My Favorite Playlists

Here are some great music playlists I have been building on Jamendo. You can download ALL of this music for free from the Free Music Archives or Jamendo.

(Here is my free music archives profile and my  jamendo profile).

This first Jamendo playlist is pretty damn amazing. It’s the best playlist I have ever created (and will create). I made it for my feature article about 11 Incredible Music Albums You can Download for Free.  (You can view & download all the tracks here).  A lot of European electronica, dance/techno/trance. Also, the amazing vocals of No Really. Sorry, it simply isn’t fair to call attention to one performer. They are all outstanding!

Tip: Don’t press the big Play  triangle in the middle of the embedded player. Click the little Play triangle below it which is  right beside the Stop and Next Song icon.

Below are several more excellent playlists to fit all kinds of moods.

Gentle & Carefree Living. Some upbeat and generally light-hearted tracks. More pop than rock, but still some oddballs thrown in for good measure (Airplane on the Highway didn’t exactly fit the mood, but oh, well).

Lackadaisical Mind-stretches. Slow otherworldly meandering through the dissonant terrain of jazz, electronica and a few other surprises.

Philosophical Rock. Songs that are philosophical either in tone or by theme (or both).  First half is guitar-based (starting  with the hardnosed thrumming of Brad Sucks).  The second half has slower songs, with a more elegiac tone and an electronic sound. Hey, even Kiss recorded "Beth"; hard rock must get dull for rock bands after  a while.   enjoy!

Mechanical Musings. This mix is supposed to be more danceable and have more industrial/mechanical sounds, but I veered off topic a bit, gave it a little whimsical glitch.  Get a load of that Bud Melvin; psychodelic  chip music with a banjo? Sad Robot is a great easy to sing song. John Ellis’s Stuttergun is more techno. By the way, I did an interview with the elusive VAE (aka Aleksi Virtu — not his real name, but a joke on another performer with the same name in his Finnish homeland).   His free album is not to be missed. And Gorowski‘s Of the Sky definitely could have been composed by VAE. (Goworski apparently has 5 albums and 40 tracks on FMA, so he’s definitely worth investigating. Enjoy!

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Neverending Music. Sometimes music tends to keep going on and on…without really reducing your enjoyment. Here are some samples. I left 2 20 minute pieces for the end (including the incredible experimental improvisation by Squadra Omega. You have a traditional techno sound (Jurek Raben), an eerie dream piece  (Phone), tranquil piano (Fabrizio Paterlini), rowdy Latin-flavored jazz (Har-You Percussion Group),  gentle percolations (Marco Kalnenek) and  gentle singing with low-key  guitars (Giraffe). Lots of repetition, but no monotony.

Songs with an Attitude. Here  I highlight songs whose vocals have an attitude — rebellious, rowdy, melancholy, silly. Leading the pack are two great hiphop mixes by Ethx with a social message, Russian Zemfira-like funkiness by Muha, angsty (and always-surprising) Josh Woodward, edgy Canadian hiphop from Audible Intelligence and  hazy strummming by Dallas Kinkaid. Counterpointing the rhythmic hiphopping  is Major Major’s muted anger, the nonchalant Steadman and Sleeping Life’s soft and cynical "Love is an Eternal Lie." Yes, there’s something for everyone!

Raucous and Rowdy Vocalizing. From the shocking & screaming of Glass Candy to gravelly/poetic urgency of  Kristin Hersh   to the furious post-Soviet post-Zemfira  popsa of Muha, to the dreamy Didoesque fill-a-roomable   Christina Courtin to the  Japan-robotic ironic mutterings of Puma Mimi, the estrogen count on this playlist is balanced by the rowdy rocking machine called the Franks and the  hazy low-fi psychodelica of Smersh. Enjoy and Bjork, we no longer need you!

Benny Goodman. In June 2010 I created a list of links to the best Benny Goodman mp3 links on archive.org (and other old-timey stuff). It also comes with an embedded player.


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