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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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