FREE MUSIC MONDAY: 09/02/2015

Free Music Monday does exactly what it says on the tin. Every Monday I will scour BandCamp for only the best free albums.

Free Music.

Every Monday!

Got that? Good.

Let's begin. 

Cloudkicker – Little Histories

I’m not really sure why the latest release from one man progressive mastermind, Ben Sharp, hasn’t been mentioned before now. Perhaps I just assumed that everyone in their right mind would have heard it already. Assumptions are dangerous things. This is an album that deserved to be talked about. 

This is Pennsylvanian’s first release since his sting of live dates with the one and only Intronaut as his backing band, but such a huge release has not seemed to diminish the quality of his core output. A first listen puts Little Histories down as a heavier version of a previous Cloudkicker release; Let Yourself Be Huge. Perhaps mixed in with the Subsume release. I say this for two reasons. The first is that while Little Histories is a heavier release, though not incredibly so, it is warm. It is chunky but not angular. You feel at home listening to this release, which is where Let Yourself Be Huge enters the mix. The album reveals in the same Post-Rock world as the earlier album. Focusing on an incredible atmosphere that is completely entrancing and hypnotic. 

This isn’t an urgent release, it is a Post-Rock album that throws a little more heaviness in your direction. It’s a spectacular mix between relaxation and metal, something which sounds like a total paradox until experienced first-hand. Little Histories brings the trademark Cloudkicker atmosphere to some kind of strange mid-point, taking elements of the two distinct styles they Sharp has developed over the course of his career. It is atmospheric and hypnotic without letting go of any heaviness. Yet at the same time it is heavy without letting go of any of the welcoming aura found on Cloudkicker’s softer releases.

This is an album not to be missed by fans of progressive rock and metal. This is a one man project that goes beyond Axe-FX and EzDrummer. This is the real deal and it deserves your attention… And even if this one album doesn’t spark your interest, every core release from Cloudkicker is completely free anyway. You’ve got nothing to lose. 

VOLA – Inmazes

Eclectic Swedish Progressive ensemble, VOLA are a strange beast. Initial seconds of Inmazes make it all too easy to write it off as “just another Djent album” but that’s not really want Inmazes is about at all, or at least not completely. There is some definite Meshuggah worship to be found in the more groove focused parts of this album. Though this heavy down-tuned riffage is couple with a myriad of other influences to create something rather unique. 

Clean, melodious vocals on top of chunky djentisms feels a little wrong to begin with, but it doesn’t take long for your brain to stop caring that it’s “wrong” on focus on what a bang on job VOLA do with it. Riffs made of the heaviest alien concrete meld into psychedelic, chilled and hook laden vocals and synthcapes with keyboard solos. It’s like going from Meshuggah to Mastodon to King Crimson without really noticing any disparity between them. Even the heavy riffs manage to have a unique melodic and atmospheric quality you’d struggle to find in other bands. Merely being able to include that word, “unique,” in a style of music that could be linked closely to the echo chamber that is Djent, is high praise indeed.

It’s strange really. There is a lot on Inmazes that you could point at individually and say “this is derivative of its genre” but when it all comes together Inmazes is a 51 minute progressive journey that you have not seen the likes of before. It is equal parts Modern and Old School, taking influences from the best aspects of the entire Progressive World. This is a debut album that shows a band ready to do almost anything. They’ve already proved themselves capable prog alchemists with their ability to meld the incessantly angular and the impeccably smooth and this is only their first full length! I doubt this will be the last time you hear about VOLA from Pyramid Noise. 

Steve Lawson – Believe In Peace

This live recording of Solo Bassist Steve Lawson is beautiful. It is not, as you might expect from a solo Bass musician, an exercise is slapping techniques or trying really hard to get you to take Bass as a “real” instrument. Instead Believe In Peace is an in-situ recording of a performance at an art exhibit focused around the Chinese I Ching texts on Wisdom. As part of this multi-media event Lawson decided to do something more than his standard set and Believe In Peace was this result. This is a 4 track release, clocking in at about 48 minutes of fantastic ambience all created on a Bass Guitar. Percussion, backing drones, melodies and more are all created on this single instrument with a copious amount of pedals. 

This isn’t just one note ambience though, Laweson doesn’t rest on his laurels and allow the art present to make up for any inadequacies in his own performance, I admit however, that the art combined with this music must have been something rather special. Believe In Peace sees drone, darker ambient tones, melodious highly textured pieces, minimalistic soundscapes and other facets of ambient than I am unable to name, brought together to create an incredibly meditative release, as suits the subject of the album. Sometimes it even bursts out into a blissed out distorted lead solo, but that does little to break from the chilled out, psychedelic jam-band quality of this release. 

The fact that this album was played live adds something to it. In an age where it is more common to make ambient in a cold digital space, the incredibly human and warm feeling that Steve Lawson offers here is a great departure from contemporary ambient artists. While the bass guitar is run through a mass of different pedals, it never loses itself and you’re constantly aware that this is human music, based in spirutality and care over craft. It is safe to say, prior to veering off into a spiritualist ramble, that Believe In Peace is an album best experienced with eyes closed and mind open. 

Interested in having your band featured on this weekly article? E-mail us at pyramidnoise@gmail.com with the subject line "Free Music Monday" with links to your Bandcamp page. 

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FREE MUSIC MONDAY: 22/12/2014

Free Music Monday does exactly what it says on the tin. Every Monday I will scour BandCamp for only the best free albums.

Free Music.

Every Monday!

Got that? Good.

Let's begin. 

Anup Sastry – Titan

The world of one-man Djent projects tend to fall into certain patterns. In the minority you have the unfairly talented people who are able to play every instrument they need with more skill than most of us can dream to play one. Damn you Ben Sharp, Damn you. For mere mortals however, machine aid must be sought. Often you’ll find that an artist will track guitars and bass and shove Superior Drummer 2 in the mix for their percussive requirements. The drummer for Skyharbor, Intervals and Jeff Loomis, Anup Sastry, however, has done things in reverse. The only real instrument on this impressively meaty Djent album, are the drums, but it’s very hard to tell.

Call it a criticism of the oft over-produced nature of Djent if you will, but even without such loaded opinions to back it up, this is one hell of a release. Despite being a drummer at heart it seems that Anup has the art of melody writing pretty well covered. This album djents in all the right ways and in all the right places. In reality it is perhaps not that surprising that this album is as solid as it is. Good Djent, in my opinion, requires two things; a good sense of groove and rhythm and a strong ear for melody, both of which are present here. As the rhythmic power house behind many a progressive band as well as for two bands that both appeared on our best of 2014 list, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that Melody work has rubbed off on him. If nothing else, this is worth a listen just to see how that programmed guitars sound.

(Spoiler: Better than you’d expect.)

Nicholas Nicholas – Wrong

Brooklyn project Nicholas Nicholas’ brand of Shoegazey Dream Pop is somehow both nostalgic and comforting whilst still feeling new and interesting. Wrong feels like a distant memory, something from your childhood half forgotten. The production is unashamedly inspired by the 80’s. Old school synths, guitar and drum tones that wouldn’t feel out of place on a The Cure record and, perhaps unsurprisingly for a Shoegaze record, reverb and delay on basically everything. While it is influenced by this 30 year old sound however, it retains a sense of modernity that prevents Wrong from simply becoming another throw back release.

The ambience of this album may best be described by a faded photograph, perhaps a photo of yourself when you were very young. There’s nostalgia, sadness of things passed, but it’s warm; bittersweet perhaps being the best word to use, but the album, despite its title, refuses to become completely morose.

The guitars drone ethereally as you expect and the melodies both from the guitar and mouth are hauntingly delayed to the point of incomprehensibility. It is all very Shoegaze, very solid, but nothing unexpected. I don’t see the album causing any hardcore fan of Shoegaze proclaiming this to be the future of the genre and all that came before it are now irrelevant. But it certainly is a great example of the genre and well worth a listen.

Elizabeth Veldon – Music For The Solstice

As today marks celebrations for the Winter Solstice over on the Salisbury Plains, it seems apt to include an album released just for the occasion. Glaswegian Experimental Noise Aritst (as if there’s a non-Experimental Noise Artist) released Music For The Solstice on December 21^st, which the actual date of the Solstice according to Google.

Citing John Cage as a major influence, it is unsurprising that much of this album is quiet to the point of silence. This is not an album to have on in the background, as I made the mistake of doing on a first listen. This is an abstraction of ideas and is something that should be paid attention to. Music For The Solstice represents what the event means to Elizabeth Veldon, realised in processed sine waves. It may not make sense to anyone else, but that’s okay. Music is a very personal expression and that is what I believe this to be, pure personal expression. It is perhaps not something you would listen to over and over, but on this, the darkest night of the year, it might be worth sitting alone with your headphones for half an hour and reflecting.

this is music for the solstice, designed for headphones. 
listen in the dark, wrapped in sound.

Interested in having your band featured on this weekly article? E-mail us at pyramidnoise@gmail.com with the subject line "Free Metal Monday" with links to your Bandcamp page.

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