Gems from eMusic, Amie Street, Magnatune, etc.
Now that I have cut back on purchases (no more 300 track membership at eMu, no more Amie Street, not buying anything except flac files or real CDs or LPs) I have been going back and listening to neglected downloads from the past.
So thought maybe good to post and encourage others to post any particularly pleasant suprises from these places.
I will start with one I discovered yesterday.
http://www.emusic.com/album/Joseph-Lamb-Joseph-Lamb-A-Study-in-Classic-Ragtime-MP3-Download/10894958.html
When I downloaded it, maybe during the emusic Frenzy days (the last month of Unlimited), I had no idea that this was a recording of Joseph Lamb talking and playing.
Lamb plays similar to how Joplin appears to play on the various Joplin piano rolls. This is not Chopinesque like playing. During the Ragtime Revival of the seventies you had classical pianists (like William Bolcom and Joshua Rifkin) that played works by Lamb, Joplin, James Scott, Artie Matthews and sometimes their own work with tremendous technique and sensitivity. I once heard Max Morath play Joplin's The Cascades in a recital and one could practically hear the sound of water cascading out of fountains in one section. When one firsts hears these classical pianists and then the composers, themselves, it is a bit of a suprise as the music loses some of its color and dimensionality when performed by the composers.
Nonetheless, it is still quite exciting to hear Lamb play (on a not-so-great upright) -- it is pretty special to hear him describe playing "Sensation" for associates of Jopin and then hear him play it from start to finish. One can imaging being there hearing him when he was playing it for that small group of people over a century ago.
Piano roles don't capture everything a recording does, so this is an invaluable document!
What have you been pleasantly suprised by?
So thought maybe good to post and encourage others to post any particularly pleasant suprises from these places.
I will start with one I discovered yesterday.
http://www.emusic.com/album/Joseph-Lamb-Joseph-Lamb-A-Study-in-Classic-Ragtime-MP3-Download/10894958.html
When I downloaded it, maybe during the emusic Frenzy days (the last month of Unlimited), I had no idea that this was a recording of Joseph Lamb talking and playing.
Lamb plays similar to how Joplin appears to play on the various Joplin piano rolls. This is not Chopinesque like playing. During the Ragtime Revival of the seventies you had classical pianists (like William Bolcom and Joshua Rifkin) that played works by Lamb, Joplin, James Scott, Artie Matthews and sometimes their own work with tremendous technique and sensitivity. I once heard Max Morath play Joplin's The Cascades in a recital and one could practically hear the sound of water cascading out of fountains in one section. When one firsts hears these classical pianists and then the composers, themselves, it is a bit of a suprise as the music loses some of its color and dimensionality when performed by the composers.
Nonetheless, it is still quite exciting to hear Lamb play (on a not-so-great upright) -- it is pretty special to hear him describe playing "Sensation" for associates of Jopin and then hear him play it from start to finish. One can imaging being there hearing him when he was playing it for that small group of people over a century ago.
Piano roles don't capture everything a recording does, so this is an invaluable document!
What have you been pleasantly suprised by?
Comments
Amiestreet by definition was a wonderful place to be if you like music that few other people like, since the prices only rose with popularity (it actually managed to invert the rhythms of the outside world, in which obscure music can be much more expensive than chart hits). So I picked up a bunch of ambient and experimental electronica for very low prices, including sometimes zero. I am pretty sure this was one of them - and since I had disliked some other stuff I had heard from one of the artists (I downloaded some of this album by Jeremy Bible, but was only ever really able to warm to track 4), I would very probably never have bought it otherwise. I just rediscovered it on my journey back through past downloads, and it's quite lovely.
Vryashn by jeremy bible & jason henry
It consists of two long-form, drone-oriented pieces. The first has an active, blustery feel, with pads and drones swirling and shifting to give a sense of constant motion, overlaid with little percussive, ringing trills, kind of like a marble bouncing on a piano strong (the effect here and also in places on the second track reminds me of some of the sounds in Monolake's recent work). The second track starts out darker and more abstract and ends up more steady-state, with the more percussive or rumbling sounds of the opening passages giving way to a more steady drone with ringing overtones and slow, stately modulations.
The whole is a delightful listen. Pleasantly surprised would be an understatement - love this album; one that I could cheerfully loop.
There's another review here. Listen on Soundcloud; purchase from Amazon (unfortunately for a lot more than I paid for it.)
Amazon link
Madredeus is a Portuguese group. Their lead female singer, Teresa Salgueiro, has a really lovely voice. I haven't found much info on this group, other than I saw somewhere their music was described as "Portuguese chamber pop." Whatever it may be, it sounds very nice. I'm going to have to digest this one, since I don't think I ever played the CD through. EDIT// Oh dear - this started out pretty good, but quickly went south. In fact, the further I got, the worse it got. The lead singer's voice sounds really grating and whining when she gets out of her range. Initially I heard a certain inflection in the voice which reminded me a lot of the female lead singer of the group Marlevar on their self-titled album here on emusic which really is a 'gem,' IMO. Rather than the annoying voice of Madredeus' lead singer and boring musical composition, Marlevar's recording features a really good vocalist and interesting and varied musical compositions, including guitar, bass, double bass, flutes, clarinet, button accordion, percussion and violins, violas and cellos. The strings are contributions from The Athena Quartet. More info here