If you’ve been waiting a long time for that 8-bit cover of Smack My Bitch Up, your wait is over.

Russian chiptune artists got their lo fi on and put together three (3) – count ‘em – The Prodigy tribute albums.

The album site is sort of inpenetrable (when it’s not in Russian) so look:

• here
• here, and
• here

You can preview $ele?’s Smack My Bitch Up below.

This video captures a monome-based remix of Radiohead’s Reckoner. Details on the remix below.

The track is available as a free download (mp3).

via suitemusic:

This is a video of a remix performance of Radiohead’s “Reckoner” from In Rainbows that I’ve been working out on the monome for a while now.

I’m using my monome 64 running mlrV to chop and sequence each track/loop. The black monome 40h I built with ultraviolet (UV) LEDs is running vu scroll (a scrolling VU meter app) which is picking up the sound in the studio from the laptop’s built-in mic.

All of the audio was recorded and mixed down in Ableton Live 8. I used my laptop’s iSight and a small Sony for the video. I used Adobe Premier Pro CS4 to edit the video (it was my first time using Premier Pro for a project).

Thanks go out to Radiohead for providing the stems of their music and especially monome.org and the monome community for its collective genius and overall awesomeness!

More info here: http://demsuite.com/2009/08/reckoner

The album is a project of Je deviens dj en 3 jourr.

More info and the album is available here.

Download link.

You can preview a few bonus tracks from the project below:

There are now over 100 tracks available for you to listen to online, and most of them are available as free MP3 downloads, too.

There are house tracks, DJ mixes, ambient music, electro, synth pop and even some sweet Berlin-school style synth rocking.

Give this music a listen and, if there’s a track you really like, remember that SoundCloud gives you all sorts of ways to share music that you like.

You can embed a sweet media player on your blog, like this:

That is just the beginning, though.

You can click the down arrow in the player and download the track, if the artist enables that option.

You can also click the embed link in the player and view all the other options for sharing the track, like Twittering about it, emailing it or posting it to Facebook.

Check out the music here! And thanks to all the readers that have participated!

Free Music Friday: Franz Ferdinand have announced details of the release of a new single, Cant Stop Feeling, through Domino in the UK and Europe on Monday July 6th 2009.

Watch for the giant synth in the music video! Is that the secret of massive bass?

Free Music Friday: Modulator ESP (Jez Creek) produces improvised experimental music using analogue and digital synthesis, analogue sequencers and processed sounds to create strange worlds of sound somewhere between ’70s space music, prog rock and dark ambient drone.

Creek has shared a large collection of his synth music at the Modulator ESP site. You can preview several of his tracks below.

Creek has this to say about his Modulator ESP project:

I decided to ‘form’ Modulator ESP as an outlet for my desire to produce improvisational electronic music. I compose my music using synthesizers, sequencers and samplers and spend far too much of my time on sound design. I am into a wide range of music from ambient electronica to thrash metal via all points between and tend to like weird or progressive stuff. I listen to music because it takes me away from the humdrum reality of everyday life and into new worlds of imagination. I play music so I can design my own new worlds. I am happy to include in my musical influences such diverse acts as Airsculpture, Dream Theater, IQ, Jean Michel Jarre, Radio Massacre International, Redshift, Tangerine Dream and Yes.

AnalogSuicide’s Tara Busch has started a new project, Free MP3 Monday, to highlight great indie electronic music. Here’s what she’s got in mind:

Use the wonderful audio file sharing network, Soundcloud.com to send me your MP3s. The Soundcloud.com Dropbox is on the top left of Analogsuicide. Click there, follow the instructions for uploading your file.

I will post my pick of the URLs on Twitter and Analogsuicide.com for people to listen to & scoop up as they please. Note: the more drenched in bleeping, blipping, screeching, trippy, synth – drenched loveliness, the better!

She has featured some very nice music already, including her own cover of Our House (Madness), above; an experimental ambient techno track from Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn, below; and an ambient soundscape from Moog’s Chris Stack, bottom.

Don’t miss Synthtopia’s music sharing group, too!

Each week, we try to highlight some of the great music that people are making available as free downloads around the Internet.

This week we’ve got something special, though: a huge collection of awesome electronic music from Synthtopia readers like you:

Check out the tracks in the player above and see what you like. Download some tracks. And check out the artists to find out more about them and their music!

Got tracks of your own to share? Here’s a music dropbox link so that you can add your tracks to the Synthtopia group list:

Send us your track

You can preview one of the tracks below, Richard Allan Robinson’s Ambience:

The source material for Ambience was produced on an “instrument” consisting of three electric bass guitar strings strung lengthwise across a long board, with a bridge and a small magnetic guitar pickup at each end. Two modes of sound production were used. One, in which transversely placed metal pipes were rolled up and down the length of the strings, of multiple glissandi. A second, predominant texture was produced by causing a number lengths to “oscillate” or rock across the strings (rather than to roll lengthwise).

This basic recorded material was then extensively transformed electronically by filtering, heterodyning, ring modulation, speed changes, etc., an 6′ finally an overall structure was composed of variously complex superimpositions and juxtapositions of the two basic textural types. A light controlled channel-speaker distributing device used in the original qaudrasonic version further emphasizes this textural contrast in that gliding textures have a predominantly circling movement around the listening area, while the more active, rhythmic textures move disjunctly.

The intention of the piece, originally conceived for performance with the Atlanta Contemporary Dance Group, is to create an impression of actually being swept up in a familiar yet mysterious sound-atmosphere or ambience – perhaps somewhat like the experience of driving alone in a car at night – a sense of increasing absorption and identity with the surrounding sounds – the motor, rushing air, tires on pavement, vibrations, etc. –

From the liner notes:

For the last three years, Dartmouth College has held an annual competition for electronic music. The winners and finalists’ works from the first competition were released by Vox two years ago and we at Dartmouth felt gratified by the warm critical response to the recording. We were also pleased that the competition gave the public an opportunity to hear some of the best works by new and younger composers.

The judges for the second competition were Lars-Gunnar Bodin from Sweden, Charles Dodge and Pril Smiley from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Kenneth Gaburo from the University of California, San Diego. They chose the winning works anonymously after listening to nearly one hundred different entries. The winning composers were Peter Glushanok, an experienced film maker who has a small electronic music studio in his home, and Peter Klausmeer, a graduate student at the University of Michigan. The two finalists were Walter Kimmel,who is director of the electronic music studio at Moorhead State College,and Raymond Moore, who is a recording engineer for a large record company.

There were over two hundred entries in the 1970 competition which meant nearly a week of listening for judges Sal Martriano from the University of Illinois, Francois Bayle of France and James K. Randall of Princeton University. Again the prize was divided between one of Chile’s leading composers, Jose Vicente Asuar and Richard A. Robinson, the director of the Atlanta Electronic Music Center. The finalists were Jean-Claude Risset who works in Marseille, France, but who realized his work at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey,and Jonathan Weiss, a Composer in his early twenties who is in residence at the R.A. Moog Co. in Trumansberg, New York.

The listener to this album will hear enormous diversity in the approach used by the different composers. The following comments about the works were written by the composers themselves.

Jon H. Appleton, Director
Dartmouth Electronic Music Studio

You can download the track as a 320kbps MP3 file at Orbit’s site.

via Twitter: WilliamOrbit

If that doesn’t creep you out – here’s a nice photo of Moby looking like a deranged naked gunman. —>>

Fortunately – he’s a provocateur and Shot In The Back Of The Head is the name of his latest track.

Better still – Moby’s pulling a Trent Reznor and releasing his new song as a free MP3 download.

Get it here (MP3).  Unfortunately, Moby doesn’t say how the track is licensed – so it’s not clear if you can share the track or use it in a podcast.

Download it and let me know what you think of it!

And if you see Moby, don’t look at him in the eyes too long.

Image: Julio Enriquez

Amazon’s got more than 700 free MP3s that you can preview and download, including 100+ electronica, dance & DJ tracks.

Enjoy.

mix of a few of my favorite deep, spacious ambient tracks from 2008. warm synth waves by Altus, icy winter environments from Shiftless, spaced-out piano by Ben Woods, stunning vocal-based headphone candy by Tertium Auris, spectral desert ambience by Rudy Adrian…

You can preview the ambient music mix macrocosm below:

playlist:
(00:22) Altus – Subspherical [Macro]
(03:39) Altus – Wood Grain [Macro]
(06:50) Shiftless – Icicles [ap3002]
(09:10) Coax – Quiet Minds reprise [ap3002]
(11:22) El Zoológico – Nada [pj002]
(12:58) Ben Woods – Realms of Detachment [OWL-33]
(19:12) Tertium Auris – Vox Auris I – III [DHS0040]
(38:21) The Dandelion Council – The Face of the Mountain [ah028]
(39:52) Rudy Adrian – Desert Realms
(47:34) Tone Ghost Ether – Gamelan Moon Landing [earman051]

Awhile back, pianist Aron Kallay performed all of my microtonal electronic keyboard pieces out in Los Angeles. He recently sent me the mp3s, and I’m struck speechless by their quality.

He used a tremendously responsive keyboard (a Yamaha Clavinova), and I have to attribute much of the finesse to that – because the alternative is to admit that I’m a really lousy pianist by comparison. Anyway, he did a beautiful job and made me all impressed with my music all over again.

Gann’s pieces make very interesting use of the harmonies available with microtuning, but are also very accessible:

You can preview one of Gann’s pieces, Triskaidekaphonia, above. More at Gann’s site.

Let me know what you think. Is microtonal music an important frontier to explore with electronic instrument?

via IVDT comes Edison’s Not What Ships Are Built For, a full album of catchy glitchy tracks.

Edison’s been seen here previously, doing amazing stuff with his monome.

You can preview the first track from Not What Ships Are Built For, The Nobility Of Being First In Line, below:

Download the full release here.

Here are the details:

Artist: Edison
Title: Not What Ships Are Built For
Release Number: mp3.069
Duration: 37 minutes 44 seconds

01. the nobility of being first in line (3:49)
02. the interworkings of the human hand (3:34)
03. bandaids eventually fail, but always leave a ring (4:19)
04. the kill tone two (edison’s new filament remix) (3:16)
05. the blue bike (3:45)
06. oh brother, this is where things began to burn (3:18)
07. don’t get all sentimental, bro (3:31)
08. the ghosts in this building are absolutely serious (4:07)
09. we once used to keep things in jars, no longer (3:09)
10. these things are better left on an answering machine……late (4:56)

via stretta

The EP is comprised of four tracks full of hazy drones, dense textures and milky warmth.

Drift carries a solemn, and sometimes desolate timbre evoked through its processed and swollen tones. Additionally, a spirituality is evoked through the music’s lonely but peaceful sonics and through its inhabitance of a seemingly surreal expansive space.

Eluder (aka Electricwest) has crafted this rich depth and antiqued sonic atmosphere in each of the four tracks using a complex but still minimal sound.

You can preview Drift below:

Download page

via Marc Weidenbaum

Amon Tobin has released a free 1:17 set, Foley Room Recorded Live In Brussels.

Back in early 2007 Amon Tobin released his latest full length album titled Foley Room and put together a tour focusing on the sound and the music, rather then thinking too much about lights, projections and stage antics.

The full-length, official recording of the legendary 2007 Foley Room tour is finally available at www.amontobin.com.  Recorded by Studio Brussels at the AB theatre in Belgium – which arguably has the best sound system in Europe.

After months of back and forth and despite everyone’s best efforts the mix was in danger of being edited into the ground to accommodate big labels and publishers. Rather than release a compromised version commercially, the decision was made to give it away for free instead. You can download the mix as it was intended to be heard along with the full digital booklet, for free.

“F*** visuals we’re sinking every last penny into the sound system!” – Amon Tobin

The works featured on this project  were solicited via public invitation. The artists were given free license to create work inspired by the late great film director, however out of all the 
submissions sent, only the ones featured here were chosen. 

You can preview a couple of tracks from the release below.

Download the full release here.

via rarefrequency

This is a preview of the first edition of the Ambient Music Blog Podcast. 

It’s a blog, it’s a podcast – it’s probably a floorwax and a dessert topping, too. 

The first edition offers ambient music for blue light and snowfall:

• All The Lighthouses by Last Days
• Vargtimme by Helios
• The Whole Town Is Against Us by Last Days
• San Solomon (Reprise) by Balmorhea
• The Ruined City by Janek Schaefer

Give it a listen and let me know what you think. 

You can subscribe to the Ambient Music Blog Podcast by adding this URL to your podcast software:
http://ambientmusicblog.libsyn.com/rss

This is the second volume of the Tangerine Tree series. Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann played at the City Hall in Sheffield, on October 29th, 1974.  This is a pretty good recording (soundboard ? radio broadcast ?), remastered by Jabberwock. The design is by Maff & Gustavo Jobim

In this 44 minutes long track, Tangerine Dream’s music is serene, floating and meditative: it is a long improvisation, where mellotron, organs, EMS Synthy and treated piano create beautiful soundscapes: it is true electronic chamber music, creating slowly evolving climates, with a kind of special German romantic touch… 

mp3 download link

password: olduvai

The Tangerine Tree tree series is a collection of bootleg recordings that are semi-sanctioned by TD.