The Boots are an Italian alternative rock quartet. Their debut album, entitled This Is Not A Test, was released in the late 2008 by the netlabel Airbagpromo Records.

Listening to the album, one can sense a certain amount of rawness and emotion in the music, especially when the album builds itself up with an Intro track and launches itself from there.

Tracks of note include the title track This Is Not A Test, You Will Wonder and Wasted.

The album may be downloaded at 320kbps quality from Airbagpromo records here.

Deastro, also known as Randolph Chabot, is an experimental electronic artist that has considerable influence from the shoegaze movement. Sweet, happy melodies define Deastro’s sound, with occasional forays into IDM-sounding tracks.

Tracks of note include Friends, a very happy sounding track, and Forest Arms, which somehow manages to combine shoegaze, IDM and electronic music all together.

Grower is available from RCRDLBL to download for free. Deastro also has 3 other singles and a debut album available, so if you enjoyed his music, feel free to check out his other material.

The album Grower may be downloaded from here.

F.D. Project is a New Age / Ambient / Electronic project by the German artist Frank Dorittke. The two albums being featured today have both been released by the netlabel Pharmacom Records.

Both albums contain a combination of synth sounds, guitar riffing and drum patterns that pay homage to the electronic scene of the 70s.

The album, Mare Tranquillitatis, released in 2006, seems to have a much greater guitar influence than the second album Mare Tranquillitatis Vol. 2, released in 2008. Mare Tranquillitatis Vol. 2 contains many ambient and synth samples to create a soothing, electronic feel.

Tracks of note include Alone in the Dark from Mare Tranquillitatis and Mandarinentraum (Part 2) from Mare Tranquillitatis Vol. 2.

The albums may be downloaded by following the links below:

Mare Tranquillitatis

Mare Tranquillitatis Vol. 2

A band like Coldplay need no introduction, but for those of you who have been living under a rock this past decade or so, I’ll make one anyway. Coldplay are a quartet from London, England that have release many popular hits such as Yellow, Clocks, The Scientist and more recently, Viva La Vida.

This time, Coldplay have decided to release a live album from their Viva La Vida tour. It consists of 9 tracks that all interlinked together with no gaps between them, creating an illusion that you yourself are actuall at the tour.

Most of the tracks are live versions of songs from Coldplay’s latest album Viva La Vida, with minor live alterations. Coldplay do play some of their other popular songs, such as Clocks and Fix You, and they include a song, Glass of Water, from their latest EP too.

This album is available for free from a link from Coldplay’s website at 192kbps. You’ll have to submit your e-mail and location, but that’s it. Get it while it lasts!

Blind Dog are a Swedish trio that play stoner metal that have unfortunately broken up. The general groove of the music is actually very similar to hard rock.

They have released 2 albums, both under different record labels, but when in 2008 they decided to stop the band, they released one more album for free. That album is Captain Dog Logs Out.

My personal favourite songs are Keep Up The Gloss, which contains a very catchy guitar riff, as well as starting out with panning guitars. Sleeping Dogs starts out very heavy in the beginning, and contains a section of talk-box guitar towards the end of the song. Help You From Yourself is surprising since it sounds very bluesy, complete with clean guitars, piano organ and mellow vocals, and carrot at the end of the song.

The album can be downloaded from Blind Dog’s official site, both as a torrent or as mp3s, from this link.

The Kyoto Connection is electronic, New Age music with a difference; it has a certain Japanese feel in the music that really fits. The quartet have released 2 albums till now, both of them available on the Internet Archives.

The First Voyage has a strong New Age feel throughout the whole album. It is very calming and relaxing, and bands like these should have their albums listened to in their entirety, not as single songs. However, with that said, tracks of note include Fly and Loneliness Radar.

The Second Voyage is very similar to the first album; more calming electronic music with Japanese influences. Tracks of note on this album include Painting With Lights and The Prisoner.

Both albums may be downloaded from the Internet Archives by following the links below:

The First Voyage

The Second Voyage

Hæckefløsse are German duo who started out by playing comedy punk. They quickly moved on to playing punk-influenced industrial, described as sounding like “a herd of mammoths”.

The album is released for free on Death to Music Productions, an antirecord label that offers releases for download. However, one may also download the release for the Internet Archives.

The music is heavy and thrashy. Hæckefløsse enjoy using samples in their music too, in fact their first song Who Am I opens with a sample from the Matrix. Tracks of note include Icons of Morality and The Decay of a 21st Century Ghostbuster.

The album may be downloaded from the following link.

Vernian Process is a musical collective led by Joshua Pfeiffer, who apparently seems to be so interested in steampunk that he made music for it. The results are amazing; brooding, haunting steampunk darkwave music.

There are four albums available for free download from the official website; they’ve been free to download since May 2007. The first one, The Symphonic Collection, is simply covers of songs in a symphonic style, mainly classical music, but there are some other songs too. Catalysts also contains cover songs, this time of popular songs associated with synthpop, industrial and gothic music.

The place where Pfeiffer really shines however is in the albums Discovery and The Forgotten Age. These are albums made up of original music, and this I believe is true steampunk music. It is defined by its percussion, which sounds mechanical and rhythmic like a factory hard at work. The instrumental songs are best.

Tracks of note include Benedictus and The Elegance of Espionage from The Forgotten Age, and Ironworks from Discovery. These should be starting points to the rest of his tracks. The albums may be downloaded by following the links below.

The Symphonic Collection

Catalysts

The Forgotten Age

Discovery

Antarhes are a French metal band that many thought to be similar to the likes of Evanescence and Lacuna Coil. Their official website offers 2 tracks and several extracts to download, but what I’m really interested in is the demo available on Jamendo.

To be fair, it is a rather rough sounding work. However, two of the tracks are top notch and should be in every gothic metal fan’s library, these in my opinion being Still Fighting and Voodoo Dream. Listen to the whole album and see what you think.

The album may be downloaded from Jamendo by following this link.

Canon Blue is a one man project from Nashville run by Daniel James. His style of music takes influences from folk music, indie electronic and post rock, creating a soft and soothing soundscape to listen to.

James has offered 3 releases through the Rumraket label, but only one of them is free, this being the EP Halcyon. It consists of 4 solid tracks, my favourites being Ennui and Kingfisher Sweet. The other two releases, an album by the name of Colonies and a single called Odds & Ends are available for purchase from the label.

Halcyon is available for free download by following this link.