Welcome to the Free Music Archive (Beta)

Suicide may have lit the torch in the mid-'70s, but one could argue that by decade's end, its carriers lived on the other side of the country -- in San Francisco.  Sure, L.A. had the Screamers and some other odd ducks.  But SF hosted an impressive number of bent bands who used synths, tape machines and other electrical apparatus to extend punk's mutated left end by leaps/bounds.  Informed by avant garde composers and performance artists, fueled by apocalyptic abandon and paranoid pop twitch, groups like Tuxedomoon, Nervous Gender, the Residents, Factrix, Minimal Man, Chrome, and Pink Section would release timeless slabs of aggresively bizarre noise -- as would the Units, whose Digital Stimulation LP (415 Records, 1980) remains a personal favorite.  The album's a lush and moody salvo if there ever was one, and I was thrilled to ask former lead synth player and vocalist Scott Ryser (right) a few questions about the band and its M.O. by e-mail last week.

Violeta Päivänkakkara was born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1992. She has always felt drawn to cosmology, planets, nature and the dream world. She creates environments and personal and melancholic atmospheres, using instruments like the glockenspiel, guitar, piano and electronic sounds of nature, among others. She currently lives between Helsinki and Barcelona. -La Gramola

"Sateenkaari" can be found on Kuu, a collection released this week on La Gramola Netlabel.

> Violeta Päivänkakkara on Facebook | Bandcamp | FMA

> La Gramola on FMA | Homepage

The Happy Valley Band is the Great American Songbook heard through the idiosyncrasies of the machine ear. It is what happens when a computer tries its best to pick out the tunes by ear, writes down what it hears and demands that human performers try to play it. It combines audio separation and computer automated transcription technologies together with a twisted affection for American popular music icons.

In the process of creating the music, the original recordings are first separated into individual instruments and then transcribed by computer automated techniques. Arranging the music is an effort to parse the profusion of computer analysis data into playable form. The Happy Valley Band then plays the mercilessly over-specific computer transcriptions along to the sound of the lone extracted vocal track, offering a new accompaniment to a familiar voice.

Last month The Happy Valley Band squeezed into the studio at WFMU to deliver a set of unusual interpretations on popular music classics. Performing live on Kurt Gottschalk's Miniature Minotaurs Show, the studio quickly became an obstacle course of musical equipment—saxophones, violin, accordion, pianos, guitars, basses and drums, topped off with a Farfisa and a small army of music stands. By the end of the set, the floor was hidden beneath a carpet of loose sheet music, casualties of frantic page turns as the band carefully staggered through a set of classic songs by Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline and James Brown rendered in new, unrecognizable forms.

All software and sheet music will soon be available from the band's website. No classic recordings were harmed in the process. The Happy Valley Band is based out of New York, but you can catch them up north this summer at Electric Eclectics Festival.

Tracks to Sync is a monthly mix of music curated with the online video producer in mind.

As more and more people turn to video in the digital era, they are faced with the music licensing hurdles that have hindered many a film. At the same time, the increase in video production offers new opportunities for multimedia collaboration. This series aims to unite producers with musicians who have music to share for these purposes.

The tracks is this mix are available under Creative Commons licenses that allow for "derivative works," like a video (some CC licenses specify "NoDerivatives"), while retaining the parts of copyright that the rightsholders wish to keep. Creative Commons offers a few custom license combinations, and each is hyperlinked to a human-readable license + legal code, i.e. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, aka "BY-NC-SA". You can read more about the various CC combos here, and check out FMA's HELP & FAQ for more resources.

Before using any Creative Commons music for a project, you need to make sure you follow the track's license in order to avoid copyright infringement. If you're not sure whether your use is pre-cleared by a particular license, it's always a good idea to reach out to the artist directly. Click the "i" button below to view the license along with a URL or email address where you can secure 'more permissions.'

We always love to hear about collaborations inspired by FMA music, so if you use one of these tracks, please post a link to the track page as well as to our Video Showcase. We'll feature our favorite video made using this month's tracks in the next Tracks to Sync!

5. Denmark's Quantum Jazz [quantumjazz.net] released End of Line, their second and final album, via Jamendo under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike license. Jamendo PRO offers a cool way to secure more permissions directly from the group.

6. GaBlé's 2003 netaudio release le sac de l enfer 1 is a recent add from France's Los Emes De Oso netlabel. It's chock full of intriguing lofi folk-hop beats. More music available at gableboulga.com. "humm ok" is CC BY-NC-SA.

7. CBC Radio's technology program Spark first introduced us to Bulgaria's Antony Raijekov (tony.cult.bg). "By the Coast" can be found on Jazz U, a 2003-2006 retrospective [CC BY-NC]