Friday, November 02, 2012

Creeps And Pervs Like Pop Music, Too!

There are no doubt scads of great releases in the Free Music Archive, but with hundreds (thousands?) of album downloads on the site, there's no way I can listen to even a fraction of 'em (any recommendations?).  I did luck out and stumbled across this goodie recently:

Amil Byleckie: Amil is Personal

described thusly: "The songs are all short form pop gems inspired by adult personal ads from the Providence Phoenix. This is genuinely bizarre recording."  And that's about the size of it. Short is right: the 20 songs here fly by in just over 17 minutes, and gems they are: most of the simply-played guitar and/or keyboard + drum machine tunes are quite good and catchy. Only drawback: that trendy indie "lo-fi" sound that can be so distracting.

And the personals themselves are pretty interesting, revealing the twisted, perverted worlds that lie beneath mainstream America. Even the "Charming Beauty" who starts off sounding pretty decent and normal slowly reveals herself to be a golddigger. Tho many of these songs are funny, some of this stuff is creepy, occasionally even a bit gross, but I admire the way Byleckie can take non-musical material like newspaper ads and craft some excellent pop tunes out of them.



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