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Favourite Free Music of 2016: P – S

Jon Doyle — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 12:38:56 +0000

Part four of the list of our favourite free music of 2016, this time covering artists beginning P – S. For an important explanation re. ‘free’ vs. ‘name your price’, head to the first post.

And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Peach Club – The Bitch Diaries
(RIYL: punk, rock, lo-fi)

Pet Cemtery & Henoheno & Brittle Brian & Francie Cool – Split
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad music, lo-fi)

Porridge Radio – Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers
(RIYL: lo-fi, bedroom pop, carbohydrates)

Post-Trash – Volume Two
(RIYL: compilations, bedroom pop, indie rock)

Psychic Shakes – Psychic EP
(RIYL: lo-fi pop, chilled out vibes, down-tempo beats)

Ratbath – Dead Skin Cells
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, sad)

Ravetank – Wasting Your Life From 9-5
(RIYL: alternative, pop, lo-fi)

Real Swell – everything else is terrible!
(RIYL: lo-fi, experimental, lo-fi pop)

Rhucle – Rustic Lullaby
(RIYL: ambient, mindfulness, field recordings)

Ryan Tanner – Promised Land
(RIYL: folk, Americana, country)

Ryder Eaton – Peach Pit
(RIYL: folk, lo-fi, experimental)

Saint Clementine – If We Are Falling / I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, pop punk)

The Saxophones – If You’re on the Water
(RIYL: ambient folk, dream pop, alternative)

Sea Offs – Sea the Blind
(RIYL: ambient, folk, dream pop)

See You At Home – The Future’s Here and It’s Terrible
(RIYL: indie, emo, dream pop)

Shalash (or, ШАΛАШ) – X
(RIYL: ambient, drone, compilations)

Skittish Arm – The Dog EP
(RIYL: ambient, drone, experimental)

Soccer Mommy – For Young Hearts
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, indie)

Svelte – svelte EP
(RIYL: post-rock, noise, shoegaze)

Swell Tone & Z Tapes – Summer of Sad
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad songs, compilations)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

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August 2016 Roundup

Liam Doyle — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 19:01:30 +0000

Another month, another whole host of positively brilliant music we’ve had the pleasure of writing about. If you missed anything, or maybe took a much needed internet-free holiday, then here’s a playlist featuring every artist we covered.

Tracklisting:

1) Lost (Season One) – Camp Cope
2) Johnny – Basement Revolver
3) Can U Hear Me Now? – Porridge Radio
4) All 4s – ARMS
5) If You’re on the Water – The Saxophones
6) In Ribbons – Psychic Shakes
7) a good pet – Real Swell
8) Breadcrumbs – The Perennials
9) Father is a Craftsman – Modern Studies
10) Aligning With the Sun – Dear Tracks
11) Cake Bath – Cloud Cover
12) Postdoc Blues – John K. Samson
13) Room For Love – Wooden Dinosaur
14) Crab Line – Trust Fund
15) 1 – Young Jesus
16) Life’s Rough – Serial Chiller
17) Never Lonely – Space Mountain
18) I Wish I Was Plural – Free Space
19) More Than Science – Sunshine Faces
20) Maya – Competition
21) Fireball – Albosel
22) It Hurts- A Day Without Love
23) That Went Well- Guppy
24) Kids Playing Outside – Almanac Mountain
25) Patience To Undo the Patience – Psalmships

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here. Be sure to pop back throughout September and beyond to see what autumn brings!

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Real Swell – everything else is terrible!

Liam Doyle — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:54:29 +0000

Real Swell is the lo-fi bedroom pop project of London’s Kris Lavin. everything else is terrible! is the project’s new album, comprising of 13 tracks all named according to the rigid pattern of ‘a something something‘. If you’re unfamiliar with Real Swell, let’s get you up to speed. Lavin takes wistful bedroom pop formulae and runs it through a sleepy, foggy filter. He’s also not afraid to experiment (as attested on the first Real Swell release, the 30-track strong suburban fortress), producing a sound that flickers between guises.

Take for example the reverberating synth pop of opener ‘a glockenspiel for the downtrodden’, followed by the lean and wiry ‘a bedroom wall’, its almost indecipherably mumbled vocals adding to the dreamy undertones.

‘a sleeping dog’ is similarly cryptic, the lyrics dark shapes below the musical surface, while ‘a bedroom wall’ sees the tempo increase to sound like Abe Vigoda stripped to the most basic of instruments and fronted by Alec Ounsworth. ‘a long time (to be alive)’ plays like a strange chant and ‘a pretender’ a melancholic echo, before ‘a friend for life’ bubbles up from the depths, reverberating vocals joining in chorus. ‘a brief respite while dreaming’, is just that, a spare and plaintive guitar interlude, while ‘a wakening’ has gentle falsetto vocals and strange fluttering panpipes and electronic vocal samples, the meaning of which is left unclear.

“When I grow up i’m going to be a scientist”

‘a motorway’ is another mellow and slightly morose guitar track, before the chilled out electronic pop of ‘a way of saying thanks’, and ‘a good pet’, which sounds like its playing in your next-door neighbour’s garage or at the bottom of a swimming pool on full volume. Here Lavin’s vocals are delivered in strained yelps, urgent but afraid or unable to fully show it, emotions left to sit in the closer ‘a burnt tree’, one final piece of meditative lo-fi electronica.

everything else is terrible! is the musical equivalent of waking from your favourite dream, a sort of grand, wistful melancholy that descends as your brain figures out how reality compares to the fantasy world is had created and desperately tries to cling on to the fading wisps. The feeling is too personal to talk about, too fleeting to properly mourn, yet overwhelmingly familiar, something you’ve experienced since birth and probably always will.

You can get everything else is terrible! now on a name your price via the Real Swell Bandcamp page.

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January 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape

Jon Doyle — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 15:29:47 +0000

Here’s the January 2016 roundup, a mixtape featuring every artist we covered last month. Due to the holiday break and various end of year lists, it’s not as long as usual, but we are positive you’ll find something that tickles your fancy. Click the artist name in the tracklisting to be taken to the post in question.

Tracklisting:

1. Amerika – Wintersleep
2. Born Confused – Porridge Radio
3. Catchyalater – Frog
4. Water – Opals
5. Listerine – Foxall
6. Nightmare Song – Oscar Lush
7. October Mirage – Island Eyes
8. Past is Personal – West America
9. Roller – Quilt
10. Unattached – Two White Cranes
11. On the Nights You Stay Home – Donovan Woods
12. Call Out – Minor Moon
13. Consolation – The Chairman Dances (Lit Links)
14. First I’m Sorry – Haley Heynderickx
15. Waitress – Soft Lions
16. Vanitas – Hanging Hills
17. Waiting – Faint Peter
18. Farewell Navigator – Naomi Pop
19. Gifts – Real Swell
20. Future Wife – Jacob Faurholt
21. Wall – Slows Down
22. Olly Oxen Free – Creature Speak

P.S. On the subject of roundups, make sure you read about our favourite albums of 2015, our favourite songs and favourite free music.

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Fresh Juice – Compilation Vol. 1

Liam Doyle — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 14:35:13 +0000

Fresh Juice are an online radio show based in Gloucester here in the UK. Every Monday night at 7pm UK time, they play a great selection of music that fits into that (very) loose bracket of lo-fi: bedroom pop, slacker pop, DIY, alternative, etc. In other words, the kind of stuff we like.

Not content with curating a great radio show, Fresh Juice have also recently become a record label. Or, more accurately, a cassette label. Their first release is a compilation of songs all discovered while mining the rich seams of talent to be found on that alien planet we know as Bandcamp, featuring artists from both sides of the Atlantic. What better way to introduce the general vibe of the radio show.

The comp opens with a lean and stylish track from San Francisco’s Concon, followed by a track from fellow Frisco artist Max Gardener’s forthcoming album Memory Lounge. Velcro Team brings pulsing lo-fi electro pop, The Carraways a bright and surfy take on the Britpop formula and Smiles deliver shoegaze-shaded indie pop.

Portland’s Turtlenecked delivers a lovely bedroom pop track, which explodes with noise in the final third, before London’s Real Swell bring oddball electronic pop and Cheltenham producer Samuel Francis closes proceedings with a shimmering slice of electronica, falling somewhere in the valley between emotive ambience and groovy beats.

You can get The Fresh Juice Compilation Vol. 1 right now via their Bandcamp page, on a nifty-looking cassette (see below) or as a digital download. And remember to tune in to Fresh Juice every Monday!

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Z Tapes – Christmas Benefit Compilation

Liam Doyle — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:59:14 +0000

We’re big, big fans of Z Tapes here at Wake the Deaf. If you’re new to the Bratislava-based label, I’d highly suggest checking out the Z Tapes tag here. Imagine our excitement then when we heard Filip had a benefit compilation planned for Christmas. Simply titled Christmas Benefit Compilation, the album brings 14 festive tracks by some of the Z Tapes roster. There are some killer covers, including those by Fox Academy, Dying Adolescence and The Washboard Abs (who provides one of two covers of Advance Base’s ‘Christmas in Dearborn’, a great track from his latest album Nephew in the Wild). We love The Washboard Abs and we love everything Owen Ashworth does, so we were particularly excited about this one.

There are also some original tracks, for example from Pet Cemetery, Real Swell and EP. The latter’s track, ‘Such a Clatter (No Christmas)’, a slightly hyperactive-sounding lo-fi casio track. Check it out below:

This being a benefit compilation, you can rest assured that all profits go to a good cause. As Filip explains:

“This year we wanted to do something special for Christmas and give something back to people that need help. We created this Christmas compilation to support a small, but amazing Slovakian organization running a shelter for battered women and helping kids without proper families in a small town, not far away from the place where I grew up. I met them this summer, and from that point on I wanted to help them financially. They need a lot of money. Therefore all profits from this compilation will go towards their honest work. Please help this organization build a better home for people in need.”

You can get the Z Tapes Christmas Benefit Compilation now via Bandcamp. You’ll get some great festive music in time for Christmas and you’ll help out some people who really need it. What have you got to lose?

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