The War On Drugs – Wagonwheel Blues

As a refreshing break from the big releases comes this debut album from a band that sounds like Bob Dylan-fronted indie band inspired by late 80s shoegaze / drone rock. I particularly like reverbed keyboard-driven A Needle In Your Eye #16 and the ten minute gaze of Show Me the Coast. Nothing huge or anything, just very good.

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band myspace page

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

At the moment The Beach Boys are my favourite old band, so I’m trying to find as much of their material on the web as possible. But no matter which compilation you find, it is never complete without the complete Pet Sounds album. It’s a classic, claimed by many to be their best ever, the first album Brian Wilson wrote after he quit touring with the band and with great focus on vocal and (often unconventional, especially for those days – 1966) instrumental harmonies.

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Johannes Brahms – The Complete Symphonies

Conducted by Wolfgang Sawalisch. This is a high quality release with CUE sheets and FLAC files. I’ve been looking for some more classical music which I enjoy exploring nowadays. It’s hard to comment, this is very complex and beautiful music which resonates peace and perfection.

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Guns N’ Roses – Nine tracks leaked from Chinese Democracy

I read about it and decided to check out what the least anticipated rock album would sound like. Disappointing, but I’m still posting about it as it’s at least called GnR after all. Axl seems to have lost his mind long time ago. It’s a problem when you’re trying to come up with straight rock’n'roll but lack any consistency, focus or concept. Overproduced post-grunge guitars, dated samples, latino rhythms and strings loop in endless songs full of cliched lyrics. How unfortunate.

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Syd Barrett – Peel Sessions

It’s amazing how many people played a John Peel session. Even Syd Barrett.

‘Cause we’re the fishes and all we do
the move about is all we do
well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you…

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Fleet Foxes – s/t

From the same city that brought us grunge, now come the Fleet Foxes with their fantastic debut album which blends together classic rock, 60s pop, folk roots and reverbed harmonies that often go to unexpected, yet so natural directions that you instantly feel this album like a familiar place you go to on sunday afternoons.

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myspace page

Offspring – Smash

What better way to revive the early teen times for a moment than to listen to Offspring’s Smash, their most consistently awesome album, for a while.

I guess I got a bad habit
And it ain’t goin’ away, yeah

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official web site

Sarkar Raj

I saw Sarkar Raj listed on mininova the other day and downloaded it not knowing what to expect. It’s a Hindi movie, and I haven’t seen one ever, I think. So I was eager to see it. The story bored me a bit at first. It’s about a powerful family, minister of the Maharashtra region and his son (on the poster), who has “in only two or three years achieved even more”, whatever that means exactly. They’re asked to support a project of building a large power plant. In the short term, 40,000 people will need to move. But the long term benefit is the development of the whole region, a dream that gets clouded quickly by political games, bribery and violence. I enjoyed it mostly for the atmosphere which feels somewhat new to me, with a different culture portrayed in a unique directing style and intense soundtrack.

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official website

Xihilisk – EPTwo Special Edition

Discovered this through a TorrentFreak article. Xihilisk says:

This is a Demonoid exclusive. I would describe the genre as experimental indie/electronica but it has elements of lots of other things including chiptune, post rock, metal etc.
It contains the original EPTwo(which was 6 tracks)remastered, and 3 new tracks which are probably the best i’ve ever done:

Tunnel Physics: This took 80 hours in total to make. Its obscene.
Theme for Something: Epic./
PLUSS: 12 minutes of improvised noise recorded with a dictaphone and produced up to make a journey into obtuse dynamics.

It’s by far the best release ive ever done (its my 11th album) and it took 18 months to make.

The guy is very talented and makes very colourful music that’s somewhere between daydreaming and slow drama. Check it out.

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Opeth – Watershed

This is the first time I listen to Opeth, although it’s their ninth album already. Their songs are often longer than ten minutes, with variations going from death metal growling peaks to subtle acoustic arrangements for guitar, strings and piano. It’s clear that they’re very skilled musicians and the leader, Mikael Åkerfeldt, has many ideas from various musical backgrounds which are often both complex and captivating. It’s just that perhaps their melancholic prog metal might not be ideal for this turn towards summer…

This torrent also includes a video for the song Porcelain Heart.

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official website