Griff says; Ready, Aim, Fireflies!

This month seems like a good time to bring the music of Lisle Mitnik to your attention. Lisle has been a presence on myspace since 2004 and throughout the last six years he has been steadily releasing his self-produced, twee, lo-fi, dreampop under the name of Fireflies. In September, Fireflies also became a presence on bandcamp. Currently, Fireflies have three albums and two EPs up on the site and you'll be delighted to learn that the EPs; 'Strange' from March 2008 and 'Butterscotch' from March 2009 are available as free digital downloads (the albums are also very reasonably priced).






The good news is that Fireflies attempt to grab the attention of the indie-pop world continues apace during October. I'd like to introduce you now to the Bubbletone Club 7 Digital Singles Club. What is it? Well, essentially, on the first day of every month Bubbletone release one, sometimes two, freely downloadable digital single(s). That's right, just like a seven inch single, except for the inches. So go ahead grab one for free right here, it's all yours. Enjoy and share with your friends and family. The Fireflies tracks featured are 'New November Leaves' and 'Pale Flashing Light'. We here at the Streetlamp are especially fond of the latter. Have a listen below:



And there's more! As you will hopefully be aware the lovely people at EardrumsPop have recently made a commitment to release a free digital single on the 10th and 20th of every month. Every single will include two songs by the band, and in addition several will include a cover-version of a song the band think deserves more attention. The cover art will be made by the label's favourite illustrators, and they would like the public to see the single as a split-release between the band and the illustrator. For this release the beautiful cover illustration comes courtesy of Minkee. The singles will vary in style, from acoustic folk-songs to noisy indiepop and covering everything in between, but always warm and melodic. The 10th of October saw the release of ePop005 by Tiny Fireflies. You may remember Tiny Fireflies featuring on EardrumsPop’s 'Between Two Waves' compilation earlier this year. Basically, Tiny Fireflies are Lisle (from Fireflies) and Kristine (from Tiny Microphone). Indie know-alls may also recognise that both are also members of Chicago-based weePOP! band Very Truly Yours. Those self-same indie know-alls will also recognise three superbly crafted dreamy pop-songs when they hear them and will rush to download this here. My own personal favourite on the single is the otherworldly cover of 'The End of The World' but then I've had a soft spot for this particular song for a very long time. Have a listen:
Tiny Fireflies - ePop005 - digital single by EardrumsPop



So there you go, two brand new releases and a wonderful back catalogue to boot. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Fireflies (and Tiny Fireflies)!

Enjoy.

Griff
xx

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!