kahvi

July 5, 2006 3:19 PM

free downtempo music Try this or this if you like Thievery Corporation or maybe Brian Eno. Or Boards of Canada.
posted by lw (26 comments total)

What if you like Thievery Corporation but don't like Brian Eno?

YourFavoriteMusicSucksFilter.
posted by absalom at 3:39 PM on July 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

For anyone who's interested, I present a webcast featuring ambient, experimental and electronic music from netlabels like Kahvi. There's a new playlist every Monday.

You'd be amazed at the amount of interesting music you can find out in the "tubes."
posted by davebush at 3:57 PM on July 5, 2006

What if you like Thievery Corporation but don't like Brian Eno?

Or like BoC but not Thievery Corporation or Eno?
posted by Foosnark at 4:09 PM on July 5, 2006

Thanks for the links. I'll have to check these out. Downtempo is more-or-less essential to my productivity and sanity.

See also :

www.somafm.com (check out their Groove Salad feed)
www.icebergradio.com (check out their Chill feed)
posted by Afroblanco at 4:21 PM on July 5, 2006

Some of the artists to whom the hard work work of electronic music is being crowdsourced are getting a little testy about the competition.

Netlabels and netreleases make me think of the Tim Hecker track title "the work of art in the age of cultural overproduction".
posted by fleetmouse at 4:28 PM on July 5, 2006

What if you like Thievery Corporation but don't like Brian Eno?

Well, if you go around deliberately not liking Brian Eno then i'm afraid i'm going to have to sneer at you. Snootily, too.
posted by Artw at 4:34 PM on July 5, 2006

Don't forget the Thinner/Autoplate site. The former is dub inspired electronica/downbeat stuff, and the latter is ambient. I'm really liking Christian Bloch and Das Kraftfuttermischwerk right now.
posted by Zack_Replica at 4:48 PM on July 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

I'm going to like this thread.
A little daghoti. for the pot. And the merry, musical love of unsigned, streamable artists available at Last.fm

related to fleetmouse's note, it's interesting to note how, recently, a number of established electronic artists have reverted to formula but new independents are doing the unusual and interesting. I bring your attention to Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre (and the now utterly dire Chemical Brothers). However if the new artists are now getting upset about the amount of untrained noise being released I'm worried they've already started to believe their own hype and the downward spiral begins sooner still.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 4:50 PM on July 5, 2006

Is soma.fm still playing the same tracks they had on 2 years ago? Their rotation period always seemed glacial.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 4:51 PM on July 5, 2006

I should also mention deepmix.ru for streaming audio. They've also got downloadable mp3's on their site via the "Selected Music" link at the top of the page. Meshkov and bVoice are both worth a listen.
posted by Zack_Replica at 5:01 PM on July 5, 2006

Zack_Replica, that Christian Bloch you linked to is real tasty. Thanks! I had written off Thinner / Autoplate after hearing something dull on it a while ago but now I see I'm going to have to check them out again. Any other recommendations from their archives?

NinjaTadpole, I don't know if the problem is they're believing their own hype so much as that old saying about how the fighting is so fierce because the rewards are so slight (how does that go again?)
posted by fleetmouse at 6:04 PM on July 5, 2006

I prefer soma.fm's Drone Zone over Groove Salad.

Thanks for all the links, everyone. I will check them out!
posted by jiawen at 7:03 PM on July 5, 2006

Is soma.fm still playing the same tracks they had on 2 years ago? Their rotation period always seemed glacial.

Don't know, because I've only been listening for the last 6 months or so. However, in that six months, I've noticed a lot of repitition. They seriously need to stop playing Afterlife. And a few other bands.

It's too bad, because in my first few months of listening, I discovered a whole genre that I had been completely unfamiliar with. Now, I'm definitely ready for some new material. I'll be glad to check out some of the streams linked to in this thread.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:26 PM on July 5, 2006

There is a collection of Kahvi tracks (893 MB of .ogg files), along with a lot of other ambient/downtempo net-label collections, available via BitTorrent over at LegalTorrents.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:55 PM on July 5, 2006

Thievery Corporation … Brian Eno … Boards of Canada

Those three artists, while similar in approach, don't make music that sounds like each other's, IMHO.
posted by Down10 at 9:12 PM on July 5, 2006

WAIT WHAT IF YOU LIKE ALL THREE??????
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 10:10 PM on July 5, 2006

Fleetmouse - Yeah, I agree, there are quite a few albums that are really... dull. I've actually found it's rare to fine an entire album that's good on Thinner, but there are some. A lot of it's hit-and-miss and what I usually do is take a few hours at night and listen to the random track off of an album.
Try Timm Kawol...
"Sinergy Networks vs. Thinner" is pretty mellow, but good background stuff for reading or conversations
Marko Fürstenberg is deep and steady.
Sectorchestra ...I'm still not sure about them, but I like the first track.
Lomov is nice and heavy on the low end of things.

Also for good ambient, I can point you to MeFi's own n9 and his band ohler. It's from this post on the blue, and it's quite good. As I mentioned in the thread, it reminds me of some of Zoviet France's mellow stuff.
Autoplate's Motionfield is good for putting you to sleep, and I don't mean that in a bad way, either. Veeeeery ambient and quiet.

I'm still working my way through the Thinner catalogue, slowly, so that's all I've got so far. Hope that helps.
posted by Zack_Replica at 11:09 PM on July 5, 2006

Almost forgot these two... Nulleins - Seven Spaces (THN084) - bass heavy, and Thinner & Epsilonlab - Silence Is Presence (THN082) - a mix of stuff all over the place, both of which are on the Thinner 'Releases' page.
posted by Zack_Replica at 11:40 PM on July 5, 2006

What if you like nothing at all???
posted by Second Account For Making Jokey Comments at 3:19 AM on July 6, 2006

I second what Down10 said.
posted by inoculatedcities at 4:56 AM on July 6, 2006

Thanks for posting this. Duly bookmarked. I recently asked for Boards of Canada type music recommendations in AskMe and received many good suggestions. I think my favorite to come out of that thread was Tycho. I listen to the stream on that site on an almost daily basis.
posted by Otis at 5:01 AM on July 6, 2006

Sorry I missed that, Tycho.
Giosun, by Sensiva might be just the thing your summer's been waiting for. It's shipped in a big brown paper package wrapped up with string and slapped all over with Russian import labels and gets even better when you unwrap it.

Or the eversogood Calika with the eversobad website (roll over the buttons on the panel on the left hand side for samples, or listen on last.fm)
posted by NinjaTadpole at 5:57 AM on July 6, 2006

To Otis, of course, not Tycho.
Excellent cut'n'paste skills as standard.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 5:59 AM on July 6, 2006

Thanks for the link to deepmix.ru. I have a feeling that this will be my new programming music. However, I would say that it's closer to minimalist techno then downtempo.

Also, a question about last.fm - is it any easier to train then pandora?
posted by Afroblanco at 7:16 AM on July 6, 2006

OverXposure.fm I haven't listened to in a while so I don't know what their rotation is like, but they're very much in the soma.fm's Groove Salad vein.
And... Digitally Imported isn't just techno - see their 'Chillout' and 'Ambient' streams.
posted by Zack_Replica at 12:31 PM on July 6, 2006

Also, a question about last.fm - is it any easier to train then pandora?

There's a companion program for WinAmp/iTunes/whatever that tracks what you play and adds it to your profile. There's a 'skip' and 'ban' button for whenever you don't like a song, and (supposedly) there's an AI intelligence taking careful notes and spinning good songs at you. You can't actually just hit a button to play your profile's music, the 'station' seed is an artist or genre you like.

My experience with it has been excellent so far. I listen to alot of internet radio (even broadcast my own station), and it's similar-enough that you can ignore the player once seeded.
posted by cowbellemoo at 11:51 PM on July 7, 2006