...and now, a word of sponsorship.

Man, it's been a while since I've posted something besides free music. Anyways, the order of business today is greeting cards. Now, you may have already purchased cards to send to your families, friends, coworkers and the like. I understand that I'm posting this a bit too late for this holiday season, but I'd still like to get this out there. I'm writing this to support Guatemala Greetings, a maker of handmade greeting cards based in the town of Magdalena, Guatemala. Magdalena has a very special place in my heart. I've gone on two mission trips there already and am currently fundraising for a third. I work in the field of micro-finance there, and Guatemala Greetings is a program which we work with. By purchasing greeting cards from Guatemala Greetings, you are supporting families in one of my favorite towns on earth, providing employment to women from low income households as well as funding a pediatric clinic. The cards are somewhat expensive, but in my opinion the benefits far outweigh the price.

This is what charity looks like.

Please visit their website at here. The link will open in a new window.

Guitarman out.


PS: If you're curious about the work the Students International micro-finance team does in the town of Magdalena, head over to the site leader's blog for more information. Again, the link opens in a new window. There's even pictures of me on there.

I'm baaaaaaaaack. With free stuff. Again.

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything. Life has kept me pretty busy lately, what with school projects, teaching myself Japanese for no legitimate reason, working on my eagle project, and fundraising for my third mission trip to Guatemala. Needless to say, I'm glad that school is canceled today as a result of heavy snow. I now actually have time to post more stuff. Huzzah. Anyways, on with the free stuff:



This is without a doubt one of the greatest free album I have ever encountered. That's saying something, because I sift through quite a lot of the stuff. Hailing from Sweden, Machinae Supremacy incorporates a SidStation into heavy metal music. A SidStation is a type of musical synthesizer sound module which uses SID chips from the ancient Commodore 64 computer's sound system. Basically, it's a device for making chiptune music. This seems like an oddball choice for a metal band, but it fits in seamlessly with the band's sound. Machinae Supremacy's latest work, Rise of a Digital Nation, was featured by the band on The Pirate Bay. For those of you who don't know, The Pirate Bay is a controversial Swedish website which is a notorious den of internet piracy. That's a rather bold move, to officially release your latest album on one of the most well-known centers of illegal activity on the internet. Whatever floats their boat, I suppose. Anyways, head over to The Pirate Bay to pick up this album. And while you're there, PLEASE don't pirate anything. I don't want to condone that sort of behavior, and don't want to be dragged into a court of law over something like that. Don't get me in trouble people! XD

Anyways, here's the album webpage: http://www.riseofadigitalnation.com/
Here's the band's webpage: http://machinaesupremacy.com/
Here's the webpage for SidStations: http://www.elektron.se/products/sidstation

I'll post again soon this time. I promise.

Guitarman, out.


PS: I have no idea how to embed a Soundcloud player that starts automatically, so I've left up the previous Radio of the Guitarman album. Sorry about that, but it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience.

The name is misleading

Well, it's been a while since I posted something new, so here goes. This is the last artist from that music dump I promised but that never really materialized. This time, it's one hell of a misnomer.

Brad Sucks (name of the band, not my opinion) is a bit of an oddity. From listening to them, one could hardly guess that the "band" consists of one man who is responsible for all the songwriting, lyrics, performance  and recording. That's pretty freaking impressive in and of itself, but Brad Sucks has value beyond the novelty afforded it by its lack of other members. Stylistically, the band creates a strange hybrid of indie rock, electronica, and punk that in my opinion actually works quite well. The lyrics are one of the strong points here, with their sly wit and self-depreciating humor. The only flaw to be found is with the recording quality of the first album. When played at a decent volume, the treble from the distorted guitars on tracks like "Bad Attraction" can quickly induce rather severe headaches. That being said, that track I mentioned is still one of my favorites. Headaches alone can't stop me from listening to music of such high quality.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

It is worth noting that all music by Brad Sucks, including the individual instrument tracks from his recordings, is available from his website free of charge. Here's a link: http://www.bradsucks.net/

PLEASE ignore the first track

Seriously. Judging this album by its bizarre first track would be a massive mistake. Oh, and before I forget, this post is a continuation of the music dump I promised back in July but never actually delivered. This would be the second of the three bands I said I would feature. Now that we've got that out of the way...

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Cool Cavemen is a French funk-rock fusion group that, on their latest album "Multipolar", decided to dabble in a little funk-metal as well. The production values are high, the rhythms are contagious, the lyrics are hilarious. I simply cannot recommend this band highly enough. That's why I will be very disappointed if you judge them by the uber-silly first track of the posted album. I might even be upset enough to hunt you down and bludgeon you with a giraffe. I wouldn't actually be able to do that, but I might be upset enough to want to. But I digress.

There's just a few things I need to get out in closing. First: Cool Cavemen has bilingual French and English vocals, though they won't usually have both on a song. It's one or the other. Second: this album, just like most things on this blog, can be downloaded free of charge, courtesy of the artist. (There's a button marked "download" on the player. It's not rocket science people!)

Well, that's it for the second part of the music dump. In a few days (depending on my internet) I should have the third part up as well. Until then!

About my absence...

I feel the need to explain why I haven't posted anything lately, after promising more frequent updates. Plain and simple, my internet keeps going down whenever I try and do anything. For a while, I couldn't even load the blog, let alone post to it. I just wanted to get this out there before my internet fails again. There will be no music posted today, but I'll see if the internet will be stable enough for that tomorrow. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed...

Music dump time!

Well, I'm back from Cali'. Actually, I've been back for a good while. I really don't have a good excuse as to why I haven't posted recently, so to make up for that this post (and the next few) will contain the music dump I promised last time. None of these artists are particularly new, but they are well worth your time if you're interested. I'd go so far as to say these three bands create some of the greatest free music on the internet. Paying attention yet? Good. Let's begin.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

PeerGynt Lobogris is a Spanish music act that, to use an obnoxious cliche, refuses to be defined by genres. I hate the "beyond genre/classification" cliche because most reviewers use it incorrectly. It's a lazy way of saying that the reviewer him/herself doesn't know the genre the band belongs to. However, PeerGynt Lobogris actually is one of those bands that can't be given a specific genre. The band's musical repertoire is so frickin' eclectic that you need quite a few genres to label them. It's not even that they bend or blend genres. One song on an album could be new age easy listening music. The next song could be thrash metal. The song after that may sound like a funky Santana. If I didn't know better, I'd think that several different bands were responsible for each of PeerGynt Lobogris' albums. It's absolutely nuts. To generalize broadly, PeerGynt Lobogris plays elevator-worthy new age, metal, and Santana-esque riff-fests. The band has been around since 1997, and they are quite prolific to say the least. The album I have here is a sort of greatest hits deal, but it's only 13 songs to cover well over 100 songs in their discography. It barely even scratches the surface of what they have to offer.

Greetings from Cali'!

As the title of with this post suggests, I am writing this post from excruciatingly sunny Cali' right now. Since I'm staying with relatives at the moment, I'm not going to be able to post music for a while. Don't expect any new music posts for about  two weeks or so. I am sorry about that, but you can expect a positively massive post upon my return, as well as an accelerated posting schedule upon my return. Cheers!

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack...with free stuff.

Well, I'm finally back. The reason I haven't posted anything in a while is that I've been at the Liberty and Learning Youth Conference at Hillsdale College in Michigan for the past few days. That place has a phenomenal campus and one heck of an impressive shooting range. Their shooting facilities are on more than seventy acres of land, and are absolutely top notch. It turns out that I'm actually pretty handy with a pistol, although my shotgun skills kind of sucked in comparison to most of the other people there. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to take pride in my one-handed lefty bulls-eyes which I was somehow able to pull off after only my second day using handguns. But enough about firearms, here's some music. This time, I've got something really good for you...

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

The band is WE ARE FM, a rock group out of Amsterdam. What they bring to the table is a flawless mix of crisp pop rock/punk and electronica. It's hardly the first time we've found rock and techno combined, but it rarely sounds this freaking good. Absolutely phenomenal. Download it. Now. If you end up regretting it, then I disown you. :P

Matteo Cargnelutti

Well, I did say that I'd be posting more frequently. Anyways, on with the music.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Our artist today is Matteo Cargnelutti, a guitarist out of Bretagne, France. He has a rather eclectic catalog of styles, but the album I've highlighted here is one of his more straightforward works. I say "album", but Moods lasts only 21.2 minutes from start to finish. It is obvious that Matteo prefers quality over quantity. Despite being recorded in his home and not at a professional studio, Moods is a well polished production from start to finish. Fans of shred guitar, rock, metal and blues should give it a shot. Trust me, it's well worth your time.

The Singletons

First things first, I've embedded an automatic music player to ROTGM. That way, each time you visit here, you will immediately hear the band I highlighted last. Cheers!

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It's been more than a week since I've last posted, and my backlog of music to post on ROTGM has gotten rather lengthy. To counter this, I have decided to try to make sure I'm posting AT LEAST once per week, if not more. If things go well, I may be able to keep this up all summer long. So, without further ado, here's some music!

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

The Singletons are a four man band from Barcelona, Spain which claims on their website to be "now with a 100% more of rock". While that statement is undeniably grammatically flawed, the message is arguably correct. The Singletons offer little in the way of innovations, instead clinging to British influenced garage rock, but they make up for it with the energy and heart that makes garage rock so much fun when done right. They may not be original, but they sure do rock. Before I forget, the lyrics are in English not Spanish. I just wanted to clarify that for those who are picky about such things.

Freedom!

Well, school's out for the summer. Now that I'm no longer constrained by schoolwork, I will be posting much more frequently than I have been lately. With that said, here's my first post of the summer. With the last four posts being about international rock and metal acts, it's high time for a change. I want this blog to have something for EVERYONE, not just rockers and headbangers. With that in mind, here's some jazz.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Unlike everything else I've posted so far, this is actually a compilation album and not the work of one specific artist. I like that with jazz. Compilations keep things fresh. This album is a collection of ten songs from artists signed to Blue Canoe Records, an indie jazz label outside of Atlanta, Georgia. It's a nice mix of youthful and seasoned jazz, with no weird crap thrown in to dilute it. As you may have noticed, I listen to some strange stuff from time to time (Diablo Swing Orchestra, for example). Thankfully, there are no surprises of that sort to be found here. It's just straightforward jazz, free of charge thanks to Blue Canoe Records. It's worth noting however that this is not the entire album. Two of the twelve original tracks have been omitted in the free download I've linked here, but it's still worth downloading the remaining ten. Even if you don't call yourself a fan of jazz, you should give this a shot anyways. The main reason I run this blog, after all, is to help people expand their horizons. If I didn't stretch your musical comfort-zone, I wouldn't be doing my self-appointed job, now would I?

Maldia

It's rare for me to be this on top of something. The band in question here is Spanish metal act Maldia. Granted the band has been around since 2006, so they aren't exactly new. However, they sure took their sweet time with their self-titled debut: it just came out last month. As far as I can tell, the band doesn't have much of an international audience. All the info I could dig up on them was in Spanish, and I don't intend to confuse you with my pathetic attempts at translation. The music more than speaks for itself.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

I am...honestly still in shock. Spanish lyrics aside (I understand that many of my fellow Americans don't share my love for foreign bands due to the language barrier), Maldia is one of the most impressive metal acts I've come across in a good while. Often, when a metal band is undiscovered, it's for a very good reason. Or two. Or twenty. Not only are there countless unsigned metal bands out there, most of them are almost physically painful to listen to. Either the lyrics are painfully trite, or the vocalist's attempts at "singing" are so subpar that it makes you wonder how drunk the other band members were when they decided to hire him/her. Often as not, these bands churn out the same riffs and the same patterns as everyone else on the metal scene. There are so many talent-less metal bands in both the songwriting and performance departments out there that the actually decent bands get lost in the shuffle. I'm hoping that doesn't happen here.

What Maldia offers is a bit of fresh air to the indie metal scene. You rarely find indie metal bands that can both write decent songs and actually play them. Except for some moments with the vocals, Maldia's debut is a surprisingly solid piece of thrash. Yes, there are awkward moments with the singing. For the most part, it's pretty good, but some overly dramatic moments and extremely out of place sound effects (burping mid song? Really people?) prove to be a touch annoying. However, anyone willing to look past this will find an impressively brutal and melodic album. What's more, it's free to download courtesy of the artist. I recommend you keep you eye on Maldia. They definitely have potential, which is something that could pay off for them big time in the long run.

Trick Seventeen

Since it's been a while since I posted anything, I thought I would pass on a band I just discovered about twenty minutes to you. Honestly, if I don't do these things promptly, there's no way I can remember to do it later. Ahem. Moving on.

The band is Trick Seventeen, a pop-punk group out of of Braunschweig, Germany. Braunschweig. I'm rather glad to be typing this and not orating. German names tend to through my tongue for a loop. Anyways, here they are: three albums for your listening and downloading pleasure. As always, the music is yours to use as you please, provided you abide by the terms established by the artist. Basically, you can't profit or take credit for it. Anyways, here's the music:

Catalogue professionnel de musique libre

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

Ok, the three albums are in chronological order, first at top and latest at bottom. As such, don't be turned off if you just listen to the earliest album. The reason I put them up here isn't because they are particularly novel or unique. Pop-punk bands are practically a dime-a-dozen these days. My point is that Trick Seventeen showed potential early on, and if their 2012 album "We Own The Night" is any indication, they are more than capable of capitalizing on their talent. They are, frankly, amazing. Oh, and before I forget, THE LYRICS ARE IN ENGLISH, NOT GERMAN. I just needed to make that clear for all those people out there who refuse to listen to foreign music because they can't get past the language barrier. Although I have no problem with it, I didn't want people to ignore me after I said they were from Germany. Anyways, it's energetic, melodic, and free. Download it.

Consider your horizons broadened

Hey, I'm sorry to say that I haven't been feeling too well lately. Health issues of various magnitude have been keeping me down, but I at least am well enough to share something with you that I hope you'll find interesting. If you don't find it interesting, or at least amusing, then this probably isn't the blog for you. Sorry. Now then, moving on...

As with last time, this music is free to download, courtesy of the artist.

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

The Diablo Swing Orchestra is one of the most stylistically intriguing bands I've ever encountered. Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, DSO mashes together elements of swing, opera, jazz, flamenco, and metal. After reading this last sentence, you probably have at least one of the following three questions:

1.) What on earth compelled these people to try mashing those seemingly incompatible genres together?
2.) How the heck did I, Guitarman, manage to stumble across such a bizarre Swedish band?
3.) ...is it any good?

I honestly don't really know about the first two questions, but I assure you: it is indeed good. It is extremely good. Seriously, give it a listen. Once you do, however, PLEASE let me hear from you about it. I intended this blog to be a collaborative experience between writer and reader, and it saddens me that everyone has thus far remained silent. I invite you to tell me what you think about this.

My, look at the time...

Dang, has it really been that long since I've posted anything? I apologize for being silent for so long. Schoolwork, a mission trip to Guatemala, and toe infections have kept me occupied lately. Now that I have a moment to spare, I think it's high time I put up some music here. No, I don't mean a review, I mean music. MUSIC. What's more, it's free. No, this is NOT pirating. As long as I don't profit from it or claim it as my own, I can distribute this music as much as I want, thanks to the Creative Commons license used by the artists. You get free music, they get free publicity, everybody wins. So, here it is:

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

The first one is instrumental funk-rock from Germany, and the second one is melodic power metal from France. The latter absolutely blows my mind, despite it being difficult to tell if the singing is in French or English because it gets buried in the mix. Aside from that, it's absolutely phenomenal. Go on, listen to them both.

Lincoln Durham

Today, I bring you good tidings of great blues. I stumbled onto Lincoln Durham recently on iTunes, and I must say I am truly impressed by what I found. So far, all he has released is a single ep (creatively named "Ep") and a single, Love Letters. However, when he releases his debut album on the 31st, I recommend you give it a listen. If the other tracks are anything like what he has already released, it'll definitely be worth having. In the tracks he has already released, Durham lays out some of the leanest, meanest acoustic blues I've ever heard. Tight barely even begins to describe his playing. His sound is full without a mote of excess, compact without being hollow. That's not to say that Durham's guitar is the only merit to his work. His soulfully pained vocals go perfectly with his dusty and gritty playing, while Rick Richards' work on the drums helps propel the songs rather than just hold down the tempo. Don't just take my word for any of this: head down to Durham's website, located at http://lincolndurham.com, and grab yourself a free copy of his single Love Letters. Also, check out his Facebook page where you can listen to his ep and Love Letters for free. You owe it to yourself to check this guy out, and make sure to pick up a copy of his debut album, "The Shovel vs. The Howling Bones", when it comes out on the 31st. I know I will.