Reviews

Notes and Scratches: To the Other Side

Notes and Scratches is a pop (maybe even pop-rock) band from Chicago. They've been together since 2005 and to date released one other album entitled "Uh-Oh" (which is also licensed under CC and available for free download here). Now, after two years and two line-up changes, Notes and Scratches is ready to present their second record, "To the Other Side". Joshua Dumas, the principal songwriter, described this collections of pop songs as “the spaces between things: between past and present, remembering and forgetting, forever and never again.” He adds “this recording is an attempt to make sad songs feel celebratory. Regret and hindsight are often more complicated than a series of minor chords can reveal. I am hopeful these songs reflect some of that depth.”

Tiara Wiles: This is Tiara

Tiara has been singing since she was a child and it seems like she can't imagine her life any other way. She grew up in Pittsburgh, PA singing in a choir and on her own all the way up to her senior year of high school, but her career really took of when she moved to Washington D.C. to attend Howard University. She started meeting people like-minded people who loved music as much as she did, giving her the confidence to work even harder towards her dream. Not much later Tiara met her current manager, Mic Sean, at one of D.C. music venues and everything started falling into its right place.

Pencil

Ever feel like creating a great animation or drawing, but don't have Adobe Flash or Illustrator? Enter Pencil, the free open source animation tool.

Hungry Lucy: Glo

Glo is Hungry Lucy's second release. While the music is trip-hop on the surface there is a gentler side to these songs that practically floats to your ears. The Teatime Sessions consists of nine live performances from podcasts titled Tea With Hungry Lucy. These are slightly pared down but still eloquent performances.

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.

Blank

Today a brand new movie has premiered but this is not the usual Hollywood-style launch. ‘Blank’, described as an intense psycho-thriller by director Rick L. Winters, will debut on DVD but you can get it for free on BitTorrent too - with the blessing of the entire cast and crew.

CelticUnderground Session 3

Northern Irish rapper and producer Jee4ce (pronounced G-Force) worked very hard to bring you this mixed album. He went around for almost a year collecting tracks from some of the best hip-hop artists from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This is a third installment of Celtic Underground Sessions. Below is the tracklisting and the names of the artists featured on the album.

Sauerbraten [a.k.a. Cube 2]

Sauerbraten (a.k.a. Cube 2) is a free, open source, both multi & singleplayer first person shooter game. It was built as a major redesign of it's predecessor the Cube by Lee Salzman, Wouter van Oortmerssen (the original creator), Mike Dysart & Robert Pointon. Just like in the original game, the main emphasis falls not on the pretty graphics & load of functions, but on seamless and dynamic in-game map/geometry editing. In the latest version of Sauerbraten gamers playing together online can even co-edit a level at the same time.

Brad Sucks: Out of It

Brad Sucks has been writing, recording & giving out his music free on the internet since 2001. 2003 has been a busy year for Brad, as he's signed up with a progressive record label - Magnatune - and released his first album entitled "I Don't Know What I'm Doing". "Out of It" was a long awaited follow-up to Brad's debut album. It was released in September 2008 and it immediately became a hit among his fans. Download it free under Creative Commons license.