Free Music Friday

Whilst considerable amounts of Free Music Friday time has been devoted this week to sorting out our Longitude festival attire! - just wait till you see the crotchless diamante earflaps we have planned for The Chemical Brothers! - we've still managed to assemble another quality selection of downloads, streams, videos and trailers on which we now invite you to feast.
The world is a shinier, happier, more decent place today thanks to the surprise online release of a new Wilco album, Star Wars. It's available for an unspecified 'limited time' so best to bag it straight away from [link]wilcoworld.net[/link]
Three tracks in and it's sounding pretty damn good!
The pick of this week's Noise Trade crop includes Anna Haas, a Nashville resident with a penchant for musical melodrama; Mother Falcon who make a big Arcade Fire-esque noise, albeit with an orchestral bent and Dralms, a brooding Vancouver-ite who comes on like a poppier Radiohead.





Our NPR friends have upfront listens to moonlighting Pistol Annies woman Ashley Monroe; 2014 Electric Picnic standout Omar Souleyman; Nickel Creek's Sara and Sean Watkins who rope in such celebrity chums as Fiona Apple and Benmont Tench, and SoCal psych popper Jessie Jones who has us most intrigued.




Joining the streaming fray at [link]3voor12.vpro.nl/luisterpaal/albums.html[/link] are The Wooden Sky, Galactic, The Smoking Trees, Nap Eyes, Rachel Sermanni, Hunee, Hollis Brown and Bart B More; [link]www.theguardian.com/music/series/album-streams[/link] has the latest from critically-acclaimed Oklahoma folkie Samantha Crain and [link]www.nytimes.com/interactive/arts/music/pressplay.html?_r=3&[/link] goes deep house with Lane 8 whose Rise collection includes guest turns from Solomon Grey, Ara Scott, Patrick Baker and Matthew Dear.
James Murphy's DFA Records celebrate their new Bandcamp presence with an ace 11-track compilation, which includes especially tasty offerings from the glam stomping Slim Twig; Shit Robot who gets some funky assistance from Reggie Watts and pedlars of percussive techno every bit as exotic as their name, Ninos Du Brasil.

We're loving this seven-track sampler from Brooklyn independent label Mason Jar Music, which includes offerings from Big Thief, Cassandra Jenkins, Rosanne Cash and Taylor Ashton.

Those nice NPR people also treat us to an acoustic download set from Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad, AKA Californian force of nature Girlpool.

You have just under a week to download this fabulous four-tracker from masked Australian producer Golden Features. Have we been dad-dancing our arses off to it? You bet we have!

The Isley Brothers' 'Summer Breeze' gets a delicious makeover from GRiZ, a Michigan DJ who layers tunes up with his own saxophone playing.

Their near Detroit neighbours, Wolf Eyes, are giving away their entire experimentalist back catalogue, which includes this 2003 Machine Music-esque EP.

Local lo-fi heroes Jack On Fire have released an EP to raise money for the Washington DC Abortion Fund.
It comprises of 'Abortion Hooray!', 'Every Life Is A Gift (Except Mine)' and 'We Aborted Trent Franks', Mr. Franks being a Republican Congressman who's floated legislation banning terminations after 20 weeks. It costs $5 but you're welcome to donate more if you want.

Roger Waters has shared the first trailer for his epic looking The Wall concert film.

Arcade Fire have released an eight-minute chunk of their film, The Reflektor Tapes, which appears to have been shot in Haiti and looks beautiful.

Above & Beyond have premiered the video for 'Counting Down', their new single which features the extremely dulcet tones of Gemma Hayes.
"We first came across Gemma through a bootleg mix that found its way on to our Group Therapy radio show," says one-third of the progressive trance group, Jono Grant. "Coming from a folk background, her voice has an honesty and emotion to it that really stood out from the pack and felt a perfect match for this song co-written with Victoria Horn."

Free Music Friday's favourite European festival, Exit, had the supreme good taste to have Motörhead as one of its headliners last week. Much Serbian moshing ensued.

To get you even more into the Longitude mood here's Hozier's T In The Park performance from last weekend, which features half of Scotland on backing-vocals. 'Take Me To Church' also soundtracks a stunning performance by Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin.


And with that we down keyboards, grab those crotchless earflaps and head to Marlay Park for Longitude fun and frolics. Look out for the Hot Press banner under which you can magic yourself on to our current cover! Check hotpress.com for regular photo gallery updates and keep those lovely links coming to @stuartclark66