Reviews

Juanitos – “Best Of”

Juanitos is an exotic rock-n-roll band from France. The members include (if my translation from French is correct): Juan (vocals and organ), the Blob (surfing guitar), Dave (groovy bass), Chang (country guitar) and Jyle Malone (drums & bongos). On the "Best Of" you can hear a bit of reggae & soul with nu-Latin Brazilian beats, but the 50s "Beach Boys" feel of the album can be noticed in almost every track.

Jay Bennett – “Whatever Happened I Apologize”

Jay Bennett was an acclaimed musician, guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer most often recognized for his work in the twice Grammy-nominated band Wilco. He has played with the band for 7 year and after leaving Wilco in 2001 he has recorded 5 solo albums. Bennett released "Whatever Happened I Apologize" only on rockproper.com as a free Creative Commons album in November 2008. He died in his sleep on May 24th, 2009. RIP.

Virtual Skipper Online – a free version of a regatta simulator

Virtual Skipper Online is a free version of a unique regatta game, Virtual Skipper 5, where you get to take the most famous boats in the world on offshore races on 14 of the best competitive watercourses including Valencia, Marseille, Trapani and Malmö – all venues of the America's Cup. You can play the game solo or tap in into the VS5 online gamer community to play in the multiplayer mode with people from every continent.

Kid Hum and Rock the Dub present “Offshore Drilling” – now on FrostWire

A great album/compilation has recently popped in on our radar. "Offshore Drilling" came together as a joint project between Khal from Rock The Dub and from a Colorado hip-hop producer Kid Hum. It started with Khal sending some of Kid Hum's beats from his "Fossil Fuels" project to few MCs back at the end of 2008 to see what can come out of it. Soon artists like Junclassic, Pugs Atomz, Whygee and Sunkenstate jumped on board the the compilation started coming together. The final product compiled together by Kid Hum features 13 tracks (and two bonus ones) and more than 13 artists in both the radio and the uncensored versions.

Cologne Commons – Second Free Creative Commons Music Compilation

Cologne Commons free music festival opens today in Germany's Rhine. The gathering is to bring many netlabels, musicians, artists, and business developers to the weekend long conference and then a party in Cologne. This compilation is a selection of some of the music featured by Cologne Commons. Make sure to check out their first release here if you will like this one.

The Flying Change – “Pain is a Reliable Signal”

The Flying Change is stage name of a New York songwriter and performer Sam Jacobs. The name was inspired by poetry of Pulitzer-prize winner writer and family friend - Henry Taylor and it suits him extremey well. After listening to the album I couldn't stop thinking that "Pain is a Reliable Signal" resembles a collection of poetry in which Sam Jacobs beautifully reveals his life experiences with pain though themes of love, loss and reckoning.

“Superheroes Of Science” from the Intercontinental Music Lab

The Intercontinental Music Lab (IML) is a world-wide music project whose aim is to promote musical collaboration. The core contributors, originally from Cambridge, England are now writing and recording music all over the planet - and new international collaborators are being enlisted every week. IML Collaborators submit backing-tracks to IML H.Q. where they are randomly redistributed to other collaborators who write lyrics and record vocals. The subject of IML's first album was "Superheroes of Science", second "Superheroes of Sea" and the third was "Superheroes of Space".

I Have Clones presents “Music 2.0” – a CC licensed electronic hard core album

I Have Clones (Rob) is an up and coming musician from UK. His genre of choice - Electronica / Screamo - is not very popular on today's music scene, but he is getting many positive comments on this social networking websites praising him for being unconventional and innovative. He has already released a single called 'New Years Eve', a two track Sampler, a remix of the Dance Gavin Dance tune 'Alex English'a and a mini album "Music 2.0" - all available as a free download on his website. His concert schedule on MySpace shows him playing shows in almost every day (in July at least), so if will be in UK, you will have plenty of chances to see I Have Clones live.

CDBurnerXP

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn all kinds of CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs and bootable discs. It has a logical, multilanguage interface, so it is fairly easy to operate, even for beginner users. CDBurnerXP is available only for Windows systems as of now, but it runs on versions as old as Windows 2000. It's a truly free software - even if you need this application for your company, you can freely install it on all computers.