Griff says; 'It's time to make your Eardrums Pop!'

Today I'd like to introduce you to the wonder that is EardrumsPop. Basically, it's my favoutite net-label and is closely related to the music blog Eardrums. Their mission statement reads;

“We love warm and melodic music of all kinds, we believe in beautiful things you can see and hear, and we believe in working together, helping each other and getting good music and good art out to the public. We do not believe in money, so all our releases are given away for free. We HOPE that instead of paying for these releases directly, you can visit the websites of the bands you like, buy their albums, go to their concerts or most importantly, just spread the word about these wonderful bands and artists. All our releases are made in close collaboration with the artists and illustrators. A donation to a charity of your choice is also a good way to pay for our compilations. Do something good!”

By now, I hope you’ll have realised that these are the same principals, or at least broadly similar, that drives our own little project here at ‘The Streetlamp’.

The newest Eardrums project is the excellent 'Between two Waves’. I’m a little late in telling you about this as it was officially released on April 19th but I’m sure you’ll forgive me the lapse when you hear what’s on offer. 'Between two Waves’ is the fourth compilation-project from EardrumsPop. Knut, the founder and living heartbeat of Eardrums, started this latest project based on an idea that it would be interesting to start a creative process between bands, specifically he wanted to see what the result would be when two bands created something new together. To further extend the collaborative aspect of the project, two of the artworks are made as collaborations between illustrators
The project consists of 3 volumes each with a slight difference in style.

Volume A contains 14 songs and is definitely a POP volume.

COVER ART for ‘Between Two Waves – Volume A ’ BY Seniorita Polyester and Roller Monkey (collaboration)

Volume B contains 12 songs and is quite acoustic, relaxed and folky. (this is Griff’s favourite)

COVER ART for ‘Between Two Waves – Volume B’ BY Julia Pax and Ronald Scharf (collaboration)

Volume C contains 14 songs and is a bit dreamy and jangly.

COVER ART for ‘Between Two Waves – Volume C’ BY DANIEL NOVAKOVIC

Most of the bands have chosen new names for their projects, so you may not recognize the band names at first, but look at the free tracklist in the beautiful booklet which comes with Volume A and you will see who is behind the projects. Lots of interesting artists!
You can download the free 3 volume album 'here' (40 songs, 40 collaborations, 80 bands)

If you’d like to listen before you do your free download, you can stream the songs below. Never mind the buy-link in the music-player, – the album is only available for free, and clicking it will take you to the eardrumspop.com website.

Between Two Waves - Volume AbyEardrumsPop

Between Two Waves - Volume BbyEardrumsPop

Between Two Waves - Volume CbyEardrumsPop

Top quality free music! You may be thinking; What’s the catch?. Quite simply there isn’t one. I’ll let Knut explain in his own words;

“I am often asked ‘Why do you do everything for free?’. The answer is that we reach a lot more people that way, and one of our main goals is to spread the word about good bands we think deserve more listeners. With a paid model, we might reach 1000 people, maybe, but now we reach a lot more. Our most downloaded compilation has been downloaded over 17000 times! It’s also a lot easier not having to take care of economy, and to be honest, money is not one of life’s prettiest things. We have expenses for servers and stuff, but not more than we can handle. As it is now, we’re very satisfied doing things for free.”

Amen, to that!