The Download Munkey : A Link A Day ;)

Caught this one off Breaksblog.biz, my preferred site for quality drum & bass mixes on the monthly selections of free full-length tracks by big name artists and newcomers to the electronic scene by the London club The End.

Apart from the fourth selection of fine drum & bass featuring tracks like Calibre’s Right On, Lynx & Kemo’s Global Enemies and Martyn’s dubsteppy Shadowcasting in the monthly series known as Recommends, there’s a great deal of quality house, minimal and electro tracks (with the occassional smattering of funk and some totally uncategorizable stuff) in the other three compilations.

Here’s my picks for each compilation.

06) Marlow - Convoy - Dubsteppy stuff
10) Hipp-E feat. Lamont Moerhaus - Dance Wit Me - Chicago house
11) Jose James: Black Eyed Susan (IG Culture’s 4 Beat Refit)

01) Mlle Caro and Franck Garcia - Always You (Ben Watt Radio Edit) - Dreamy, melodic music
06) Fairmont - Fade and Saturate
08) Joel Mull - The Walk - The funky minimal side of Joel Mull - a very big difference from tracks like ISO1 produced before the ascendancy of minimal techno

01) Sébastien Tellier - Divine (Midnight Juggernauts Remix) - 80s sounding stuff (the good 80s stuff , that is)
02) Black Grass - Bless : Very retroish, smooth house
03) Inland Knights: Lay On Me
06) Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip - Look for the Woman (Zane Lowe Mix) - The new rap
10) Me & You - Sneaker Thief (Hint Remix) - Catchy, toe-tapping music.
11) Tiger Stripes - Beach Buggy (Motorcitysoul Ambient Remix)

01) Calibre - Mr Right On
02) Lynx feat. Kemo - Global Enemies
03) Seba & Krazy - Nebula
07) Martyn - Shadowcasting

Each track is encoded at 224 kbps for your enjoyment (the downside is that each selection of 10+ tracks comes in a 100+ MB zip file). Each collection also comes with a PDF with the artist profiles. Excellent stuff and highly recommended!

Download these tracks from The End. Free registration is required before downloading.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Tony-B Machine - Flash Toy for Creating Early 90’s Techno/Electro
Android Jones - Musical Art & Much More
Grabbing Music from MySpace
Takuya Kashiwada @ Under Water Bar Praha
Links to Direct Downloads for Selected Annie Mac 5 Minutes Mixes

Something positive and heartwarming to kickstart of a brand new week

The lyrics for Jack Houston’s beautiful ballad Dragon Fellow transcribed directly from the movie (below) made by the July 2005 class at DAVE School (see previous post on Tofu : The Vegan Zombie).

© DAVE School

And if you’re wondering whether that’s Jack Houston in the video, it is Found this photo while Googling for the lyrics.

Below are the lyrics for Dragon Fellow. Any mistakes in the lyrics below are solely my own.

A long long time ago, in a kingdom far away
There lived a gentle dragon in a city by the bay
Dragon Fellow was his name, with scales and breath of fire
A golden heart within his chest and the finest dragon attire

They sang fly Dragon Fellow, high up in the sky,
Play dragon games and float above like a firebreathing butterfly
Oh fly Dragon Fellow and feel the joy it brings
Dragon Fellow’s golden heart has earned him dragon wings
Oh Dragon Fellow’s golden heart has earned him dragon wings

Watch or download Dragon Fellow from DAVE School.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Tofu : The Vegan Zombie

Just chanced upon this page (legal, of course) where Konami is offering a selection of the BGM tunes for the Wangan Midnight : Maximum Tune 2 racing game for free download.

All tracks are euro-trance which essentially sounds like stuff produced during the early days of trance music before its heyday during 1998 to 2000. While I definitely prefer the more subtle styles of uplifting and progressive house/trance exemplified in the first half of Armin van Buuren’s Universal Religion 2004 : Live From Armada Ibiza or the second half of Sasha & Digweed’s classic Northern Exposure 2 West Coast Edition, there’s always times when you yearn for the euphoria and adrenaline rush that accompanies this genre

While snobs may deride euro-trance as simplistic, cheesy and unsubtle stuff especially when compared with other forms of electronic music or even other more restrained variants of trance, it’s undeniably upbeat, cheery and incredibly straight to the point without long buildups and stuff while retaining those catchy melodies and snare rolls characteristic of trance

Some of the tracks that I recommend from the 14 complete tracks available for download.

08. Driver’s Delight
05. Fun-Loving Spirit
03. Feel the Passion
04. Beyond The Horizon
02. Stream Of Tears (More Tranced Mix)

The drumbeats of Beyond The Horizon sounds like Ferry Corsten’s early work in his Moonman guise IMHO.

There’s also a short 3 minute medley comprising most of the downloadable tracks for those interested in sampling the music beforehand.

Download the Wangan Midnight : Maximum Tune 2 BGM tracks or preview the medley (first download - 4.3 MB).

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Saiko - Cool Electronic Music Generator (Trance, Acid, etc)
Tony-B Machine - Flash Toy for Creating Early 90’s Techno/Electro
Android Jones - Musical Art & Much More
Orange Mixer - Arrange Your Own Music
Grabbing Music from MySpace
Why I Love Techno - Takuya Kashiwada @ Under Water Bar Praha

Another electronic music toy, Tony-B is the brainchild of a French flash developer with the same name.

You get synthesized melodies, bass and percussion (snares, hi-hats, kickdrums) with some early 90’s techno/electro soundbites (try pressing R for that classic C+C Music Factory’s Everybody Dance Now sample) as well as some nifty EFX which you can activate via Street Fighter like controls (Down,Right,Left,Up) for the Thunder Break snare roll or (Up,Down,Up,Down) for Extreme Danger sirens.

© www.tony-b.org

The Tony-B machine boasts a very well-designed and intuitive interface where everything can be accessed either via the keyboard or the mouse (or both for optimal effect). Switch the instruments on and off by pressing the number keys, play the keyboard via the ASDFGHJKL; keys for the standard QWERTY keyboard layout (it also supports the AZERTY keyboards used in France and Belgium) and trigger the sound samples with the QWERTYUIOP keys.

© www.tony-b.org

Check out my 3 minutes track (2.90 MB) recorded with Audacity. It doesn’t exactly show off the full power of the Tony-B machine since my reflexes suck when attempting to control all the instruments, samples and the EFX simultaneously but it should give you an good idea of the style of audio generated by this marvellous little Flash toy.

Start creating your own track with the Tony-B Machine. You might want to read what each of the sound samples correspond to over at the official site before playing around with it.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Orange Mixer - Create your own Electronic Tracks Online
Rebirh RB-338 - Free Drum Machine
Saiko - Cool Electronic Music Generator
Be Your Own One Man Band
Takuya Kashiwada @ Under Water Bar Praha

If there’s something that puts me in a better mood than listening to beautiful music by previously unknown electronic musicians or feasting my eyes on the artwork of newly-discovered artistic talents, it has to be chancing on glorious eye kandy related to music (and about electronic/club music no less )

Today, I present Andrew Jones who’s better known as Android Jones.

© Andrew Jones

This is my favourite piece - can you believe that Andrew actually did this piece live during Temple San Francisco where the Goddess Alchemy Project performed during the Touch of Truth event on 11 Nov 2007. While I’ve never been to a club, I find it simply quite amazing that anyone can accomplish any productive work in the darkness of a club and with the music blasting from the sound system

© Andrew Jones

Another three favourites - I love the contrast between the cool blue and warm red hues - makes the pictures look more intense and energetic while maintaining the cool, relaxed appearances of these practised, professional turntablists and DJs.

Not everything is about music though - there’s a couple of other non-music related pieces that I quite enjoy, mainly because I’m a big fan of skulls

© Andrew Jones

A more gritty modern re-interpretation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

© Andrew Jones

If you care to take a closer look at this piece, you’ll notice that besides the morbid skull and moth (or are those wings?), there’s a Mayan/Inca/Aztec mythological figure on the bottom left - there’s plenty of such intricate nitty-gritty details in his works that reward the careful or patient viewer.

Check out all these works and more in their original high resolution at Andrew’s blog or visit his official site at www.androidjones.com where a pillar of 1000 portraits done in a span of 2 years and 9 months (at the rate of one portrait per day!) is proudly displayed on the left of the website. Massive Black DVDs also sells several Android Jones video tutorials as digital downloads.

© Andrew Jones

And by the way, you might also be interested in visiting DEITRIX ArtWorks - I wouldn’t have discovered Android Jones without dear DEITRIX’s links

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Fabric CD Coverart
Hed Kandi CD Artwork & Wallpaper
Skull A Day
My Favourite Pepper Project Entries
startdrawing.org - Asia’s Drawing Portal
Tiger Translate 2007 - Asian Artist Showcase