FMA Blog

Sometimes the sound you're looking for is a sound that sustains. Music for sitting right where you are, but going somewhere, slowly.

This Music for Video mix highlights many shades of drone and ambient electronic music from across the Free Music Archive, including some that can set a relaxing and joyful tone, and others that can be a tool for your most tense and chaotic scenes. The best drone delivers, creating a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built, often creating a meditative space, taking on the feeling of a sculpture, and evoking intense feelings.

PATCH is a series of curated playlists selected from the Radius episode archive. Each playlist is organized around a specific topic or theme that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum. PATCH serves as a platform to illuminate the questions, concerns, and complexities of and within radio-based art practices.

PATCH 01: Failure

Episode 04: Art of Failure

8 Silences, part of Art of Failure’s Laps Series, offers a sensible representation of the Internet by broadcasting audio streams that travel and reverberate trough the web. In the style of encephalography, this empirical sound process gives substance to an unstable and intangible digital space. Initially silent, the streams progressively incorporate an infinity of transformations or “errors” that modify the sound as it circulates the network. These alterations are comparable to a form of erosion caused by the network space - they are a key to allow different mental representations of this digital topography. Presented as a live performance, 8 Silences is a sound immersion in the heart of data flows.

Tashi Dorji conjures incredible sounds from a prepared acoustic guitar. His spirited improvisations—recorded live without any loops or effects—evoke a composite of influences from Derek Bailey to Mauritanian pulaar to the traditional music of his native Bhutan.

"Growing up in Bhutan with little access to music except random bootlegged cassettes and shortwave radio, I listened to anything i could find," Tashi Dorji writes in an email interview. He learned guitar by ear because "we didn't have music school, TV or internet back then in Bhutan, so we had to use a lot of imagination and improvise what we thought we heard off of a tape player."

Tashi Dorji arrived in Asheville, North Carolina as an international student in 2000. He quickly fell in with the vibrant punk rock community, which flowed into free jazz, noise, experimental and other avant garde music. The Appalachian mountain town has become a real hub for experimental music thanks to longstanding acts like Ahleuchatistas, resources like Asheville FM, the shop Harvest Records, tape distributor Tomentosa, and labels like Bathetic and Headway Recordings.

Guitar Improvisations, released on cassette by Headway last year, sold out quickly but is available to download from the FMA along with his release sêp. This week, the label unveiled Tashi Dorji's self-titled follow-up, and it's streaming after the jump. Tashi Dorji also has a forthcoming release on Turned Word Records out of Belfast ME, and much more on his bandcamp.

Bhutanese traditional music is an oral tradition consisting of many marginal, isolated communities across the country, and much has yet to be documented. But for those interested in hearing some examples, Tashi Dorji points us towards a nascent archive hosted by the Bhutan Broadcasting Service.

Classwar Karaoke is an online label primarily based around an ongoing series of quarterly surveys - in effect, largescale compilations - published online mainly through the Free Music Archive, on each of the last days of February, May, August and November. It hosts material culled from the experimental scene, including electro-acoustic, improv, free jazz, acusmatic, soundart, field recordings, cut-up, avant-rock, noise, ambient and sound poetry.

Classwar Karaoke was founded by Anthony Donovan in March 2008; with the first survey appearing a few months later. The label only truly came into it's own, however, when Jaan Patterson joined as co-curator later the same year. Concerted efforts to expand and professionalise the label ensued. At the same time, Patterson founded suRRism-Phonoethics, as a platform for full-scale releases. Many crossovers in personnel and outlook were evident between these projects, and, after a two year hiatus, upon his return, Patterson invited Donovan to similarly co-curate at suRRism-Phonoethics. Between them, and via these two projects, Donovan and Patterson have, by now, released hundreds of pieces of music and short-films, attracting many tens-of-thousands of hits.  

Included in the Classwar Karaoke and suRRism-Phonoethics roll-calls are internationally-recognised artits such as Bob Ostertag, Fred Frith, Rhys Chatham, Bryan Lewis Saunders, Leif Elggren, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Geoff Leigh, Otomo Yoshihide, Terry Bozzio, Nate Young, Michael Giles, Keith Tippett, Jaap Blonk, Jochen Arbeit, Steve Beresford, Leafcutter John, Ludo Mich, Gino Robair and Zoviet*France, as well as an impressive array of lesser-known but equally innovative artists. Live gigs, mini-festivals and specialist multi-media releases have also featured, and physical releases, of limited edition CDRs and audio-tapes, are planned for the future.

Coffee milk is the official state drink of Rhode Island. If you haven't tried it, it's basically chocolate milk's more wired cousin, but just as rich, cool and sweet.

Rhode Island's AS220 will also give you creative jolt. They're a non-profit community arts center in downtown Providence. For Spring, they've compiled a seasonal sampler, showcasing musicians from who have played at their space, including the likes of Javelin, Feels, What Cheer? Brigade, The Kolour Kult, Math The Band, Howse & Mincemeat or Tenspeed. Pour yourself a tall glass here.

After a couple years weaving their magical and haunting sounds through Montreal's underground, Les Momies de Palerme went on hiatus. Needless to say, we were thrilled when the duo agreed to reunite and join us in the CKUT studios and play some music during If You Got Ears. Surrounded by an array of synths, effects, cables, and mixers, the pair conjured some seriously dreamy audio during their live performance. The stunning audio and the fleeting reunion made a truely special set.

Element Perspective is a sound and design label in Osaka, Japan. In celebration of their 3rd Anniversary, they're offering a free ambient electronic complation featuring tracks from AUCHRE, itsuqi doi, mitsuru shimizu, Mujika Easel, N-qia, Rika Oshimi, sanmi, SHOMOMOSE, unmo, yoko komatsu, and zmi. The album offers an abstract, google-translated description, explaining how the album is a journey to a higher level of consciousness through sound: "My lifetime were surrounded by crowd of sounds. The road to consciousness, to overdrive consciousness. Welcome to consciousness drive."

There's bonus artwork and higher quality files offered from the bandcamp release here.

Creative Commons licensing has opened a new world for collaboration. Most artists with works in the Free Music Archive share their copyrighted work with some rights reserved. Depending on the chosen license for the work, this often allows others to incorporate the work into something new without the use of lawyers and other middle men.

An avenue of collaboration that the Free Music Archive has actively promoted is the reuse of recordings in film and video. The FMA Music for Video selections offer filmmakers a sampling of the variety of music available for reuse. The FMA also has a partnership with Vimeo, the video host, helping filmmakers find just the right music to fit the setting of the film.

The collaborative music+video results have been remarkable around the world. In fact, in some cases this collaboration even benefits the world. Nonprofit organizations, not typically known for having large promotional budgets, can benefit greatly by re-purposing Creative Commons recordings licensed for reuse.

One FMA success story is the union of a recording by American artist Aaron Ximm with a public service message for sustainability organization Redress. Ximm's track is used in a promo video for the EcoChic Design Award.

Redress is a Hong Kong based NGO with a mission to promote environmental sustainability in Asia's fashion industry by reducing textile waste, pollution, water and energy consumption. We achieve this via educational sustainable fashion shows, exhibitions, competitions, seminars, research and media outreach. Our unique profile allows us to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders. We work with multiple fashion designers, textile and garment manufacturers, retailers, schools and universities, multilateral organizations, governments, NGOs, financial institutions and media organizations.

The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition inspiring emerging fashion designers and students to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. Apply now.

This year has been yet another strange chapter in the incredible musical voyage of Steve Mackay. After wrapping up a new album, he and his Stooges band-mates are touring the world once again. He joined his long time collaborators The Violent Femmes for a reunion show, the live Snakefinger album "History of the Blues" is going to be re-issued, and any free moment he is ready to join any of his numerous collaborators from 10 years of work with his "Radon Ensemble."

Preparing for our first release as Polyglot, "Sometimes Like This I Talk" we were thrilled when Iggy Pop offered to contribute vocals to a song and later used it for a feature in the New York Times-style "Godfather's of Glam" article. However, not being ones to brag...we credited his performance as Ypsi Jim, an old Michigan nickname. Unfortunately, the song received little attention and surprisingly the limited edition 7" has not even sold out.  

With our friends at WFMU and the Free Music Archive, we proudly offer a free listen to "The Prisoner" by Steve Mackay, with Mike Watt, Henry Barnes, Kamilsky and Iggy Pop.  

Please check out the other artists newly featured in the Polyglot archive as well, including Akris, Cummingworth's Escape, Sikhara, and Yang Zhong Gao. Feel free to contact Polyglot with questions about the artists.

This year's Primavera Sound Festival is stocked yet again with amazing acts. The fest features trending artists including White Fence, Deerhunter, and Wild Nothing alongside epic rock influencers The Breeders, who will be playing their 1993 release Last Splash in full. The lineup offers a musical snapshot of past greats, while also featuring performers who recently have been garnering tons of attention.

One great place to check out the action captured at the fest is right here on the Free Music Archive, where many of this year's live sets will be recorded and posted. Check our collections from 2012 and 2011.

Here's where to download a sampler of performers who will be appearing at the festival this year.