Based on the name of the band itself, you just know the members of Zut Alors probably passed French with flying remarks. Zut Alors, actually, is a French interjection that more or less means ‘dang’ or ‘dammit’. Though dang or dammit would have made catchy band names all the same, zut alors definitely takes the price of the most inventive and clever band name based on an interjection.

The band is made up of four members: Nick Bennett, John Marshall, Will Reiss, and Zac Stred. Currently one of the hottest bands in Nashville, Zut Alors performs what they call bedroom pop. They also tag their music as indie pop and indietronica. People like me didn’t get how exactly this genre sounded—it sounded more like an attempt to be creative than an actual musical genre.

And yet, once you listen to some of their songs, such as Cheers and The Killing Kind, you will get exactly what they mean. No wonder their first single, The Killing Kind, was called ‘one of the best tracks to emerge from Nashville’ by the Nashville Scene just this year. In fact, they are part of Experimental Institution, Nashville’s go-to authority when it comes to news, music, movies, and everything about entertainment.

The band has been performing in and out of Nashville as early as March. Two big events that they are holding right now are the Open Lot Session 2 (an exhibit of music and arts) and the recent release of Zut Alors!, their recent EP.

Most importantly, the Zut Alors values the Nashville music scene so much that they have recently released their own podcast, Four on the Floor. Its first episode has already aired and is currently open for subscription. The first volume, as a matter of fact, is filled with exciting performances from a couple of indie bands in the Nashville music scene.

Related Links:
Zut Alors on Bandcamp
Zut Alors on Myspace
Zut Alors on Youtube

Mind’s Eye is exactly the type of album you should listen to if you are feeling nostalgic and emotional. The compositions in this track intend to evoke entrancing emotions that will lure listeners even deeper to its melodies. The only question that remains, however, is if this intention was ever really fulfilled. Favorably speaking, all 13 songs in this EP—from songs entitled Virtue Lost to Woods of Eremae—are able to deliver what it poised itself to do.

Mind’s Eye is the brainchild of Celestial Aeon Project. Behind this project is one man alone, Matti Paalanen. Mind’s Eye is his third album, after having produced the albums Aeon 2 and Aeon 3 under the same project. Celestial Aeon is all about producing soundtracks that have that fantasy feel. They were originally produced for RPG or roleplaying video games. In fact, it has been received favorably by RPG directors and game masters. That’s not such a big surprise, as the tracks in this EP do seem well-suited for such kinds of games.

Game masters aren’t the only ones impressed by Celestial Eon. Matti’s music has been ranking all too well in Jamendo. It has consistently been at the top spot of the rankings week after week. Virtually all reviews are just as positive, with ratings of at least 4.5 stars.

The music of Mind’s Eye is not hard to listen at all. If you’re in the mood to meditate or in need of concentration, this album is the perfect match. The melody is relaxing and peaceful, and there’s none of that aggressive tunes that, although usually breathtaking, can be hard to listen to. Perhaps that’s why Mind’s Eye has become such a hit to its listeners: it’s what everyone needs to relieve stress.

The track listing of the Mind’s Eye EP is as follows:

1 Virtue lost
2 Hymn of the Sky
3 Bazaar of Tal-Mashad
4 Cherry Blossom
5 Hymn of Twilight
6 Song of Mourning
7 Mind's Eye
8 Stranger
9 Hold the Line
10 Burn Them Down
11 They Came From Nowhere
12 Thrall's Theme
13 Woods of Eremae

Among the influences of the Celestial Aeon Project are Jeremy Soule, E.S. Posthumus, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and Micheal Hoenig. All songs are produced via virtual instruments and sample libraries in a home studio. And if you can’t get enough of Matti Paalanen’s works, you should check out his other projects:

Axial Ensemble
Project Divinity
Frozen Silence
Matti Paalanen

Related Links:
Celestial Aeon Project on Jamendo
Celestial Aeon Project on Mikseri
Celestial Aeon Project on Last FM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and is available as a free album download (.zip or .torrent) from Jamendo.

If Daenjellson isn’t an interesting enough name for a singer for you, then perhaps nothing else will make the cut. More than his interesting name, however, Dane’s music is more than worth listening to. His EP, Walk Your Soft Skin on the Edges, is the result of years’ worth of introspection and adventure from different parts of the world. It has provided listeners like me with an impression of the things to expect of Dane, especially with the full album release of Jesus Loves.

The biographical information placed by Daenjellson in his social networking sites can be considered wild by many. He writes about his former careers as a blade painter and a songwriter. He has penned memorable songs such as Baby, Now That I Found You, Waterloo, and How Deep is You Love. He then called it quits after he talked about “attending one too many wasted nights at exclusively private celebrity parties and waking up one too many morning after next to another Samantha Fox lookalike.”

After this, he went around and traveled: from Borneo to Mexico. He finally went back to music in the summer of 2008 and started recording songs with his laptop. Along with him are cello, violin, piano, and French flute accompaniment with his coach and mentor Scott Walker’s wife, Fiona. The result of his comeback to music? A slew of songs that he categorized under ghettotech/electroacoustic and punk indie music.

The somewhat mellow and electronic pop music he has in his 5-track EP Sampler, Walk Your Soft Skin on the Edges, is heavily influenced by his travels from Belgium and Brazil to Australia. No wonder he lists fresh air, women, travel, sunsets and fauvism among as his influences.

What’s noticeable about Dane’s songs is the elaborate background instrumentals surrounding his songs. Maybe it’s the result of the great deal of experiences he’s had after travelling for so long or the product of working with a limited range of instruments—in one way or another, the result is an effective combination of Dane’s vocals and Fiona’s instrumentals.

Related Links:
Daenjellson on MySpace
Daenjellson on Last FM
Daenjellson on Archive.org
Daenjellson on Youtube

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

If you think Bankai is a word that sounds like a positively explosion, then you and Will Dayble, the creative mind behind the electronic music Bankai, have one thing in common. According to Will, the stage name is from an anime series called Bleach, where characters perform the Bankai, a sort of “final ultimate power realease”. The Bankai results in huge explosions and, it goes without saying, sends the opponent off to lick his wounds. That exact same power is probably what you’d get after hearing to Bankai’s music.

The album, Quarter Circle Punch, is licensed with Creative Commons. Yes, from torrents to wav downloads, everything in this EP is free for everyone to download and mesh with their own tracks or videos. In fact, since he released the Quarter Circle Punch, Will literally saw it evolve in the Internet. It got mixed, remixed, and integrated with videos in Youtube among a few other things. And what’s his take on the way his music has gotten people inspired? “That’s such a win.” This statement alone explains how much he supports peer-to-peer sharing over the net.

Bankai’s songs, as he himself explains, is about the tune that precedes the fight scene music. He tries to evoke that “manic, grandiose feeling” that something big is about to happen. Those big things, according to him, are those small victories: climbing a tree, getting laid as a teenager, feeling invincible on a BMX home made ramp, beating the crap out of the school bully as a kid.

At first I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant when he made these allusions. Having listened to his EP, though, I got to understand what he was trying to say. And how was he able to deliver his message? He has his laptop, which he uses after he records tunes using vox, guitar, slap bass, piano, mandolin, and other random things.

Here’s an excerpt from our interview with Will:

What is your music background?
I played violin as a kid, I was raised on balkan / macedonian folk music and stuff. I taught myself guitar in my teens, got vocal lessons later on - I played in a punk band for about a decade. I only started doing electro about 9 months ago, so I still tend to scream and rant a lot on stage. It feels weird twiddling knobs and sliders.

Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
Devin Townsend was a big deal to me and my friends growing up. Big fat epic production, manic songwriting. Of course there's Oizo and SebastiAn and whatnot, but a guy called Joe Forrester I used to play with - astoundingly talented dude - has probably been an even bigger inspiration over the years.

I wrote a big chunk of QSP in a wee little town called 'Savonlinna', in Finland. Really inspiring place. It's like someone reached into reality and turned down the hue, all black and white and dark green, with 5 hours of sunlight a day and -30 temp and stuff. I spent a lot of time in this bar called 'Happytime'. Hah!

Do you compose your own songs from scratch?
Most of it starts on the piano or guitar, or I go "laa laa" into my phone when I'm not at home. I tend to start things too late at night and mix them together the next day at the cafe down the road, or the pub. I tend to finish remixes the day I start them, but originals take a lot of obsessive tweaking. I have trouble keeping things simple, the last step tends to be pulling out all the unnecessary extra synths and samples so it's listenable again.

Now, what’s next for Bankai? He’s says, “I'm in the process of modding some Wii bits and fixing up a pedal thingy I made from a broken usb keyboard, 'tis fun... but way cooler is this group of people over in Vancouver (from the 'Electro Freaks' group from T61) who are trying to do a sort of crowd-sourcedBankai minitour, where they share the costs and effort over a bunch of people, making merch and buying plane tickets and all. If it actually works out it'll be quite the feat...” If anything, his EP is already quite the feat.

Related Links:
Bankai on FM
Bankai on Facebook
Bankai on Myspace
Bankai on Last FM
Quarter Circle Punch on Archive.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and is available as a free album download (.torrent) from mininova.org. If the torrent doesn't download because of seeding issues, you can download the album song by song from Bankai's website.

Behind Spheriot is a one man bad who literally does everything - from the composition of music to the recording of all his songs. The result? A provocative album entitled Bekennerschreiben. According to the singer and writer himself, all of the songs in the fourteen-track album is a result of music from the heart and head. They were all produced in Spheriot’s living room. For someone who just toys around with his Mac, Spheriot was able to impress with his surprisingly refreshing take on music.

You don’t have to worry about having a hard time understanding Spheriot’s songs. Though he’s currently based in Cologne, Germany, he’s very much fluent in English. In fact, a lot of his songs in the album are in English—and with surprising depth at that. Try listening to The Golden Circle and Blind Ride to get a grasp of just how his songs can be infectious.

What’s also interesting about this man is his view towards expectations: he has none! That’s precisely why he expressly states that as a musician, he’s not trying to fulfill anybody’s expectations. He’s the type of artist who’s arguably gone through it all: involvement in many long gone bands, the dreams of making it big, the struggle to get make that creative song, and all sorts of trials.

In the end, all he needed was his Mac, his guitar, and his love for song writing. Perhaps it’s easy to say that Bekkenerschreiben is the culmination of his hobby as a musician: an album that fits the category of Indie Alternative Rock.

Here is the track listing for Bekkenerschreiben:
1. The golden circle
2. Aufmarsch der Lemminge
3. Ikarus
4. The Getalong
5. blind ride
6. Amok Dilemma
7. Back to Barnacle Boy
8. Naughtic Dub
9. witz ohne worte
10. Life hating bastard
11. The things I do
12. Maitri
13. Endspurt
14. Takeaway Landing

Related Links:
Spheriot on Archive.Org
Spheriot's Our Stage Profile
Spheriot on Jamendo

Orblitz, a fast-paced and dynamic puzzle game, is the brainchild of The Yakuza: a group of four comprising Josh Bell, Jason Runta, Jesse Kvatek and Marc ten Bosch. Each has a distinct role in the making of the game, from being a technical director to being the marketing manager. What was originally an idea by Marc and Josh to create a game that involves mazes featuring different art textures proceeded to become the 2006 Winner Student Showcase of the Independent Games Festival. It’s not hard to understand why.

As a puzzle game, Orblitz strikes a balance between difficult and easy. The goal of the game is fairly simple: you have to create a series of bridges that will get the blue ball to the red goal. As players accomplish each level, the originally black-and-white environment becomes a mix of vivid colors.

There are more than 60 levels in this game, so you can just imagine how dynamic the setting will be by the time you finish all rounds. I’m still in the process of finishing the game, so at this point I can only visualize how finishing this game would be like. As a multi-player game, you can pit yourself against your friends and find out who can solve the game’s puzzles the fastest.

Before you download the game, make sure that your computer meets the following requirements:
1. 1.5 Ghz Processor
2. 128 MB RAM
3. 15 MB Disk Space
4. Graphics Card with Vertex Shaders and Supports Fragment Shaders (e.g., GeForce FX 5200 or Radeon 8500)

If you’re looking for a challenge or a way to spend time with your friends, you should give Orblitz a try. The game’s cel-shaded graphics and 12.8-megabyte file size gives you all the reasons for you to try it. After all, it’s free and easy to download.

Related Links:
Orblitz's Website

For a free game, Intense Racing is undeniably self-assured. It challenges players like you to take the game on and become the world’s fastest racer. All you have to do is download the game, choose from among 12 cars, and race on one of the 15 race tracks available. The mechanics sound easy enough, until you get to the real meat of the game: the actual race. Although controlling the car is easy enough, maneuvering past the opponents can be problematic.

The graphics of the game are solid. For a game that’s 24,5 MB large, the visuals are quite impressive. Of course, you won’t find the same realistic graphical quality in more advanced video game platforms that you actually buy for a hefty price, but Intense Racing can work for you. It definitely has for me.

With wide features to boast, it also has amazing replayability. There are seven race cars to choose from, each one customized in looks and specifications. As for the tracks in the game, there are 15 to choose from. All these tracks are set in interesting places all around the world.

As for the game’s difficulty, there are three options to choose from. This variability of difficulty, for me, proves just how sensitive this game is to players. Driving a car can take a little getting used to, and while you’re in the learning curve, you can opt for the easy level first.

There are not much bad things to be said about Intense Racing. The graphics are solid, and the different race tracks and cars should be able to interest you for a while. Though there are definitely more complex racing games out there, Intense Racing is a breeze to come across. Here is a game that is accessible, can easily by installed in Windows, and does not take up much hard disk space. That’s a win-win situation, if you ask me.

Related Links:
Free Game Pick's Website

Already Late is a 7-track album by Nasdat, a band from Monterrey, Mexico. With musical influences from bands like Papirringas and Arizona Tea, Nasdat is able to produce a unique sound along the lines of the alternative and rock music genre. This rising band has already played in many local pubs and bars in Mexico, before they finally released this debut album.

The line up of the EP Already Late includes the members Eliud Varela, Diego Mejia, and Ramon Castillo. Eliud is in charge of the vocals, guitars, keys, bass and other virtual instruments. Diego Mejia is on drums, while Ramon Castillo on protools.

Nasdat's EP Line up comprises different members from its Live line up. In the Live Line up, Eliud is on vocals and guitars, together with Rodrigo Lopez Neri (Bass), Gilberto Lozano (Keyboard) and Adrian Hinojosa (Drums). The vocalist Eliud Varela is the only one present in both.

Nasdat was produced by the vocalist himself, and was recorded by Ramon Castillo. Nancy Matter mastered the album in Moonlight Mastering in Austin, Texas. This collboration led to an album that Nasdat decided to release for free.

The track listing of the album is as follows:
1. Late Revenge
2. 29
3. Aftertaste
4. The Note
5. How it Ends
6. Arizona
7. Sundays

As a whole, Already Late is not hard to like at all. It does not go to the far end of rock music, so it can appeal to anyone who likes alternative music. Eliud's vocals, mesmerizing and strangely touching, is also striking to listen to. Perhaps the best thing about Already Late is the uniqueness it brings to the Indie music scene. Where everybody else is creating sentimental, electronic or hip music, Nasdat sticks to its signature alternative rock style.

Related Links:
Nasdat's Myspace
Nasdat's Youtube
Nasdat's Facebook
Nasdat's Last.FM

Icy Tower 1.4 is a freeware game that features the main character Harold the Homeboy. Don’t be fooled by Harold’s title, though, because he is anything but a boring homeboy. Rather, Harold the Homeboy is your regular kid who wants to impress his friends. To do this, he jumps to the highest level of the Icy Tower. Unbelievable as it may sound, this game’s simple premise has earned it more than a million of downloads.

The controls of this game are ridiculously easy. You only need three controls to ace in this game: left, right, jump. The simplicity of controls is more than enough for you to fulfill the main goal of this game, which is to climb the tower as high as possible by jumping from one floor to another.

As you elevate from floor to floor, the points of Harold increases and accelerates. The faster he gets, the more difficult the game becomes. The levels of the Icy Tower are marked by a change in color and shape. The variety in the game levels will make you want to play this game endlessly.

Icy Tower 1.4 is a marked improvement of the previous versions. The first one was released in December 2001—it was limited in that game saving was not possible. Version 1.2 fixed glitches in the previous version and introduced custome characters. The latest version, released last June 3 2009, is easily the best version yet.

Icy Tower 1.4 also introduced new tunes that are just as addictive as the ones in the older versions. Players can also create their own profiles and customize their characters. Their ranking in the game will even be displayed! And, as if all these features are not enough for a free game, there are even unlockables in the game—more levels, combos, and better looking floors. In short, players will have a very personal experience with this game.

This game was developed and published by Free Lunch Design, with the design by Johan Peitz.

Related Links:
Icy Tower's Website
Icy Tower on Facebook Page
Icy Tower on Free Lunch Design

Owen is a solo project of Mike Kinsella. People in touch with the indie music scene in Chicago can easily recognize who he is. Mike is part of the three Kinsella brothers, all of whom are known for their involvement in many bands in Illinois. Mike himself is a member of the following bands: Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc, The One Up Downstairs, American Football, Owls, Maritime, and Aloha. Working on "Owen" though, Mike Kinsella got to control everything - from the songwriting to the album design - and the outcome is bloody brilliant!

With Mike's many bands, what made him decide to do a solo project? He cites the disbanding of American Football as the impetus for him to finally work on a project of his own. And by his own, this means everything. Owen is basically a collaboration of Mark's artistic talents. He did all the songwriting, vocals, album design, and artistic direction. As if these aren't hard enough, he also plays the guitar, bass, keyboard, drums and the other instruments used in all the songs of his solo project.

So why did Mike name his project Owen? He simply wanted a pseudonym that will not be associated to him or any of his bands. Though people have always known who he was, this change in name proved to be effective as he is now referred to as Owen during his gigs and in the Internet

All of Owen's songs were done in a former bedroom-turned-studio, where instrumentation of all his songs were rendered possible. This solo project that started in 2001 has now created about 5 solo albums available in his record company, Polyvinyl Records.

These five songs from Owen's different albums were mashed up in a sample EP. Listening to them will basically give you a rundown of how Owen has made his music through the years. These are the songs:

1. Bad News
2. She's a Thief
3. Places to Go
4. In the Morning, Before Work
5. The Ghost of What Should've Been

Related Links:
Owen on Myspace
Owen's Site