Great free music!

A small chain of events brought me to Gruber, a local electro-dub duo. I had a café lunch at Dudok in Den Haag and picked up a flyer of events coming in January at the Haags Pop Centrum (among others). When I got home, I read through the listings and checked out those that sounded interesting by following the links from the muziekcafé area of the HPC website.

“Kim is Here” is from their first CD which is titled “And er yeah things like that.” It appears to be out of print (I checked at the local Plato store), but thankfully there are several excellent tunes on their website. Gruber songs are copyrighted, so I emailed Edith to ask permission to podcast this tune and she wrote write back to say yes. (Thanks for that, Edith!) There are lots of great samples in this one, a nice throbby baseline, plaintive vocals from Benno, and lyrics about my favorite person: Kim!

 

 Gruber: Kim is here [4:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Another gem from one of my favorite one-man-bands: Scomber. This is yet another goody from the ccMixter website…and it is worth noting that Scomber’s own website seems to be AWOL. Dunno what happened there, but the good news is that all of his excellent work seems to be available on ccMixter, so no worries!

According to the liner notes, this intense techno ballad features DoKashiteru & the Scomber Fingerlings. DoKashiteru is a familar face here at TD Tunes, and the Scomber Fingerlings seem to be those precocious children of his. Well done, Scomber!

 

 Scomber: This is Independence Day [4:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Here’s a haunting, ethereal piece from David y Kellie, two awesome artists here in the Netherlands. David is from Spain and Kellie is American, so their unique sound is a blend of, well, things. Give it a listen!

 

 David y Kellie: Parent Conf [2:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

State Shirt rocks and this video proves it. He combines that oddly addictive Slap Chop infomercial with his own sad vocals to paint a grim picture of suburban life in America. Wow…

 

 State Shirt: I am a Target [4:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

And here’s vitaminsforyou out of Winnipeg from the Internet Archive: “Straight from Winnipeg’s experimental electronic scene, vitaminsforyou has been developing sound and music for theatre, dance, film, video, animation and prose across Canada working with artists in a variety of genres from electro-acoustic sound designers to some of Canadas darling pop practitioners. Recent performances include an invitation to play at Mexico Citys Mutek Festival, Toronto’s Canadian Electronic Ensembles Festival and the Deep Wireless Festival, Montreal’s Mutek Festival, Saskatoon’s Digidome Festival of contemporary sound, music, and digital video, Vancouver’s New Forms Festival, and Winnipeg’s Send and Receive Festival.”

Easy-going electronica with a marching band surprise near the end…so much fun!

 

 vitaminsforyou: Being Away Fame (A Song for the Xenophobic) [3:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup