#Writing #MusicMonday: Far From The Earth Beneath Your Feet by So Far As I Know

So here’s a case for the Creative Commons. Jamendo, as I recently ranted, has been trying to hide the fact that its business model rests entirely on CC licenses, for whatever reason.

I’d had this album queued up for Music Monday for some time, gave it a few listens, and lined it up for late November. Then Jamendo decided to betray its users and the very foundation on which it is built, and I have no wish to continue directing traffic, however little, to them. But this album, under the CC license, is not available elsewhere.

But I have it under the license, meaning that I’m free to share it, so I have now uploaded it to the Internet Archive. And unlike Jamendo, I won’t hide the license from you or lie to you about what it means.

So far as I can tell, So Far As I Know is a Russian progressive rock group that specializes in evocative, emotionally complex and textured melodic tunes that work together to create journeys for the listener. Or at least, this album is such a journey.

Far From The Earth Beneath Your Feet begins with a lonely, almost mournful piano solo, before the second track plunges you into the full experience of the album.

If you want an idea of how interesting the whole album is as a listening experience, and how all the compositions work together, listen to track 5, “Down Back on Earth”, and track 6, “Siberia”, nd listen closely to how the one transitions into the other. That will either do it for you, or it won’t. For me, it really, really does, along with a number of other moments on the album.

You can download Far From The Earth Beneath Your Feet by So Far As I Know under a Free Culture license from the Internet Archive.

You can also get it from the band’s BandCamp page, sending well-deserved money their way, but without a Creative Commons license — their BandCamp downloads are all rights reserved.

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Far From The Earth Beneath Your Feet by So Far As I Know is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Writing Music Monday: Martian Winter by Bruce H. McCosar

Bruce H. McCosar is another O.G. Creative Commons musician who seems to have stopped releasing albums, which is a pity. But he has hours and hours of music available, and all of it is Free Culture-licensed, which means that even if he vanished in the the middle of the Bermuda Triangle intestate, his works will live on.

Between 2006 and 2010, McCosar — a middle school science teacher by profession — released eight solid albums of instrumental rock, post-rock and jazz.

Martian Winter was the fifth, released at the tail end of 2008. It combines his rock and jazz influences in interesting ways, and makes a very good soundtrack for writing or outlining.

As for what it means to him personally:

Like NASA’s Spirit rover, I survived a long journey, and found myself in a new land.

Like Spirit, I find myself under a darkening sky. Time goes on, and the light fades.

During Martian Winter, Spirit shuts down. But Spirit always returns.

That day is today. Listen to the newest transmissions from your sister planet.

So, it’s not nearly as spacy or Vangelis like as the previous Writing Music Monday album, but it’s still not a thing easily to be slotted into genre strictures. It’s a personal work, and feels it.

Download Martian Winter free from Jamendo.

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Martian Winter by Bruce H. McCosar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Writing Music Monday: Gennevilliers by Lovely Girls Are Blind

Generally speaking, I have issues with any art form or movement that defines itself by what it is not. I get that, sometimes, there’s no clear philosophy driving various people who band together, and a “post-whatever” label makes sense, at least for a time. But it still bugs me.

That said, I seem to quite enjoy “postrock” quite a bit, at least in the tastes of it I get through Creative Commons licensed music.

Gennevilliers by Lovely Girls Are Blind is that group’s second appearance in Writing Music Mondays, and also their second album, recorded in 2006, apparently in the town the EP is named after. There are but three tracks, yet they add up to just about thirty full minutes of music.

And apart from “postrock”, I don’t really know how to describe it. Contemplative, emotional, it captures and ebb and flow of some kind, and does so in a way that you can focus on and enjoy, or push to the background while you concentrate, and it (mostly) won’t interfere with what you’re doing.

In fact, this, for me, might be the definitive LGAB release. I don’t dislike any of them, but this one seems to hit the sweet spot of whatever it is I like about their compositions and performance.

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Gennevilliers by Lovely Girls Are Blind is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://sebastien.dekoninck.free.fr/site/f_contact_e.html.

Writing Music Mondays: Turn by KRESoff

Turn by Russian composer KRESoff is simply wonderful. I was writing last week and — oddly — jazz was not doing it for me. I put a list playing that had this and a few other things on it, and when KRESoff started playing, I somehow shifted to high gear and tore through a thousand words in the first two or three tracks.

Which for me is quite a lot of words in a very short time.

I’m not sure how to describe it, except that his self-selected label of progressive rock seems apt. It’s instrumental, guitar-heavy, and very melodic while also carefully creating a sonic landscape underneath the melodic elements.

It was both pleasing and productive to me, so of course it gets into the Writing Music Mondays list. I commend it to you.

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Turn by KRESoff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Writing Music Monday: Lovely Girls Are Blind

Lovely Girls Are Blind is a French quartet who do some really amazing work. It’s not jazz. I don’t count it as rock, despite their self-labelling as progressive rock (also “postrock”, so I don’t think they’d disagree with me). It’s solid mood music, the sort of thing you want to put on when you’re writing intense emotion, brutal action, or obsessive pursuit.

This eponymous album is more rock-oriented than their other works, but still outside of “rock” as I think of it, even with its heavy electric guitar basis. All of their albums and EPs are good and worth having, but this is the one I’m in the mood to share at the moment.

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Lovely Girls Are Blind by Lovely Girls Are Blind is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.