Category: Free Music

Another free album from Free Albums Galore.

Various Artists – Extended Voices
Genre: Classical, Modern Composition, Avant-Garde, Electronica

The complete title of the featured album is Extended Voices: New pieces for Chorus and for Voices Altered Electronically by Sound Synthesizers and Vocoder. It was released in 1968 but is long out of print. Again Ubuweb does the miraculous by offering this very fascinating and important recording as a free download.

All tracks have vocal music in common even though some of them are electronically distorted beyond recognition. Pauline Oliveras starts the ball rolling with a decidedly modern if non-distorted choral exercise. It’s a riveting performance and a good way to begin this aural excursion. The second track by Alvin Lucier demonstrates the use of extreme distortion of voices. The effect is jarring at first but become wearisome in its ten minutes length. John Cage fares better, still heavily electronic but less repetitious than the piece by Lucien. I found the offerings from Robert Ashley and Toshi Ichiyangi to be of little interest. Musically, the best of the lot comes from Morton Feldman. His two compositions evokes a minimalist, ambient tone through long extended notes by chorus and instruments. This compilation may work better as an historical document rather than esthetically. However, I recommend a listen particularly for the tracks by Oliveros, Cage, and Feldman.

Bob Ostertag has posted a few of his albums as freely-available MP3s under a creative commons license.

The great Free Albums Galore site has posted links to several albums by this trio.

A live performance of Ives’s Fourth symphony by Martin Brabbins and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played the July 11, 2003 at the Musica Viva festival has been posted.

Hop on over to their site and you can download a number of outtakes and unreleased material from the last 20 years.

Yugen is a new Italian avant-rock band. Samples can be downloaded from their site.