jason (FMA Admin)

Our friends at Phlow Magazine are compiling an advent-calendar's worth of Creative Commons charts from some of the world's most attuned netlabel listeners. This includes people like Michael Gregoire of Bloc Sonic (who just released their 25th NetBloc - congrats!), Phlow's esteemed staff members, and other creative commons music freaks. I'm working on my own list right now, honored to be involved in this very cool project. When all's said & done, Phlow's compiling another "Best of Netlabels Compilation: Netlabels at their Finest Hour" (here's the most recent one). And in the meantime, I've been enjoying hearing everyone's daily mixtapes.

I'm also discovering some new forces in the vast Creative Commons music world, like Masakuyi of the Music Forest blog. His best-of 2009 tipped me off to this 2-song digital 12'' single by Quarta330, a free Creative Commons release on Japan's Maltine Records. enjoy:

Maltine Records is a very cool sounding netlabel specializing in electronic sounds, hip-hop, mashups, house and dubstep. We're just starting to delve in to their catalog of nearly 50 releases -- if anyone is familiar and has some recommendations, please share!

Hailing from Tokyo, Toru Koda a.k.a. Quarta330 has a couple actual physical 12''s out on Kode9's world-renowned Hyperdub label, and a remix on a Warp Records digital comp. He's one of the 3 people behind the Tokyo-based chiptune collective Lo-Bit Playground, and he's collaborated with the likes of Flying Lotus. After the jump, enjoy a video of Quarta330 live at the 2006 Blip Festival in NY.

Quarta330 // Blip Festival 2006: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

Blip Festival 2009 is coming to The Bell House in Brookly, NY Thurs Dec 17 thru Sat Dec 19, and will be streamed in its entirety on WFMU right here. A bunch of the performances will also be archived here on the FMA. So stay tuned for that, and if you're coming to NY for Blip Fest, I will see you there!