FMA Blog

Element Perspective is a sound and design label in Osaka, Japan. In celebration of their 3rd Anniversary, they're offering a free ambient electronic complation featuring tracks from AUCHRE, itsuqi doi, mitsuru shimizu, Mujika Easel, N-qia, Rika Oshimi, sanmi, SHOMOMOSE, unmo, yoko komatsu, and zmi. The album offers an abstract, google-translated description, explaining how the album is a journey to a higher level of consciousness through sound: "My lifetime were surrounded by crowd of sounds. The road to consciousness, to overdrive consciousness. Welcome to consciousness drive."

There's bonus artwork and higher quality files offered from the bandcamp release here.

Creative Commons licensing has opened a new world for collaboration. Most artists with works in the Free Music Archive share their copyrighted work with some rights reserved. Depending on the chosen license for the work, this often allows others to incorporate the work into something new without the use of lawyers and other middle men.

An avenue of collaboration that the Free Music Archive has actively promoted is the reuse of recordings in film and video. The FMA Music for Video selections offer filmmakers a sampling of the variety of music available for reuse. The FMA also has a partnership with Vimeo, the video host, helping filmmakers find just the right music to fit the setting of the film.

The collaborative music+video results have been remarkable around the world. In fact, in some cases this collaboration even benefits the world. Nonprofit organizations, not typically known for having large promotional budgets, can benefit greatly by re-purposing Creative Commons recordings licensed for reuse.

One FMA success story is the union of a recording by American artist Aaron Ximm with a public service message for sustainability organization Redress. Ximm's track is used in a promo video for the EcoChic Design Award.

Redress is a Hong Kong based NGO with a mission to promote environmental sustainability in Asia's fashion industry by reducing textile waste, pollution, water and energy consumption. We achieve this via educational sustainable fashion shows, exhibitions, competitions, seminars, research and media outreach. Our unique profile allows us to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders. We work with multiple fashion designers, textile and garment manufacturers, retailers, schools and universities, multilateral organizations, governments, NGOs, financial institutions and media organizations.

The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition inspiring emerging fashion designers and students to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. Apply now.

This year has been yet another strange chapter in the incredible musical voyage of Steve Mackay. After wrapping up a new album, he and his Stooges band-mates are touring the world once again. He joined his long time collaborators The Violent Femmes for a reunion show, the live Snakefinger album "History of the Blues" is going to be re-issued, and any free moment he is ready to join any of his numerous collaborators from 10 years of work with his "Radon Ensemble."

Preparing for our first release as Polyglot, "Sometimes Like This I Talk" we were thrilled when Iggy Pop offered to contribute vocals to a song and later used it for a feature in the New York Times-style "Godfather's of Glam" article. However, not being ones to brag...we credited his performance as Ypsi Jim, an old Michigan nickname. Unfortunately, the song received little attention and surprisingly the limited edition 7" has not even sold out.  

With our friends at WFMU and the Free Music Archive, we proudly offer a free listen to "The Prisoner" by Steve Mackay, with Mike Watt, Henry Barnes, Kamilsky and Iggy Pop.  

Please check out the other artists newly featured in the Polyglot archive as well, including Akris, Cummingworth's Escape, Sikhara, and Yang Zhong Gao. Feel free to contact Polyglot with questions about the artists.

This year's Primavera Sound Festival is stocked yet again with amazing acts. The fest features trending artists including White Fence, Deerhunter, and Wild Nothing alongside epic rock influencers The Breeders, who will be playing their 1993 release Last Splash in full. The lineup offers a musical snapshot of past greats, while also featuring performers who recently have been garnering tons of attention.

One great place to check out the action captured at the fest is right here on the Free Music Archive, where many of this year's live sets will be recorded and posted. Check our collections from 2012 and 2011.

Here's where to download a sampler of performers who will be appearing at the festival this year.

In TV prom, there's always an incredible live band up on the gymnasium stage with tuxedos and torn tulle skirts. The entire room is dancing. Most of us are not so lucky, with more Celine Dion slow dances filtered thourgh a bored laptop DJ, and half the room sitting around at tables looking awkward.

In this songs about prom playlist, get drunk and wasted at prom '98 with the Modest Mousey Undynamic Pop Expariment. Hear Grooms sweetly sing "I want to be friends with you." In the last track, enjoy some Twin Peaks-inspired New Wave in "Laura Palmer's Prom" from British Columbia's You Say Party! We Say Die! live at KEXP. All three songs have a feeling of looking back in time, when you looked like a child in those grown up clothes. Prom never had it so good.

A mix of songs that are inspired, euphoric, and a little flirty. Tracks that remind you that it's getting warmer outside every day, and things are starting to grow.

As a follow up to our moody April Showers Mix, a collection of instrumentals for new loves, new creative challenges, and that feeling when the air outside perfectly matches your body temperature. A mix for noticing flowers on trees. For when all the girls start wearing skirts without tights again, and you leave your jacket at home. Let's go outside and enjoy every minute together.

23-year old Venezuelan Ernesto Gonzalez is one half of the dark electronics duo Sayona, one half of the drone duo Gonzalez/Steenkiste, 1/6 of the psych rock band Sylvester Anfang II, and still 100% Bear Bones, Lay Low, his solo project that started out as voodoo noise but slowly evolved from kraut to synth fusion.

As part of the 2013 Megapolis Audio Festival, the Free Music Archive taught workshop on finding music for projects legally, including podsafe music, instrumental tracks, and music you can modify, adapt or build-upon. Then participants dug up music tracks and audio elements from Creative Commons and Public Domain resources with which to construct an original 1-3 minute sound art composition.

Check out our shared Google Doc for more online audio resources to use in your projects, and let us know where it takes you.

Have you spotted Free Music Archive tracks out in the wild? Send us your links.

The TV Show Glee is about a cute group of high school underdogs, who sing sparkly cover songs while dancing through the cafeteria.

But there's another Glee club forming, whose members have no say in joining. They're a ragtag group of underdog musicians who've found their arrangements of cover songs appearing in the hit show without their permission or credit of any kind. One member of this club is independent musician Jonathan Coulton. He's is the Internet's take on a rock star. He was also a recent judge of our Birthday Song contest, and he's currently hosting a highly successful Code Monkey comic book Kickstarter campaign.

For this May's edition of The Organist podcast from Believer Magazine & KCRW, I've produced a story about what's become known as #backgate. It begins about 8 minutes into the program, wedged between James Franco (!) and Tao Lin (!).