Free Music Friday

It mightn’t be Christmas but it feels like it with the full Lollapalooza sets performed last weekend by Queen Of The Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, Mumford & Sons, The Killers and Two Door Cinema Club available for your HD streaming pleasure.
Alex Trimble & Co. acquit themselves extremely well in what is exalted rock ‘n’ roll company.
So go on, fill your boots!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Polly Harvey has recorded a new song that highlights the plight of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident being held in Guantanamo who’s currently on hunger strike. A powerful tune that will hopefully heap more shame on Barack Obama whose hypocrisy on the matter grows by the day.
 

 
[link]3voor12.vpro.nl/luisterpaal/albums.html[/link] kicks this week’s free streams off with newbies from Pop. 1280, Automatic Sam, The Icarus Line, Eric Copeland, Explosions In The Sky & David Wingo, Pinkunoizu, Ikonika, The Icarus Line, Blondes, Rocketnumbernine, Raffertie, The Boxer Rebellion and Pond; [link]pitchfork.com/advance[/link] lets you try Greco-Roman, Chastity, Modern Life Is War and Bare Mutants before you buy; [link]www.npr.org/series/98679384/first-listen[/link] has cracking new collections from Julianna Barwick, Typhoon, Sam Phillips and the impressively dreaded Valerie June whose Pushin’ Against A Stone is a delicious southern soul, R’n’B and folk gumbo; [link]albumstreams.com[/link] has links to the latest offerings from Matt Hires, Yellowcard, Eli Mardock, Washed Out, My Silent Wake, JJ Doom, Dumb Numbers, Psychic Teens, Chastity Belt and Moondoggies and [link]www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/aug/05/outfit-performance-album-stream[/link] introduces us to glitchy Liverpudlian next big things Outfits.
 
Our NPR friends also have the whole of The Mountain Goats’ Newport Folk Festival appearance to view and download for gratis plus an acoustic session from quiet is the new loud Londoner Keaton Henson.
 

 

 
 
The Late David Turpin is not only very much alive, but also gearing up for the September 13 release of his We Belong Dead album.
To whet appetites he’s making ‘Emile’ available as a free download. A “lavish ballad with traces of Midnight Cowboy-era John Barry and early-‘80s New York minimalism”, it features Cathy Davey, Liss Hannigan’s right-hand man Gavin Blass and Cora Venus Lunny who creates the song’s orchestral sweep with over 100 layers of strings.
From the same sessions but not actually on the LP, it’s a cracker!
 

 
“Tender” isn’t a word normally associated with Hoodie Allen but the young scamp sounds positively lovestruck on the acoustic ‘Two Lips’, which sounds like a more sweary version of The Script.
 

 
The title-track from Austra’s Home album gets a shimmering techno makeover from Austria’s Space Echo production duo.
 

 
Our good friend Bitter Rocc – his MMXIII Part Deux album will be available for exclusive hotpress.com download in November – has launched his revamped [link]theroccollective.com[/link] website, which includes his ace remix of Irish femcee Mai’s ‘Dum Dum’ and links to the new promos from Collie ft. Funzo and Chris Haze’s ‘Summer Daze’, which can also be downloaded for free.
There are loads more audio and visual treats to feast on, so check it out!
 

 

 

 
We don’t know how he does it, but insanely busy Carlow producer James Strain, AKA Auxiliary Phoenix, has another free four-tracker for you.
 

 
We thoroughly approve of what HP Hot For 2013 pick Angel Haze has done to Kanye’s ‘New Slave’.
The NYC spitter also joins Grimes, Karen Elson, Xiao Wen Ju, Gabourey Sidibe, Scarlett Johansson, Soo Joo and Liya Kebede for the Karl Lagerfeld shot Singular Beauties spread that graces the September edition of Harper’s Bazaar.
Check out the full gallery at [link]www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-articles/carine-roitfeld-fall-fashion-shoot-0913?click=pp#slide-1[/link]
 

 
The dancey delights don’t end there with Canadian EDM merchants Zeds Dead dishing up an Altered States Summer Mix, which manages to weave in everyone from Nina Simone and Disclosure to Major Lazer and Dream McLean.
 

 
To Drogheda now where Sean Matthews has come up with a cute stickman vid to accompany the delicately gorgeous ‘Remember The Times’.
 

 
 
In addition to their new album which may or may not be called Reflektor,Arcade Fire are supplying the soundtrack for the new Spike Jonze movie, Her.
Indeed that may be them tinkling away on the first official trailer for the love story, which stars Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Scarlet Johansson.
They have previous with Jonze directing the band’s 2011 Scenes From The Suburbs short.
“It’s a movie set in the slight future of L.A. and Joaquin Phoenix’s character buys the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system,” the filmmaker reveals. “It basically turns into a human, this entity, this consciousness, on his computer."
We’re also much looking forward to Win and the gang covering ‘Games Without Frontiers’ as part of a Peter Gabriel tribute album.
 

 

 
And that, sorry to say, is your Free Music Friday lot for another week. We’ll be in The Aviva for Celtic vs. Liverpool – come on you Bhoys! – and then hoping Wigan pull off Wembley giant-killing act. Keep them links coming to @stuartclark66