Jess Klein has a new single on emusic.  If you don’t know Jess’s music she’s an extraordinary talented singer-songwriter whose music moves from folk to almost-country to acoustic rock to a kind of post-punk pop.  Some of her work is sweet and melodic (try Blood, Sweat, Tears, or City Garden, or Real Live Love, all from the City Garden album, either from emusic or Amie) and some is sharp and funny (Flirting, here on youtube).  These tracks are a good starting point, based on what’s available on the sites I lurk, but all of Jess’s work is interesting, challenging, and definitely worth hearing. Her label’s website has samples here.  There’ a lot of acoustic folk, but if that’s not your thing the single Psalm 29 is stately and moving and beautiful, and her souly-bluesy collaboration with Peter Malik is just gorgeous (the tracks Immigrant and Midsize City Girls here; and as aside Norah Jones is on the same album).  Jess is also a fantastic live singer, one of those who is as good or better in a live recording than a studio.  There’s a live album on both Amie and emusic, should that catch your interest.  Jess also has a blog around these parts (and is indirectly the reason I started this here, rather than another site).  And now I think that’s about a long enough drooly fan-plug.

Amie street has been quiet lately.  There was a spate of Euro dance and metal, then almost nothing at all for the past few days.  However (and possibly related) the great sale price top-up is back: they’re doing 30% off the cost of credits right now, should you need some, but according to their emails, only for today.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: old Kings of Leon (for no particular reason) and the new Cold War Kids (here on emusic, if you’re an American). A very different album, strange and lyrical and melodic. Several outstanding tracks (try 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, and 9).  Cryptomnesia, the final track, is staggeringly good.  This is something to listen to straight though, proper album-style, not to chop and change.

And as an aside, the new Mogwai is also on Amie St, again, if you happen to be an American.

I noticed last night that All India Radio had a new album up.  I’d forgotten to become a fan of them, so didn’t get the notification, and spotted it after clicking on one of the banner ads.  Then I spotted something else.  All India Radio supposedly only have two albums available for download outside the US, except I’ve got four of their albums and I’m pretty sure I got them from Amie.  Checking my computer, yes I do, and my copies of the albums that are now flagged as US-only are tagged as ‘downloaded from Amie Street’, so the designation must have changed.  Ah, record labels.  Obviously, I can’t download them any more, although I once did.  Another reason to make sure you have good local backups, rather than relying on re-downloads from online stores rant rant blah blah.

There’s also a couple of newish albums up on Amie by noteworthies of the indie rock scene Steve Wynn and The Plastic Constellations. Both stopped being free pretty quickly, but both are still cheaper here than a lot of other places, if you’re interesting in rounding out your collection.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: Several great new (and right now still-free albums) from Alice Newton (acoustic folk) Chrissy Angel (a lot of styles, but this particular album is stripped-down gospel and blues), Kristy Thirsk (synth-pop, think Uh Huh Her) and Kate Tucker and the Sons of Sweden (indie rock). All these artists are really good – well worth a dollar or two if you aren’t in time to get them free.  For that matter, well worth full price – just to make that clear!

An interesting series of albums on Emusic are the Punk goes… albums, here.  The general idea is that a punk label has got their bands to cover a thematically grouped set of songs and put these out as compilation albums, so Punk goes 80s, Punk goes Pop, Punk goes 90s, and so on.

First thing is these covers aren’t all – or even necessarily – punk sounding covers, more a general mix of 90s alternative, post-punk, hard rock, and some just in-betweens. Some of the covers are faithful to the original, some are way off. Second thing is, it might just be me that finds this idea interesting.  I remember a lot of these fondly from back in the day, so more grown-up covers are more than welcome. Last thing, ignore the off-topic negative reviewers.  There’s a few there who seem not to have realised these aren’t karaoke-type numbers. Approach these tracks for themselves, and maybe for a bit of past-good-times reminiscence, nothing more, and you might find something you like.

Punk goes 80s is probably the best album: Manic Monday, Straight Up, Everybody wants to Rule the World, and Video Killed the Radio Star are all worth a try.  Punk goes Metal is also intriguing should you remember the originals – and the original bands’ hair.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: Jeremy Jay, electronica, Kirsten Price, extraordinarily good contemporary pop-indie-soul from a woman with an extraordinary voice, and a new Robert Waddington electronic jazz track too (the last one on Zero Gain), all of these still currently free on Amie Street.

I’ve got a bit of a theory that more new material is uploaded to Amie Street mid-week then weekends.  Often the weekends seem a bit dead.   I’m guessing struggling bands trying to emerge are out playing gigs on weekend nights, not finishing off their latest release on their computer and uploading it, but that’s just my theory…

Anyway, there’s been several interesting uploads today (and, to disprove my theory, which is why I mentioned it, over the weekend).   All these releases are still free as I write, and most of them have older albums up you can purchase if you like their sound.

Michael Schmidt does acoustic indie rock and has a new album out. I seem to remember he won a competition on Amie Street a while back and got promoted a little as a result – I have a feeling it was along the lines of the best newcomer, but I can’t find a link now so I’m not certain. Pretty sure it was him, however.

Robert Waddington (electronic jazz) has a new track on his Zero Gain album. Robert’s work is always interesting, often edging towards experimental, often with a laid-back and mellow kind of a vibe. He seems to use his Amie Street page as his official website, so I assume all of his material is up there. There’s a wide variety, and a lot of it, so its worth a quick listen to see what else you like.

Sundial Project do a mix of acoustic and anthemic indie rock. There’s still several free tracks on their album, and if you feel like paying a little something, track 5, Waking Up Tomorrow, is a great cut and well worth the 13c is costs at the moment.

Brad Sweitzer, folk, still free, and intriguingly ‘explicit’ – labelled that is. Don’t often see an actual rating label on Amie.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: The above, of course, and right now another recent appearance on Amie Street, Catherine Scholz, haunting and melodic acoustic folk-pop. A wonderful singer with the voice of an angel.

Amie street has a couple of dozen free classical albums right now, check the new classical album upload page.   As an aside, the link can be saved as a bookmark – as can all the browsing views – should you wish to.  I’m not sure where these albums have arrived from.  There seems to have been another flood of new European house and indie, so it might be the same label doing the whole lot.  There are a few identifable named pieces (Mozart Quintets and Quartet for Oboe, a Strauss sonata, and a Tchaikovsky trio), and also a few ‘various artist’ type compilations (here and here).  Get in quick to collect up some civilised dinner party music.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: I just came across the Gaslight Anthem in my wanderings.  Think Springsteen doing modern indie rock.  Think a touch of Dylan’s voice and – to a degree – his esoteric poetry.  Officially punk, but its not really.  Absolutely stunning rough-edged rock.  There’s an EP on Amie Street or emusic, as you prefer, and two full-length albums on emusic (here and here).  These are the kind of albums you can listen to straight through, rather than picking and choosing good tracks, but if you must, try ‘Say I Won’t (Recognize)’ from the EP, or ‘The ‘59 Sound’ from the album of the same name.

Some more random freebies and samples available out there on the web:

Amie Street has a free sampler album from Hush Records here.  The tracks by Novi Split, Norfolk & Western, Kaitlyn Ni Donovan, and Reclinerland are especially worth a listen.  All except Kaitlyn Ni Donovan have more material on Amie Street (here, here, and here, respectively) and Kaitlyn’s work is available here, on the Hush Website (click the very small play icon directly under the price to listen).  There’s also a pdf CD booklet here, on the Hush website, if anyone’s interested, and if you like the album you can also donate something at the same time. Okay, so I cheated. If you see it only on Amie Street it’s free, but from Hush its not entirely free, more free-with-guilt, and you didn’t know that until I told you just now, so sorry.  It is a good album.

Emusic also has several sampler albums if you hunt around (a good starting place is searching for ‘various artists’ and then narrowing it to ‘free’). The 2008 Digital Rainbow Quartz Sampler is good, and as far as I know is free-free, not make-you-guilty-but-free.

There’s also a sample track on David Bryne and Brian Eno’s website (remember them?) from a forthcoming album, but you need to register and give a real email address to get it (they email a link to the download).

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: The Walkmen’s pre-release on Amie Street – grabbed it the other day.  Five dollars, and of it goes to charity.  The album’s out elsewhere in a day or two, Amie Street got it first.

There’s been a lot of new releases on Amie Street over the last couple of days.  There seems to have been a bit of a flood of European techno and house (guessing from the titles) and a lot of them seem to be quite good – at least they’re getting downloaded.  There’s far to many there to listen to them all.  There’s also been several good new releases by the Boy Bathing (duety folk), Cam Hodges (acoustic folk) and Piebald (mournful indie rock) – all still free at the moment – as well as new singles from Barnicle (not free but still worth it) and Suzy Callahan (also not free but still equally worth it, formerly of Devils Wielding Scimitars).

Amie Street’s 25% off sale seems to have morphed into a permanent 10-20% off.  Ten dollars gets you a dollar free, and fifty gets you ten free.  I’m not sure if this is good (permanent discounts) or bad (no more half price sales).

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: Those above (obviously) and also this sampler compilation from Arena Rock records.  Some good stuff from people who are now well known from back before they were.

Third post, so I’d better explain what I’m trying to do here.

I spend a lot of time trawling the newly added albums on Amie Street.  You know, the free ones.  Some days – to be brutally blunt – there’s utter dreck there.  Some days there’s gems.  The Hush Records upload day a couple of weeks back, for example, and the Naxos uploads the other day.  Other days, where something truely great goes up, something you probably wouldn’t have ever listened to if it wasn’t free, but that you find you like enough to go and buy the back catalogue.

Amie street is a bit chaotic, and that’s the wonderful thing about it.  I do recs from my main account, the one I purchase from, but that has a limited use and only  a limited number of people see it.  You only get recs by spending money, and if you spend a lot of time trawling the pool of new uploads you don’t need to spend that much money.  So recs get rare.  There’s some other reasons too.  Recs are quite limited.  Sometimes you find something good that you don’t personally like, but you want to tell people about.  Recs also have a built-in time pressure, the need to get your rec in before another person hits buy and the price goes up to 9c.  It’s a bit pathetic – especially considering artists are starving and struggling to make those few cents – but its a big bad world out there and you want your rec in before you get downgraded to half-price value.

So the idea here is to talk a bit more, suggest a bit more widely, and hopefully some people out there will get some good music that they wouldn’t have otherwise, and maybe get it cheap or free.

I’ll plug people unashamedly.  Some because I like them, some because they deserve to be liked.  It’ll be arbitary and a bit random – I usually concentrate on the music that’s still free when I log in, and what’s free depends on time zones and who uploads when, that kind of thing.  I’m not an musician, and I’m not promoting anyone who’s a friend – although I’ll probably plug people I meet through the blog, or Amie St, or wherever.  I’ve done this with recs before, and probably will again.

I won’t just be writing about Amie Street.  I’m a user of emusic, cdbaby, and various of the smaller indie-based sites.  Some of the free ones.  Sometimes I buy music directly from the labels sites.  Sometimes I’m even a user of itunes.  Occasionally I even use Amazon to find CDs – but not often.  I’m not in the US, so postage starts to bite on even a second-hand one-dollar CD.

Basically this blog is about getting good music cheap.  I’m not even going to mention the word legal, that should be obvious to anyone who isn’t RIAA lawyer slime.

The name?  That’s because down where I am a local record store used to have a dollar sale table.  They’d buy up old jukebox CDs and dump whole boxes on this table.  Lots of it wasn’t of much interest, but occasionally there was some brilliant stuff, if you hunted.  A jukebox’s cast-offs, so it was music people in pubs would pay to listen to.  Great for backfilling your collection with stuff you remember from back in the day.  Downside was, of course, lots of other people knew about it to, so there was a bit of a race on, even while you were standing at the table.  People blocked each other with elbows, people started looking in the back box so they could lean over the front one and cover it with their bodies.  All very intense.  Lucky Amie Street isn’t quite to zero-sum.  You can get a free track and a dozen other people can too.

First useful tip.  Everyone knows how Amie Street recs work, right?  You rec it when its free, you get the full value of the track in street cred.  You rec it any other time, when its up past 9c, and you get half the improvement.  You always want to rec free stuff, even more than you want to rec the new Alice Cooper when its still sitting at 50c.  That is, you want to rec free stuff if you can be bothered hunting through the new uploads for something good, like a few of us do.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: Florence and the Machine’s debut single Kiss With A Fist, thanks to a tip from emusic’s 17 dots blog.  Get it here from emusic if you can, or from their label if you can’t.  I can’t :)  If you grab it from the label you can also get a free sampler EP while you’re there from the Wave Pictures.  Also the Crash Engine on Amie Street, intelligent red-wine rock (so they say), great sounding mix of anthems and acoustic (so I say), and still free as I was writing this if you go right now.

I just came across Jamendo by random wikipedia-style link procrastinating.  It’s a Creative Commons based music distribution site, everything free to download and mostly CC licenced, and some of it rather good.  Easy to be cynical about free redistribution sites, but occasionally talent turns up on them – Serena Matthews on downloads.com, for example – certainly the potential for a lot of chaff, but there’s some real talent around too.  Jamendo seems to be primarily European music.  A lot of the music (and the album descriptions) aren’t in English, which makes it a little hard to tell who’s doing what.  But hey, if you can always work out the lyrics you’re not listening properly.

The best of the bunch after a quick browse is Zero’s Les suicidés, a rich distortion-laden synth-pop EP.  Almost synth-pop, maybe just electronica rock.  You work it out.  Unlike Amie St, I assume they’ll be free there forever, so no hurry going to grab it.

Looking good on Amie St today is Kray van Kirk, traditional acoustic folk, just a guy singing and playing his guitar.  Very low key and low fi.  Kray was the middle link that led me to Jamendo.  His website says he doesn’t cut CDs any more because the world already has too much consumer stuff in it, instead he just plays live shows and gives away music on his website.

Did anyone else notice Amie St’s half-price credit sale is back, but its not half price any more?  Twenty-five percent is all now.  I presume this is good in general, since it must mean they’re doing better, but here I was assuming half-price Wednesdays were going to be a permanent bimonthly thing after the first few so I didn’t stock up as much as I should have.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO: Kray van Kirk obviously, a random trail through Jamendo, and the new Carla Bruni (who is also the new Mrs Sarkozy, and first lady of France, if you didn’t know) – now $8.98 on Amie St, but still worth a listen.  Not often a national leader’s partner records an album.  At least, not one you’d want to listen to.