Comments on: honest to god good music!

honest to god good music!

SpaceCadet — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:01:24 -0800

Everybody needs free music "Welcome to Comfort Stand Recordings, a community-driven label where all releases are free with artwork and liner notes. We strive to bring you recordings that we find interesting, compelling and downright enjoyable." Inspired by Dydecker's post about the Thinner music netlabel, I would like to speak up for Comfort Stand - legally free music in many tastes. I particularly like Very Proper Dragonflies and The Apartment.

By: TTIKTDA

TTIKTDA — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:08:19 -0800

Opsound is a brand new Copyleft label, issuing all their releases as Creative Commons licensed works, and selling CD's on the strength of some amazingly beautiful packaging. They've just released a debut album from Catalpa Catalpa which is pretty damned awesome, and available in it's entirety for free online.

By: modofo

modofo — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:24:06 -0800

[pimp] The Tapeworm Collective mix disc is available for download here.

By: filmgoerjuan

filmgoerjuan — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:35:09 -0800

I think this is the third time I'm going to recommend it on MeFi, but you really can't not listen to Coconut MonkeyRocket and Martinibomb - SPLIT!, released on the Comfort Stand label. Comfort Stand's first release was discussed previously here although the site itself doesn't appear to have had an FPP on its own (it's cropped up in comments quite a bit).

By: nylon

nylon — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 14:30:24 -0800

It may be free, but judging by the stuff I've downloaded so far, it's not actually very good. I should really be supporting these endeavours, because, well, it's good for everyone to be able to make music and have it available for others to listen to, and it's great for people to do things out of sheer enthusiasm rather than thinly veiled and cynical attempts to get rich at the expense of the general public, but to be honest the ocean of crap music out there just depresses me. Just because everyone can make music doesn't mean that they should - and although you can claim that this kind of thing doesn't harm anyone, well, it just makes the good stuff so much harder to find.

By: nylon

nylon — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 14:41:04 -0800

Okay, I take some of what I said back - the Edith Frost album is great. But I had to wade through some steaming ordure to get there, and almost didn't make it out alive.

By: SpaceCadet

SpaceCadet — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 14:42:37 -0800

nylon, I couldn't agree more about the "ocean of crap music out there", but it doesn't depress me. There's always good stuff amongst the mass of bad (in my subjective opinion). I happen to enjoy a lot of the music I've heard so far on Comfort Stand.....it's a subjective thing and all that.....just keep looking....

By: willnot

willnot — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 15:02:44 -0800

Niche-casting is the strength of the internet. I'd rather have the one album that I think is great and that almost everybody thinks is pure crap than the 1 album that is bland enough that almost everybody thinks it's OK. You do have to wade through a bunch of stuff you won't like to find it though. What's needed is a trusted friends network to layer on top of everything to act as a personalized filter. Barring development of something like that, it would help a lot if comfortstand created a few rough genre categories or provided a few easier ways to happen upon music I like by way of a happy accident.

By: omnidrew

omnidrew — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 15:19:26 -0800

[tangent] Otis Fodder, the curator of Comfort Stand, was responsible for a site that made 2003 a fun year, the 365 Days Project. I contributed a couple pieces off 1980s Indian cassettes in April -- Abba sung in Hindi and an excerpt from an album called "Disco Musical Stories."

By: SpaceCadet

SpaceCadet — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 15:31:51 -0800

Opsound is a brand new Copyleft label, issuing all their releases as Creative Commons licensed works, and selling CD's on the strength of some amazingly beautiful packaging. Oh yes! I found the john francis there

By: starkeffect

starkeffect — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 17:57:38 -0800

Self-link

By: starkeffect

starkeffect — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 19:37:43 -0800

Also, Beth Sorrentino (formerly of suddenly, tammy!) is particularly fine.

By: mildred-pitt

mildred-pitt — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 19:56:55 -0800

otis - The hardest working person i know. He also makes great music by the way....

By: phirleh

phirleh — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 20:29:02 -0800

Very cool starkeffect. I downloaded the first 30 or so as they started getting released and I'm constantly singing the eepples and beneenees to my 19 month old daughter. Evolution Control Committee had some similar Napster Nuggets on their site.

By: HifiToaster

HifiToaster — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 05:43:01 -0800

I got real excited the first time I stumbled upon Comfort Stand (I think as a link via the 365 Day Project), but there was very little there that merited repeat listens. The Stark Effect, Joe Meek, and Bran Flakes cuts are great and well worth checking out, but after that I didn't find much to sustain my interest.

By: otisfodder

otisfodder — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 11:12:13 -0800

Comfort Stand is a mixed bag of music and it's cool to hear of what people like and dislike. Excellent point Nylon about genres on Comfort Stand to make the ease of finding releases suited to certain tastes easier. This has been brought up many times before, but we decided to just go ahead and leave no mention of genres or categories on the website (at this time). The releases will continue to be very varied in scope, from noisy lo-fi to well produced material. I do understand trying to find the 'needle in the haystack' when it comes to online audio. There's just so much out there to download. Our compilations are usually a great place to start. I've been enjoying OpSound as well. Some other avenues to find NetLabel material are: The Internet Archive, Phlow and Rowolo. Or... instead of sifting through Net Label releases check out these two radio shows spotlighting releases (with MP3 downloads of the weekly shows): Squares Cubed, and Sijis.