Warning Signs For Tomorrow

Source: Chris's Wiki

Hunter S. Thompson had a thing for motorcycles, not much unlike the thing he had for drugs, as well as for practically every forbidden pleasure. Once he found himself with a Ducati super-bike and he had to write a review about it for the CycleWorld magazine. The result was a very characteristic document (a classic gonzo-style piece) titled The Song of the Sausage Creature. I came upon it lately and, for no particular reason, I made an attempt to translate it to Greek. I tried to maintain the overall feeling of Thompson's writing without staying too close to the exact words. Regardless, I'm still not sure if it makes any sense in Greek. Read it if you don't have anything better to do, and tell me what you think about it...

Some points I would particularly like some input about:

• I really I don't get the Genghis Khan reference, so I have probably totally mis-translated it...
• Who the fuck is Ron Zigler?
• I'm not comfortable, at all, with the way I translated the title, but still I cannot think of something better. Any suggestions?

Seeing my last post, somebody mentioned in a reply Robert Persig's novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, taking for granted that I would have read it, or at least that I knew about it. I haven't and I didn't. Luckily the text is available online, and since I'm maybe the last person on the planet not to have heard of it, I read the first few chapters yesterday. I'm still too early in the book for a solid opinion, but one thing I can say for sure: I would have enjoyed it immensely had I read it as a teenager. I mean, there are books that when you read at a certain age they expand inside you to something much more that a simple reading, and sometimes even mark whole periods of your life. This, I'm certain, would have been one these books.

It's the story of a father and his son, traveling by motorcycle, together with another couple (Sylvia and John). During their rides the narrator has a lot of time to think about the world, about ancient cultures, about modern society, about science and technology, about the classical, versus the romantic way of thought, about the role of man in the modern world, and so on. So the book often diverts in long philosophical musings which sometimes, while not uninteresting, neither exactly boring, sound a bit too didactic in tone and attitude. Then again, it is twenty-something years since the book was written, the author was a beatnik, people used to write like this back then, and he does call these interludes Chautauquas which, I guess, means that they are supposed to be didactic in style and content. Also remember I have read just a few chapters... Regardless, I find the book a great pleasure to read; I mean in a honest "can't wait to get back to it" way.

Looking for the book, I came uppon this ZZM Quality site devoted to the study and adoration of Pirsig's work. Among other things it features some 12 photographs Robert Pirsig took during the actual trip on which the book is based. The following picture of the author and his son seems to be the most characteristic.

This is a link to an essay by Stevan Harnad titled "Post Gutenberg Galaxy: The fourth revolution in the means of production of knowledge".

Who is Stevan Harnad, and what kind of psychedelic essay is this, you may ask?

Harnad is a cognitive scientist and can be considered the father of the Open-Access Movement, a movement that evangelizes the free publication and free distribution of academic writings; something akin to the Free Software movement, but focusing on academic output instead of computer software. As a matter of fact, Harnad is sometimes likened to Richard Stallman. In the essay linked above he presents his vision that the free flow of academic knowledge, empowered and accelerated by the modern electronic communication technology, and the global network, will result to a revolution in the way knowledge is produced. This is what he calls the "fourth revolution" (the previous three being: speech, writing, and typography).

In 1994, Harnad published a subversive proposal (Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing), presenting methods that can be used to hasten the arrival of the day when esoteric, peer-reviewed, electronic publishing becomes ubiquitous. From this proposal is the quote that follows:

We have heard many sanguine predictions about the demise of paper publishing, but life is short and the inevitable day still seems a long way off. This is a subversive proposal that could radically hasten that day. It is applicable only to ESOTERIC (non-trade, no-market) scientific and scholarly publication (but that is the lion's share of the academic corpus anyway), namely, that body of work for which the author does not and never has expected to SELL the words. The scholarly author wants only to PUBLISH them, that is, to reach the eyes and minds of peers, fellow esoteric scientists and scholars the world over, so that they can build on one another's contributions in that cumulative, collaborative enterprise called learned inquiry. For centuries, it was only out of reluctant necessity that authors of esoteric publications entered into the Faustian bargain of allowing a price-tag to be erected as a barrier between their work and its (tiny) intended readership, for that was the only way they could make their work public at all during the age when paper publication (and its substantial real expenses) was their only option.

Source: lwn

Source: Cynical-C Blog

Once more I sent to you a letter Tenderly kissing its pages And opening the bottle of your evil perfume I'm inhaling its intoxication And then oh so clearly I see These thin black birds that are flying From the bottle they fly to the South From the bottle of Nuit de Noel And soon once again comes the spring When the youthful violins of Venice Will dance out your grief and your sorrow Will dance out your gloom and despair And then your sins seem not as bad And your blue mistakes will become lighter Please don't be afraid to share all your spring kisses When almond trees begin to bloom Please don't cry for me my dear friend I'm a bird that is frozen and sulking My Sharmanshik master he shows me no mercy He makes me dance non-stop all day And picking up the lucky tickets I stare at the unhappy faces And accompanied by cries of the Sharmanka I'm falling asleep on my feet Once more I send to you a letter And tenderly kissing its pages Don't be angry at me for an unhappy end So seductive are my bitter tears And due to your evil perfume All this is because of those black thoughts Flying like birds from the bottle to the South From the bottle called Nuit de Noel

Sappy, sentimental, and more than a little juvenille. I know, but some moments I'm a sucker for this kind of... bitter gayness. Don't worry, it usually passes quickly.

Lyrics from Marc Almond's "Nuit de Noel". Originally by Alexander Vertinsky. Translated from the Russian original by Olga Lutskaya.

From "The Problem with Music", by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course...

In his response to round 2 of these ramblings John "accuses" me of speaking at a very theoretical level, while his arguments pertain mostly to every day, personal experiences. Furthermore he claims that a "talented" audience can still approach art with innocence, and that such an approach is necessary if pleasure is still to be extracted from the interaction with art. This is my response.

I can see no real difference between a grand scheme, a theoretical system, and everyday life. The only non-masturbatory use of theory and "social analysis" (as John calls it) is to help us come to terms with reality, to shape the actions and perceptions in our every-day lifes. I thought this as self-evident. To make myself perfectly clear: I believe that the social situation I described in my previous postings (that of entering the dominion of simulation) is the reason why at a very specific and very personal level innocence is no longer an option. So let me try to be very specific: I can no longer approach a record with the eagerness and anticipation I used to when I was a teenager. Not when I know that the work is most likely not real but the result of the operation of a simulation apparatus the mechanisms of which I can consciously detect and understand. For example: I remember what passion we used to enjoy the first Metallica albums with, when we were kids (some of them I still enjoy equally). If one brings to me a recent Metallica album I will no longer be able to say whether it is good or bad. The question will be beside the point. I will simply say that such a thing does not exist. The artifact he brought to me, I will conclude, is something that looks like a Metallica album, but is not. Anything else I might say about it would be meaningless. This may be a sad conclusion, but it is unavoidable. In my first contact with a new work I no longer try to decide if it is good or not, if I like or despise it. I first have to decide whether it exists, or not, as this is no longer self evident. The work (taken as a whole, together with its historic, cultural and social background) has to persuade me of its "innocence" (to use John's term) before I can allow myself to approach it with a similar attitude, and this happens less and less often. An interesting question at this point would be whether this authenticity is a binary thing: Isn't it possible to find traces of the real in an otherwise manufactured artifact? Possibly, but as long as art cannot be reduced to its parts, and recomposed to the sum of them, as long as a work either stands in its completeness or it doesn't at all, the effort to detect mere "traces" of authenticity becomes vain.

Take another example: I recently read some of Henry Miller's early books. What would one's reaction be if, after reading these books, he was told that the author was a rather wealthy dude, who lived comfortably in an apartment in Paris? Or that for writing the books a team of researchers collaborated, wrote drafts of every chapter, investigated the style of the era, provided samples of works of other artists, and that Miller only composed the final result taking into account all this material. Wouldn't this mere fact be enough to completely remove any value from the work? Wouldn't this be enough to deem the work nonexistent? Could he still argue that he doesn't care how the work was produced as long as it is what it is? This does not mean that square guys cannot write interesting books; they just cannot write in this specific way.

So if the copy has very similar properties with the original, why do I care if the artifact at hand is a copy? If I "enjoy" what I read, see, or hear, why the fuck do I care if it is "real" or not? It has the same effect on me, doesn't it?

Well, no it doesn't. As long as the purpose of Art is the pursuit of Truth (a purpose very similar with that of science, but this is another story), there is a terrible difference between the copy and the original. In the copy---once the mechanisms of the original are understood---reality becomes infinitely malleable. Anything can be claimed, anything can be postulated, any conclusions can be drawn, or as Baudrillard writes in the essay I quoted before, [the copy] "lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra". The fake does not give you a clearer glimpse to the world, but, under the best conditions, a glimpse to a cleaner world. And there is a ton of difference between the two! Blurring these differences, saying that "as long as I like it, I don't care where it comes from", is exactly what made Disney so prosperous. In my previous posting I reproduced a section of an essay by Neal Stephenson. Reading it again it seems eerily relevant:

Disney World works the same way. If you are an intellectual type, a reader or writer of books, the nicest thing you can say about this is that the execution is superb. But it's easy to find the whole environment a little creepy, because something is missing: the translation of all its content into clear explicit written words, the attribution of the ideas to specific people. You can't argue with it. It seems as if a hell of a lot might be being glossed over, as if Disney World might be putting one over on us, and possibly getting away with all kinds of buried assumptions and muddled thinking.

...

The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture.

So, John, the only way I can accept your quest for innocence is to assume a mystical ability that allows one to automatically recognize the fake from the true. But personally, this ability I lack...

I first read "In the beginning was the command-line", an essay by Neal Stephenson, a couple of years ago, and in quite a hurry. Recently I came upon it again and read it once more with greater attention. The main theme of this quite long essay is a beautifully written comparison of the various types of computer user interfaces, and the cultural and social groups and structures that form around them. The fact that it focuses mainly on a cultural and semiotic level, rather than on technical and pragmatic details, is what makes the article especially interesting. The essay is full of lively, funny, and vivid metaphors about the predominant technocultures, and generally a thrill to read. It is freely available online, as well as printed and sold as a paperback.

In the essay there is one section titled "The interface culture" that places the whole argument in a broader context. This section is so marvelously executed and so insightful that stands apart from the rest of the text and demands a second and third reading. It is one of the pieces that when I read certain paragraphs of I always think, "Boy! I wish I could have written something like this!".

If you don't plan to read the whole essay, if you are not interested in computer user interfaces, if you don't know what the "command line is", if you couldn't care less about Microsoft, Apple, and Linux, then, at least, read the following few paragraphs (that reproduce the above mentioned section of the essay). It might help you see the world a little more clearly, as it did for me...

( Neal Stephenson, The interface culture )

In Basel, Switzerland, between the 13th and 15th of January, 2006, an international symposium was held on the occasion of the hundredth birthday of Albert Hofmann.

Hoffman worked at the laboratories of Sandoz in Basel, investigating the properties of the plants Scilla and Ergot, as part of a plan to isolate and synthesize their active ingredients that could be used as pharmaceuticals. His study of the shared component of the Ergot alkaloids (Lysergic Acid), lead to the synthesis of the substance known as LSD-25, in 1938.

Though bent by age, Hoffman did participate in the conference. Apart from the speeches there were presentations of electronic music and psychedelic art by painter Alex Grey. Participants, were asked to contribute their experiences with psychoactives in the library of Erowid; the website of the member-supported society that collects information about various psychoactives, and who state their collective vision as:

A world where people treat psychoactives with respect and awareness; where people work together to collect and share knowledge in ways that strengthen their understanding of themselves and provide insight into the complex choices faced by individuals and societies alike.

Hofmannn said millions of people have taken LSD, but some had bad reactions when they took counterfeit drugs. He would like to see a modern Eleusis, the ancient Greek site that held the rituals of Eleusinian Mysteries which took place for two millennia beginning in 1500 BC. During the LSD symposium, mythologist Carl P. Ruck and chemist Peter Webster presented their research suggesting that an ergot preparation was the active ingredient for the Kykeon beverage used during the ritual.

Jandek is a musician, presumably from Houston, Texas. Since 1978, he has self-released 43 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting a real interview or providing any biographical information.

Jandek plays a very strange and frequently atonal form of folk and blues music, often using an open and unconventional chord structure. Jandek's music is unique, but his lyrics closely mirror the country blues and folk traditions of Eastern Texas.

Barely a handful of people claim to have contacted Jandek, whose steadfastness in anonymity is legendary. Without any conventional attempts at promotion, he releases albums through his own record label Corwood Industries, which is addressed at a Houston post office box. Fans can write to Corwood for a typewritten catalogue and order Jandek's albums, usually at inexpensive prices. Jandeks work has been available on vinyl and on compact discs. Many of his albums feature pictures of the same young man (seen above) at various ages.

While not verified, it is believed that Jandek's real name is Sterling Richard Smith, and that he lives somewhere in the Houston area or an outlying area. The only Sterling R. Smith to have resided in the Houston area was born May 23, 1952.

In October 2004 Jandek startled his fans by ending his seclusion and performing live, unannounced, in Scotland, at the Instal 04 music festival in Glasgow. In light of Jandek's live performance it is almost entirely certain that the person featured on the album covers is Jandek himself.

More from wikipedia...

In this blog posting you can find a couple of links to mp3s with Jandek's music, and there is also a comprehensive site about him maintained by Seth Tisue.

Apart from writing to Corwood Industries, you can also order Jandek albums from Flipped Out Records, Forced Exposure, and Aquarius Records

I found out about Jandek, from this posting in Swen's blog.

From the biography page on his site:

Pierre Bastien (born Paris, 1953) post-graduated in eighteenth-century French literature at University Paris-Sorbonne. In 1977 he built his first musical machinery. For the next ten years he has been composing for dance companies and playing with Pascal Comelade. In the meantime he was constantly developing his mechanical orchestra. Since 1987 he concentrates on it through solo performances, sound installations, recordings and collaborations with such artists as Pierrick Sorin, Karel Doing, Jean Weinfeld, Robert Wyatt or Issey Miyake.

[...]

Around 1986 he started participating in Pascal Comelade's Bel Canto Orquesta. At the same time he created---and literally built---his own orchestra called Mecanium: an ensemble of musical automatons constructed from meccano parts and activated by electro-motors, that are playing on acoustic instruments from all over the world.

[...]

In the nineties the mechanical orchestra developed up to 80 elements. It took part in music festivals and art exhibitions in Norway (World Music Days'90), Australia (Tisea'92), Japan (Artec'95), Canada (Fimav'95, Sound Symposium'98), Poland (Warsaw Autumn'95), United States (Flea Festival'96)...

In the recent years, Pierre Bastien and his machines collaborated with video artist Pierrick Sorin, fashion designer Issey Miyake, dj Low, British singer and composer Robert Wyatt and the Trottola circus. The most recent compositions were released on Lowlands and Rephlex.

In his response to my previous post about art and historicity, John argues that even when someone gets "deceived" by a cheap knock-off, or by a manipulative work of art, even then, he might stand to gain as this may eventually lead to the discovery of the original (so to say) qualities of the material. In less contrived times it might have been so; but not today. Today there is a tremendous pressure to replace the original with the copy, and have the copy serve as a more controllable, more sanitized, less ambiguous, less tempestuous, "better" version of the original. Furthermore this effort is neither incidental nor exceptional. It has taken the form of a grand plan to replace art with its industrialized replica: easier to create, more malleable, more consistently monetizable. The scope of this plan is so large that younger generations are already beginning to think of art as something that occurs within a certain distorted social framework, within externally imposed political and economic rules. Take for instance television shows ("reality games" or whatever they are called), so very popular in our country---and elsewhere, I'm sure. What else could their purpose be seen-as but an attempt to document, evangelize, and glorify the project of the systematic elimination of the artist from the creative process. How many children and teenagers take for granted that art is produced within environments, following processes, and governed by dynamics like the ones presented in these carefully constructed allusions of reality. See how the line blurs, year after year, between such game-universes and real life. It is becoming progressively impossible to tell apart the genuine from the fake without looking backwards. Maybe not today, but within a few years the products of similar simulation processes will be sophisticated enough as to be indistinguishable (in terms of form) from the products of the genuine artistic process. In such a cultural environment the "innocence" that John seems to seek, can be very dangerous. The music of Madredeus may indeed "come from the heart", as he claims, but I argue that it will progressively be more difficult to tell if something really comes from the heart, or if it is manufactured to sound like as if it does. And not only this: I claim that today it is, in some cases, already impossible to tell the difference by examining the attributes of form only, without placing the work in a larger framework: Who is the artist, where did he live, how did he grow up, what cultural or artistic influences he had, under what conditions was the work produced, by what means, under whose influence, guidance, or direction, and so on.

These concern have, of course, been set in a much more general context, and have been expressed much more concisely than I could ever hope to do myself:

By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of the truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials-worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself---such is the vital function of the model in a system of death, or rather of anticipated resurrection, that no longer even gives the event of death a chance. A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and for the simulated generation of differences.

-- Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra" </blockquote

John's latest posting on his blog (in Greek) was about a very lengthy, and quite animated, discussion we had last night---him, George, and myself---about whether placing a work of art in a solid historic framework is necessary for assessing its qualities. (There may be more deprived things to do on a Christmas evening, but this has to come quite high on the list).

In his posting John argues that (I clumsily translate to English) being aware of an artist's influences helps understand his work more thoroughly, but, on the other hand, it takes away something from the "innocence" by which the work is approached, and from the pleasure that this innocence brings with it. He ends the posting by asking whether it would be possible for someone to be at the same time suspicious and innocent.

I'm not sure whether this innocence exists and, if it does, what exactly it means. Approaching a work of art requires, at the very least, some affinity with its language. Lacking this any understanding---hence any pleasure---remains at a purely sensorial level. This affinity does not have to be conscious; it may very well be acquired by a sort of cultural "osmosis" which is exactly how art appreciation works in tribal and primitive cultures. In such environments no-one has a conscious understanding of the internal language of the work, including the artist, and acceptance comes naturally. Characteristics of this mode of creation are the rigidity of the "form", the scarcity of radical innovations, and the tight bonds of the artistic production with a complex nexus of beliefs and traditions. The emitter (the artist) and the receiver (the audience) have, over a very long time, established a remarkably reliable channel. As long as this channel can carry the message communication is trouble-free. If this is the innocence John speaks about, then I'm strongly convinced that we can forget about ever regaining it. Once the artist becomes aware of the true nature of his work, once he rationalizes his medium, and once he becomes able to manipulate the message, consciously, systematically, and freely, the channel becomes unreliable. Cultural osmosis becomes too slow to adapt to the changes and, lacking a conscious interpretation framework, it becomes very easy for the emitter to mischief the receiver.

John wonders if it is impossible to enjoy the music of Theodorakis without knowing anything about Tsitsanis (and without knowing anything about all his other influences, I add). Let's assume that it is: Your "reading" will initially be more shallow, than if you were familiar with Tsitsanis, but eventually---provided that you are sensitive enough, intelligent enough, susceptive enough, and willing enough---your level of understanding will increase together with the pleasure you derive from the work. Progressively, you will discover more and more hidden layers (many of which might have been obvious if you knew the historic context of the work), and you will feel a sense of completeness that is getting stronger and stronger. Furthermore the effort you put to uncover all these yourself will probably make the experience much more fulfilling. On the other hand, you will probably attribute to Theodorakis much more than he deserves, but lets ignore this detail for the moment; historic justice is not our concern here. So what's wrong with this approach? Think of a counter-example: Instead of Theodorakis, I give you a couple of cheap Tsitsanis knock-offs; something like the massively produced, "for tourist consumption only", tapes. Without knowing anything about their cultural and historic background, and without looking for such an interpretive framework, how long will it take you to discover the "scam"? How long does it take for the average Greek listener (having a fairly good---though not necessarily conscious---gasping of the historical background) to discover the scam? Compare with how long it takes the average Foreign listener (remember, these tapes sell) to do the same.

This brings us to the initial point of our quarrel: In the Internet today, as well as in the press and the media, and regarding popular forms of art (like musical recordings), one sees a tremendous amount of opinions being expressed, but scarcely any formal critiques being put forward. Furthermore, the tendency is getting stronger and stronger to equate the "opinion" with the "critique" to the point that even professional appreciators of art are apt to simply express their subjective opinions (maybe a little more eloquently than the average Joe) and hide behind precepts like "everyone is entitled to believe what he wants", or "there is no objective point of view for art". My point is that this is a strange---if your see it optimistically---or dangerous---if you see it pessimistically---situation. Stripping the art-critique of all formality, and equating it with a mere "opinion", or advancing the notion that popular art needs nothing resembling a formal critical theory---hence anyone can become as good a "reviewer" as anyone else---deprives our culture of an essential guidance system. In a situation where all opinions are considered equally valid those who speak louder (or more eloquently) tend to prevail. Controlling these dominant nodes, or substituting them with ones that are controlled, allows someone to manipulate the whole system, as there is no constant frame of reference that defines "value" or "correctness". One could advance a step further and argue that since the middle of the twentieth century, this transformation has started to occur massively in our society. In times before that, there was always a rather solid "filtering layer" that regulated the communication between the producers and the consumers of art (the nexus of traditions, or an institutionalized critical circuit). With these in place it was possible, very common, and rewarding for someone to approach art with the innocence that John speaks about. Starting at the second half of the twentieth century this filtering layer was progressively eliminated, and the residual innocence became an easy target for conscious manipulation, and mischief.

I'm staying in my parents place the last couple of days, visiting for the holidays. Browsing the old books I left behind when I left to go to the "big city" (ten-something years ago!) I found a copy of Tom Robbins' "Still Life with Woodpecker". The book was still ear-marked at the page with the following quote:

I love the magic of TNT. How eloquently it speaks! Its resounding rumble, its clap, its quack is scarcely less deep than the passionate moan of the Earth herself. A well-timed series of detonations is like a choir of quakes. For all its fluent resonance, a bomb says only one word --'Surprise!'-- and then applauds itself. I love the hot hands of explosion. I love a breeze perfumed with the devil smell of powder (so close in its effect to the angel smell of sex). I love the way that architecture, under the impetus of dynamite, shedding bricks like feathers, corners melting, grim facades breaking into grins, supports shrugging and calling it a day, tons of totalitarian dreck washing away in the wake of a circular tsunami of air. I love that precious portion of a second when window glass becomes elastic and bulges out like bubble gum before popping. I love public buildings made public at last, doors flung open to the citizens, to the creatures, to the universe. Baby, come on in! And I love the final snuff of smoke.

[[ Note: The book I found was actually a translation in Greek. In order to paste the original quote, I has to google it up; I found it in Antonella Gambotto's diary ]]

How's this for an inappropriate Christmas-day post :)

The last few days I've been scavenging the Internet Archive for interesting material from netlabels. From the some one thousand or so netlabels hosted in the archive, it seems that about 90% tend to produce mostly crap (at least according to my taste), while the remaining 10% release very interesting stuff. Not that I have listened to music from all of them; this is just what my random sample (collected in a totally unscientific manner) seems to indicate. If you don't know what these "netlabel" things are, here's the official definition found in the archive:

Netlabels are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres.

Practically it is "open-source for music". Yes, I know, etymologically this doesn't make any sense, but I think you can, roughly, get the point. If you are interested in a more detailed analysis of netlabels as a social, artistic, and economic phenomenon I urge you to read the excellent paper Netlabels and Open Content, Making the Next Step Towards Extended Cultural Production, by Bram Timmers.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to theorize about Netlabels (maybe in a future post), but to present a few of the interesting releases I've discovered during my brief search.

( Read on for links to netlabes and cool free music )