I started listening to the first 2 compilations. Both are great. That Dream one has some great moments. There are several other compilations from Main Arena, but these 3 are the most bargain for your money.
Top songs by Canned Heat, Foghat, Atlantic Rhythm Section, Badfinger, The Grass Roots, Blue Cheer, Rick Derringer, Edison Lighthouse, Vanilla Fudge, The Ventures, The Outlaws, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Fixx, Bobby Kimball (of Toto), Peter Rivera (of Rare Earth), John Waite (of The Babys and Bad English) and others. Yes, these are all re-recorded but they are still great and how can you go wrong at 4 cents a track!
I guess I'm more tolerant of these compilations of alternate recordings. From the same label, here's an 80 track $4 compilation of disco hits, alternate recordings. Ok, so the James Brown Sex Machine recording is downright bizarre, but I see more songs by the Trammps and the Three Degrees. (Three Degrees are royalty in my book!). I know, it seems like such a waste to blow credits on Top 40 stuff... Also, looking at that Don Cherry compilation... Funny Story, I spent years trying to chase after an amazing 70s instrumental only to learn that it was That Sound of Philadelphia with Three Degrees singing background near the end. Of course, that was before Shazzam and melody recognition apps.
Basically, it a Sorabji work from very late in his career. His work often gives the impression that he's improvising even tho his work is notated in often extreme detail. His most famous work is the Opus Clavicembalisticum which is an incredibly complex 4 and a half hour piano work. The Symphonic Nocturne is the longest uninterrupted stretch of music he ever wrote. His life and his eccentricities are interesting reading. The work is dedicated to the guy who runs the Sorabji Archive.
Looks like I'm going to be digging through the low-priced titles again. I'll be posting my finds over the next month. By the way, really enjoyed the Sorabi title mentioned above.
Live at Kaleidoscope Club by Canned Heat. 6 tracks, 46 minutes, 99 cents. Bluesy rock. Great, fun. Canadian Heat has a 3.99 compilation which I'll be previewing..
As an aside, I'm still open to electronic compilation albums (honestly!), but I won't even listen to albums where the artist isn't identified (a surprising amount), and where there are 5 remixes of the same song..
More stuff from the Sublime Frequencies label (bandcamp link). They produce lots of ethnic/African/Asian stuff.
Ecstatic Music of the Jemaa El Fna by Hisham Mayet. Lively Moroccan street music recorded live. This is dense, rhythmic and rowdy stuff. 9 tracks, 38 minutes, 3.99.
Sabor de Carnaval Tableno by Fito Espino. 8 tracks, 29 minutes, $3.49 Panamanian music from 60s and 70s.
Treeg Salaam by Group Doueh. 5 tracks, 43 minutes, 99 cents. Western Sahara jam session!
Also, I ran out of credits to buy it this go around, but I really enjoyed Erkin Koray's: Mechul: SIngles and Rareties. (legendary Turkish singer from the 70s).
Ok, here's some more budget stuff, many from this label called Feeding Tube Records.
In the ink dark by Scott Twynholm. Classical music that sounds like background music for serious movies. Gentle, serene stuff. 5 tracks, 39 minutes, 1.99
Alligator Records 45th Anniversary Collection. 37 tracks, $6.50, 150 minutes. Great value for a compilation of leading US blues/rock singers. More value as entertainment than art. This was my own splurge of the month. BTW, emusic has the 35th Anniversary and 40th Anniversary edition. Both cost the same (I own 40th), have as many tracks and have no overlaps among them.
S/T, Weeping Bong Band. 5 tracks, 52 minutes, 99 cents. Spectacular experimental rock-jazz fusion. Mostly slow, dreamy stuff — no dissonance. It’s amazing to discover that a rock band can produce this kind of stuff.
Frame Slip by Dalthom, 2 tracks, 40 minutes, 49 cents. More experimental rock stuff, with synthesizer and random electronic sound effects and occasionally distorted voices. Each track is 20 minutes, which allows time for a variety of voices and melodies. Dense, textured stuff, and not too disruptive — well maybe occasionally on the second track.
S/T Jamaleonics. 4 tracks, 25 minutes, 99 cents. Mainstream but energetic Italian jazz band. I actually was on the fence between this one and another avante-garde recording; I decided that I actually enjoyed the fun energy here.
Out of my Head by Kate York. 5 songs, 99 cents, 16 minutes. Because all of York’s songs have electronic arrangements, “Country soul” is the phrase I think of when trying to describe this EP. Several of this country singer’s songs were carried on TV shows like Nashville. (here’s a profile). This EP is a good sampler of her stuff.
Two albums by Elkhorn: Sun Cycle and Elk Jam. Each album is 30 minutes and 99 cents.. Basically freeform rock guitar instrumentals, mostly slow stuff, but it picks up the tempo at parts. Overall a nice listening experience.
For what it's worth, you can check out my list of emusic purchases (though the links seem to go bad pretty quickly).
This isn't quite an eMusic bargain, but it's a 7Digital bargain (and with 7DIG saying they may go into insolvency at the end of July, a bargain that may not be around much longer):
This is the new (2018 season) double-CD from SF Jazz Collective. It is $35 on the SFJAZZ site, Amazon, etc., but is $11.99 for MP3 download at 7Digital. 20 songs, 127 minutes.
Thanks for that Soulcoal. £9.95 at 7 Digital, £19.80 at Amazon and £13..9 at Google Play Music. Needless to say i am downloading this very minute from 7 Digital, and their sound quality is better, only £11.99 for 24bit FLAC
OK, this one is truly bizarre... (the situation, not the album). Ropeadope, a jazz label that fled eMusic a couple years ago, has exactly one new release suddenly available on eMusic, and it is actually a 2019 release and only $4.99. Some pretty top notch talent joining Sanchez, too - Obed Calvaire (currently playing with SFJazz Collective, as is Sanchez), Lage Lund on guitar, Luis Perdomo on piano/Fender Rhodes, etc. Go figure.
These labels have worthwhile maxi singles (haven't seen that word very many places lately), EPs, and full length albums for 99 cents: Youngbloods, Audio Antihero, Civil Music, Feeding Tube, Humo, LOaF, Akuphone, OHM Resistance, Pinecone Moonshine, Asoka Miau, Hueso, SPEKK, Seraphin Audio Imprint, Tranquil Society, Cassauna, and many more. If you're into droning or experimental stuff where tracks are 10+ minutes long, eMusic remains a tremendous value. Most listed are electronic (as that's what the majority of what's left on the site seems to be), but I'll try to keep this list at least half non-electronic.
Fellow cheapskates, lighten the clutch of your pinched pennies! And for a moment, put aside worries about the marginal compensation actually going to the artists rather than directly into eMusic’s tattered, hole-ridden pockets. Here’s 50 unduly obscure 99-Cent Favorites not already described in my other list (could be dominated by electronic stuff, but I’ll try to diversify) for when you don’t have enough credit left to get full-length albums (but many of these are still over half an hour long). In no particular order. Be sure also to check out the labels these are on for worthwhile exploration with your full credit. Bow down to my wishlist standing at over 250 albums strong! (Bwahaha!) Or at least, I hope that absurdly low prices and brief descriptions will break down the mental barriers to trying/buying stuff you’ve never heard of:
1. “Mountain Spirits’ - Hoarang. 2014. Korean dub album may or may not contain actual Korean vocals (sounds wild enough to be gibberish), but it does provide what most dub albums have been missing for far too long: gongs! And of course Korean percussion.
2. “S/t” - The Sprinklesburgh Quartet. 2014. A very mixed EP categorized under jazz but more akin to surf rock on one track, interpreting a standard on another, and letting loose with noise in the end.
3. “Should I Erase You?” - n400. 2017. Left off the favorites list b/c it’s pretty droney, but also epic and melodic in its darkness. Looks like it should be noisy, but it’s surprisingly listenable.
4. “Wandering” - Yosi Horikawa. 2012. Melodic IDM might not break a lot of new ground, but it’s catchy in the way more seminal acts used to be.
5. “Alix” - TERRITOIRE. 2018. Very dark electronica bordering on sounding quite evil.
6. “Mono y toro EP” - Son of Run. 2012. Four long tracks that go down easy but not inanely. Very pleasant and just enough electronic variety, occasional vocals. The Igloo Pop label this is on just disappeared, but I’m hoping it’s a glitch, as I just bought this a few days ago.
7. “Dandelion Seeds” - Kratos Himself. 2014. Has a feeling like R&B not without vocals but without singing, pared down to basic elements and meticulously reassembled with sounds that are all but untraceable. Sparkling electronica with lots of organic, ethnic elements.
8. “Citadel” - ghostmolly 2019. Similar to previous entry but more expansive. It might be a stretch to call these songs, but they’re highly engaging and interesting. Atmospheric interplay between vocals and bass waves invite or lull your attention depending on how closely you want to listen, but this more involved and complex than ambient music. There are definitely beats, but they can be pulled back for stretches and never get loud.
9. “S/t” - Weeping Bong Band. 2018. Skeptical about the name, but pretty much anything on Feeding Tube for 99-cents is getting due attention for great value in epic run times. Very abstract and kinda post-rock, never very loud.
10. “Piano Works” - Vitor Rua. 2016. Gets downright noisy at times, but this is still an interesting listen for folks ready for some challenging, highly structured piano minimalism.
11. “Empa #01” - Escola de Musica Popular e Avanzada. 2017. Again, the name doesn’t inspire confidence, but this is basically instrumental folk dance music with acoustic hooks.
12. “S/t” - No Gravity. 2019. Sampling it, I wasn’t impressed, but after taking the plunge on the strength of the Jazz Engine label, this EP does a lot of interesting stuff, and the tracks hold together a lot better when heard in their entirety. Go figure.
13. “Poliedrico” - Lazar (IT). 2014. Won’t appeal to everyone, as it’s just basically techno, but the way the thumping bass seems muted down to a low rumble is pretty novel, allowing one to appreciate some subtleties. Absolutely no melody to speak of; this is all rhythm and texture. RIYL Phoenecia.
14. “By the Sea” - Shuta Yasukochi. 2019. This and the next one on ROHs! are fine examples of ambient that aren’t just droning.
15. “Faded Clothes” - Seki Takashi. 2019. Adds a little more strings and piano to the mix, in addition to some standard ambient droning.
16. “Music for Destroyed Orchestra” - Andy Fosberry. 2018. Ambient and not as dark as the cover suggests unless one concentrates on it being so. Orchestral elements pop in and out nicely.
17. “S/t” - AFRIK & The Smiling Orchestra. 2018. Not very creative, as a driving beat thumps over most tracks and doesn’t really change, but there are other interesting elements over the course of an hour.
18. “Utrecht” - EOD. 2010. Excellent IDM.
19. “S/t” - Burton Greene Quartet. “2015” One of several EPs on ESP-DISK for 99 cents with apparently critically acclaimed jazz from the 1960s. To my untrained ear, they’re almost interchangeable, but good aural palette cleansers all and obviously worth it.
20. “Farewell” - Bal&. 2012. Uncomplicated and often led by a piano melody. These are a chill little electronic EP for people who find electronica too coldly electronic. Also glad it’s a little harder than other stuff on the label.
21. “Little Swing” - Yabloko Moloko. 2018. I can imagine some people finding the pilfering of old jazz samples for dance techno to be offensive. Doop was doing this way back in the 1990s, but it’ll get one up and moving all right.
22. “Marble Planet” - Prison Pavilion. 2015. Very short and numerous hip-hop beats leaning to the side of electronica.
23. “S/t” - Pauli Lyytinen Magnetia Orkesteri. 2017. A mighty fine, real, unadulterated jazz EP I wish were an LP, even if it were no longer 99 cents. Everyone needs Slovenian jazz in their lives. Just trust me on this.
24. “Cracks” - Desert Sound Colony. Soundscapes more closely tied to post rock than most on this list. Try their other EPs too!
25. “Saint Claude” - Christine and the Queens. 2015. Actually got this one to decide whether to take the plunge on an LP. Straight up synth-pop with female vocals. Might be popular for all I know.
26. “13 Perspectives” - Schecter. 2011. Gimmicky opening track, but the rest is more like synth rock and pretty accessible. Nice portrait for the cover.
27. “Danger Time” - Velds, NLIC. 2018. Since the 99-cent EP is apparently the standard package for drum & bass if not all obscure electronica on eMusic, I certainly can’t vouch for this being the best example. I’d be amiss not to include any on this list, though. Fairly diverse, with some tracks more aggressive than others.
28. “Belzebu” - Telectu. 2016. A clear cut above the average dronescape, with considerably more going on, keeping the listener semi-engaged.
29. “Dusk at Trellick Tower” - Art of the Memory Palace. 2019. Pretty straightforward rock with an etherial touch on keys and vocals. Might they be playing off of “Dusk at Cubist Castle?”
30. “Feelings of Unreality” - Inwards. 2019. Really nice, varied electronica, though the last track is a bit grating.
31. “Play with Me” - The Rotten Blues. Ignore the second half, and this is just fine instrumental blues.
32. “V” - Senko. 2016. Distorted, warped, electronic sounds that don’t congeal into songs but still feel cohesive, assuredly sounding exactly how their creator intended. Judge it by the second track, when a bass tone has a conversation with the synthesizer.
33. “Un Hombre Que Camina” - Ramirez & Lianas. 2018. Very light electronica with an occasional, soothing voiceover in Spanish. Ritmos Latinos and other elements of that sort give it character.
34. “Accordion & Voice” - Pauline Oliveros. 2014 (actually much older). Fans of electronic drones might want to try an accordion tone that stretches the length of a full album?
35. “Kalmukia” - Angel. 2008. A rather abstract composition of four tracks, each over ten minutes long. Consider it a soundscape.
36. “Cut by 20” - Fada. 2014. Light drum & bass.
37. “Wurm Series 1” - Oophoi. One track, over an hour, and it takes its sweet time to get to its destination.
38. “Mort Aux Vaches” - Various Artists. 1997-2015. Staalplaat is standing pat against attrition with this experimental series from artists across the spectrum, and most of it is either 49 or 99 cents. It takes some sampling to find one’s desired ratio of droning/experimentation to recognizable music, but when you do, there’s no better value on the site that’s still the internet’s best music downloading bargain. My last JFK of this summer’s indulgences just went to the entry by David Shea.
39. “Pharoah’s First” - Pharaoh Sanders. 1965. Free jazz so cheap it might as well be free.
40. “Wildcat” - Freeform. 2003. If this were a ranked list, this one would be much higher. Whimsical and unpredictable, nominally electronic, split between instrumental and vocal tracks. Like nothing else out there. I should add that with any of the 99-cent singles on Skam, you know that you’re getting some pretty fine early 21st century IDM and techno. Their stuff could comprise half this list.
41. “Moments” - Lackluster. 2014. One of my favorite, low key IDM artists tries a more atmospheric album of much longer tracks and proves adept. Still a little too active to be ambient, and that’s how I like it. Keep an eye on this little label, Igloo Pop, as it disappeared for a day.
42. “Motorhome Songs” - Sweet Baboo. 2013. Innocent, simple pop with a theme.
43. “Kubu” - Mark Fell & Peter Rehberg. 2011. Disjointed and disorienting would be putting it mildly. Interesting and overall appropriate to categorize it as industrial music. Never noisy, but always uncomfortable.
44. Any - Acid Mothers Temple. Know what you’re getting into with them. I’d avoid the ones where they’re just chanting and stick to those where they play some instruments, but you’d be hard pressed to find cheaper trips. Gotta try the 2019 one: I wouldn’t trust any other band to pull off a psychedelic disco epic.
45. “The Van Smells Like Beats” - Almost an hour and a half of beats for any aspiring MC in need. Not particularly distinguished as stand-alone music, but for quantity and length, again, it’s…wait for it…unbeatable.
46. “Everything You Say Is Lyrics, Anything You Touch Is Art“ - Papernut Cambridge. 2017. First, everyone who’s read this far needs to go check out wiaiwya for several 99-cent single tracks, each spanning exactly an hour and seventeen minutes. It’s a big bonus that they’re in different genres—not even all electronic, as this one shows. On sampling, the one minute sounds like a rock song one might expect to go for the usual 3-5 minutes and be done. So, I think, if there weren’t already others on this label doing the same thing, this would have to be an error. Barring extreme psychedelia, there’s no way a rock song can be stretched that long. You can judge whether it holds your interest that long or justifies it (stay tuned for cheeky meta-music messages), but this one just keeps on a-rockin’ for as long as a feature film. (AllMusic notes they’re connected to Death in Vegas, so I guess that explains it…also incidentally eMusic has way more of their stuff than AllMusic lists.)
47. “Revelations of the Flowermind“ - Solid Sun. 2015. Like a blast from the solar past, this one hurtles toward the listener as a mass of solid prog. Members of Grails are involved. Unlike anything else on this list or, near as I can tell, left on eMusic at any price. Thanks to @peterfrederics for the tip.
48. “Phreatic Surface“ - Metome. 2013. iTunes calls it broken beat, and I won’t disagree. It skitters and slides, breaking into suddenly driving melodies, chopping vocals into incomprehensible subsyllables in ways that put it well above most techno in my book.
49. “Blue Sky on Mars“ - Jonny Faith. 2011. Bouncy but still downtempo electronica with a limited palette of sounds that can resemble Pacman or an old pinball machine. It’s not trying to change the world or convert anyone who doesn’t already like techno. Upbeat and straightforward without being dull, occasionally toeing dub and urban waters, with an Ital Tek and a couple other remixes.
50. “Goma” - STA. 2016. This list started with dub and may as well end with it. Nothing fantastic about this one, Instrumental and pleasant.
Overall, these are less spectacular than the original favorites list, but for anyone who likes to cast a wide net, the continuing value of eMusic remains clear, especially when on a $75 booster binge yielding $200 in credit. If these aren’t just glitches in eMusic’s pricing scheme, they’d do well to publicize them more. People just aren’t going to drop $7.99 on something they’ve never heard of by sampling every track a minute at a time, but with some confidence that there’s good stuff out there, I hope they might for 99 cents after sampling one track. Tzadik, Strut, and Planet e used to be great for 99 cent albums and are sorely missed on this list. Plenty was left off for not being an actual favorite, and there’s a TON more out there. So have some fun compiling your own 50, won’t you? My credit’s done spent for a month.
Since eMusic sort of owns 7Digital now, I'm going to liberally apply the title of this forum to include bargains on 7Digital. This double CD live jazz release from last month captures a concert from a Catania jazz festival in Sicily in 1992 set against mafia violence in the country. At $8.99 for 2 hr 30 min of great jazz it is definitely a bargain... The AAJ review linked below provides a great backstory and more details about the event itself. Well worth a read.
OK, so once again this is not technically an eMusic bargain, but rather a 7Digital jazz bargain... but since eMusic effectively owns 7Dig now, so be it:
$15 on Bandcamp, $1.09 on 7Digital. (The album is essentially a single track, and looks like it was priced accordingly).
Comments
Look at the album number.
- Music for Love and Sex: Erotic Rhythms 4.99 (Various). 340 minutes, 64 tracks.
- Dream Arena 0.99 (various). 120 minutes, 20 tracks.
- Teleport: Trance Music. (Various). 0.99, 220 minutes, 41 tracks.
I started listening to the first 2 compilations. Both are great. That Dream one has some great moments. There are several other compilations from Main Arena, but these 3 are the most bargain for your money.Top songs by Canned Heat, Foghat, Atlantic Rhythm Section, Badfinger, The Grass Roots, Blue Cheer, Rick Derringer, Edison Lighthouse, Vanilla Fudge, The Ventures, The Outlaws, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, The Fixx, Bobby Kimball (of Toto), Peter Rivera (of Rare Earth), John Waite (of The Babys and Bad English) and others. Yes, these are all re-recorded but they are still great and how can you go wrong at 4 cents a track!
https://www.emusic.com/album/6130930/Various-Artists/100-Rock-Tunes
https://www.emusic.com/album/1879444/10187276/Coleman-Hawkins/Jazz-Giants-Remastered/track/Imagination-Remastered
His work often gives the impression that he's improvising
even tho his work is notated in often extreme detail.
His most famous work is the Opus Clavicembalisticum which
is an incredibly complex 4 and a half hour piano work.
The Symphonic Nocturne is the longest uninterrupted stretch
of music he ever wrote. His life and his eccentricities are
interesting reading. The work is dedicated to the guy who
runs the Sorabji Archive.
Live at Kaleidoscope Club by Canned Heat. 6 tracks, 46 minutes, 99 cents. Bluesy rock. Great, fun. Canadian Heat has a 3.99 compilation which I'll be previewing..
Roll with the Punches by Yu Su. 5 tracks, 32 minutes, 99 cents. Ambient dub, Vancouver musican (Album on youtube)
As an aside, I'm still open to electronic compilation albums (honestly!), but I won't even listen to albums where the artist isn't identified (a surprising amount), and where there are 5 remixes of the same song..
- Ecstatic Music of the Jemaa El Fna by Hisham Mayet. Lively Moroccan street music recorded live. This is dense, rhythmic and rowdy stuff. 9 tracks, 38 minutes, 3.99.
- Sabor de Carnaval Tableno by Fito Espino. 8 tracks, 29 minutes, $3.49 Panamanian music from 60s and 70s.
- Treeg Salaam by Group Doueh. 5 tracks, 43 minutes, 99 cents. Western Sahara jam session!
- Juguya by Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band. 8 tracks, 3.49, 41 minutes. Burkino Faso jam! (They have another album which is a dollar cheaper, but Juguya is better).
Also, I ran out of credits to buy it this go around, but I really enjoyed Erkin Koray's: Mechul: SIngles and Rareties. (legendary Turkish singer from the 70s).- In the ink dark by Scott Twynholm. Classical music that sounds like background music for serious movies. Gentle, serene stuff. 5 tracks, 39 minutes, 1.99
- Alligator Records 45th Anniversary Collection. 37 tracks, $6.50, 150 minutes. Great value for a compilation of leading US blues/rock singers. More value as entertainment than art. This was my own splurge of the month. BTW, emusic has the 35th Anniversary and 40th Anniversary edition. Both cost the same (I own 40th), have as many tracks and have no overlaps among them.
- S/T, Weeping Bong Band. 5 tracks, 52 minutes, 99 cents. Spectacular experimental rock-jazz fusion. Mostly slow, dreamy stuff — no dissonance. It’s amazing to discover that a rock band can produce this kind of stuff.
- Frame Slip by Dalthom, 2 tracks, 40 minutes, 49 cents. More experimental rock stuff, with synthesizer and random electronic sound effects and occasionally distorted voices. Each track is 20 minutes, which allows time for a variety of voices and melodies. Dense, textured stuff, and not too disruptive — well maybe occasionally on the second track.
- S/T Jamaleonics. 4 tracks, 25 minutes, 99 cents. Mainstream but energetic Italian jazz band. I actually was on the fence between this one and another avante-garde recording; I decided that I actually enjoyed the fun energy here.
- Out of my Head by Kate York. 5 songs, 99 cents, 16 minutes. Because all of York’s songs have electronic arrangements, “Country soul” is the phrase I think of when trying to describe this EP. Several of this country singer’s songs were carried on TV shows like Nashville. (here’s a profile). This EP is a good sampler of her stuff.
- Two albums by Elkhorn: Sun Cycle and Elk Jam. Each album is 30 minutes and 99 cents.. Basically freeform rock guitar instrumentals, mostly slow stuff, but it picks up the tempo at parts. Overall a nice listening experience.
For what it's worth, you can check out my list of emusic purchases (though the links seem to go bad pretty quickly).Over 8 hours of music for $6.99, some of which is pretty good.
https://us.7digital.com/artist/sfjazz-collective/release/music-of-ant%C3%B4nio-carlos-jobim-and-original-compositions-live-sfjazz-center-2018-9228776?f=20%2C19%2C12%2C16%2C17%2C9%2C2
https://www.emusic.com/album/2359007/Tim-Rose/Tim-Rose-Live
Fellow cheapskates, lighten the clutch of your pinched pennies! And for a moment, put aside worries about the marginal compensation actually going to the artists rather than directly into eMusic’s tattered, hole-ridden pockets. Here’s 50 unduly obscure 99-Cent Favorites not already described in my other list (could be dominated by electronic stuff, but I’ll try to diversify) for when you don’t have enough credit left to get full-length albums (but many of these are still over half an hour long). In no particular order. Be sure also to check out the labels these are on for worthwhile exploration with your full credit. Bow down to my wishlist standing at over 250 albums strong! (Bwahaha!) Or at least, I hope that absurdly low prices and brief descriptions will break down the mental barriers to trying/buying stuff you’ve never heard of:
1. “Mountain Spirits’ - Hoarang. 2014. Korean dub album may or may not contain actual Korean vocals (sounds wild enough to be gibberish), but it does provide what most dub albums have been missing for far too long: gongs! And of course Korean percussion.
2. “S/t” - The Sprinklesburgh Quartet. 2014. A very mixed EP categorized under jazz but more akin to surf rock on one track, interpreting a standard on another, and letting loose with noise in the end.
3. “Should I Erase You?” - n400. 2017. Left off the favorites list b/c it’s pretty droney, but also epic and melodic in its darkness. Looks like it should be noisy, but it’s surprisingly listenable.
4. “Wandering” - Yosi Horikawa. 2012. Melodic IDM might not break a lot of new ground, but it’s catchy in the way more seminal acts used to be.
5. “Alix” - TERRITOIRE. 2018. Very dark electronica bordering on sounding quite evil.
6. “Mono y toro EP” - Son of Run. 2012. Four long tracks that go down easy but not inanely. Very pleasant and just enough electronic variety, occasional vocals. The Igloo Pop label this is on just disappeared, but I’m hoping it’s a glitch, as I just bought this a few days ago.
7. “Dandelion Seeds” - Kratos Himself. 2014. Has a feeling like R&B not without vocals but without singing, pared down to basic elements and meticulously reassembled with sounds that are all but untraceable. Sparkling electronica with lots of organic, ethnic elements.
8. “Citadel” - ghostmolly 2019. Similar to previous entry but more expansive. It might be a stretch to call these songs, but they’re highly engaging and interesting. Atmospheric interplay between vocals and bass waves invite or lull your attention depending on how closely you want to listen, but this more involved and complex than ambient music. There are definitely beats, but they can be pulled back for stretches and never get loud.
9. “S/t” - Weeping Bong Band. 2018. Skeptical about the name, but pretty much anything on Feeding Tube for 99-cents is getting due attention for great value in epic run times. Very abstract and kinda post-rock, never very loud.
10. “Piano Works” - Vitor Rua. 2016. Gets downright noisy at times, but this is still an interesting listen for folks ready for some challenging, highly structured piano minimalism.
11. “Empa #01” - Escola de Musica Popular e Avanzada. 2017. Again, the name doesn’t inspire confidence, but this is basically instrumental folk dance music with acoustic hooks.
12. “S/t” - No Gravity. 2019. Sampling it, I wasn’t impressed, but after taking the plunge on the strength of the Jazz Engine label, this EP does a lot of interesting stuff, and the tracks hold together a lot better when heard in their entirety. Go figure.
13. “Poliedrico” - Lazar (IT). 2014. Won’t appeal to everyone, as it’s just basically techno, but the way the thumping bass seems muted down to a low rumble is pretty novel, allowing one to appreciate some subtleties. Absolutely no melody to speak of; this is all rhythm and texture. RIYL Phoenecia.
14. “By the Sea” - Shuta Yasukochi. 2019. This and the next one on ROHs! are fine examples of ambient that aren’t just droning.
15. “Faded Clothes” - Seki Takashi. 2019. Adds a little more strings and piano to the mix, in addition to some standard ambient droning.
16. “Music for Destroyed Orchestra” - Andy Fosberry. 2018. Ambient and not as dark as the cover suggests unless one concentrates on it being so. Orchestral elements pop in and out nicely.
17. “S/t” - AFRIK & The Smiling Orchestra. 2018. Not very creative, as a driving beat thumps over most tracks and doesn’t really change, but there are other interesting elements over the course of an hour.
18. “Utrecht” - EOD. 2010. Excellent IDM.
19. “S/t” - Burton Greene Quartet. “2015” One of several EPs on ESP-DISK for 99 cents with apparently critically acclaimed jazz from the 1960s. To my untrained ear, they’re almost interchangeable, but good aural palette cleansers all and obviously worth it.
20. “Farewell” - Bal&. 2012. Uncomplicated and often led by a piano melody. These are a chill little electronic EP for people who find electronica too coldly electronic. Also glad it’s a little harder than other stuff on the label.
21. “Little Swing” - Yabloko Moloko. 2018. I can imagine some people finding the pilfering of old jazz samples for dance techno to be offensive. Doop was doing this way back in the 1990s, but it’ll get one up and moving all right.
22. “Marble Planet” - Prison Pavilion. 2015. Very short and numerous hip-hop beats leaning to the side of electronica.
23. “S/t” - Pauli Lyytinen Magnetia Orkesteri. 2017. A mighty fine, real, unadulterated jazz EP I wish were an LP, even if it were no longer 99 cents. Everyone needs Slovenian jazz in their lives. Just trust me on this.
24. “Cracks” - Desert Sound Colony. Soundscapes more closely tied to post rock than most on this list. Try their other EPs too!
25. “Saint Claude” - Christine and the Queens. 2015. Actually got this one to decide whether to take the plunge on an LP. Straight up synth-pop with female vocals. Might be popular for all I know.
26. “13 Perspectives” - Schecter. 2011. Gimmicky opening track, but the rest is more like synth rock and pretty accessible. Nice portrait for the cover.
27. “Danger Time” - Velds, NLIC. 2018. Since the 99-cent EP is apparently the standard package for drum & bass if not all obscure electronica on eMusic, I certainly can’t vouch for this being the best example. I’d be amiss not to include any on this list, though. Fairly diverse, with some tracks more aggressive than others.
28. “Belzebu” - Telectu. 2016. A clear cut above the average dronescape, with considerably more going on, keeping the listener semi-engaged.
29. “Dusk at Trellick Tower” - Art of the Memory Palace. 2019. Pretty straightforward rock with an etherial touch on keys and vocals. Might they be playing off of “Dusk at Cubist Castle?”
30. “Feelings of Unreality” - Inwards. 2019. Really nice, varied electronica, though the last track is a bit grating.
31. “Play with Me” - The Rotten Blues. Ignore the second half, and this is just fine instrumental blues.
32. “V” - Senko. 2016. Distorted, warped, electronic sounds that don’t congeal into songs but still feel cohesive, assuredly sounding exactly how their creator intended. Judge it by the second track, when a bass tone has a conversation with the synthesizer.
33. “Un Hombre Que Camina” - Ramirez & Lianas. 2018. Very light electronica with an occasional, soothing voiceover in Spanish. Ritmos Latinos and other elements of that sort give it character.
34. “Accordion & Voice” - Pauline Oliveros. 2014 (actually much older). Fans of electronic drones might want to try an accordion tone that stretches the length of a full album?
35. “Kalmukia” - Angel. 2008. A rather abstract composition of four tracks, each over ten minutes long. Consider it a soundscape.
36. “Cut by 20” - Fada. 2014. Light drum & bass.
37. “Wurm Series 1” - Oophoi. One track, over an hour, and it takes its sweet time to get to its destination.
38. “Mort Aux Vaches” - Various Artists. 1997-2015. Staalplaat is standing pat against attrition with this experimental series from artists across the spectrum, and most of it is either 49 or 99 cents. It takes some sampling to find one’s desired ratio of droning/experimentation to recognizable music, but when you do, there’s no better value on the site that’s still the internet’s best music downloading bargain. My last JFK of this summer’s indulgences just went to the entry by David Shea.
39. “Pharoah’s First” - Pharaoh Sanders. 1965. Free jazz so cheap it might as well be free.
40. “Wildcat” - Freeform. 2003. If this were a ranked list, this one would be much higher. Whimsical and unpredictable, nominally electronic, split between instrumental and vocal tracks. Like nothing else out there. I should add that with any of the 99-cent singles on Skam, you know that you’re getting some pretty fine early 21st century IDM and techno. Their stuff could comprise half this list.
41. “Moments” - Lackluster. 2014. One of my favorite, low key IDM artists tries a more atmospheric album of much longer tracks and proves adept. Still a little too active to be ambient, and that’s how I like it. Keep an eye on this little label, Igloo Pop, as it disappeared for a day.
42. “Motorhome Songs” - Sweet Baboo. 2013. Innocent, simple pop with a theme.
43. “Kubu” - Mark Fell & Peter Rehberg. 2011. Disjointed and disorienting would be putting it mildly. Interesting and overall appropriate to categorize it as industrial music. Never noisy, but always uncomfortable.
44. Any - Acid Mothers Temple. Know what you’re getting into with them. I’d avoid the ones where they’re just chanting and stick to those where they play some instruments, but you’d be hard pressed to find cheaper trips. Gotta try the 2019 one: I wouldn’t trust any other band to pull off a psychedelic disco epic.
45. “The Van Smells Like Beats” - Almost an hour and a half of beats for any aspiring MC in need. Not particularly distinguished as stand-alone music, but for quantity and length, again, it’s…wait for it…unbeatable.
46. “Everything You Say Is Lyrics, Anything You Touch Is Art“ - Papernut Cambridge. 2017. First, everyone who’s read this far needs to go check out wiaiwya for several 99-cent single tracks, each spanning exactly an hour and seventeen minutes. It’s a big bonus that they’re in different genres—not even all electronic, as this one shows. On sampling, the one minute sounds like a rock song one might expect to go for the usual 3-5 minutes and be done. So, I think, if there weren’t already others on this label doing the same thing, this would have to be an error. Barring extreme psychedelia, there’s no way a rock song can be stretched that long. You can judge whether it holds your interest that long or justifies it (stay tuned for cheeky meta-music messages), but this one just keeps on a-rockin’ for as long as a feature film. (AllMusic notes they’re connected to Death in Vegas, so I guess that explains it…also incidentally eMusic has way more of their stuff than AllMusic lists.)
47. “Revelations of the Flowermind“ - Solid Sun. 2015. Like a blast from the solar past, this one hurtles toward the listener as a mass of solid prog. Members of Grails are involved. Unlike anything else on this list or, near as I can tell, left on eMusic at any price. Thanks to @peterfrederics for the tip.
48. “Phreatic Surface“ - Metome. 2013. iTunes calls it broken beat, and I won’t disagree. It skitters and slides, breaking into suddenly driving melodies, chopping vocals into incomprehensible subsyllables in ways that put it well above most techno in my book.
49. “Blue Sky on Mars“ - Jonny Faith. 2011. Bouncy but still downtempo electronica with a limited palette of sounds that can resemble Pacman or an old pinball machine. It’s not trying to change the world or convert anyone who doesn’t already like techno. Upbeat and straightforward without being dull, occasionally toeing dub and urban waters, with an Ital Tek and a couple other remixes.
50. “Goma” - STA. 2016. This list started with dub and may as well end with it. Nothing fantastic about this one, Instrumental and pleasant.
Overall, these are less spectacular than the original favorites list, but for anyone who likes to cast a wide net, the continuing value of eMusic remains clear, especially when on a $75 booster binge yielding $200 in credit. If these aren’t just glitches in eMusic’s pricing scheme, they’d do well to publicize them more. People just aren’t going to drop $7.99 on something they’ve never heard of by sampling every track a minute at a time, but with some confidence that there’s good stuff out there, I hope they might for 99 cents after sampling one track. Tzadik, Strut, and Planet e used to be great for 99 cent albums and are sorely missed on this list. Plenty was left off for not being an actual favorite, and there’s a TON more out there. So have some fun compiling your own 50, won’t you? My credit’s done spent for a month.
https://us.7digital.com/artist/noah-preminger/release/zigsaw-9939388