Does anyone have an opinion about eMusic? Are they good chaps, bad chaps, people to be trusted, to be avoided etc?

Your thoughts would be welcomed.

http://www.emusic.com/

I've been a member for a year, no probs at all, very professional and 100% trustworthy. And very cheap too, especially for those Jazz albums with 4 tracks.

Thanks!

I´ve spoken well of them before, and I´ve downloaded hundreds of hundreds of tracks. I liked them better before they started "eMusic Europe", though; suddenly, they were much more expensive, and there were less tracks to choose from. So I´ve only downloaded occasionally since. Never any problems with them, though.

Again, thanks...

I think they're very good. I like exploring genres through them (got a load of eastern european stuff recently), exploring artists (just made a great John Zorn Masada compilation that way) and getting cheap downloads of albums I'm not 100% about buying for real. Only disadvantage is that sometimes albums and artists disappear for various reasons (for example Zappa used to be on there, but no longer). Still, an excellent and cheap way to discover music legally.

They're great, though they've whacked their prices up recently. Luckily I'm on the same tariff as before.

I like the fact that a track is a track regardless of length (you don't get the 'album only' bullshit like you do on iTunes), also I think their DRM is much better than iTunes. Never seen that annoying 'you are not licensed to play this track on this computer' message from stuff I've downloaded from eMusic.

They say that they are:

"providing tracks in a high bit rate (192K VBR) MP3 format with no DRM"

I see it's now £8.99 a month for 40 downloads. I pay I think £6.89, as I must have been a member before they raised the price. But £8.99 is still very good, you can still get 5 or 6 jazz albums for that a month. Tons cheaper than ITunes.

Just signed up to this myself and it certainly offers an interesting mix. This sort of thing is perfect for experimental purchases, and i make many of those.

I love the fact that a lot of stuff i listen to and want to investigate further comes on 4-6 track albums, and are therefore stupidly cheap.

Newsom - Ys is my first download, and i think i'm going to try out some Sunn0))) next.

Yep what the title says. I've got myself an eMusic membership and i'm trying to milk the free tracks to the limit before deciding whether to cancel or keep.

So far i've got

Faust - Faust
Joanna Newsom - Ys

and i'm looking at some of the following

Boris' debut album (one track and one extra reissued)
Sunn O))) - The Grimm Robe Demos or Flight of the Behemoth
Merzbow - Cycle or Metamorphism

I'm a complete novice in the the ways of noise and drone etc but i'm interested so can anyone comment? I like Wolfeyes if that helps.

I'm also very much into jazz at the min so any great albums available over there with only a couple of tracks?

Any other recommends?

Thanks one and all

Van Der Graaf:
Pawn Hearts (3 tracks)
Godbluff (4 tracks)

Jazz Etc:
Miles Davis' "Get Up With It" has 4 tracks, especially He Loved Him Madly which is utterly sublime.

Also The Necks albums - espcially Hanging Gardens (like a trancey Lalo Schifrin s/track) or Aether (more er...ethereal but a real builder) - one track each: 60 mins. The latest one Chemist isfantastic although it does have 4 (all great) tracks.

Noise Etc:

I thought Merzbow's Metamorphosis was only worth getting for the packaging, which doesn't apply here (but I should give it another listen) - "Aqua Necromancer" is my all-time fave if it's there.

Meshuggah's "I" is a 21 minute dark metal belter of face-melting energy.
If I recall, Fantomas' 'Delerium Cordia' is a one track album - and delerious it is too, ranging from exotica to 2 second bursts of thrash to bridcalls etc.

Boredoms - Seadrum is a whole side of ecstatic tranciness

Drones:

My favourite is Michael J. Schumacher's "Fidicin Drones" - especially The Resolution Chord From 'Frances' (not it's not the Formula 1 champ!)

Infinite Love by Kawabata Makoto

Oh, and the Daddy Of All Genres - "Consume Red" by Ground Zero (from Last Concert LP) and wild and wonderful hour or so. By the end you'll think "Yes, chaps, you deserve to retire after that".

and so on...

Look for Miles Davis albums such as In A Silent Way, Big Fun, Dark Magus, Agharta, Pangaea.

I think Get Up With It has 8 tracks, hasn't it Fritter? :unsure:

Ah, yes indeed. Funny where time goes when playing it. (Or maybe I've mislaid one of the discs).

Time Machines by Coil is another great drone work. I thiiink it only has 4 tracks, but it's hard to tell once it's been on a while; it really does slow time down.

But they don´t have all of these recommendations on eMusic, do they?! :huh: At least not on eMusic Europe. The Miles Davis ones, for example, or Van der Graaf.

I know that I have bought the Meshuggah one, though, and they have the Fantomas one.

I ended up with:
Meshuggah's - I
Fantomas horror one track thing (what i've heard is great)
godspeed you! black emperor - f#a#infinity
Sunn O)) - The Grimm Robe Demos
Boris - Absolutego

Got 7 downloads left. Lot of stuff for no money legally = :D

Oh and yeah there is a lot of stuff that they unfortunatley don't have. I was looking forward to Van der Graaf and some Miles Davis but they have none of the former and only bits of the later. They do have some of the first quartet stuff though like workin', relaxin' etc so they might come later when i've absorbed what i have.

That stuff ace btw.

As far as classic jazz goes they have the entire Prestige and Riverside catalogues (lots of prime Monk, Rollins, Miles etc etc) so It should take years to get all the good stuff.

Also try John Coltrane - The Complete European Tours. It's about 7 cd's, cost about £100 in the shops but you can download it all for about £6, bargain. The sound quality is excellent and the performances very good, especially the ones with Dolphy.

I know almost nothing about Jazz so please point me in the direction of some classic Monk and Rollins albums to sample. What era are these? Styles? etc?

I am a sponge for info like this at the mo and i've been searching high and low for a descent book on the subject of Jazz development (not a tomb 'rough guide' as they are only really any good for looking up individuals amidst a sea of obscurity).

Was looking at that Coltrane set actually and you definately make it sound an attractive proposition... I could do a disk a month or something to make sure it's not wasted due to volume of work.

On the "Live Trane: The European Tours" all of it's good, but disc 1 is the best.


Monk - start with Brilliant Corners, Monk's Music and Misterioso.

Rollins - Saxophone Colosus.

Eric Dolphy - Out There and Outward Bound

Miles Davis - apart from the ones you've mentiones, make sure you get Bag's Groove and Miles Davis And The Modern Jazz Giants, these two were recorded at the same time on Christmas Eve 1954 with Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver and the Modern Jazz Quartet's rhythm section (Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke). Classic stuff.

Coltrane's best work was to come after Prestige but Soultrane, Lush Life and the one just called Coltrane are good.

Bill Evans - all the stuff on Riverside is excellent but start with Bill Evans Trio: Sunday At The Village Vanguard.

That should keep you going for a while.

I don't know if they're on EMusic, but all the John Zorn/Masada live albums are exhilarating.

Yes, they are; for some reason, though (It seems that Zorn/Tzadik wants it this way), tracks longer than 15 minutes are not available. That goes for all Tzadik albums, I think.

"Tonic" is my favourite, but that´s the only one of these live albums that has a track missing.

i'm sure there was a thread about emusic but maybe it's been lost in the servercrash

i noticed last night that Daisy Chainsaw's Eleventeen had been added recently- looking forward to my download refresh to see if it was as good as i remember it being at the time

No, not lost. It was indexed here too.

ta v much

you expect people to function logically at 11o'clock on a Saturday morning?! :P

My Feb 07 take:

Apples In Stero--New Magnetic Wonder LP

Fuck_Cupid's Cactus_01_Glass Charms.mp3

Negativland--Jamcon 84 lp

Negativland--Muriels Purse Fund LP

Pavement--Wowee Zowee expanded disc 2

Superchunk--On The Mouth LP

Ted Leo and The Pharmacists--Hearts Of Oak LP

Thinking Fellers--Blank Eyed Devil.mp3

No worries.

O, yeah and why do you object to DJ Spoony? Did he play too loud at the pub you and yer buds shut down?

Going for a good haul this month:

Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Six Organs Of Admittance - The Manifestation
Six Organs Of Admittance - Sun Awakens
Merzbow and others - Electric Dress
Sun Ra - The Magic City
John Fahey - God, Time and Causality
EP C - Battles
Jackie-O Motherfucker - America Mystica

Anyone care to offer their list?

This is the first month in a few that i haven't used all my credits on jazz boxsets so should be a nice change of pace.

And as influenced by the LP/CD/CASSETTE poll, how do you store your legal MP3, and do you store your legit stuff with the grey area stuff like bootlegs?

I burn them to CDR´s and store them among the real CD´s, and I do the same with bootlegs - burned or not. Unless they aren´t good enough, then they might be transferred to the attic (where I store the discs that there´s not enough room for in the living room).

I've decided to seperate my mp3 purchased albums from my albums bought on cd or lp and i keep them in alphabetical order in a shoebox. I also keep my bootlegs in a folder in a crappy unsorted order, and that clearly needs sorting out.

no longer a member, ran out of stuff I wanted yonks ago, but that Asana stuff was good (reminded by Lou Reed's latest trip).

They have added some new labels recently, like Cherry Red.

I had a browse, saw the DK's stuff.

At the moment I am overloaded & the webbed hand stuff is entrancing..

This month I have downloaded:

Sun Ra - Jazz In Silhouette
Sun Ra - Other Planes Of There
Sun Ra - When Angels Speak Of Love
Sun Ra - Lanquidity
Euros Childs - The Miracle Inn
Swans - Kill The Child
Bang On A Can - Terry Riley In C
Evan Parker - A Glancing Blow
Free Music Quintet - Free Music One & Two
Spring Heel Jack - Live
Psychic TV - A Hollow Cost

Lots of experimental purchases this month with a few choices from ESP Disk. Some will surely be shit but not bad for £8.99.

Well, here's my download list.

Not all of it I'd recommend mind you.

Fave bands I've 'discovered' on emusic include Sunn O)), Country Teasers, Mountain Goats, Merzbow etc. It's also been good to replace all my Creedence stuff on vinyl.

Currently liking that Merzbow Frog+ LP and Gillian Welch's 'Revival'.

Weird how some stuff appears there and then disappears. I downloaded Black Dice's excellent 'Creature Comforts' from there but now Black Dice have gone. Also Jana Hunter's excellent 'Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom' LP and now she's gone (was hoping to get her new one).

Just blown my monthly allowance in one go on the following:

Spiritual Unity - Albert Ayler
Ming - David Murray
Arch Duo - Derek Bailey and Evan Parker
Future Artists - The Dead C
The World Of Cecil Taylor - Cecil Taylor
Joe McPhee Quintet - Common Threads
Ornette Coleman - Town Hall 1962
Eric Dolphy - At The Five Spot Vol. 1
Greg Davis - Somnia

A very nice Shop Assistants compilation added to eMusic recently.

This month I've gone for:

Stockhausen Piano Works - Elisabeth Klein
Controlled Bleeding - Knees and Bones
MONO & The World's End Girlfriend - Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain
Kawabata Makoto And The Mothers Of Invasion - Hot Rattlesnakes
Josephine Foster - A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing
Rhys Chatham - A Crimson Grail (This is cracking stuff, shame about the artiacts on the recording)
Yellow Swans - Decension (Excellent noise, not as abrasive as I expected)
Wooden Shjips - Wooden Shjips (Entertaining psyche, some great guitar work)
Glen Branca - The Ascension

I got the Wooden Shjips as part of my Nov 13 allotment. Can't say that I am that impressed. I also see that eMusic took out "America's Funnyman" by Neil Hamburger. Best comedy lp ever. More's the pity.

In positive eMusic news, they do have the best Negativland LP ever (beware: it is spoken word):

http://www.emusic.com/album/Negativland-Ov...d/10676368.html

I think it would be far better without the delay masked vocals. They don't sit too well with me, but the guys voice doesn't sound that grand either so probably wouldn't be any better sung straight. Glad I've heard it, and with probably get a few spins.