WFMU's Free Music Archive (Beta)

WFMU, in collaboration with several other non-commercial radio stations, webcasters, and online organizations recently launched the Free Music Archive, an internet resource dedicated to offering users free downloads from its vast libraries of live audio recordings. The archive is in its beta stage, so navigational issues are to be expected, but they're constantly expanding the site with cool and weird stuff (cool - Mahjongg's "Machinegong" EP; weird - Jad Fair's sound loops/"spoken weird" tracks, Charles Manson's album, "One Mind"). And it's FREE. Great, like I need another enabler for my internet addiction.

A Place To Bury Strangers - "I Know I'll See You" - Live @ KEXP

Alan Vega - "SS Eyes" - Live @ WFMU's Free Music Series (full set HERE)

Asobi Seksu - "Sing Tomorrow's Praise" - Live @ KEXP

Brian Jonestown Massacre - "When Jokers Attack" (full sets HERE) - Live @ ATP 2008

Charles Manson - "One Vision" album. This isn't bad. In fact, I feel morally unsettled right now because it's not bad. Everybody knows that serial killers are just frustrated artists.

Crystal Stilts - "Converging on the Quiet" - Live @ WFMU (full set HERE)

Dälek - "Subversive Script" (full sets HERE) - Live @ WFMU

Excepter - "Kill People" - Debt Dept. - More HERE

Getatchew Mekuria - "Eywat Setenafegagn" - Moa Anbessa - WORLD MUSIC

Grouper - "The Man Who Died on His Boat" - unreleased mp3

Grouper - "title unknown" - 1st CD-R - More HERE

Growing - Live at ATP in NY on WFMU - ELECTRONIC (full set HERE)

Low - "Breaker" - Live at ATP 2008 (full set HERE)

Mahjongg - "countdown (the chicken)" - "Machinegong" EP - More HERE - ELECTRONIC

Nine Inch Nails - "Echoplex" - The Slip (full album HERE)

Pink Skull - Live at the Bell House (full set HERE) - KRAUTROCK/HOUSE

Ponytail - "Start A Corporation" - NOISE-ROCK/EXPERIMENTAL

The Effigies - "Mob Clash" - PUNK

Throbbing Gristle interview - Part One - Part Two

The Tleilaxu Music Machine - "Bizzy" - ELECTRONIC

Download the Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction/Street Sweeper EP for free!

"Features exclusive unreleased tracks" from all the bands on the NIN|JA|SS tour bill this Spring/Summer. Download it at ninja2009.com ('cause Ninjass2009 just didn't make any sense).

Thanks, Trent!

Elliott Smith's Unfinished "Basement" Tapes

The good folks at Rawkblog posted links this weekend to unfinished/suppressed/demo/rough/discarded/_______ tracks from Elliott Smith's From A Basement on the Hill sessions. As with all the music he released before his death and even the ones he didn't (some of his live recordings on Sweet Adeline are incredible), these outtakes from the "Basement" sessions are remarkable even in their unpolished condition.

With Smith's passing, this generation, if not the world, lost one of its most talented songwriters. Nobody evokes the fucked up beauty of life for me as well as he does. He wrote about lost souls and old ghosts with a thoroughly pop sensibility. I can't think of anybody today who writes about gnawing addiction, the mercenary relationship between the artist and the public, the torpor of depression, the alienation that accompanies heavy drug/alcohol abuse, poisoned relationships, the hopes, wonders, despair, and numbing banalities of ordinary life, etc. etc. with the poignancy, unflinching honesty and at the same time, attention to melody as he did.

[Update] The player doesn't seem to be working. The link to this DivShare playlist is here.

[Update] To download tracks, go to the playlist provided in the link above and click on the track titles. To download the first track (Coast to Coast), you need to click on the link on the top right hand side of the page that says, "Download Original."