I discovered Opsound when it was mentioned over at Creative Commons. There was nothing more than an invitation to participate at Opsound for a long time; but the site is now filling up with free and legal MP3s. I have not listened to any of it yet though.

Opsound is a record label and sound pool using an open source, copyleft model, an experiment in practical gift economics, a laboratory for new ways of releasing music. Visit the Opsound Open Pool for free copyleft music downloads. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the pool.

… you are free (and encouraged) to download works, make copies, share them, include them in other works, remix and rearrange them, and even sell them.

Positron Records

believe that today’s independents release today’s music, while today’s corportate conglomerates release cross-promotional marketing campaigns that package artists with hamburgers. To them, artist is product, and product is disposable. To us, artist is label, and our aim is to make a contribution to the soundtrack of your life without picking your pocket in the process.

An audio stream is available. The music is mostly electronic.

Not just MP3s at Disquiet, but also audiostreams and videos. I will probably track down their recommendations at one stage. Free ambient/electronica is not exactly hard to find, one for the backlog.

The South by Southwest Music festival is in Austin, Texas every March. “Fest4Pod” is a massive 2.6GB/750+ tracks of free and legal SXSW 2005 tracks made available as a BitTorrent feed (or individual tracks). I am in the process of listening through it all.

I have made a fairly complete SXSW 2005 tracklisting available over at Halvorsen. If you like pop, listen to Bonnie Pink (sxsw) or try the latino-funk-hop of Cartel de Santa (sxsw) (as you can tell I have just made it to “D” in the alphabet).

Download podcast MP3 file.

Acecast podcast number two (MP3, 128Kbps, 30.2MB, 32m:57s) (you can download the MP3 file using the podcast link if you are not using a podcasting application).

The second coming.

I play two artists who have emailed me over at halvorsen.org, some ’60s-style garage/surf, electronica, a handful of fine vocal songs and a spoken word track.

Mogwai’s Government Commissions is my “fair podcasting CD” for March 2005. Artists give us free MP3s so we can hear new music. Some do it in the hope that we might buy the music, others because they have no other outlet for their music. I will buy (at least) one CD a month from artists I play on my show. It’s not a lot, it will not make anyone rich — but at least it proves that free&legal MP3 tracks can lead to the purchase of a physical product (I still prefer to buy my music on CD or vinyl).

Finding free and legal UK grime/dubstep is a challenge. I played Kode 9 on the first show, on this podcast I include DJ Dynamat. Analogue is available from a site which requires registration; don’t despair use BugMeNot to find a user for registration sites. If you like Dynamat’s track and decide to download it, please vote for his music. Hopefully this will be the first and last time I use a track from a registration site.

Penny Broadhurst’s poetry is via Warren Ellis.

I did not find Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Largo02; they found me over at Halvorsen.

Largo02 is the alias of Fred Scellier (alias Ulric Cel? or is it the other way around?) from France. Ulric played in the new-wave band Newropeans, he plays jazz and also makes some good electronic music. The tracks available from his website are from the period 1998-2002, but recently remixed. Do also get Track 8 from Past and Hopes (mp3). Disconnected was recorded years ago, it reminds me of ShelleyDevoto’s Buzzkunst.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim is a British band. So British they record in a shed. Tim, Al and Anthony got some rave reviews for their remix of David Sylvian’s The Heart Knows Better, and their own music is also subtle. Don’t know if they are religious, but there is a God/Jesus-thing going on in their titles. Religious or not, you might as well download Ain’t No Jesus In Here (mp3). If you like Sweet Billy Pilgrim, try The Blue Nile’s A Walk Across The Rooftops. The Pilgrim also run a sweet blog.

Production notes.

The microphone situation has been sorted out, so I should be more audible from now on.

I finally got to use my MXL V67 condenser microphone. The mic was plugged through a small mixer (Behringer UB802) to do the voice track. Applications used were the same as the last time. The overall production should be an improvement from the initial podcast (I know I sound a bit tired at the end of the podcast. I was).

All tracks played are free and legal downloads.

Extended tracklisting for Acecast number 2, 3 April 2005.

If you like the music in my little show (or prefer not to listen to it at all) use the links for each MP3. All MP3-links point to the artist’s own website, unless listed otherwise. All tracks were available at the time when the podcast was recorded (early April 2005).

• Intro — Carl from the Gub.
• I’m a Man (Dragnet Records) — Double Fudge (article).
• Hunted by a Freak — Mogwai.
• Analogue (Soundclick) — DJ Dynamat (download requires registration, try a Soundclick logon from BugMeNot first).
• Bus Park — Penny Broadhurst.
• Heaviest Heart — Magnet.
• Banquet (Phones Disco Edit) — Bloc Party.
• Disconnected (original hard mix) — Largo02.
• God in the Details — Sweet Billy Pilgrim.
• NY 79 (Download.com) — Laika and the Cosmonauts.

Brief playlist for the second podcast.

Initial post: Sun, 3 Apr 2005.

• Intro — Carl from the Gub.
• I’m a Man — Double Fudge.
• Hunted by a Freak — Mogwai.
• Analogue — DJ Dynamat.
• Bus Park — Penny Broadhurst.
• Heaviest Heart — Magnet.
• Banquet (Phones Disco Edit) — Bloc Party.
• Disconnected (original hard mix) — Largo02 .
• God in the Details — Sweet Billy Pilgrim.
• NY 79 — Laika and the Cosmonauts.

Full details and MP3 download for the second Acecast podcast.

Initial post: Sun, 03 Apr 2005.

*6ize

You all probably already know about Sixeyes (one half of the legit resources on iPodlounge). A fine site promoting what seems to be (mostly) legal MP3s. No streaming prelisten, and I would have liked alphabetical archives. But the site is frequently updated and the content is clearly written.