Epitonic

Epitonic was a godsend after originally trudging through the great trash heap known as MP3.com. Of all of the amalgamated mp3 sites on the web, this is definitely the best in terms of content quality, and utilizes a most helpful search/recommendation system.

Here are some of my own picks:

High Rise! (almost an album's worth of their scorch)
'68 Comeback (garage)
Thee Headcoats and Holly Golightly
Rovo (with Yamamoto from the Boredoms)
Thuja (ambient psych)
Azusa Plane (psych/noise/drone - some lengthy pieces)
Aix Em Klemm (ambient rock)
Randy Grief (creepy electro and samples)
Zoviet France (legendary electronicists)
Alp (compositions from everyday sounds)
Goem (repetitive and minimal)
Badawi (dub with Mideastern loops)
Nortec Collective (Tijuana d&b)
SQ (lo-fi droning)
Nordisk Sang (Nordic folk compilation)
Badar Ali Khan (cousin to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)
Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis (performing in a 2-million-gallon cistern)
Stefano Scodanibbio (experimental contrabass)
The Mount Everest Trio (mid-1970's Swedish jazz)
Luther Thomas/ Human Arts Ensemble (more kickass jazz)
Mountain Goats (frenetic folk)
Michael Yonkers Band (primative psych-garage)

I've heard that Epitonic was sold by its creators (now administering Better Propaganda) to a larger corporation. I've also heard that it will cease to add new entries, but fortunately will keep the archives online.

Music Blogs

There is a growing population of weblogs that pepper their monologues with mp3's (available for a limited time, usually a week). At first, these tended toward pop, pop-rock, and variations of indie-pop, and the good pickins were slim. Nowadays, things are starting to get interesting as these blogs specialize and adopt themes.

To my knowledge, The Tofu Hut is by far the most labor-intensive blog I've seen, particularly due to all the work put into tracking down other mp3 blogs, aggregators and music hubs (just check out this entry).

Music (for Robots)
Fat Planet
Soul Sides
Cocaine Blunts & Hip Hop Tapes
Totally Fuzzy
Cake and Polka Parade
Knobtweakers
The Essential Ghoul's Record Shelf
Space Debris
Prancehall
Crud Crud
Garage Hangover
Naija Jams
Strange Reaction
AmpNoise
Shortwavemusic
Both Kinds of Music
Wyrd, Wisconsin
Chasradio
Phil Musical's Lounge

These bloggers almost always link to countless other blogs (filesharing and otherwise), so happy hunting.

Little surprise WFMU's Beware of the Blog should blow most other music blogs out of the water with its vast curiosity-cabinet of unusual recordings. They seem ready to become as big an archive as Ubuweb by maintaining their downloads.

Oddio Overplay

Katyana's Oddio Overplay is a homemade music resource site on growth serum. Her Super Sounds page is similar to this one here -- heavier on the pop music, but she does attach a thumbnail to each link, which is rather nice. Her Showcases page is a collection of mp3 albums. Then you can kill plenty of time with the links on her "Listen" and "Links" pages. And as if all that wasn't enough, she contributes to a music blog and has many mp3 playlists on her Webjay page.

Katyana compiled sites featuring insect recordings to celebrate the NY Summer. Most of the results are .wav and streaming sounds, but I've extracted those utilizing mp3's:
Stridulation Sounds of Black Fire Ants
Insect World: crickets and katydids from Japan
Insects of Northern Thailand

Katyana tracked down hodge-podge of tribal folk music (African, Australian, Inuit) on a Slovakian site.

Techno

First off, you might want to download Audacity, a free open-source audio editor. Almost every long dj mix I acquire these days needs some gristle trimmed away.

Aabtek, is a site dedicated to the minimal techno scene of Aalborg (Denmark). There are many individual tracks and mixes to be found here (click the "show all posts" button at the bottom). One of its mainstays (and my personal favorite), Bo V, puts out some prickly-textured and eccentric tracks that I can't find the likes of elsewhere. Don't miss the "releases" section (the net label page) which features the incredible Mikro album by sgnl.fltr.

Betoni is a site which showcases mixes from a number of dj's and producers. It's open format, so mostly amateur contributions, but might be worth a bit of foraging.

Klot is a similar site, with a few recognizable names. Most recordings are live in Sweden.

English DJ Inigo Kennedy provides some respectable tracks off his site.

HavocSound is a NYC collective of quirky techno producers, with a bent towards gabber. Their music is made for people half my age.

I would definitely have to be half my age to appreciate the Hardmind Productions label, but I did enjoy Mindgame a bit.

Christian Bloch (Aabtek associate) is a minimal techno producer who had taken MP3.com by storm, but now keeps most of his archives on his own site.

Intuit is a Detroit-based label for techno and ghetto-tech, and the catalog page includes samples from Dan Bell and Terrence Parker (which, unfortunately, average at about 90 seconds).

New York DJ Dylan Drazen presents a couple dozen mix sets, mostly of the deep house or hard techno variety.

Mite Recordings is a small techno/tech-house/electro label out of Buffalo, NY. The audio page holds individual tracks as well as mix sessions.

Mark Verbos has established the Simple Answer label as a vehicle for his minimal hardcore techno, with a few mixes.

Vertical Cat puts out some laptop techno that is pleasant enough, as well as some samplecore here and there.

Gregory Shiff is a producer from NYC who was associated with Stewart Walker's Persona label. Lots of warm and mellow touches amongst the robotics.

Resource Records is producer Chris Jackson's label out of California. Skip the catalog section and scroll down to the unlicenced tracks and mixes.

Institut für Feinmotorik utilize prepared record players as instruments, as opposed to using them to extract samples. More variated than Thomas Brinkmann's click tracks, but very much like techno in contrast to Otomo Yoshihide's turntable works.

Ignore the indie pop on the Ghostly label's soundpage and focus on Detroit techno producer Audion (aka Matthew Dear).

Foundsound is a Philadelphia label specializing in sample-heavy laptop techno and microhouse, with several dj mixes. In the top bar you can switch to "Unfoundsound" (unreleases) to access their netlabel.

Micro is a Spanish click-techno label with a collection of mixes. Click the b&w squares next to the titles.

Mo's Ferry Productions is a German label that's seasoned with a little quirkiness. Otherwise, a bit on the mellow side.

San Francisco's [KONTROL] is a monthly event gathering producers of minimal techno and "forward-thinking house", with plenty of archived mixes.

Clever Music is a London netlabel for minimal techno and closely related subgenres.

Microphono is a Minneapolis IDM netlabel. Nothing here truly kicks my ass, but I'll be extracting segments from some of the longer mixes on the promotional series page.

Sami Koivikko is a Finnish supplier of nouvelle electro.

Minimal technohouse producer Daniel Bell keeps a mix on his site. Just bare traces of the squeaktoy-bangin' material that originally attracted me to him, but still good.

Redshape is a Berlin techno dj who protects his identity with a red mask during sets. It's a mix of some gloomy 80's beatbox/synth with minimal tech with some mildly playful touches.

Cio D'Or is a Munich purveyor of minimal techno/electro-funk. Sombre and ethereal, but some warmth.

House

Again, Audacity

Angel Alanis is a producer (originally from Chicago) with a generous supply of mp3's.

Denver's Dj Vitamin D posts an online music page with several sections of individual tracks and live sets.

Trevor Lamont is a Philadelphia DJ who trafficks in warm house records. This isn't my particular taste in house, but his mixing style keeps me interested.

Sonic Sunset is a radio show from Chicago's WNUR, spinning a wide berth of techno, house and funk from the past few decades. The page posts each broadcast for download for a week's time.

Chicago's DJ Ed White supplies a diverse assortment of house mixes.

The Deep House Page Archive is a large index of mixes dating back to the early 80's (Memorex D90 quality) with many familiar names.

Assorted DJing

Blentwell is a hub of various dance music mixes found on other sites, and it's post-1990's (for once). You can search by genres.

DJ Big Daddy's Ghettoblasta site holds his sets of ghetto tech and electro.

The Richcolor site presents a gathering of 1980's hip hop and soul mixtapes, mostly from London pirate radio.

The CardboardFlava site archives the satanic hip-hop of Black Mass from 1992-93. This is bedroom recording rescued from tapedubs, and is more novelty than entertainment. You can download tracks, or grab the entire double-album via the Internet Archive link.

Turntablist Dj/Rupture (aka Jace Clayton) feeds various dance (breakbeat, dubstep, hiphop) genres upon each other, with some Mideastern folk records to spice things up occasionally. The Negrophonic site maintains a long mix in 2 parts.

Ghislain Poirier is a Montreal DJ adding very large beats to his ragga/hiphop.

Aaron Spectre creates a dubstep/jungle mash with some metal thrown in for good measure. The mixes here tend to be the same dozen recordings shuffled about.

Eccentrics/Oddities

Little Marcy is a ventriliquist's puppet singing very skewed Christian songs for children.

A site dedicated to otherworldly scat-singer Shooby Taylor provides his entire "Human Horn" album.

The Show and Tell Music galleries present various categories of oddball album covers for your viewing pleasure. Complete mp3 offerings are few and far between, but the fun is all in the browsing.

Here is a page dedicated to John North Wright: Masonic conspiracy expert and composer of "Teenage Volleyballers"

The April Winchell Show has a hefty multimedia page that includes outlandish songs, ads, themes, and a host of other odds and ends. Lately, however, it looks as though much in the archive has been drastically compressed for space, so expect some muddled sound quality.

Y2Khai, the "loc'd out Asian", dresses like Elvis and kicks out some foolish hip hop, while girls send in their pictures.

The audio gallery from the Bad Music Foundation offers some tracks. The music here is not "bad" as some other sites in this section, but some interesting bits can be found. I recommend the Tommy Spanos Show.

In college, I used to see earthy kids selling zines and cassettes for the Zendik Farm, a commune founded by Wulf Zendik. The Zendik Farm Orgaztra was his prophetic musings over (usually) slow acid rock. His page includes some of those tracks, plus a more intimate bit of singing with an electric piano ("Rose"). Dig his glamour shot from 1948!

Coyle and Sharpe were well-dressed pranksters on the streets of San Francisco in the early 1960's, secretly recording random victims who fell prey to their nonsensical badgering.

Lisa Carver/Suckdog collaborator Coz the Shroom sings some ballads and punk songs. Sort of like the first Ween album, but more sincere.

The J & H Productions tape is a recording of a Cincinnati man's appeal to record labels as a would-be music promoter (and sent to at least one label). The 13-minute recording of the fragmented and repetitive speech spirals relentlessly, actually inducing hypnosis.

Costes has been described as the G.G. Allin of France, with his obscene stage shows and continuous court hearings. His wild yelling over casio-pounding is about as obnoxious as it gets.

The Italian Glubibulga' site organizes a monthly archive of strange songs and recordings from throughout the web - either on permanent soundpages or on record-collectors' showcases.

I first saw Dave Whitman when he volunteered to perform an erotic reading out of Prisoners Inventions during the Chicago booksigning. The publishers, Temporary Services, have compiled a CD of his stories about the streets of Chicago. Included is the story of his relationship with T.S.

Kerry Christiensen is the Swiss Cowboy from Utah, with several albums of yodeling and zither music. The particular tracks I'm recommending are "The Chicken Yodel" and "Gypsy's Revenge (mouth trumpet)".

Otis Fodder published his much-admired 365 Days project in 2003 -- providing a new eccentric/outsider mp3 every day of that year. The gracious folks at Ubuweb have archived it in its entirety, with all accompanying notations and images.

WFMU's Blast of Hot Air is the NYC/New Jersey station's online newsletter, which has finally brought together some oftentimes amazing oddities and ends from the audio archives.

Miqel.com features a collection of strange musics, although not as strange as tracks on other sites of this sort. I was pleased with the Whitten Jr. High School Band's rendition of the "Star Wars".

Picking up Girls Made Easy ("as easy as opening a beer") is a 1975 album with lots of good advice for lurkers. The entire album is posted by Hyde Park Records in Chicago, and it looks like their archive page holds more downloading opportunities.

The American Song-Poem Music Archives charts mail-order music (lyricists pay to have session musicians put their words to a pop single). Often some true punishers, but sincere. I'd recommend the documentary Off the Charts as an accompaniment.

A site archiving the nutty music of Spike Jones and his City Slickers provides a good slew of them.

Wayne and Liz are a duo I originally discovered on MP3.com, who perform lo-fi Christian folk with a relentlessness that reminds me of the Swans or early Leonard Cohen.

You may have heard of Harry and the Potters, extolling J.K. Rowling's books in their tours through libraries and bookstores. Draco and the Malfoys are their co-touring arch-nemesis.

Thrift Store Rotations

The word is "sharity", referring to a longstanding network of music collectors who share their thrift store finds (usually on vinyl and out-of-print) on a rotational basis.

Basic Hip Digital Oddio is a key site that has been adjusting formats every couple of seasons or so. Nowadays, an entire album is rotated weekly for downloading, and there are (semi-)permanent sections for whistling records, unsung musicians, the field recordings of Tony Schwartz, and so forth. There is also an interesting section pairing screen shots of Vertigo with contemporary photos of the same San Francisco locations.

Here are some sites that post an album for a limited time:
Bellybongo
Raymondo's Dance-O-Rama
Your Pal Doug
Mr. Swank's Album of the Moment
Pastor McPurvis' Weekly mp3 Talent Show

Splogman's World is a Dutchman's miscellany of thrift store finds and music played with children. The "Splusp" page is sorta thrift-rotational, sorta weblog. The "52 Weeks" page is a mixed assortment of unusual downloads from a 2004 project.

Both Weirdomusic.com and Oddio Overplay's sharity index maintain indexes of sharity pages.

Unusual and Homemade Instruments

Here is a Canadian site offering some excerpts of a symphony for dotmatrix printers.

I found a page of miscellaneous theremin recordings, including a Rachmaninov orchestral piece, and the intro to The Green Hornet.

A much better theremin site is the Thereminvox audio library, an index of file collections from better known musicians. I particularly recommend the Public section where some interesting pieces have been submitted, including "Sinners" by Freddie and the Hitchhikers. The Samuel Hoffman page is also good, with Captain Beefheart's "Electricity", some melancholic Yiddish tunes, and other treats.

Ela Lamblin constructs various sound sculptures through which he strains his world music tastes, with some interesting results. Most of the "samples" on his music page are actually a few minutes in length.

Royer's One Man Band is Eric Royer playing bluegrass banjo, an assortment of other small instruments, and his guitar machine -- a contraption built from two guitars, with pedals to control the chording and strumming. Just one track here.

A Thai elephant orchestra plays some very free improv on custom instruments.

Reed Ghazala, has been promoting "circuit bending" (hotwiring pre-existing circuits) since the late sixties. Although many of his inventions involve human body interactivity, the devices featured on his site are more along the lines of customized Speak&Spells and keyboards, with gaudy decor.

The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra has been creating instruments solely out of vegetables. Their "listen" page only has short clips.

Although there are only short samples and clips on his page, I couldn't leave out Mr. Quintron's Drum Buddy, a quirky device involving a turntable, light sensors, and a coffee can.

Neil Feather invents often quite complex instruments with metal, strings and electronic pickups. Most of the samples are under 60 seconds, but you can find a couple of longer mp3's in there.

Stephen Schweitzer uses his Bikelophone, a washing machine, electronic toys and various debris as sound sources for his electronically-processed compositions, which ought to appeal to Nurse With Wound fans.

The Gravikord Ensemble features Bob Grawi on his electric double-harp, with music that is some sort of Celtic/African/South-American fusion.

The Glass Orchestra composes music entirely from glass instruments, both found and hand-made. The sound page holds a set of 90-second samples.

Bradford Reed is a Brooklyn artist (and one-man band) inventing electrified stringed instruments resembling dulcimers.

Paul Slocum is an artist composing music on his dotmatrix printer

Old-Time Recordings

The American Memory Sound Recordings Collection is a tremendous and layered index of musical and nonmusical recordings from the first half of the 20th century. Many of these are various sorts of folk music recordings (indigenous and immigrant). The collection has been progressively stored as mp3, and they may have finished by this point.

Nugrape offers a couple of dozen blues/bluegrass 78 recordings, including a couple from Blind Lemon Jefferson

The Virtual Gramaphone presents historical music recordings from Canada. Some of these recordings are somewhat deteriorated and buried under hiss, but there is a lot to search through. The site includes a range of old popular tunes and reels.

Glen's Vintage Jazz and Hot-Dance Music. Some interesting obscurities from 1927-1930.

NpMusic.org has put together a great page of Cajun music from 1920's-1970's.

Lexpages includes a page dedicated to homemade 78's and acetates. The dilapidated recordings includes radio shows, bands, and personal messages.

The Moylan Sisters (ages 5 and 7) were crooning over the radio around 1940.

Tyrone's Old Audio page is a rotation of a selected recording from olden times (last updated 2003).

Jim & Marianne's Jukebox is a collection of recordings from '78's, from 1911-1928.

The Edison National Historic Site archives the recordings of Thomas Edison, with musical and nonmusical recordings from wax cylinders and early disc pressings.

The Edison Cylinder Recordings is another collection of early phonograph pieces.

The Loritsu Media Library hosts a collection of 78's, including The Five Red Caps and Woody Herman.

The Kiddie Record King presents an archive of selections from 78 rpm childrens records.

Prefer victrola noise to the sound of music? Then I'm sure you'll like Roger Wilmut's 78's.

Here's a collection of songs, skits and speeches from the WWI era.

Balkan/Mediterranean

The Guca Folk Festival of Serbia is the place to go to check out Gypsy brass band music (including Boban Markovic)

The Balkan Babau Orchestra is a squirrely Italian group from Trieste (near Solvenia border) drawing on Balkan traditions.

Süperstar Orkestar of Sweden perform some Balkan-style brass.

The kaval is an old style of flute popular in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Turkey. Stoyan Chobanov demonstrates with some solo tracks.

The Romanian Voice site presents an index of folk songs and traditional carols. Use the "audio" linkstack on the left.

Radosov are a Czech folk group employing cello, strings and dulcimer, or sometimes leaning towards choral music.

Mikkel Hornnes' Danish music site features a showcase on gypsy music including some brass bands. There are downloads here from Ferus Mustafov, Fanfare Ciorcarlia, Boban Markovic, and others (often they are live recordings). He has also added his personal recordings of the Guca 2004 Fest. There's also a Klezmer page to check out.

Orchestra Mihalache are are accordionist Andrei Mihalache and his two sons, hurrying through some Romanian gypsy folk tunes.

The Romanothan is a resource site for gypsy culture in Romania with a page of "Old Roma lautars music" with a hefty cache of hi-quality tracks. The musicians include Constantin Eftimiu, Gabi Lunca and Romica Puceanu (use the "select musicians" dropdown menu).

Ballkan World Music Management is an Italian company organizing tours and festivals of renowned artists, particularly those from Balkan regions (gypsy brass band stars, Albanian polyphonists, etc.) as well as bands such as Hun Huur Tu. Most of the downloads here are complete tracks.

Tamburaški Orkestar Kardinal Stepinac is a large Croatian Catholic tamburica group from Vancouver.

Far East

Asian Classical Mp3 is a site hosting music (generally taken from cassettes) from China, Korea, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Laos.

The Misterpants site hosts a single page dedicated to Korean singer Baeho, with a schmaltzy mp3. I couldn't find any English info on the guy, so his significance (other than schmaltz) is a mystery to me.

The Internet Chinese Music Archive includes a traditional music section with about a dozen tracks ("The Moon is High" being my favorite) and a section for the Yellow River Cantata (operetta with piano accompaniment). The rest is cocktail bar fare.

A page entitled Nostalgia: Indonesian Songs is loaded with some cheezy pop music, but scroll down to the Sundanese, Jaipong and gamelan sections for the traditional stuff.

The Swara Naga Gamelan Group of the University of New England (Australia) offers three tracks of traditional and somewhat contemporized pieces.

Laman Melaya presents some Kelantanese folk songs (of the Malay peninsula), but unfortunately compressed to the point of sounding like RealAudio. They are still an interesting listen - you can pretend you are tuning in with a small transistor radio.

The Awa Odori is a folkdance performed for the Bon Festival in Japan. The music consists of percussion, winds, shamisen, and shouts to the effect of "we are fools whether we dance or not -- might as well dance". A single 4-minute recording is provided here.

A site exhibiting Laotian folk opera might be a standard survey of national music, but the in-the-red production of these recordings renders a frenetic and almost bombastic sound. You can also check out the folk songs & lullabies page (scroll down for mp3s).

A hefty page of Korean traditional music is not always quite so traditional, but there's plenty of the genuine article. Of special note: the section entitled "Sinawi Music of Korea - Farmer's Jazz"

This Nordic page on Indonesian music has a few decent gamelan pieces nestled within it. Avoid everything else.

Gamelan Nyai Saraswati of Indonesia seemed to have have taken residency at the University of North Carolina at one point, in which gamelan music was grafted to the modern classical program.

Shirley and Spinoza have posted a broadcast on the Internet Archive of music and field recordings of the Uyghur province (N.W. China). There are two long files on two pages, totaling about 4 hours.

The Aruna Ragangiri Buddhist Monastery (U.K.) provides their entire chanting CD, with a fairly ecclesiastical sound to it.

This page for assorted Nepali, Thai and Vietnamese might be worth a rummage, particularly the "Himalayan Melodies Of Nepal" and the "Thang Long Water Puppet Troupe". There's also some silly points of interest in the "Cha Cha Cha 2000 - Thai Pop" and "Nepali Pop" sections.

Phong Nguyen is a musician and ethnomusicologist with a collection of traditional Vietnamese music.

Klezmer

Den Flygande Bokrullen is a Klezmer band out of Sweden, and a bit on the easygoing side.

Rubinchik's Orkestyr is a klezmer band out of Austin with some Rom influences.

Klezmer Muziek is a page compiling tracks from various klezmer outfits, including the Klezmatics and many other bands that used to have MP3.com pages.

Black Bear Combo are a fairly drunk-sounding Chicago klezmer/barrel-house jazz trio.

Judaica

A site for Chazzan Moshe Bazian, presented by his son, offers some recordings of his Judaic cantorials.

The Bnai Baruch Kabbalah site is an odd page, giving you your choice of Kabbalist melody versions: over-dramatic casio keyboard instrumentals, or archaic recordings of chants by Baruch Ashlag.

A Dutch page about popular ballad singer Leo Fuld offers a couple of tracks from a televised performance.

A general site for the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia includes a music page with some contemporary pop as well as some traditional music from Ezro Malakov, Ensemble Makam, and Shlomo Takhalov with Ensemble Nava.

The Jerusalem Lyric Trio performs a repetoire of traditional Judaic music in Western classical style (piano, flute and voice).

Montreal's Black Ox Orkestar fuse Jewish folk music, moody jazz and indie-rock into a rather pleasant cocktail.

Golem are a group of young NYC musicians playing yiddish tunes for both bar mitzvahs and rock clubs.

Spanish Folk

Barallete is a drum and pipe band playing a couple of traditional Galacian tunes.

Milladoiro is a Galacian band stringing influences through Britain, France and the Mediterranean. The page is mostly samples, except the last 2 at the bottom.

Brocal is an ensemble performing traditional music from the Castilla region.

L'Arca de Sueños is a folk-rock band playing the traditional songs of Campoo and Cantabria.

The Ayuntamiento de Monturque (Cordoba) presents the music of the traditional Bellringers of Aurora to honor the Virgin Mother.

Cafe Flamenco are a trio (2 guitarists, 1 dancer) producing some rather good instrumental tunes, even if a bit studio refined.

Txistulari is a site presenting the music of the Basque txistu (3-holed flute), some of these recordings are traditional drum and flute, others are chamber music.

Latin American

A site about Aymara music (native Bolivian and Peruvian) presents songs flute and percussion groups, as well as charango music. There is also an 18-minute piece performed by a brass band.

If you are into South American folk music, occasionally with a cool cafe tinge, then you may wish to dig through this French site.

Boogaloo Productions is a label out of San Francisco promoting Cuban musicians and culture. The site only provides samples nowadays, but offers access to full mp3's if you join the mailing list.

El Che Vive! is a great compilation of songs dedicated to Che Guevara from throughout Latin America (and a bit of Europe). There are numerous tracks from Carlos Puebla, and artists such as Victor Jara and Maria Farantouri are included as well.

A site about Andean music from Japan features a few bands doing a decent job reproducing South American folksongs.

A collector of Brazilian Bossa Nova, Balanco and Samba records has created Sabadabada to share the goods, particularly those from the 60's.

Funky do Moro is a huge archive of early hip-hop and sampler funk of Rio de Janeiro.

Nuevacancion has archived some rare and unreleased songs from the legendary Chilean political folkster Victor Jara. This includes some television performances, and a great version of "Canción del Minero".

Here are more Victor Jara songs in zipped format. These are high quality tracks spanning 1968-72, but the site does seem to time-out rather easily.

Enrique Kaliski is a classical guitarist from Chile.

Mexican

Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center offers a few tracks from each of its CD releases in a variety of traditional styles.

The Ballet Folklorico del Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz provides tracks of sones and folk songs.

The Instituto Nacional Indigenista provides mp3's of folk musics from various regions, although I can't always vouch for the audio quality. I found the selections from the Xetumi album (Michoacan) to be the most interesting. Also buried within this site is La Música Que Resuena en las Nubes, a collection of songs (large ensemble) from the Asunción Cacalopetec region (Oaxaca).

A collection of jarocha music of Veracruz includes some rousing folk numbers, and at least one symphonic piece tucked in there.

After WWII, Yugoslavia began drawing pop culture from Mexico as an alternative to Soviet pop culture. Slavs with sombreros, brass and guitars created their own Mexican music genre, as preserved on the Yu-Mex site. The pages offering mp3's carry warnings of awful sound quality. Granted, the audio isn't great, but I've heard worse.

Etc.

The Fat Possum label has mp3's offered from just about all of their albums (click on the "More Album Information" links). This is my favorite blues label, featuring the likes of T-Model Ford, R.L. Burnside, Elmo Williams, and Bob Log III.

Jewsharp.com offers some short pieces off of their releases, featuring Jew's harps, mouthbows, and similar instruments.

The Skazka Russian Society in Norway presents many varieties of the famous Communist anthem, the Internationale, including a Chinese rock version.

The Sonic Studios site presents some organ grinder theater organ sounds: demos, a variety of tunes, and a rendition of "Take Five".

I'm not sure what keeps MP3 4U afloat, as it seems to allow individuals to post their ripped mp3's. I haven't spent too much time here -- most of it seems to be teen oriented -- but I do recommend the Public Domain 4U member page for its old blues/country/jazz recordings (this guy has his own site which seems to be a personalized interface to his MP34U stockpile).

Here's some classic pipe organ music from Reiko Oda Lane, of the First Universalist Unitarian Church (San Francisco).

Jim Goad, publisher of Answer Me and author of The Redneck Manifesto, has a sound page with some songs and monologues. If titles like "Let's Hear It for Violence Toward Women" are not your cup of tea, then don't say I didn't warn ya.

I discovered DateJesus.com, a blasphemous gag site supposing that Jesus could use the Internet to field humanity for the woman of his dreams. However -- the music page features the designer's genuine attempt to share some brief yet haunting cello compositions (purportedly performed by the Lord himself).

The Cosmotic Order (Chicago Chapter) is a site I published to coincide with an outdoor artshow in August 2003: an alleged Winter-based occult society. This includes an audio page with downloads so you can mix your own audio-bio-training session.

The Mandolin Cafe holds an archive of mandolin-centered tracks from various artists in various genres.

Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mother's Temple) has reserved a section of his band's site to host a small (and infrequently updated) listening room to share some of the records he has been into lately. Unfortunately, no AMT downloads on this site yet.

The Crammed label out of Brussels has been a purveyor of indie-pop, Brazilian, electronic and world music through its various sublabels (and definitely grab the Kocani Orkestar tracks!). The yellow dots denote the mp3's.

This Is Ska is an Argentinian site providing some classic tracks (Skatalites, Desmond Dekker, etc.) as well as some stuff from ska acts from Argentina and Mexico.

"Do what thou wilt is the whole of the Law" is the English subtitle of this Russian page, which does little to explain the random collection of short Asian folk and Russian rock samples. The first mp3, however, is a good Hun-Huur-Tu track, and the final download is a decent Hindi (sdtk?) piece.

Come to Truckin' MP3s to get your load of truckin' country from Dave Dudley, C.W. McCall and Red Sovine.

Martin Lampen's Bubblegum Machine has been showcasing tracks from several decades of rock and r&b, with an emphasis on the cheesy and sugary stuff. But there's plenty of surprises in the archives (and they are all active) - a bit of rockabilly, some sixties garage pop, schmaltzy songwriters, glam, etc. Often sheer drivel, but sometimes just danged good tunes.

I recently made a website for my girlfriend to organize her cat photos, and I included an mp3 cache of reconstructed and raw recordings of the little monsters (purring mostly, or eating, or whining while getting nails clipped). The litterbox is the navigation, so select the rightmost poop.

Smart-Music is a German-based site seeking to glean the best of free and legal dance (pop) music sources and showcase them. A free track is provided off their server, but clicking images will take you back to the artists' sites. I'm not finding anything that makes me shout, but I may keep looking.

The Bell Sisters were a young duo recording from 1951-59 and scored a hit with their own amazing composition, "Bermuda" (the unreleased demo by Cynthia Bell melts me). The site is organized by their nephew who has posted a generous collection of singles, radio performances, film and television spots, and home recordings.

The Balkan, Greek & West Asian Folkdance Library is a mixed bag of traditional, semi-pop, and loop-samples from the Balkan territories, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Armenia and Kurdistan (my favorite section).

The Robert Grafias Ethnomusicology Kiosk includes a devotional page to Romica Puceanu with numerous tracks from a few albums recorded from the 1960's-80's, as well as field recordings and vinyl excursions from various parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and South America.

Vaisnava Media is a collection of ISKON (Hare Krishna) recordings and videoclips, with plenty of mp3s mixed in there. The 3rd and 4th pages also present similar collections.

Revenant Records is guitarist John Fahey's label with an interesting downloads page: early blues and folk, Charlie Feathers, Captain Beefheart, etc.

The Fisher Ensemble, directed by Garrett Fisher, is a musical dance/theater group mixing styles from throughout the East and West.

Terrassorkestern of Stockholm are an ensemble playing Swedish jazz and big band tunes from the 30's and 40's.

Capoeira Ginga Nagô is a French martial arts/dance group with some accompanying Afro-Brazilian music.

Ropeadope, a NY-based label, conference and clothing line, has downloads available in the "Records" section. The pages gather soul/funk/groove/hiphop/etc/etc, and features the likes of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and The Spanish Harlem Orchestra.

The HarSMedia found tapes exhibition is a collection of small compilations of spliced tape (from either discarded cassettes on the street, or loose spools and strands), mostly found around Paris. The site solicits help in identifying yet-unknown tape segments.

Ska for the Skeptical is a Berkeley site presenting a couple handfuls of ska tracks from the 60's-90's, including Desmond Dekker and Laurel Aitken

250 covers of "The House of the Rising Sun" are stockpiled on this Russian site. You can find the expected Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, and Animals versions of course...but I'm enjoying the Dolly Parton version as I type this.

Sweet Thunder: Tape Findings is a weekly presentation (and archive) of music and recordings discovered on found cassettes.

The media page for The Winter War Monument -- commemorating Finnish and Soviet soldiers who died at Suomussalmi -- presents a bittersweet wartime tune on a scratchy Victrola disk, and a brief field recording of bells hanging from a memorial sculpture.

Paris-Pekin is a treasure trove of varied field recordings of traditional music (although at times woefully brief). Two French cousins cycled their way from France, Southern Europe, North Africa, and on to the Far East (and some Brazilian pieces for good measure). You can also download zipped collections of their recordings from France, Spain and Portugal.

OrientalTunes is an outlet for Arabic and Southeast Asian music, particularly of the pop/club variety (this page features Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan paired with Massive Attack). My own recommendations are the instrumentals by Anouar Brahem, Charbel Rouhana and Bilal Isqaqov.

The Secret Spain site has catalogued many versions of the cowboy classic Ghost Riders in the Sky, from Roy Rogers to Impaled Nazarene. Scatman Crothers' version is missing, though.

I can't seem to figure out what the SoundProductions.de site is all about, but its download page is a mixed bag of jazz fusion, remixed world music, krautfunk, and a live Half Japanese recording.

A Beatles site has compiled a collection of promotional Christmas flexidiscs released to members of their fan club from 1963-69. As the acid years progressed, they apparently deemed any recording of their own voices suitable for an avant-collage.

Mieskuoro Huutajat, aka the Finnish Screaming Males Choir, boasts a membership of 30.

A Gurdjieff site presents three of his melancholic piano pieces performed by pupil Thomas de Hartmann between 1951-53.

You can poke around this music studies site from San Diego state Univ. and find mp3's sprinkled here and there. Some goods can be found in the Early European music section, and a couple Yma Sumac tracks on the Latin American page. Mp3 links are denoted by either a sentence or sentence-fragment.

The Wire maintains a hefty library of artists featured in their publications, and this is a good place to stroll through some new electronic/improv/experimental new music. It's a mixed bag of downloadable and streaming music. There's more in the "MP3 Specials" page.

Greenstar presents traditional music recorded in West Bank, Jamaica, India and Ghana.

The Florida Memory Project presents selections from its collection, including folk, bluegrass, blues, Greek, Asian, etc.

Electronic

I am impressed to find Ian Nagoski's "Warm Coursing Blood" CD available for download in entirety. This is some very mermerizing stuff created from lo-fi modulators and effects. This has been one of my favorite bedtime/naptime CD's for years.

The Raster-Noton caters to respected minimal electronic artists (Vainio, Noto, COH, Vaisanen) although full-length downloads can take some searching around.

The site for the 2001 Stop.Spot! Festival in Linz, Austria posts experimental electro tracks from its participants (including Goem, Porter Ricks, and Stillupsteypa)

The TV Pow are an interesting minimal electronics group in Chicago.

The last time I checked into the Schematic label, the selections sounded like d&b made from sound effects. The tracks are "samples", but they are 2 minutes long apiece.

The Appliance of Science was a series of laptop/electro/dj performances in Boston. They have devoted a generous amount of server space to maintain the archives. There wasn't much here that excited me personally, but it might be worth rummaging through.

Kracfive Records (home to Octopus Inc. and others) posts an mp3 rotor with a few tracks.

Sirr-records has a download page, including a piece by John Hudak with Stephan Mathieu.

Errorsmith produces some minimal electro that sounds like a very simple drum machine rhythm pushed through effects.

An announcement for an Anchortronic performance includes one of my favorites, COH (Ivan Pavlov). The individual bio pages each have a morsel to download.

Yannick Dauby (Kalerne) is a French artist experimenting with small acoustic phenomenon and processing. The page here includes the "Lisen" project with full recordings of quiet feedback tones and clicks, while the "Phonography" sections offer shorter samples of various experiments. The "Entrelacs" section refers to his collaboration with Michael Northham, which includes concert extracts which are a bit more lush and organic in nature.

John Sellekaers of Montreal has produced illbient/samplecore/electro under a variety of monikers, each of which on this page corresponds to its own Internet Archive page. Which means that once there, you'll need to click the "individual songs" link in the leftmost column.

Kazumichi Grime is an Australian artist taking part in the DSP/laptop craze, but creating some gentle and pleasant material.

Lithuanian electronicist Gintas K creates light rhythms with the familiar click/sine pallete, but allows them to evolve intro drones and dramatic shifts. His downloads can be found on the Retinascan label (in the "Artists" section), at Pehr (at the bottom of the page) and there's a long track at the Surfaces netlabel.

Marc McNulty is a DSP artist whose online works have appeared in various websites. A half-dozen of his albums are posted here.

Brian Lavelle is a Scottish electronicist, and the man behind the former TechNOH mp3 label.

The Little Sound DJ is a Gameboy cartridge that transforms it into a lo-fi music workstation (originally created by Role Model). Compositions by several artists have been posted.

Logoplasm are an Italian husband/wife duo experimenting with electroacoustic sounds. They also run the S'agita label.

Mil Records is a label based in Tijuana, Mexico that is a springboard for artists involved with the Nortec Collective ("intelligent techno", informed by Northern Mexican music aesthetics). Mostly laptop sounds here, with some doses of club-friendly warmth.

Erik M is a French turntablist who has turned to pure electronics, apparently with an emphasis on visual material and clutter in his performances.

Synchron is a label of electronic minimalism founded by Swiss artist Steinbrüchel. And a nice sparing use of Flash.

Via Steinbrüchel, I found Domizil, a digital label out of Zurich.

Incite are a laptop duo from Hamburg devising a linear string of loops amidst the grain and clicks.

Cognition Audioworks is an experimental electronic label formed by Andrew Duke, and the webzine portion houses a collection of live recordings.

BLK w/BEAR is Jim Adams using turntables and moribund media to create low-key, crispy ambient works.

Hamburg's Axiomatic Integration is a laptop artist expressing a focus on the integration of opposing forces -- in other words, some pleasant clickity textures with some mellow downtempo basslines.

Cock Rock Disco is a label for an agitating breed of laptop musicians (including WFMU's Donna Summer), creating a mash-up style of drill'n'bass.

London's Raft Recordings features experimentalists such as Peter Rehberg and Fennesz. Although the mp3s are at least a couple minutes apiece, they are excerpts from longer tracks.

Thomas Jirku is a Czech-Canadian dubtech producer, with compositions less drowned in reverb than the tag suggests. His page offers 3-minute samples.

Given that Spain's Tito Diaz has worked with Aube and members of Sensorband, I will assume his electronics are somehow traced to organic sources.

ECR is a CDR label for electronic/drone music that test-flies each of its new releases as a free album download for one month.

Switched On is a London radio show dedicated to the pioneers of electronic music. Preserved are conversations with Jean-Jacques Perrey and Bob Moog, as well as collages of theremin and other 20th century recordings.

The Arabbox site commemorates Bryn Jones, aka Muslimgauze who pumped out endless releases of his electro-ambient-dub under the torchlight of Palestinian politics. A couple of unreleased tracks can be grabbed here, and you can follow up with the Epitonic page which hosts a generous amount of downloads.

Osso Bucco, aka Gregg Kowalsky, produces lush electronic drones "influenced by the thick, humid air of South Florida".

Nexsound is a Ukranian label for electronic and acoustic improvisation.

Phil Thompson is an experimentalist specializing in drones and found textures.

Rafael Flores is a Spanish electronicist generating textured, minimalist noise and soundwave constructions.

San Francisco's Thomas Dimuzio is an electronicist who has worked with various noteworthy new music types. Alongside the numerous mp3's are the archives from his 2002 Mono::poly series on the Gench label, where 25 Web-exclusive tracks were made available.

Net Labels

MP3-only labels were a nice answer to the filesharing controversy -- urging artists to bypass traditional publication/distribution hassles and serve up their new releases for free.


Otis Fodder has been a busy facillitator of unusual music online, and has launched Comfort Stand Records which will organize a set of tracks under some sort of theme and maintain them for a few months.

Courtesy of the Comfort Stand link page, here are some directories to get you acquainted with other net labels:
    Rowolo.de Net Label List
    Phlow Net Labels

The Netlabels Collection at the Internet Archive is a growing list of links to net labels of various genres.

Bhadrakali Recordings is my own label project, although with a comparatively narrow focus: a collection of music and recordings dedicated to the Goddess Kali.

The 12k label presents Term, a revolving display of associate sound artists.

Microsound is a hub for artists working in the digital signal processing format, and host to a number of mp3 compilations where a thematic soundbank is made available for a period of time, to be reworked and submitted for posting. Among the many artists submitting to these projects, you can find the likes of Frans de Waard, Pelagius, Marc McNulty, and Brian Lavelle.

John Kannenberg's Stasisfield has posted numerous ep's of mp3's from numerous experimenters.

cntrl+alt+cancel records [?] is an Italian label consisting of live performances of minimalist and droning electronics (including Aal and Sawako)

Earlabs has resurfaced, previously an online electronicist community, it has been delving into becoming a full-fledged label with an Mp3 subsector.

[Surfaces] is a net label showcasing experimental and electronic, with an emphasis on Lithuania. It says "closed", but pages and downloads are still active.

Protest Records created by Thurston Moore and Chris Habib was published in response to Bush's foreign policy. Included are Cat Power, Sonic Youth, DJ Spooky, Allen Ginsberg and many others.

Audealism is an Australian net label for electronics with the sobriety of the laptop purists but a tidal pull towards the new samplecore dj's.

Antiopic is an experimental label/hub of sort in NYC, which has created a net-label subset called The Allegorical Power Series -- seven clusters of releases "to address the possibilities and roles of abstract or experimental music as social and political response". At the very least, it does manage to compile some interesting works. One of my favorites is "Resurrections for Goatskin" by Raz Mesinai (volume III) which applies a frame drum and bells toward dramatic abstract textures.

Fedora Corpse gathers various forms of lo-fi noise and other 4-track genres.

Conv is a net label for experimental electronics and sound processing, including a release from Brian Lavelle.

Speaking of which, Earlabs is restoring the releases of Lavelle's TechNOH netlabel which started in 2000, but disappeared a few years later.

Samplecore/Collage

Chenard Walcker is a French samplecore artist layering large slabs of pop music, soundtracks, etc. The site offers many albums worth of material as free downloads, as an anti-copyright stance. He also publishes the Free Sample Zone netlabel, which is all his material under several monikers, and mostly overlaps the releases under the first link.

People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) is a collage-recordist who has been plugging along since the early nineties. It appears that all of her releases are available for download here.

V/Vm are an English outfit on a mission to tweak and corrupt the music of others. I'm not personally a big fan of their results, but their label's site does provide many mp3's to sort through.

The Illegal Art section of the Detritus site features a number of curated presentations of sound collages and appropriations.

To commemorate the passing of Gareth Williams (This Heat), recordings of his friends gathered at his favorite spot in the English heathlands are mixed over a variety of samples on a radio show.

Brian Joseph Davis is a sound artist who burned 10 albums that were banned at some point in time. He then played and recorded the records afterwards.

Avant/Experimental

Ubuweb presents an astounding mp3 archive of sound art and poetry by modern/contemporary artists from the past century (Artaud, Becket, Cage, Schwitters, etc).

Experimental string-composer/performer Arnold Dreyblatt offers a group of recordings of his solo work, collaborations, and music with the Orchestra of Excited Strings.

Burbonese Qualk is an English collective who produced work in the 80's and 90's. The tracks range from electronic noise to pop instrumentation. Last time I checked, the site was a little tricky with broken links.

Climax Golden Twins are an outfit creating compositions of electronics and samples, aside from one thick and rowdy guitar mess. Plus: they present their Victrola Favorites Listening Parlor.

Chicago artist Chuck Jones posts a page of some audio-extraction recordings ("Buffy" utterances, NPR breaths). The centerpiece is the full 74-minute recording of a large band (13 musicians) looping the main riff from Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" (with periods of exhaustion and rejuvenation).

9 Beet Stretch is a rendition of Beethoven's 9th Symphony where each note is slowly stretched like taffy, until final result lasts for 24 hours (broken into mp3 files of about 80 minutes apiece). This was produced for Free Manifesta in Frankfurt.

Big City Orchestra had released a CD of experimental rock and eccentric versions of radio and TV jingles, although more sombre than the Residents. When the CD was discontinued, they posted it on the web.

Sweden's Cold Meat Industry label is a hub for creepy and sullen ambient/noise artists.

Erstwile Records has a page for a release by Thomas Lehn and Gerry Hemingway. The mp3 is an 11-minute bonus track of soft, skittery percussion and electronics.

Lê Quan Ninh is a free-form percussionist, often playing with theater and dance companies. His mp3 page includes a couple of long sets.

Jane Henry is a violinist employing custom bows and electronics.

Hans Fjellestad is an improvisational musician and filmmaker who is active in the San Diego/Tijuana experimental scene.

London's TwoThousandAnd (2+++) is a CDR label of experimental music (electronic and otherwise), with some downloadable tracks and excerpts.

Stephen Wittwer is a guitarist/electronicist from Switzerland, involved in a somewhat comic experimentalism.

A variety of recordings and segments by eminent experimentalist Karlheinz Stockhausen are archived on his official site, among interviews.

My Fun (aka Justin Hardison) is a Brooklyn sound artist collaging various recordings and musics, although I prefer the tracks built from field recordings.

Stimmhorn are an interesting Swiss group employing alpenhorns and various other instruments (and yodeling/tuvan singing) to create some sombre and experimental renditions of tradition Alpine music.

The Maritime Fist Glee Club is a label out of Oklahoma proffering some straightforward pop-rock, but mixes in some interesting improvisational and experimental projects.

Philip Samartzis is a Melbourne sound artist whose work is often reminiscient of early musique concrete (at least in structure).

Konstant, aka R. Keenan Lawler, is an experimental steel guitarist who enhances the improv with electronics.

I found the Portland-based Strange Attractors label while looking for Stephen Basho-Junghans. It hosts a variety of fairly experimental musics, seemingly with an emphasis on guitars (with some nice acoustic works by Harris Newman and Glenn Jones).

Carbon Records is an indie label out of Rochester featuring a range from guitar pop to experimental drones, but heaviest on the experimental improv.

Al Margolis, the man behind the Sound of Pig cassette label, cofounded Pogus to disseminate experimental music (electroacoustic and non-electric improv) from the likes of Pauline Oliveros, Robert Rutman, and his own If, Bwana. The mp3's on each catalogue page are only about 90 seconds or so.

New Zealand's Sync are Alison Isadora and Jan-Bas Bollen, a husband-wife team who both apply acoustic instruments and electronics toward improv and avant classical hybrids.

Merzbow may be the most well-known name from the Japanese noise scene, but Masonna (Yamazaki Maso) was its true monarch. Not content with twiddling knobs at a table, his performances resorted to hyperspastic flailing and screams through mics and effects. It was an added bonus that in a music scene as geeky as extremist noise, he sported flares and long hair and was a fashion designer by trade. The first track is a good representation, the others are psychedelic side projects.

Raz Mesinai, of Badawi and Sub Dub, is a musician and DJ who seems to have borne the torch left by Muslimgauze. Sometimes employing Middle Eastern loops toward a dub aesthetic (or the relentlessness of Rapoon), and other times engaged in instrumental improvising.

Zloty Dawai are a German/Cologne improv outfit traversing between light tinkering to dense freakouts. This is German MP3.com, so click the graphical icons with the floppy disc.

Earlabs has preserved a 1956 concert of early tape music from Tokyo, including Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayuzumi.

The Pink Twins are two brothers from Finland involved with electronic and instrumental noise collages. Three full albums are offered here, as well as a number of live sessions.

Paradigm Discs is an English label for some interesting tape and electronic experiments, as well as some early Pauline Oliveros. Artists here tend to record long tracks, so the samples are only 2 minutes, but still worth it. I especially dig Brast Burn and Karuna Khayal -- both of which are 1970's Japanese psych-improv.

The Dead CEO label from Chicago offers 2 pages of music: banjo improvisor Uncle Woody Sullender with a couple of neat duo tracks with cellist Kevin Davis, and the entire 2002 Winter Construction compilation which includes Fred Lonberg-Holm, The Flying Luttenbachers and TV Pow.

4boxs is a Chicago CDR label showcasing the improv/experimental jazz projects of trombonist Mike Hagedorn. Several complete albums are posted here for downloading, including the Ridiculous Trio covering Stooges songs on tuba/trombone/drums.

bLevin bLectum is an Oakland experimentalist whose tinkerings are a bit on the silly side. A number of her projects are featured here.

Rebis is a noise/drone label promoting White/Light, Number None and Noah Opponent.

The European Free Improv Pages compiles from the likes of Derek Bailey and Han Bennink, often as extracts at a few minutes apiece.

Russian/Ukranian

Here is a page of old Russian Tartar songs. The tracks are low-quality mp3's taken from cassettes, but I found them worth my while.

Marxist.org offers a set of Soviet proletariat songs (below the national anthems).

The Kolyada ensemble is a group performing classical and folk music from Russian and Ukranian performers. They remind me of some of some classic film soundtrack music from the 50's and 60's.

The zvons of Great Rostov features recordings of bell-ringing compositions. The mp3's are from the Dormition Cathedral of Rostov.

Russland Online features some Siberian choral music from a young folk ensemble.

Pritcha are a Russian vocal quartet from the Raifa Holy Virgin Monastery, performing liturgical chants as well as folks songs and romances.

A site for the Barynya ensemble holds an index of Russian folk musicians and dancers (primarily U.S.-based). Complete mp3s may take some sifting (and content can overlap from page to page) so I'll isolate the following:
  Barynya
  Misha and Natasha
  The Slavic Male Chorus of Washington, D.C.
  Nikolai Massenkoff
  Alex Siniavski
There's more, if you're into modernized folk sounds. I say you're better off just checking out photos of Alenushka!

Rostov Balalaika are a Cossack song-and-dance ensemble. The "Rostov Music" file has glitches, but the "Song" file is rather good.

Carousel are a St. Petersberg quartet that sound like they are soundtracking a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film. Their downloads include a rendition of "Take Five".

Svetilen are choral ensemble specializing in traditional religious music as well as contemporary choral music.

Muroma is a male vocal ensemble performing Russian folk (Orthodox?) music, with an entire album for download.

The Don Cossacks Chorus of Victor Kuleshov is a men's ensemble of singers, instrumentalists and dancers. The music is more or less a mixture of orthodox folk and military band music.

Eastern Orthodox/Coptic

An excellent Russian Orthodox liturgical site out of St. Petersburg presents hymns from several choruses, as well as some bell melodies.

A site of Slovakian Byzantine Catholic choir music includes some good recordings of the Choir of St. Romano. My favorite piece: "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent".

A few Macedonian Orthodox chants by Sotir Golabovski are performed by different choirs.

The Crestinism Ortodox site posts a page of Romanian carols.

Byzantine chants in English always strike me as strange. The music has so much more authority in other languages, but hearing the English words with male droning just brings cheesy occultist film scenes to mind.

The Coptic Orthodox Church of St. Anthony (Melbourne) has Gregorian liturgies posted.

The David Ensemble is a Coptic hymnal group, with musical accompaniment.

Swiat Prawoslawia is a Polish Orthodox church site with a good collection of choral pieces.

Aksion are the Youth Choir of The Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Bialystok, Poland.

Turkish/Mid-Asian

Sadly, the Turkish Ministry of Culture has eliminated its incredible mp3 archive of Turkish/Anatolian music (only a few short samples of local instruments remain). A few handfuls of downloads are preserved on the Republic of Turkey site.

Another Republic of Turkey site has a folk music page (with a slight contemporary flair) comprised of some Turkish songs, but mostly pieces from Uzbekistan, Khazakhstan and other mid-Asian territories.

Anatolian Sound Experiment is a Turkish group in Michigan, with some (incomplete) mp3's and (for whatever reason) an English acoustic version of "Wind Beneath My Wings".

The Archive of Armenian Music in America provides a few old recordings. These change once in a very long while.

The Kafkas Vakfi Caucasus Foundation features a music page with traditional tunes and semi-traditional pop.

A site for the Elbruz Caucasian Ensembles holds an immense collection of traditional songs, but apparently from a variety of sources. The files are tightly compressed and not always good quality.

Latif Bolat is a Turkish musician residing in New Mexico, with a few tracks (follow the links to his "Gul the Rose" and "Infinite Beginning" CD's).

MusicHall.am is a gigantic storehouse of Armenian music. The traditional section is a mighty archive on its own, but be warned...site access and downloads are excruciatingly slow. I'd let the page load up for a long time, or stop it when you've run out of patience (a good number of tracks will still appear). Then click the "DOWNLOAD" buttons. These will conjure a pop-up, and the word "Confirm" is the actual mp3 link. Sneaky!

Edwards Hines Music primarily sells downloads, but the page here is dotted with a few free tracks of Turkish and Arabic folksongs in their entirety.

I found a Pontian culture site with a page of live recordings -- often lo-fi, but distinguished in providing some lengthier recordings, so you get a chance to hear these folks cookin'.

A site promoting the Turkish port of Bodrum features a few tracks on a music page. The first is a pop ballad, but the rest are folk tunes.

The Kyrgyz Music site offers an introduction to the music of Kyrgyzstan, with a few downloads (limited to a minute or so).

Music in the Afghan North: 1967-1972 is a site documenting Afghan field studies with a number of pages related to musical cultures (auido quicklinks are near the top left). I do recognize at least a couple of recordings here from the excellent Afghanistan Untouched compilation.

Arbuz seems to have taken over the Uzbekistani music archives previously available on Uzdessert.uz. I'm not sure of the difference between the two alphabetical indexes on the righthand side, but I can still find tracks from Soqdiana and Kamolidden Rakhimov (both traditional music).

I can't identify this site, but it contains some tracks of some contemporary Pontian folkmusic.

The Association de la culture Afghane presents a great collection of traditional recordings.

Greek

I found a page with some overly-compressed rebetiko tracks by bouzouki-player V. Tsitsanis. Just pretend that the heavy digital grain is part of the old Victrola hiss.

Kostas Antionadis & Ensemble of Germany play some instrumental folk tunes, restaurant-houseband style.

Anonimi is another German act, but with more of a Mideastern hue. The downloads aren't full-length, unfortunately.

A single track by Markika Papagika ("I'll Smash the Glasses") is available from the Women of Rembetica compilation.

Maria Stellas is a Greek singer in Sweden performing cabaret-style tunes.

Also from Sweden (Stockholm) comes the Taximi ensemble (samples measure from 60-90 seconds apiece).

A site about Ayios Epiktitos (a Cyprus district under Turkish occupation) provides various Grecian music in mostly RealAudio format, but an occasional folk or soundtrack tune can be picked up in mp3.

A generous page of Rembetika and Greek Popular Music presents numerous recordings of vintage and contemporary rembetika and laika.

Here are a handful of classic rembetika tunes from 1948-51

Multi-instrumentalist Peloponnesian archivist Stamatis Makris provides an entire album of material.

Amanes: The Legacy of the Oriental Mother is an online paper about the Grecian amanes singing tradition, with some tracks on its pages (including Marika Papagika and Rita Abadzi). Lo-fi sources, though.

Through WFMU I was alerted to Grecian pop singer Vicky Leandros, who may interest fans of both Scott Walker and ABBA. Check out this page and this page for a few tracks. Especially the second link -- "Hameni Agapi" is a good farfisa-driven number.

Near East

A website commemorating tenor Mohammed El-Bakkar allows you to download ALL 6 VOLUMES of his "Music of the Middle East" bellydance series (with his Oriental Ensemble)!

The Khamush page, devoted to the Sufi poet Rumi, and offers a couple of downloads.

The music page for The Bellydance Museum provides tracks off of the "Hatshepsut" and "Oriental Dance" CD's (mostly 1-minute samples, but decent quality), as well as an mp3 page with a scattered assortment of traditional and odd contemporized samples. You can also access the Çengi/Turkish Gypsy page, which isn't linked from the main page.

IraqiMusic.com has an array of Maqaam songs dating back to the late 20's, and often quite archaic in sound quality.

The Iranian is a site showcasing Persian artists of numerous genres, although almost all sound files are in RealAudio. I did, however, find mp3 tracks from revolutionary folksinger Fereydoun Foroughi His mp3's are lo-fi recordings from a concert in the '70's.

Issa Boulos is a Palestinian composer and 'udist in Chicago. The tracks are either quiet taqsims, or more lush pieces accompanied by cello, flute, etc.

This page showcasing Kurdish singers is mostly .ram files, but there are two aged tracks under the "Kurdistani" image. The Mazhar Khalegui song is also good, but I had to work on it in a sound editor to hear it properly.

Hidayat Inayat-Khan was a classical composer and conductor and Representative-General of the International Sufi Movement. The Petama Projekt site archives 2 CD's of his music, and I am most partial to Invocation OP 8, Chanson Exotique, and La Monotonia.

The Cybersufis site has a zikr page with a single track that reaches a few minutes -- prayer chants accompanied by breathing and percussion.

Sufism.ru has a download page with tracks from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shahram Nazeri and some others. Mellow stuff here in general.

Sweden's Morad Kaveh is a keyboardist giving a contemporary treatment to traditional Kurdish music. Normally I don't care for such treatments, but these recordings are pretty good.

The Tariqa Naqshbandi offer a 12-minute sufi chant (the "Dikr Khalwati" file) that is less boisterous than other chants I've run across, but the recording quality is pretty good.

Indian

Raga Records, specializing in North Indian classical music, posts several artist pages with mp3's. The tracks are in mono to reduce file size, as most are between 15-60 minutes long.

Saradamandali are an ensemble from Trichy (India) performing to raise funds for the Sri Ramakrishna Sarada Educational Trust.

The Classic Movie Club is a large archive of Hindi Film songs, mostly from the 1930's - 50's. As you can expect, the audio quality can be a bit sketchy, but not much worse than one finds on the old SDTK cassettes.

Prapatti Online, dedicated to the Sri Vaishnava Community, presents a large collection of verses and chants, recited in a musical monotone over some random-sounding playing of the highest three keys of the keyboard. Still, I almost put this in the "nonmusical" section.

Yoga Vidya is a German site proffering yoga and meditation programs. The audio page features songs by Yogi Hari with female accompaniment, and are divided between "Cosmic Chants" and "Shiva Chants".

Amelia Cuni sings Italian lyrics in classical Dhrupad (Northern) style, over early-Euro-Indian-fusion instrumentation. She has apparently tends to work with Western avant types like Paul Schütze and Terry Riley. The tracks here cut off after about 2 minutes.

Most of what is one the music page for the Sahaja Yoga Sardegna didn't grab my attention, but the first couple of tracks off the Musica & Mantras release proved enjoyable. Also, the music from the P.K. Salve Academy of Music and Fine Arts might appeal to fans of Godspell (it just made me sputter - especially the first song).

Vedamantram archives Veda Mantras. The first section is bascially lo-fidelity monotone recitations, although the two "chamakam" recordings turned out to be interesting. The "stotras" section features more straightforward traditional music, often as a sort of echo-reverbed qawwali with folk accompaniment.

Veena Sahasrabuddhe is a Khayal/Classical singer and musician, with lengthy recordings excerpted from a 2004 concert.

Bollywood for the Skeptical is a compilation of soundtracks from the 1950's-2000's. Kishore Kumar's "Ina Meena Dika" is quite amazing, and you can pick up Mohammed Rafi's well-known inclusion from Ghost World.

The entire Radha Krsna Temple album is available for download, which George Harrison produced at Apple in 1970 (he plays occasional harmonium and guitar).

MacMoutal's RagPage is a French site that has archived a long list of vintage Indian ragas and vocal pieces, some of which seems to be as old as turn-of-the-century.

A spoken/sung narrative to the folk diety Devnarayan (northwest India) is archived here in a couple of tracks. I like the second one better

African

La Musique des Amikpon supplies some recordings of West African (Porto Novo) Yoruban percussion and song.

A page of Tigrigna songs from the 70's contains lo-fi .aiff files.

The Ministry of Communication of Morocco offers a variety of short folk tunes, although the sound quality can be a bit shakey sometimes.

Konomo N°1 of DR Congo is a band playing "tradi-modern" music: traditional instruments and vocals with homemade amplification devices. There is an mp3 halfway down the page.

The choir Les Anges Compagnie have released "The Black Slavics: A-capella Songs of the Africans of Russia", which is a project conjuring "the imaginary meeting of the African and Slavonic culture but in Russia in the 17th century". The choir features musicians primarily from the Congo, and features Sylvie Nawasadio who was a founding member of Zap Mama. There are 3 samples which clock in at just under 2 minutes.

Farid el-Atrache was a film composer for Egyptian films, as well as a celebrity heartthrob. The page linked here is from an oud-enthusiast's site and presents live taqsim performances (from the 1960's?) which absolutely blow me away. This same site also has a separate page which showcases a new single taqsim download (from other artists) every few weeks.

A page featuring the music of Nubia includes a track by Mamoud Fadl, a couple of contemporary tunes, and a nice percussive piece from Luxor (Egypt).

The Al Mashriq site provides a couple of lengthy recordings by famed Egyptian singer Umm Kalthoum: "Raq el Habib" (performed 1941) and "Ouzkourini" (performed 1939).

Afriyié Lines presents a page of traditional African recordings and Afro-pop. My favorite is "Bremang Ashanti", a funeral chant with percussion from Ghana.

The Sounds of Salone is a collection of ceremonial and other trad. music from the northern province of Sierra Leone.

A site dedicated to djembes has downloads of drumming from Mali

Bagpipes

A Grileira is a Galacian cultural site from Argentina, with a few tracks (the last is a bittersweet accordion tune).

Midipiper's MP3's has converted some MIDI bagpipe tunes to MP3. What a fine idea.

Bagpipe competition recordings (from North America) have been archived on Right Quick March.

Alison Dunsire is a young professional-class bagpiper out of Washington state. Her page offers a few of her competition pieces.

Olle Gallmo plays numerous examples of the Swedish bagpipes.

A Contrabanda are a Galicische bagpipe and percussion outfit from Brussels.

Bagad

Bagad is traditional music from French Brittany, consisting of Scottish bagpipes, hornpipes and percussion. It's generally less regimental than British piping.


Bagad Bro Foën are a large troupe of young musicians from Fouesnant.

The audio page for Bagad Cap Caval offers some sets of live tracks, although often a bit clipped at the end.

Bagad Ker Vourdel is a group from Bordeaux that are alright -- this is more like precision pipe'n'drumming than other festive bagad recordings I've come across.

Bagad Keriz is a Paris-based bagad band with some longer pieces on their sound page (10 minutes or more) as well as shorter extractions. The recording quality is a bit limp, though, and might need a boost.

Bagad Saint Nazaire is a decent outfit. Downloads are on the rightside, and the mp3 icon at left links to a modern hybrid.

Soundtracks

.45 Caliber Samurai archives the soundtrack from director Seijun Suzuki's Yakuza masterpiece Tokyo Drifter. These 60's jazz pieces were extracted from the film itself, so they are not complete studio versions. Unfortunately, more and more tracks are disappearing over time.

A Mothra fan site includes a page of Mothra songs sung by the twin faerie characters in the films. Included are those by the Peanuts (Japanese pop duo) and something more recent.

Rated X: A Journey Through Porn is an independent documentary about the porn industry in California. The online soundtrack is decent: acoustic numbers and cafe-jazz. Don't mind the titles (at first glance, I thought this was stock music for video porn).

The Auckland Astronomical Society hosts a page of "The Coolest Space TV Themes", which used to have a much larger selection. Still, you can grab music from Battlestar Galactica and Cosmos.

Not sick of the Rocky Horror Picture Show yet? Well then here's a site with an endless archive of bootlegs, specific casts (particularly from Mexico), and other rarities that I'm sure are much coveted by people out there, somewhere.

Here is a collection of soundtrack selections from the works of master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu.

Simpsoncrazy presents musical selections from all the Simpsons episodes (16 and counting). The Simpsons Sing the Blues album was left off, so relax.

Radio

Space-Weather Sounds is Stephen McGreevy's site archiving recordings of the earth's natural radio emissions, recorded via ELF-VLF radio receiver. They are "the first radio signals people had ever heard beginning in the 1880's on telephone lines."

Pam's Radio Jingles is a site of categories of radio station ID jingles sold out of Pam's Advertising Agency in Dallas (1960's). There are many pages organizing these small files (less than 1 MB), but I'll link you to the "Sonosational" page (utilizing the Sonovox) to help you remake "The Who Sells Out" album.

Out of Berkeley, CA: Trip Receptacles - an "all-psychedelic, all-entheogen" radio show (KPFA) in the Negativland/Weathermen vein. The excerpts are collages of sound and music beneath lectures, commentaries, and listener call-ins regarding powerful psychedelics. Another show from the same producers (The Professor and Don Joyce of Negativland) is Spooked, a voice-disguised monologue uncovering CIA secrets.

The Muzak for Anoraks archives examples of "spy numbers" stations - unexplained shortwave transmissions of long strings of numbers and letters. Many of these were recorded in Egypt.

RadioLovers is an expansive archive of old-time radio shows. You can sift through dramas and serials, comedy, big band orchestras, etc.

The Glowing Dial is the online version of what used to be featured on Yesterday USA Radio in Texas. Here, you can find old time radio segments, music and serials.

Old Time Radio is a business selling CD's of old radio shows, but under the "OTR Categories" you can start hunting out the free downloads.

The Conet Project was a 4-CD set archiving shortwave numbers stations, to the delight of conspiracy enthusiasts everywhere. A page on the Irdial site offering access to the tracks didn't work, so the link above will take you to a directory. Here's information on the project

Shirley and Spinoza is an internet station from Oakland transmitting sound collages built from found music, nonmusic, and knob-twiddling from the host and their guests.

Jaweb presents a weekly array of old-time radio serial episodes, including The Avengers (South Africa), Sherlock Holmes, and Superman.

The Toe Stubber blog maintains a page of radio commercials for schlocksploitation movies. Other parts of this site are worth digging through as well.

Garage/Punk/Rock

Crypt Records has an amazing downloads page featuring such luminaries as The Oblivions, The Gories, Thee Headcoats, and The Lyres! Plus, lots of singles from the various Back From the Grave series!

The Bomp Records site has a collection of the mp3's offered throughout its catalogue. The Black Lips and DMZ are included. Unfortunately, this doesn't include anything from the Pebbles releases, but if you're a Brian Jonestown Massacre fan then you've hit paydirt.

Punk Rock in My Veins supplies tracks of classic punk bands from '76-'86 (Damned, Ramones, etc.)

Bad Afro is a decent little Danish garage-punk label.

I doubt that Estrus Records needs a formal introduction.

The Captain Beefheart site presents a couple of wild numbers performed during a 1980 Saturday Nite Live episode.

I cannot believe how many mp3's of bootlegs, live and studio tracks the Butthole Surfers have provided on their site! And this is early material.

Voodoo Rhythm is a label for trashy garage punk, rock-n-roll, rockabilly and such. I recommend The Monsters and Reverend Beat-Man.

Orange Recordings is a label out of Los Angeles boasting the likes of garagesters such as The Peelers, Cash Audio, The Shams, and The Porch Ghouls. They also handle some mellower indie-pop types, of which I can recommend Chris & Ted and The Cells.

Mr. Airplane Man are two women from Boston putting together some of the best crusty garage rock and pop since the Headcoatees (although the vocals can sound a bit on the sleepy side).

Flying Bomb Records aims for the Crypt sound, with a half-dozen tracks including the Scat Bag Boosters.

Detroit's burlesque trio The Demolition Dollrods have carried on as "the new Gories" for some time now. A couple of tracks are in the discography section.

The Crutch is a good place to start taste-testing various garage acts.

Big Neck Records presents tracks from The Baseball Furies, The Blacks and others.

I found Smart Guy Records off of Billy Childish's linkpage. They're a Bay Area label pushing some music in the similar vein, as well as some bands reminding me of 80's popcore.

Sexton Ming is a painter/poet/musician and long-time collaborator with Billy Childish. The tracks here are sort of a carcrash between Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits and Attila the Stockbroker. His Rim Records page features a few primitive rock pieces from Benjamin Prosser and the Avant Gardeners.

The Husbands are three West Coast ladies aiming for that Crypt Records sound.

Tijuana Hercules are a Chicago trio playing a crusty Captain Beefheart flavor of rockabilly/blues.

The Spits are a goofball punk act with costumes, obnoxious keyboards, and sound like the Ramones with a headcold.

Looks like the audio page for The Damned has whittled itself down to a small archive of Captain Sensible songs.

Miss Alex White is a singer/guitarist exerting herself from the Chicago garage scene.

Detroit's Ghetto Recorders boasts a studio full of vintage analog equipment and clientele from record labels such as Sympathy for the Record Industry, Flying Bomb and Blood Shot.

Lest We Forget was a 1991 compilation tape documenting Berkeley, California's punks scene from 1981-88 (there are two large downloads here, to represent each side of the cassette). The original recording quality is as bad as could possibly be, but charmingly so. This reminds me of a record that Crass published to compile the demo tapes sent to them over the years.

I remember the ISKON literature of Southern CA temples showcasing The Cromags (as well as Nina Hagen) in an attempt to win young punk kids over to vegetarianism. Among the downloads here is the entire 1986 "Age of Quarrel" album.

Longstanding Dutch squatter-punks The Ex have been expanding their sound into hybrids of improv-jazz, folk influences and guitar noise. "Kokend Asfalt" exhibits them at their best.

The Frothy Shakes are a noise-punk band out of Nashville that aren't quite as good as Pussy Galore, but neck-in-neck with the crusty production values.

A spanish site has compiled cover versions of I Wanna Be Your Dog, including Sonic Youth, The Swans, The Ramones, and Slayer's "I'm Gonna Be Your God". But I'm so sick of the song nowadays I just can't bring myself to test any of the unfimiliar versions.

Reptilian Records is a punk/metal label that doesn't interest me much, but you can grab tracks here from Hatebeak, The Upper Crust and The Means.

Mark Sultan/BBQ is a one-man-act guitar-stompin' his way through the 50's-60's, but more of a punk than a purist.

Montreal's Demon's Claws are a garage outfit with a bit of melodic monotony reminiscient of early Fall records.

Gruta '77 is a venue in Madrid with a large collection of mp3s of various punk and ska bands. Maybe there's more on the page than that, but I was primarily honing in on Cocknoose downloads.

Metal

StonerRock.com has a formidable mp3 jukebox of hair music, including some of the finest in the business (Electric Wizard, High on Fire, Sunn O)))). And, truckloads of washed-out ex-grunge bands. The mp3 console works best when using the "band name" search arrow.

Norway's Gorgoroth have been one of the most excellent black metal bands since the mid-nineties. Their "Releases" page offers a track or two from each of the albums albums.

The Blasphemic Cult Metal site showcases numerous pages with tracks from well-known black metal bands such as Mayhem, Abruptum, Burzum, Bathory and (my personal favorite) Arckanum. But if you occasionally see a note saying that tracks are "not of CD quality sound", you better believe it.

Isvind are another Norwegian black metal group drowning their melodies in noise and muddy production values, as a decent black metal band should.

Just about every death/black/gore metal band has thought of this at one time or another, but Caninus decided to press it: enlisting pitbulls as vocalists. As you might have guessed, it sounds no different than usual.

High on Fire has been lauded as the best of the stoner rock genre. I would argue that they are the best metal band touring, period.

Nokturnal Mortum are Ukranian black metal, with Slavic folk injections.

Nebula posts bootleg concert recordings, seemingly on a rotation. As I'm posting, there are 5 downloads from a 2001 show in LA.

Southern Lord leans toward slower heavier metal/doom products, including Sunn O))), Saint Vitus and Khanate.

Psych

VHF Records has much to offer from neo-psych-noise bands (Makoto, Pelt, Sunroof, as well as Flying Saucer Attack). Digging through this catalogue will render a plentitude of samples and full-length tracks as well.

Here's a site showcasing vintage South American psych/garage rock album covers, with a few tracks here and there.

Ufomammut is a stoner-metal act that took a hard left onto Nik Turner avenue.

I'm a bit shocked to find a quirky gem like the 1968 J.P. Sunshine album available for complete download. This is psychedelic folk/rock/blues with some raw studio productions (and a bit of compromise on the compression quality). You can also check out frontman Rod Goodway's 45 single from 1965 as Rod and the Pack, with a Lovin' Spoonful cover.

The Camera Obscura label of Melbourne hosts a great page of acid-folk, psych-pop and space rock. Although I've never seen a page claim that their "right-click" option is disabled. Funny...mine still works.

A site for the Argentian 1970's prog-psych band Rebelde posts a (zipped) mp3 of the week.

Here is a Russian artrock site that disappeared for a while and came back. You'll find an interesting index of prog and psych bands (from around the world) including Amon Duul II, Arthur Brown, Comus, The Groundhogs, King Crimson, and Spirit. Tracks do tend to cut off after a few minutes, though.

Avarus are a Finnish free-form psych/improv group with a couple of live tracks to download. This is on the Zerga label page, with a link up top to downloads from various other bands, but I haven't spent much time with those.

Finland's Kuupuu is the lo-fi psych solo-project of Jonna Karanka. Like Halloween soundtrack music for quaaludes. This site includes other side projects as well.

Hiroyuki Usui (aka L) has been involved in various projects with the Japanese psych scene, contributing his didjeridu. His site also includes an archive of his earlier bands (including Fushitsusha) and some current free/avant jazz work here.

Night Wings Records is a small Italian source for late-60's/early-70's acid obscurities, on the mellow SF side. The tracks aren't complete.

Last Visible Dog is a great Rhode Island label for psych, folk and drone musics, with particular emphasis on the New Zealand scene. Some overcompression spoils the occasional download, though.

Of the four mp3s at the Summersteps label, I can recommend the two cover songs.

Green Milk From the Planet Orange are a Tokyo outfit blending a frenetic post-rock with acid/stoner rock.

Vintage Rock

Prior to Rainbow and his subsequent launch to greater fame, Ronnie James Dio sang for a number of bands between the late 1950's until the early 70's (with Elf). Dio: The Early Years has archived songs from these bands -- lo-fidelity, but you aren't likely to hear these elsewhere. Check out Dio's trumpet with "Conquest" by Ronnie and the Redcaps.

The Rock and Rumble site presents a music lounge with a set of vintage rockabilly, surf, exotica, and other good stuff.

B.O.M.B. (Big One Man Band) is Bruce Humphries, playing solo rockabilly on drums and guitar. He's much more conventional than Hazel Adkins, but decent.

Billy Zoom had his own rockabilly band before becoming joining up with the X. His mp3 page has a few tracks from the mid-seventies.

The Woodies are a contemporary surf band, with a track called "The Swami" that is drenched in Eastern exotica (as a good surf song should be).

Till Dawn, dedicated to Marc Bolan and T. Rex, posts an interesting mp3 page with tracks from both as well as numerous covers from various musicians.

You can grab a single live track from The Wildweeds -- a bit of 1967 blue-eyed soul from Connecticut.

Macca's Secret Vault is a collection of unreleased and rare tracks from various points in Paul McCartney's career, particularly the early 1970's.

A site for The Saturn V presents a single track of classic frat rock.

Zombi has recreated the Goblin sound, with emphasis on the 1980's work (but not the cool groove-rock from Deep Red, unfortunately).

Five selections from the 1972 Drank the Conium album by Socrates is a fine serving of Grecian bluesy prog-rock, along the lines of the Pink Fairies and Wishbone Ash.

The bachelor pad music of Juan Garcia Esquivel was the real test record for stereophonic systems.

Carmen was a prog-rock act formed in the early 70's by David Clark Allen, who later pursued a career as a flamenco guitarist

German prog legends Faust have a long discography page with their releases, collaborations and compilations, so stroll on through and 1) click albums, 2) click the red "tracks" link, and 3) check to the left of titles for the blue megaphone symbol. I recommend going to the "So Far" album from 1972 first.

Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me" has been considered the quintessential bootleg of his recordings. This site has digitized one of the original triple-vinyl copies (not the subsequent CD release).

Original surf act The Tornadoes resurfaced after being selected for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. It's on the mellow side, not the preferred surf music from young horny Japanese bands.

Indie-Rock/Pop/etc.

Personally, I don't get into most of what Sub Pop has to offer, but their media page does provide ample material to dig through.

MP3it posts a generous number of tracks from known indie acts such as Black Heart Procession and Tortoise. It's heavy on the San Diego side. Most of these seem to be live tracks.

Chris Butler (formerly of the Waitresses) offers some songs recorded on antique equipment: wax cylinders, wire recorder, crystal mic. Reminds me of Eugene Chadbourne.

The massive Midheaven mailorder site is centered on indie pop, but these mp3 search pages will have occasional full-length tracks among the samples.

Ween fans can get their live tracks here.

Calexico's site presents some live tracks. Often it's indie-pop, but there are two songs ("Ojitos Traidores" and "Cascabel") in strenuous Mexican folkstyle.

Matador Records presents quite a load of their tracks from various genres (rock, pop, electro, rap).

A promotional website for Lisa Gerard (of Dead Can Dance) allows a couple of demo versions of tracks from her Mirror Pool album.

The Mod Pop Punk Archives holds a generous list of bands who were in on the mod-revival and early punk scenes. I was happy to find the Buzzcocks and Simply Saucer.

Will Carruthers (formerly of Spiritualized) posts a page of tracks. They bring me back to some of the early David J and Jazz Butcher Conspiracy releases.

The Sadies of Toronto are one of those insurgent-country-type bands that I normally don't pay much attention to, but they have 3 enjoyable tracks on their page.

Sand (the recent band, not the old Krautrockers) creates a moody fusion of electronic genres, jazz and rock. The sound page includes some 2-minute excerpts.

Corndogs.org is an archive of Mike Watt's music, and a number of his bands including The Minutemen and Firehose. Apparently endorsed by the man himself, who has been uploading some rarities. The site includes assorted tracks as well as full shows.

Alternative Tentacles certainly does have faith in promoting indie music with mp3's, and they have 21 pages of downloads to prove it. Included are the various Jello Biafra projects, The Ex, Noam Chomsky, Jad Fair, and Michael Gira.

Accordionist Alec K. Redfearn works through many bands to create a hybrid of jazz-improv, prog-rock and circus music reminiscient of Tom Waits.

Imputor? is a West coast electronica label attempting to gather DSP projects with more warmth and melody than found elsewhere. Most of the mp3's here are quirky laptop projects with varying degrees of pop appeal. Aspect of Physics has integrated electronics very tightly with its shoegazer music. Johnny Kawasaki is another point-of-interest, with his remixes of pop singles.

Iceland's Sigur Rós wafts between lush pop arrangements and lo-fi electronic textures, like stepping in and out of the northern cold.

A Russian site dedicated to Tom Waits archives 4 entire concerts (1996-2000) and a dozen unreleased tracks. This is bootleg audio quality.

Cuba Las Vegas vibrate between Nick Cave in a smokey lounge and Gallon Drunk.

Austin's Emperor Jones Records is a grab-bag of an indie/psych label, so I'll single out Thuja, Steven Smith, Alastair Galbraith, Rusted Shut, Hala Strana, and the very odd Pip Proud.

Catsup Plate Records is a former cassette-label that is home to some irregular strains of lo-fi and experimentalism.

Fonal Records is a Finnish label featuring a banquet of somber pop and folk, with a tendency towards precarious instrumentation struggling towards lushness. I especially recommend Kemialliset Ystävät, Es and Islaja. Mp3's are found in the "record shop" page, and some live recordings on the "radio Fonal" page.

Thalia Zedek is a singer whose credentials include Live Skull, Dangerous Birds, and Come.

Kill Rock Stars has been a rather prolific indie label since the early 90's, and their sounds page offers a hearty buffet. Much of this is strictly for the kids, but there are interesting bits such as The Gossip, Jad and David Fair, The Thrones and 00100.

Parallelism is a label centered on Air Traffic Controllers and a small cluster of other musicians performing rock-based improv or electronics.

Prewar Yardsale are a husband/wife team performing lo-fi ditties with a guitar and plastic buckets. This page is the general soundpage for Olive Juice Music, but I'm just endorsing this one band.

WM Recordings is a Dutch label creating mp3 compilations of new unusual music, as well as older recordings from the cassette-trading days.

The Curable Interns of Baton Rouge play instrumental guitar (either fairly straightforward blues picking or experimental'n'treated) with a bit of mystical conflation to back it up.

English multimedia artist Ergo Phizmiz has released his version of Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" online. Multitracking a wild variety of instruments on his own, the music resembles the early Residents, Ween and Alastair Galbraith.

Indiana's Secretly Canadian label compiles moody pop and acoustic artists, but it's not for me -- except for Antony and the Johnsons.

Cirrus Oxide centers upon guitarist Chuck Johnson, and showcases a post-rock instrumentalism, for want of a better description. I'm really just there for the Idyll Swords tracks, and the field recording of the Pushkar camel fair at the bottom of the page.

Hirvileuka are a Finnish trio performing folk-inspired improv instrumentals.

(K-RAA-K)³ is a Belgian label housing a few interesting guitar-pop/laptop musicians (Loobke, Toss, Köhn), but the best stuff is from the Finns shared by the Fonal label (Es, Kiila).

Demosaurus presents tracks from Frank Pahl and Ghedalia Tazartes, both with unusual approaches to acoustic multitracking.

There are many interesting things to be combed from the Puzzling Music Archive. This was originally a showcase for Deerhoof mp3's, but now features The Frothy Shakes and Sharon Cheslow at one noisy end of the spectrum, and the delicate folk of W_S Burn at the other. Also, The Cherry Blossoms and the amazing Peggy Snow. Downloads are available in 3 bitrate flavors, and generous helpings abound.

Gitary are a "traditional Ukranian punk" band, but sound like a hybrid of various things 1980's: Devo-esque electropop, English ska, Antz twang-guitar...

Soft Abuse is a label that seems to overlap with the Jeweled Antler label a bit. Similarly eclectic, but with more noise acts.

Reverend Vince Anderson is a Brooklyn organist playing his own take on gospel with Tom Wait's trachea.

Amsterdam's zZz are a duo featuring a drummer/vocalist -- seemingly a refugee from a Doors cover-band -- who has teamed up with a goofball keyboardist.

Silber Records are a label serving up a moody buffet of ambient electronics and bedroom pop. Aarktica I like, as well as the long chamber-pop piece from Twelve.

Greenpot Bluepot is the project of Natalie Rose LeBrecht joined by a host of others, performing some leftfield folk that ought to appeal to fans of the Faun Fables.

Almost Halloween Time is an Italian lo-fi pop label. I recommend Annelies Monseré

Cast Exotic is a Canadian label for exploratory guitar rock and noise.

AntiClock Records is a moody collection of artists producing electroacoustic drones with moments of conventional instrumentation and recitations.

NYC's Narnack Records is a bit tricky to pin down. Their multimedia page includes The Coachwhips, The Fall and Aa.

Artrocker delivers what you'd expect -- the experience of an interminable battle-of-the-bands at an art school. Mostly mediocre stuff, but I did enjoy The Magnetix, The Coachwhips, and Electronicat.

Swami Records is a trashy rock label out of San Diego. The downloads page seems to be all outtakes and demos, without too much promise, but I can endorse The Penetrators and Dan Sartain.

There's not all that much for me at Wee Rock Records, a punk/pop label out of Missouri, except for a couple of their mod-punk acts -- Thee Fine Lines and The Gentleman Callers.

Stones Throw Records sound page has a few leftfield hip-hop and funk tracks. I like Sound Directions (Madlib).

Tanakh are a drone-rock band from Richmond that might appeal to fans of The Dirty Three or Black Heart Procession.

The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band are a Colorado trio whose slide-guitar-n-washboard blues beat most of the blue-eyed sorts found on Fat Possum.

Damon and Naomi are a pop folk duo with a rather lush sound. Most of it is too sacharine for me, but I kinda like the Kazuki Tomokawa cover.

Aussie-American quartet Clogs play viola-driven chamber rock similar to The Rachels. Their website includes a subsite about avant-classical composer Padma Newsome

Brooklyn's Soft Abuse label propels an odd array of psych-pop and noise acts.

The Comorevi-ButtEr fLy project centers upon Tomoko Sawada, who transplanted herself from Tokyo to Chicago to create an off-kilter avant-pop.

Morc Records is an indie-pop label specializing in the lo-fi stuff. Iditarod and Annelies Monseré tracks are here.

I can't say that I've pulled out my Siouxsie and the Banshees cassettes much since 1990, but it's sorta nice to check out the Untied Undone site to reminisce over some crusty live recordings from the late 70's - early 80's. Recordings by The Creatures are included as well.

The Palimpsest Festival was a small UK event (held in a church) of new folk and softer indie rock. Tracks from Josephine Foster and Alasdair Roberts be found herein.

Apostasy Recordings specializes in lo-fi noise, but more pop than abstract. The occasional release on this page will render a download or two.

Gray Field Recordings is a one-woman project fusing abstract noises, mournful instrumentation and reverb-drenched recitations.

No Wave/Erratic Pop

Datblygu were a Welsh art-pop band who sang in their native tongue and employed primitive musicianship. This page features tracks of cassettes from 1982-1984 which alternately remind me of The Fall, Alastair Galbraith, and an inept teenage goth-pop band. These are home-recordings, so the tight mp3 compression is not entirely at fault for the sound quality.

The Sydney Post-Punk MP3 Collection, a page from the No Night Sweats site, presents tracks from a variety of bands from this scene from the late 70's until the mid-80's.

Mindflayer are the duo from Providence (including Mr. Brinkman) which are a noisy spasm of a drum kit, quirky electronics, and indecipherable distorted vocals. There's more than an album's worth of material here.

Mikrowelle is a German duo involved in a hybrid of neo-surf and goofball analogue electro.

San Francisco's Mono Pause are a set of young artists with an offshoot band Neung Phak, in which old Southeast Asian pop songs are run through the hipster mill. But they did include some of the genuine articles on their page (last two tracks).

Lightning Bolt are a sort of a 2-man Ruins from Rhode Island, but much more disheveled.

I'm begrudgingly including the Load Records soundpage, as I am a bit allergic to young whiteboys making screwy artnoise, with the exceptions of Mindflayer, Lightning Bolt and The Hospitals.

It pains me to put a link for Bulb Records here, given their penchant for college-freshman-style tomfoolery. I can endorse 25 Suaves though, maybe even Wolf Eyes. Skip the Quintron track - it's an unfortunate representation.

Mudboy is a soloist from the Providence no-wave scene, performing lo-fi and droning music on retrofitted keyboards. There are also a couple of recordings on a 1927 wurlitzer.

Neo/Acid/Wyrd Folk

The Bluesanct label is a source of some odd acoustic-folk, pastoral-psychedelic, etc.

Kulgrinda were participants in a Prussian "ritual folklore and neo-folk" gathering. This page provides three of their tracks of slow percussion and chanting. The rest of the bands on the page prove the event was a watershed for cheap Death in June knock-offs.

The Seidr Webzine hosts a collection of "dark folk" tracks, spanning Europe and Russia. You can find the likes of Fire&Ice, Current 93, etc. Many of these mp3's are zipped files. I had assumed the goods would be buried in an unendurable gothic muck, but the digging turned out to be more fruitful than expected.

English-style folkster Sharron Kraus provides several excerpts (60-90 seconds apiece) from a few of her albums.

The Iditarod were a duo from Rhode Island that rubbed elbows with various wyrdfolk musicians. Now they are in Black Forest Black Sea, playing some melancholic banjo'n'viola tunes (with touches of electronics and psychedelic guitar work).

My Christian finds tend to end up in the "Eccentric" section here, but the Oracles of God intrigued me, having the urgency and minor-keyed chords familiar to Death In June types (but far more vigor). They offer a huge archive of files in their mission to reproduce "whole Chapters of the Bible, word for word, enshrined in Song".

Fern Knight are duo from Rhode Island creating some sweet and gloomy acoustic folksongs.

Long Live Death are an acoustic troupe that tugs the psych-folk sound towards Simon and Garfunkle. Although I would prefer that they had a English/New Zealander vocalist...

Nick Castro plays some introverted and folksy strings while backed up with some electronics. "Jack of All Seasons" is a rather nice 60's styled psych track.

Despite some resemblences to Mazzy Star, I'm really digging Marissa Nadler's folk blend.

Secret Eye is a psych and psych-folk label generated by Black Forest/Black Sea. The items under the "available now" stack will link you to a page with an mp3 or two.

The Cherry Blossoms are a Nashville collective delving into various American country/folk styles. I guess the closest comparison I can make is the Manson Family (while Charlie steps out to use the restroom).

Whysp are a cheery prog-folk group out of California with some resemblances to the Incredible String Band.

Carrituck Co. of NY is the solo project of Kevin Barker, a acoustic folk project with psych touches.

Perun is a small Warsaw label with a bit of gloomy folk to offer, including Stone Breath.

Hush Arbors is Keith Wood, publishing CDR's of shamanistic psych-folk from Missouri. The four tracks from the self-titled released are glitchy, but these particular songs sink into a malaise, so no loss. I much prefer the 17-minute "Spell Against Demons".

Harris Newman is a solo guitarist from Montreal performing a dandy Western-raga style, primarily on the steel guitar.

Askr are a San Francisco trio weaving together various folk strains (and the occasional mild freak-out) with a wide variety of instruments, often accompanied by some nice electric organ.

Songwriter B'eirth's In Gowan Ring has gracefully shifted from the World Serpent scenario toward the latest generation of neo-folksters. At the bottom of this mailorder page is a downloadable compendium album of works from 1994-2002.

From Quagmire generate some mellow, whispery avant-folk spiced with some drones and low-level noise improv.

The Singleman Affair is a bit of spacey acoustic folk in the style of Skip Spence.

Larkin Grimm is a multi-instrumentalist and singer, straining her American folk influences through classic acid-folk.

Spires That In the Sunset Rise are a group of women doing their part for the psych-folk scene.

Christian Kiefer plays a singer-songwritery folk occasionally stewed in electronic ambience. Click the (broken) thumb for the 2006 "Black Dove" album with Sharron Kraus.

Medieval/Renaissance Revivalist

I'm always a sucker for this genre. It has something to do with either hearing the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack as a kid, or making out with goth ladies to the tune of Dead Can Dance as a youth.

Rondellus has released an album of Black Sabbath covers played on Medieval instruments and sung in Latin. There are 12 mp3 track-samples (1 minute or so apiece). Full-length tracks of their more authentic trad. selections can be found here
Estampie is a primarily Medieval-styled ensemble from Germany, with downloads in the discography section.

Camerata California is a choral and instrumental group playing early music (medieval to Baroque). From this page you can link to four other pages of recorded performances.

The Soil Bleeds Black are a gothic-medieval trio with some World Serpent affiliations. The tracks here cut off after 60-90 seconds.

Capella Monacensis is a group from Munich preserving Medieval and Renaissance songs.

Falsobordone are a Swedish duo specializing in mediterranean music from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Jon Sayles (not the filmmaker) is creating a sizeable index of 14th-17th Century classical guitar downloads, as a campaign to promote Early and Renaissance music from various parts of Europe.

Sedayne is an Englishman playing a host of medieval instruments, with a little electronics creeping into the works.

Traditional/Vintage European

Biermösl Blosn is a German troupe performing songs and barber-shop quartet pieces of "bayerische folklore und dialekt".

Pilleknaekeren play some folk music that I can't locate, so I'll just say "pan-European".

Encontros da Eira are a band out of Madeira Island off Portugal, reworking the traditional bals and working songs.

Another Portuguese site, Associação Gaita de Foles, presents a mixed selection of folk music examples (bagpipes, choral, percussive, etc).

Kontraburger from Poland a "fantasy folk" group sometimes delving into mildly psychedelic indie-pop/rock territory.

The European Folklore Institute CD page includes a nice track from the Hungarian Folkmusic School (Budapest), as part of the "From Generation to Generation" release.

The Gadki Polish Folk Music site is rife with broken mp3 links and clips, so here are direct links to The Warsaw Village Band and Ensemble Polonais.

Lost Trails seems to be some sort of anthropological site, but its music page features folk bands from Greece and Romania. The 2 long tracks on the "Music of the Night and Sea" page are quite nice.

Tanczene: Instrumental Music from Hungary in the Cold War Era is an album documenting popular dance music in Hungary from the 1950's-60's, provided here in its entirety.

Dobranotch are a French band mixing traditional Celtic and Eastern European styles.

Gothart are a Czech group playing traditional tunes. The "rakija'n'roll" section is not for me.

The At-Tambur site presents an index of traditional Portuguese music.

Here's a collection of childrens' songs in Czech.

Der Grindchor are a German noseflute band (backed up by other instruments).

Celtic/English

>From Germany:

Ben-Bulben (Irish trad.)
Blackbush (Celtic rebel songs)
Fish & Jigs (more Irish)


The Scotland Music site delivers a set of some decent Scotch songs'n'dances.

Fiannan is a Czech band playing some rowdy Celtic music.

Poitín is another Czech band playing Celtic and Breton songs. Beware of broken mp3 links.

Matthew Szostak of Maine demonstrates the hurdy-gurdies that he constructs with some traditional tunes (from somewhere in this region).

Cantaria is a library of bardic folk songs from Ireland, Scotland and England. Most have been written after 1600. Some pages in this index hold complete recordings (although small files), others just offer a verse and a chorus.

The Wolfe Tones were part of the traditional Irish revival movement from the 1960's onward.

The Tholtan Builders are a group from the Isle of Man with a track on their site that I really enjoy: "Flitter Dance" (jumpy tune with some neat stereophonic harmonica).

Cormac is an Italian band playing Irish jigs and reels with some urgency.

Iona Abbey is a Scottish ensemble from Seattle combining bagpipes with cello and other instruments.

Bob Fox is an English folksinger and guitarist, and here you can grab tracks from some of his recent albums.

Tin Whistle Tunes is a forum for Irish/Celtic tinwhistle music where folks can post their own recordings.

Óverön are a Spanish/Celtic folk hybrid from Seville.

Hockett was the tavern band from The Wicker Man, and a very lo-fi analog segment of their "Gently Johnny" is featured on fiddler Ian Cutler's website. It's not much, but it's catchy and has Christopher Lee's voiceover. The download link is the little violinist graphic.

Comas are a group of musicians from throughout Europe performing trad-Irish, with some external influences and a modern folk varnish.

French Folk

Babord Amures is a French band performing sea shanties.

Deskomp is a sextet playing traditional Breton dance music.

Divarrek is a fest-noz band that also plays traditional Breton music, but with a more Celtic flavor.

Strand Hugg is a quartet performing sea shanties from Normandy and Brittany.

Le Syndrome de L'Ardeche mixes various traditional regional styles, which accounts for the bagpipe and the tuba.

Marmotte is a traditional French outfit from Germany, with Celtic flavorings.

Mastei are an Italian band performing tradition Basque and Breton music.

Réménilhe of Toulouse plays traditional Occitan music.

Yann-Fanch Perroches is a diatonic accordionist leading other musicians through some traditional Breton tunes.

Anapurna Productions is a French label presenting some semi-traditional groups (I prefer Duo du Pavé, which is more on the arty side - to invoke the Caro & Jeunet imagery), as well as Doudou Cissoko, a Senegalese kora player and singer.

Italian Folk

Ziringaglia mixes Southern Italian and Rom folk music, with lots of klezmer energy. Downloads are available on their 1998 release at the bottom of the discografia section.

Musicanta is a quartet out of Quebec mixing Italian and Quebec folk, accompanied by foot-stamping.

Tenores di Bitti quartet is another Sardinian chorus, with a little more gruffness.

Lhi Sonaires is an band performing traditional Occitan music.

Corepolis is a group promoting the Neopolitan and Mediterranean traditions. "Donna Sabella" is an impressive solo vocal piece from the 1600's.

Gruppo Ortobene are a Sardinian folkloric choral group, resembling Byzantine choral music a bit. The tracks here are incomplete.

Scandanavian Folk

Haugaard and Høirup are a Danish guitar'n'fiddle duo play traditional instrumentals with a contemporary flair.

Folldal Spellmannslag is a Norwegian massed-fiddle group.

Trispann is a Norwegian trio playing primarily Norwegian folk tunes, with a bit of modern influence. The mp3's are at the bottom right corner.

Ande Somby performs the yoiks (chants) of the Samis, the indigenous culture of Finland. These sound like a cross between Native American and Japanese Buddhist chanting. His site includes another page of recording of yoik performed by his parents.

Erika and Cecilia are performing traditional tunes on fiddle and nyckelharpa.

Irmelin is a female vocal trio, with some fine mp3's in the "Ljud" section.

Malström is an instrumental trio playing 18th and 19th-century folk tunes.

Två Fisk och en Fläsk are a feverishly dramatic folk-rock band with Medieval, Celtic and other European influences.

Anna and Ingrid are Swedes living in Seattle who perform melacholic folk tunes on various folk instruments, occasionally singing.

Nonmusical (more or less)

The Earthear Online Sound Center provides excerpts from sound recordists who mostly publish field recordings, with varying degrees of technical intervention. The recordings are excerpts, but worthwhile.

The Phonography Archive of Randiantslab.com allows field-recordists to upload their findings. Most are in mp3 format. The Radiant Muziek section of the site indexes some projects where artists collaborate by remixing a particular sound (such as a broken SCSI drive, or the breaking of a ceramic pig).


Many ghost-hunter and supernatural enthusiast sites provide recordings of "Electronic Voice Phenomenon" (EVP) - voices of the dead purportedly recorded on audio recorders and video cams (sometimes inadvertently).

Raymond Cass Archives (lengthier, raw recordings)
Paranormal Researchers Looking For the Truth
The Glowing Dial: Sightings
Spellfyre's Ghosts
Voices on the Wind (.wav only)
Washington State Ghost Society
Alabama Foundation for Paranormal Research


The Light News site offers a CD of "space sounds", allegedly recorded by the Voyager Spacecraft. I've heard other releases of the sounds of space - which usually sound like Sun Ra - but these are electroacoustical drones. The files are only clips, though.

Paul Dickinson is an artist/sound-designer friend of mine that has been working with minute recordings and room-tones. His page offers files concerning life-forms: Dermestid flesh-eating beetles, hermit crabs, ants, and a yellow-bellied sapsucker.

The Christopher Recordings on Sex Instruction were intended to assist God-fearing parents in the delicate task of relating the birds and bees to their brood. Produced in the late 1940's, these include great little flashes of a bygone age, like a reference to the eldest son blasting his Cab Calloway records in his room.

The Quiet American is Aaron Ximm's project of composing from field recordings taken during his travels (mostly in Asia) and his hometown of San Francisco. The "One-Minute Vacations" page featuring various contributors.

Dallas Simpson has a homepage featuring his binaural surround-sound recording demonstrations, recorded from an ecological standpoint.

I'm due to schedule a dental appointment, but after hearing this German site of sounds of oral surgery I hesitate.

Here's a set of old dilapidated recording of Aleister Crowley intoning in both English and Enochian. There are a couple more excerpts here as well.

Here are some excerpts from speeches by celebrity-celebrated guru L. Ron Hubbard.

Virtual Bird is a Finnish archive of short clips of birdcalls from the Arctic regions.

Soundscape FM is a rallying point for field-recordists around the world, where databases are compiled for festivals and radio transmissions.

An Internet Archive page features a copy of the final speech by Jim Jones for the Peoples Temple Compound as the passing of the punch began. This is the sound of a broken man here, without the hellfire hysterics found on other recordings (such as a recording featured on this WFMU page).

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) has a few clips of Sasquatch moans and other assorted sounds.