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The Club Foot LP is named after one of San Francisco's premier artist-run venues of the late 70s/early 80s, and documents the jazz-punk-DIY-situationist sounds nurtured therein. Originally released in 1981 by legendary local imprint Subterranean Records (Flipper, Dead Kennedys, Inflatable Boy Clams), it was recently repressed in a limited edition of 450 12'' LP's to coincide with Club Foot's 30th anniversary and an "Artifacts from SF's Art Punk Cabaret" event at the San Francisco Public Library.
Club Foot was founded by Richard Kelly, a student of John Cage who sought to "marry high art values to the vitality of underground performance art; to fuse Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison and Albert Ayler and project that onto the art-rock stage" (this from an article on the Clubfoot Orchestra's website). The original Club Foot Orchestra was a revolving cast of characters from the local scene assembled for this LP recording, including Richard Edson (who appears on the cover) and other members of the bands who appear on this compilation: Bay of Pigs, Alterboys, Longshoremen and Naked City (not the Zorn one). The ensemble disbanded in 1983 after Richard Kelly committed suicide, and the Club itself closed its doors in 1985.
Around this time, inspired by the original Club Foot, Richard Marriott founded a new group under the same name that continues performing to this day. Clubfoot (one word) has a completely different lineup and a distinct focus on "modern music for silent film".
A clip from the contemporary Clubfoot'sNosferatu soundtrack appears after the jump.
Though they've got one foot in their next-level future home, ISSUE Project Room has been making the most of their current location in the (OA) Can Factory by holding a fantastic series of outdoor summer concerts.
This Sunday's massive lineup is curated by Important Records, and features Master Musicians of Bukkake, Jozef Van Wissem, Duane Pitre, Helena Espvall + Fursaxa, Arborea, Kouhei Matsunaga, The New Monuments, Cave and Diane Cluck. a label with broad yet supremely refined taste. Many of these artists have performed at WFMU over the years, and/or have profiles on the Free Music Archive (where ISSUE Project Room is also a Curator). IPR compiled the following mix to preview Sunday's all-day affair...
This'll be the last IPR courtyard show of the summer, and it's all all day affair starting at 2pm. More info/tix
Matthew Johnson has said that he started Fat Possum Records just to be able to put out a record by R. L. Burnside. He did that (Bad Luck City, 1992), but fortunately he didn’t stop there. From that time on, Fat Possum has released many of the most exciting blues discs to appear since the 1960s, revitalizing interest in music that many people (outside the South, especially) had long thought was creatively exhausted.
For a number of years, a handful of artists from the label’s roster toured the country, billed as the Fat Possum Juke Joint Caravan. Back in the mid-1990s the troupe featured R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Later, its mainstays were T-Model Ford (pictured) and Paul "Wine" Jones. In 2004, the opportunity arose to bring the Caravan to WFMU for a set on my show "The Inner Ear Detour," and I was thrilled to have them.
For reasons I don’t recall, everyone was packed into Studio A, rather than setting up the musicians in the regular, roomier performance space upstairs, connected to Studio B. It wasn’t intentional, I’m sure, but with everyone crammed in there, the effect when the music started was that Studio A felt an awful lot like a crowded hill-country juke joint. The sound had a lot to do with it, too, of course. Listening to these recordings today, this is not a sound—gritty and dark, loose and groovy—that I generally associate with 10 a.m. on a Thursday morning! It helped too that we had a throng of people squeezed into the room: all the musicians, their handler, engineer Jason Engel, sundry WFMU staffers and volunteers, and, somewhat incongruously, a small television crew doing a story on Fat Possum for the Canadian branch of Bravo.
The late Paul "Wine" Jones played first, with a searing guitar style reminiscent of the rawer recordings of Hound Dog Taylor. T-Model Ford played next, with echoes of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters in his repertoire but with a sandpaper-and-gravel timbre and sparse accompaniment (by his longtime partner Spam on drums) that no one would mistake for Chess Records. "T” (as everyone seemed to call him) was then in his 80s and walked with a cane, but this didn’t stop him from getting up and dancing when the other musicians played. Last was Kenny Brown, best known as a protégé of R. L. Burnside but whose lighter finger-picking on this date was more reminiscent of another of his mentors, Joe Callicott. Cedric Burnside played drums with Paul Jones and with Kenny Brown.
Single Bullet Theory were a DIY-punk-inspired power-pop group with a true shot at new-wave stardom in the late 70s and early 80s. They were certainly worthy; the songs were there and the energy was too. But after gigging with artists like The Ramones (photo R), Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and even finding their way onto MTV and the Billboard charts, the music industry bottleneck pressured SBT to sacrifice their pure vision for potential mass-marketability. In the process, the group lost the sense of purpose that drove them to play music in the first place, and disbanded before they could record their elusive breakthrough.
SBT: 1977-1980 compiles Single Bullet Theory's self-recorded material, and the 11-song collection offers an unfiltered vision of a band at their prime. It's compiled by Artifacts/yclept, which is both a musicians' collective from SBT's hometown of Richmond Virginia, as well as the imprint that originally released this material on 45rpm 12'' in an edition of 1000. We've previously documented the more experimental tendencies of Richmond's fertile arts scene with features on Karen Cooper Complex and Bomis Prendin, but there is much more to dig into over at the Artifacts/yclept FMA page.
The core of Single Bullet Theory -- Frank Daniel, Dennis Madigan, and Michael Maurice Garrett -- had been playing in Richmond bands since 1971 in groups like Big Naptar and X-Breed (pictured at right), putting on warehouse parties and fostering a healthy music community. Both of these bands appear on the first Artifacts compilation, originally released as a flexi-disk in 1976 (they love those flexis!). X-Breed's version of "Miss Two Knives" was later recorded as Single Bullet Theory, who formed in 1976 to further refine a sound that had started by covering bands like the MC5, Velvet Underground, and the Troggs.
One of the songs below, "Keep It Tight," would be re-recorded for Single Bullet Theory's first (and only) official album, released in 1982 on Nemperor Records, a subsidiary of CBS Records. The song charted, a music video (after the jump) appeared on MTV two years later just as the label stopped promoting the band.
One solution is to play recordings that are not covered by the agreement to begin with. The blanket license for recordings (but not compositions) is overseen by the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA). Their catalog includes the discographies of hundreds of Australian labels & artists who've opted to join the collecting society, but its primary licensors are the four multinational major labels.
In other words, "Real Music". Or at least that's the language the PPCA uses in its press release. This doesn't mean to say that PPCA members are any more "real" than independent artists (though it may seem implied). Rather, it's referring to the hundreds of fitness centers across Australia who are phasing out original music in favor of cheap cover recordings that aren't subject to PPCA control. The trend was recently spotlighted in this Wall Street Journal article, and these Britney Spears knockoffs are apparently big business for anybody who really wants to make money through music.
For those who want something a little real-er than mock pop tunes the next time they're at the gym, I made this mix of Creative Commons-licensed workout-ready tunes. All of these tracks (except the liberally-licensed Juanitos) are licensed under NonCommercial terms (click the "i" for the complete terms). So other than the Juanitos, these tracks wouldn't fly in a for-profit gym, but they could be used in school gyms and non-profit YMCA types of fitness centers. As long as the song isn't being used to enhance somebody's business, these artists would bee happy to see you getting in shape to their music. So feel free to download and bring this with you on your next trip to the gym. And if you find yourself having to use this to block out another knockoff "Oops I Did It Again" again, now you'll know why.
More about each artist after the jump or by clicking the "i" button next to their track. As always if you like what you hear, you can tip the artist by hitting the $ symbol on their artist page.
The Almigty Defenders are a twisted-gospel/garage-punk supergroup featuring members of Black Lips, King Khan & BBQ. When I say "gospel," I mean these guys are inspired by 70s soul, 60s garage and 50s R&B, but the spiritual message is slightly warped. During their rowdy live set at Primavera Sound, they don't just encourage the crowd to "Take Jesus Christ," but to "take him by the balls...and squeeze". They had some strong words for the pope as well in this beguiling set of spirituals, and survived more than a gag (a Defender vomited onstage, which upset the security guards) to keep the party going late Saturday night at the Vice stage.
Vice released The Almighty Defenders' self-titled debut LP late last year, which is surprising turn-around considering the group had only formed in February 2009. Even more surprising is the group's origin story -- according to Wikipedia:
During the Black Lips' January 2009 tour of India, following an incident at a rowdy show during which Cole Alexander kissed fellow bandmember Ian St. Pe and exposed his private parts on-stage, the Lips fled the country while rumors of their arrests circulated the internet. The tour was canceled and the group members fled to the Berlin, Germany residence of King Khan, where Sultan so happened to be recording tracks with Khan for the King Khan and BBQ Show's upcoming "Invisible Girl". Over the course of eight days, in a typically booze-sloppy Black Lips fashion, they laid down 11 tracks with Khan and Sultan. On June 17, the full group made its live debut, performing a set in choir robes at the North by Northeast festival.
The Defenders' choir robes were in full effect at Primavera Sound, where highlights included the group's epic "The Great Defender", "The Ghost With The Most", and "Cone of Light" (full setlist after the jump). The album version of "Cone of Light" is available for download from Vice Records' FMA collection, where you can also find music from related projects Black Lips and King Khan and The Shrines and great great bands like Pierced Arrows, Growing, The Raveonettes, Acrassicauda and Lullabye Arkestra.
For the second year in a row, Primavera Sound made WFMU the official American radio station for their unparalleled 3-day festival in Barcelona, Spain. The multi-stage festival was bigger and better than ever as it celebrated its 10th anniversary with a lineup of heavy hitters and WFMU favorites like Pavement, Sic Alps, Wire, The Books, The Clean, The Slits, Thee Oh Sees, New Pornographers, Diplo, Wilco, Camarón de la Isla, and So Cow. Many of these sets are now archived streaming on WFMU's special events page, and starting today we're posting some mp3 highlights to WFMU's Blog and Free Music Archive.
Kicking things off is the one and only Superchunk! The legendary kings of indie rock are back to reclaim their crown with their first new album in nine years, Majesty Shredding, slated for a September 14th release on Merge Records. Singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance founded Merge back in 1989 with the release of Superhcunk's debut, the "Slack Motherfucker" 7''. That anthemic tune was one of many classics from the 2010 Primavera set, which was broadcast in its entirely on Terre T's Cherry Blossom Clinic. Also in the mix was "Detroit Has a Skyline" (mp3 below), "Learn to Surf" (off the forthcoming album), and "Precision Auto" featuring the omnipresent Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav on guest vocals -- also check out his stage appearance during Liquid Liquid's set on WFMU's youtube).
The live performance and new album both feature a classic Superchunk lineup -- unchanged since the early 90's -- with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance joined by Jim Wilbur on guitar and the renaissance man Jon Wurster on drums. You can check out a video teaser for Majesty Shredding over at vimeo, or after the jump.
Elsewhere on the FMA, you can catch Mac performing a solo set as Portastatic live over the phone from Chapel Hill, as broadcast on Phoning It In where "lo-fi is the right fi".
We'll be posting mp3 highlights from Primavera Sound all week long, and in the meantime, enjoy some Prima-Video's after the jump...
You may know Arrington de Dionyso from his post-punk-freak-folk group Old Time Relijun, or from his trance-inducing solo experimentations with overtone-singing, shruti-box, jaw harp, and Kadri Gopalnath-inspired bass clarinet. He also teaches workshops on "Unleashing the Voice", and plays in the free-jazz quartet The Naked Future (ESP-Disk). His paintings offer a visual depiction of said future, where humans, animals, and angels live in naked, bestial harmony.
Malaikat Dan Singa (K Records, 2009) is an album that melds all of these influences and more: Arrington's unleashed vocals are sung entirely in Indonesian, with translations of William Blake and the Zohar finding their way into the mix. The album was produced by K Records/Dub Narcotic house engineer Karl Blau, who also plays bass and drums on the record.
Arrington de Dionyso brought Malaikat Dan Singa to life for a visit to Talk's Cheap on WFMU this past Tuesday, engineered by Dave Mambach. The lineup featured Arrington on vocals/guitar/bass clarinet, Nehemiah Saint-Danger on bass guitar and Ruben Sindo Acosta on drums. Old Time Relijun's drummer Germaine Baca was on-hand as well, studying up for the next leg of the tour. She's got an extra leg up because the first song of the live session, "Kedalman Air," is a reworking of an Old Time Relijun song "Cold Water"<-- be sure to check out the amazing live version from WFMU's Free Music Series concert @ Southpaw, 10/13/2007!
Speaking of Old Time Relijun, they're playing a surprise show at NYC's Cake Shop this Saturday 5/22. Malaikat Dan Singa plays Brooklyn's Death By Audio tonight, then they're off to AS220 and beyond for this tour which Arrington promises will be "never-ending" (see here for tourdates).
So what compelled Arrington to start writing music and lyrics in Bahasa Indonesia, let alone to learn the language in the first place...??
Richmond, VA had a vibrant art-rock/experimental scene brewing for decades, and the Artifacts/yclept label documented some of the sounds circulating around their hometown. In anticipation of a 3-CD sampler titled Necroscopix (1970-1981), we recently posted three full albums from this era to the Free Music Archive (click the album art to grab 'em) as well as an Artifacts sampler.
1979's Test and 1980's Phantom Limbwere the first two official releases by Bomis Prendin, an experimental collective from Washington DC. These 9'' flexidisks came silkscreened, wrapped in a PVC bag "for protection", and their avant-industrial living room tape sounds inspired mail from the likes of Jandek and WFMU's own Irwin Chusid. They're also cited as the two records that earned Bomis Prendin a spot on the mythical "Nurse With Wound" list. A tracks off each album was later compiled as part of Hyped 2 Deaths' Homework #110 compilation, and an official CD release is available here along with more recent Bomis Prendin recordings (BP writes that releases reconvened in 2001, "after we gained the necessaries to make our own CDs, having started digitizing and archiving our hundreds of tapes in 1999"). So there is much mind-melting Bomis Prendin music to be heard, in addition to these two groundbreaking releases. Here's "N.Y. Nightmare" off Test and "Doppler Shift" off Phantom Limb:
Bomis Prendin's mutating lineup centered around its eponymous core member, along with characters like "Corvus Crorson", Candeee, and Miles Anderson. One of the players on Test is Bill Altice, who wrote the liner notes for the forthcoming Necroscopix retrospective. Earlier this year, Bill Altice introduced us to Shinjuku Birdwalk, a previously un-heard gem of an album recorded in 1981 by Richmond's Karen Cooper Complex...
>> Cyclic Bits: The Raymond Scott Variations<< curated by WFMU's own Ergo Phizmiz (originally broadcast on Phuj Phactory) feat. David Fenech, Vernon Lenoir, Satanicpornocultshop, Tracky Birthday...
>> 2010 Golden Festival highlights mix << 25th annual Balkan/Roma/brass festival from the Transpacific Sound Paradise remote
The
law has pretty much steered clear of the grey area surrounding mp3
blogs since their rise to prominence ~7 years ago. Meanwhile, other
regulatory forces have helped the blogosphere develop an organic code
of conduct that benefits the interests of the music industry and our
society as a whole.
Last week, in what's been called #musicblogocide2k10, Google's Blogger service shut down several popular blogs
accused by the IFPI and RIAA of copyright infringement. Due to a bug in
Google's system (for which Blogger later apologized), at least one of the bloggers (the amazing Masala blog, which has since been restored) did not receive notification until after the blog's deletion.
Sure, you can blame Google for that error. But you can't really
blame them for following the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to remove
allegedly infringing content. As part of Bloggers' DMCA policy Google forwards their takedown notices to ChillingEffects.org where they are available for all to see. Chilling Effects is an incredibly useful resource conceived by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
(who also advise our work on the Free Music Archive) in collaboration
with a group of university law clinics and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Check it out, and you'll find myriad DMCA copyright
complaints like this one,
each listing hundreds of allegedly infringing Google-powered blogs, and
claiming that Google may be liable. Google has no choice but to remove
this infringing content, and from there the alleged infringer can file
a counter-notification.
This back-and-forth DMCA procedure is far from perfect. But it's
designed to protect online service providers like Blogger, who can't
possibly be expected to look into each and every one of these claims.
It's up to bloggers to defend themselves, and (as long as they are
properly informed) there's a relatively clear way to go about it. This
way, the inevitability of infringing content doesn't have to take the
entire blogging service and all its non-infringing treasures down with
it.
Let's leave Google alone for a second (they've got other problems
right now) to consider "the inevitability of infringing content." There
is still a great disparity between the law and the other codes/norms
that govern the blogosphere, and musicblogocide is a great example of
how this plays out. Before you read on, take a look at the above
diagram from Free Culture, in which Lawrence Lessig describes the law as one of four regulatory/enabling forces acting on...let's say...the blogosphere.
John Henry and Heather of the great band Static Static
are in serious legal trouble in Prescott, Arizona, and are facing 5-15
years in prison. Though I don't know all the details about what has
happened, I know they have a lot of great things to contribute to
society, and they don't deserve to be locked out of it. They go before
a judge tomorrow and their friends are trying to raise money so that
they can both have proper legal representation.
Miss Pussycat, a friend of Static Static from their New Orleans days, writes
I
have known John and Heather for over ten years. Heather has been on
tour with us to sell merch, Static Static has rocked the Spellcaster
many times and I love them both and know they have lots of other
friends that love them and would want to help out. Lesley, the drummer
for Static Static has a Paypal account to direct donations for a
lawyer.
Send paypal donations to: lesley.lesley "at" sbcglobal.net
I wrote more about Static Static (and the artist Keenan Keller, whose Static Static artwork appears in this post) here, when they played live at WFMU on my radio show "Talk's Cheap". Here's a track from that session:
When Mike Mangino and Chris Shepard started writing music together in the late 1970s, their goal was not to develop a repertoire and play gigs, or even to perform live in front of any audience. Everything they needed was right there in Piscataway NJ: a basement full of musical toys and instruments, novelty space microphones, a TR-606 (the same "Roland" who was listed as a member of Big Black), a SH-09 (Cabaret Voltaire's favorite synth), and -- perhaps most importantly -- a tape recorder. Every Monday night, they'd write a new song from scratch. A couple hours later, the song was recorded, never to be performed again.
By 1981, this dedication to spontaneous creativity had already produced countless recordings, and the duo began releasing cassettes as Smersh via their own Atlas King label. A definitive Smersh discography may not even be possible, but this one lists more than 30 Atlas King cassettes. As these tapes traded their way across continents, Smersh developed a devoted following in places far beyond Piscataway, leading to releases on dozens of other labels from across the globe. A 15 song sampler featuring some of the many highlights from Smersh's vast discography, spanning 1983-1993, is now available from the Free Music Archive (and at right).
My obsession with Smersh began relatively recently, when I first heard the song "Sweet Little Bishop" in the WFMU library, off a 7'' released by Sweden's Börft label in 1991 (listen). Then it got stuck in my head for several days straight. My subconscious couldn't remember what it was at first, mixed it up with some bizarre Prince song. But then i remembered that mysterious Smersh 7'' -- the one that stood out amongst the other Börft stuff in the library (Swedish artists like Frak and Enhänta Bödlar, who are also uncategorizable and each worthy of their own post!). I set about tracking down as much info as possible find about Smersh...
CBC Radio 3 is a service of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation with a focus on emerging Canadian music. Alongside their pioneering efforts in webcasting, podcasting, and satellite broadcasting, CBC Radio 3's website offers a free on-demand library of streaming music from over 20,000 Canadian artists. With a unique curatorial focus, CBC Radio 3 is
expanding the definition of radio. We're proud to welcome them to
the Free Music Archive alongside WFMU and fellow radio innovators like KEXP and dublab.
CBC Radio 3 kicks things off with a great batch of live tracks from Caribou, Destroyer, Arcade Fire, New Pornographers, Feist, K'naan, Neko Case, Islands, Thunderheist, Do Make Say Think, The Sadies, Sloan, and many more. Check out their "Additive Free Canadian Blend" mix after the jump, and dig in to CBC Radio 3's FMA portal for more, or subscribe to their RSS feed to keep up w/ new adds.
We're very excited to announce the winner of the Anti-Pop Consortium "Reflections" remix contest!
It was extremely difficult to pick -- we received 50 submissions from
all over the world that reimagined APC's innovative hip-hop in a
kaleidoscope of styles and unclassifiable genres. And this was not an
easy song to remix, we're very impressed by all of the talent that's
out there. Here's a note from Anti-Pop Consortium:
Thanks to all of the artists that took the time and effort to
create these hot remixes. Each remix had a different approach which
made it difficult to decide on a winner. The arrangements and attention
to detail were very impressive. And if you were brave enough to
incorporate the "tempo change ending" we salute you!
It was a pleasure to listen and we wish you all much success in your future musical endeavors...Thank you.
I've put this off for way too long... it's just cuz too much awesome music happened in 2009 and I think it's more than any single human could possibly digest in one year. Trust me, I've tried -- I have to have this sadistic urge to try to absorb everything. It's a problem. It's an addiction. But hey -- music is the healthiest addiction around, so might as well binge on the choicest sounds! I discovered a lot of these favorites through WFMU's music library; its endlessly inspiring New Bin curated by Mr Brian Turner, and WFMU's multi-talented DJ arsenal who bring the musical universe to contextualized life On The Air.
I've also discovered countless new favorites via the Free Music Archive, through tips from fellow curators and music fiends and browsing the net for the best Creative Commons audio. The FMA's library of freely download-able, curated mp3s has tripled in size since we launched in April, and I've listed some of my favorite selections below, more are on the way. Happy 2010 everybody! = hear more of the artist's music on the Free Music Archive ♫ = a streaming archive from Talk's Cheap, my radio show here on WFMU
This time last year, San Francisco's Wooden Shjips
released a Holiday Cassingle featuring psychedelic covers of "Auld Lang
Syne" and "O Tannenbaum". The 4-piece -- who famously gave away all 300
copies of their debut 10'' -- offered free mp3 version of the cassingle
to the WFMU blog, posted by Brian Turner here.
Meanwhile, the 100 physical copies of the cassette sold out in no
time, and -- in the spirit of The Holidaze -- all proceeds went to the San Francisco Food Bank.
This holiday season, Wooden Shjips' guitarist and vocalist Erik
"Ripley" Johnson is continuing this tradition. He sent over an mp3 from
his new project Moon Duo,
a re-imagined "Silver Bells" with a bit of Hawkwind's "Silver
Machine" thrown in the mix: Moon Duo - Silver Bells (mp3)
We are auctioning off three one-sided holiday 12" LPs
manufactured by Sacred Bones records. They are part of a private press
batch, created as a limited-edition holiday gifts and not available for
sale anywhere! Proceeds go to the SF Food Bank.
The exclusive tracks are: Moon Duo - Winter (Rolling Stones cover) Gary War - Grounds for Termination (Phil Gone Mix) Zola Jesus - No Time
Tonight, the leading lights of the worldwide chip music movement are convening at Brooklyn's Bell House for the fourth-annual Blip Festival. And as you may have heard, WFMU will be webcasting all 3 days' worth of pixelated madness LIVE on a separate super-special blip stream, beginning at 8pm ET tonight!
The webcast is hosted by Trent of WFMU's Sound and Safe, who'll be DJ-ing between sets and talking with Blip Festival organizers, performers, & attendees throughout. Trent hosted a Blip Fest Warm-Up radio show on Monday night -- check out the playlist & archive here for live performances from
Je Deviens DJ En Trois Jour and Patric Catani, plus special guests C-Men and Peter Swimm.
Peter Swimm runs the True Chip Till Death blog, and curates weekly highlights from the chip music world on the Free Music Archive. Earlier this week, he posted a mix featuring some of the artists who'll be performing at this year's festival. Check it out after the jump!
We've been testing out some new features and slight changes to the Free Music Archive, this month, and we'd love your feedback.
The big #1 is Tagging. Any registered user can tag a track, artist, or album. This will help create community-generated tag pages like this one for Banjo and this one for Baltimore.
Your tags'll now pop up in a new Recent Activity Feed (on the homepage),
along with user-generated blog posts, mixes, and comments. Soon,
these feeds will also be available on your own profile, as well as on
Artist, Curator, and Label pages to track discussion and help users
collaborate
Other recent changes include .zip downloads for Albums and Mixes,
and the embeddable player (which you may have already seen in action on
this here blog). Like the embedded mix over there <-- which was something I made for
warm, rainy weather when you'd least expect it.
One of our next steps is a Free Music Archive message board,
where we'll be able to discuss these site improvements, share free legal
music resources, and bring our worldwide userbase together to share knowledge and wisdom.
We all hold high expectations for the FMA, and user feedback is our guide, so let us know what you think of these
changes by leaving a comment or by emailing.
Read more about what's in store on the Free Music Archive's new donate page, where you can help this project reach its full potential.
+ It's a big week for the Downtown Music community as ISSUE Project Room is in the midst of the second annual Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire Festival (Dec 3-5th). This Phill Niblock piece is a preview of what's in store, you can read more here, and re-live last night's performances here.
+ Peppermill Records offers a series fantastic seasonally-themed compilations (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer), featuring the likes of Daedelus, Nathan Michel, Mochipet, Dev/Null, Bran Flakes, Satanicpornocultshop, Jason Forrest (aka WFMU DJ Donna Summer) and more! Here's an awesome auto-tuned jam from Rafter:
After the jump there's a mix of recent WFMU live session highlights featuring Roland P. Young, Frantz Loriot & Ben Miller (of Destroy All Monsters!), El Perro Del Mar, Hopewell, Manikin, Doug Gillard, De Cylinders, Delta Dreambox, and Wild Carnation (Brenda of the Feelies!) with much more from each session on the Free Music Archive.
Club Foot was founded by Richard Kelly, a student of John Cage who sought to "marry high art values to the vitality of underground performance art; to fuse Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison and Albert Ayler and project that onto the art-rock stage" (this from an article on the 
You may know 
John Henry and Heather of the great band