in April's Tracks to Sync.  Now based in Prague, the Russia-born artist returns with another fantastic ambient release, Town of Two Houses. [Creative Commons BY-NC-SA]

Chris Zabriskie recently removed the NonCommercial clause from his work in favor of Attribution-only, and wrote an article, "Why I Went CC-BY," explaining his reasoning. His latest release, Undercover Vampire Policeman, is beautifully minimal and darkly cinematic, with excellent song titles to boot. [CC-BY]

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Most of these artists provide contact info if you'd like to reach out for more permissions than the CC license grants -- they'll be happy to hear from you, and it can lead to cool collaborations like this one between Tony Higgins and Danny Cooke:

In possibly his most nerdy move yet, Lee Rosevere's latest project is music inspired by the writing of Isaac Asimov, known for his many science-fiction stories.

This project kinda makes sense, given that Lee's previous works (like the three installments of the Light Years albums I, II and III) have been likened to unofficial scores for non-existent sci-fi movies.  It isn't essential to be familiar with the Asimov stories the songs are named after, but it does enhance the listening experience.

The album is available now on FMA (also available in lossless FLAC with extra goodies), and here is the first 'single' "The Machine That Won The War", sync'd to an edited version of the film "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" by George Melies (1902, public domain via archive.org).