Some of the best things in life are free...

I love supporting the artists I play by purchasing music, directly from the artist if possible, and one of the ways I discover new artists is to check out who's giving stuff away. Love this new music industry model: the more you give away, the more you sell. My favorite freebies of the last month are these:

The Electro Compendium

I've played a fair number of songs off this incredible, free, compilation of true electro music and I think you should just get the whole thing, too. 116 Tracks includes contributions by some of best names in electro music of the last decade, given free with the admirable goal of making sure that the word "electro" continues to represent one of the most distinctive strains of electronic music which has roots in the mid-70s, and retains recognizable traits of that music to this day: a dystopian, clinical sound of machine-generated funk. Do not sleep on this!

Larry Gus - Silent Congas

This album is just bananas - psychedelia, tape edits, instrumental hiphop, abstract soul, kraut funk... A feast for the ears. The acute listener may notice I've been a fan of just about anything DFA has put out since they started, and I'm especially supportive of them pushing the boundaries. Excellent tunes for work listening.

Talking Heads meets Razor-n-Tape

Most disco edits I hear are pretty lame - partly because Black Cock and other house producers had pilfered most of the best nuggets in the disco canon by 1998, so what's left over was sometimes left over for a reason. However, there's nothing like a good edit of Talking Heads, thus...