Royston Vince is someone who we’ve heard of before, but never really considered for NMO.

That was until he emailed to tell us about his upcoming new release, which should be with us sometime in the New Year. While we were talking though, I mentioned the possibility of a slot on NMO for this previous release, “London Nights”, and he graceously agreed.

Royston’s music is a melting pot of swirling atmospheres, mind-expanding grooves and crisp soundscapes, written as a soundtrack to life. Your life. My life. Anyone’s life.

He describes it best himself…

‘Obviously my music is influenced by everything I’ve ever heard and what I would like to listen
to: hopefully I can furnish that scene you are running inside your head with a soundtrack.’

So why not make Royston the soundtrack to your life? You can download ‘London Nights’ completely free from musoswebs.com/users/roystonvince/london-nights/.

A few days ago we received an email from Matt Searles, who describes himself thus…

“a visionary avant guard electronic musician, composer, producer, heavy metal virtueoso guitarist, a poet, and a multimedia artist”

Blimey… That’s quite a description!

Matt currently has 2 albums available as free downloads, the first of which is Indra’s Net. Matt says…

“I’m giving away a compilation of songs that goes by the name “Indra’s Net” at virb.com/mattsearles, where you can also add me as a friend if you like. Indra’s Net’s compositional organizing principles are largely inspired by Hindu Metaphysics (to say nothing of Jungian Psychology) which I believe offer special insights to understanding the long term systemic implications of the social media / digital revolution of which we are still in the early days.”

Sounds complicated, but actually the music is not at all what you’d expect. Electronic, obviously… but it’s quite dark, minimalistic in places, and wouldn’t sound out of place in a modern Hitcock movie.

You can download the tracks individually from virb.com/mattsearles.

All Matt’s music is available through the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 license.

Big bands (for want of a better term, I’m referring to well-known bands, not brass bands!) are increasingly getting their act together with the whole online music thing. It’s good to see. Hell, it’s taken long enough!

Machinae Supremacy are one such band that “gets it”. Their website (really their MySpace page) contains a link to their Archive, which features not only a collection of freely downloadable Ringtones and Text Message tones, but also the complete 2 volumes of their “Jets ‘n’ Guns” computer game soundtrack. All there, all free.

Very cool.

But they’ve gone one step further. They’ve also released their guitar sounds as Line6 Guitar Sounds for the GuitarPort / TonePort product. If you’re a Machinae Supremacy cover band - you can now download the actual guitar sounds they use!

All this is available via their website at www.machinaesupremacy.com. You can get quick access to the archives page if you click here.

Back To Work Records have come up with a nice idea to promote their bands’ music - Virtual Vinyl.

From their website… “Virtual Vinyl is a series offering free Back to Work Records releases via the Web. Harking back to the days of yesteryear, when bands released 7-inch singles comprised of an A-side and B-side, Back to Work Records’ artists will do the same. However, instead of releasing tangible vinyl records, songs will be available for free download in MP3 format.”

So, not strictly a free album or EP then, but an interesting promotion concept that I thought was worth mentioning.

The first in the series comes from The Mirror Orchid, an indie/pop outfit from Maryland. This “virtual vinyl” contains “My Dedication” and “A Thousand Miles” (probably not the Vanessa Carlton track!).

You can download the MP3s directly from Back To Work Records.

Miranda Sound were a Indie/Rock band from Columbus, Ohio. Sadly, they played their last show on August 15th this year.

I say sadly… I’d never heard of them before they split. But listening back to the free mp3s they’ve made available, they are one of the best melodic indie/rock bands I’ve heard in a while.

The 10 tracks available are a collection showcasing their entire catalogue (they released 4 LPs and 2 EPs during their time together) and offer a great insight into a band that should definitely have kept going, in my opinion.

A sad loss then, buy we are left with a great collection of tracks available from www.mirandasound.com - get them while you still can!

Just a quick update to draw your attention to the new “Twitter Feed” button in the menu-bar. If you use Twitter and would rather be notified of NMO posts via that service rather than RSS, you can click that button to see our feed, and hit “Follow”.

This does not replace the RSS feed, it is merely an addition for the convenience of our readers!

You can find our Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/newmusicalorder.

It’s been a while since Radiohead took the music world by storm with their novel “pay-what-you-like” approach to the release of their latest album, In Rainbows. During that time, there’s been lots of speculation as to the success of the idea from a commercial standpoint, and whether the model will be used more widely in future.#

Well, the results are finally in…

continue reading "The Results Are In (Rainbows)"

KeyDragon are a 5-piece Gothic Metal band hailing from the Grass Valley, California - not necessarily the sort of place you’d expect to find Gothic Metal?

But you will… and if you’re partial to a bit of Gothic / Power / Doom metal, the 8 completely free tracks they have available to download may be right up your street.

You can get the free tracks from www.numberonemusic.com, and find out more about KeyDragon from www.KeyDragon.com or their rather garish Myspace page at www.myspace.com/keydragon.

Yes, that’s right! Our latest free and legal downloads come courtesy of Ben Hammond, proud winner of the 2008 John Lennon Songwriting Award.

Applause!

The tracks available via his Jamendo page include 2 tracks from his latest CD “Reasonably Honest”, and 4 from his earlier EP “No History Sessions”.

Ben describes his music as Acoustic Soul-Pop, “ranging from New Zealand influenced reggae styles through to theremin-tinged Twang-rock”. Nice.

You can visit Ben’s website at www.BenHammondMusic.com, or that Jamendo link again… http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Ben_Hammond/.

Afterthem are a very funky New Jersey outfit, with an interesting take on the new musical order.

See, they’ve released a few albums (available through CDBaby), but they’ve also released a collection of songs under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

“You what?!”

OK, the Attribution 3.0 license states that you are free to copy and/or remix the works, as long as the original author is credited. It’s a clearly defined structure for licensing free music, and one that I think we’ll see more bands adopting in the future. You can find out more @ Creative Commons.

So, go download free tracks from Afterthem, and remix them to your hearts content! You can find the tracks here, or why not find out more about Creative Commons?