Trip-Hop

Bangguru – Bang the Guru! EP

For those born in the '70s, or even youngsters who just foster an invented nostalgia for what it was like to be a kid in the '80s, there's a certain timeline of sounds that inevitably weave their way through the collective memory. Portuguese electropop band Bangguru have a sound that embodies all these elements within a single package, and not only is this the kind of music I like to listen to, these seem to be exactly the sort of people I'd like to hang out with.

Triplexity’s ‘Between Light and Shadow’ – smooth, groovy & sultry nujazz

Triplexity's Between Light and Shadow is a nujazz album fused with different genres to offer a bit of something to everybody. It features 12 tracks of different kinds of lounge music ranging from oriental to breakbeat. Triplexity is the combination of the words 'Triplex' and 'Complexity', mainly because it is made up of three musicians from different countries and culture, giving their music a touch of each of their personalities.

Markovich/A.M.P.’s Emotive Force – project-based alternapop

It's nice to see Creative Commons licenses being used for undertakings that push the limits of collaboration and remote recording technologies, and Markovich/A Music Project (A.M.P.) are doing their best to test those limits. As the name suggests, they are a music project more than a band, and although they aim to make pretty straight-up downtempo and trip-hop, there's still enough variation in there to make for some very interesting listening.

Revolution Void “Increase the Dosage” – free energetic nu-jazz and trip-hop album

Proving that music never truly died in the region, after its heyday in the early 1990s, Seattle native Jonah Dempcy’s project Revolution Void reached a funkified zenith after 8 years in existence with its 2004 release Increase The Dosage. The energetic nu-jazz and trip-hop blending in the album actually harkens back to jazz fusion groups of the 70s and 80s, like Weather Report or Chick Corea’s Return to Forever.

WhiteRoom – a neoromantic pop album by WhiteRoom

Ever heard of neoromantic pop? I must confess that I haven't, that is, until I came across WhiteRoom's self-titled album. "WhiteRoom" is fast-paced, mournful, and thoughtful---all in equal measures. The sound is quite unique. "If Radiohead’s unborn bastard children had survived, been raised on a steady diet of Massive Attack, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Duke Ellington, you might have managed to engineer a group like WhiteRoom," says one music review. I couldn't agree more.

Cologne Commons – Second Free Creative Commons Music Compilation

Cologne Commons free music festival opens today in Germany's Rhine. The gathering is to bring many netlabels, musicians, artists, and business developers to the weekend long conference and then a party in Cologne. This compilation is a selection of some of the music featured by Cologne Commons. Make sure to check out their first release here if you will like this one.

Voodoo Economics: if : then :: iminami

Voodoo Economics is a hard act to classify. There are traces of hip-hop, trip-hop, techno, industrial and even goth throughout the tracks on their album titled If: Then:: Iminami. Yet no one genre dominates. In various reviews, the word ‘quirky’ comes up often. The band’s fondness for fragmented riffs and odd time signatures certainly sounds quirky. While this may keep them off the commercial radar there is still plenty of intelligent music from this very professional sounding band for music lovers to admire.

Dynamoe: Jump Start

Dynamoe is quite a unique electronica band from Denmark. They've met almost by accident in 1997, when both Giovanni Campagna and Dennis Lee were signed by the same label. After a long chat, they've discovered they have so many ideas in common that working together was almost a given... "Jump Start" is the band's debut album - the first of three.