The veil between the living and dead is growing thin, and I… uh, have some free music for you. Sorry, it turns out I don’t have a clever lead for this story, and my segue makes no sense. So let’s get to it!

Friend of the Site Liz McLean Knight aka Liz Revision aka Quantazelle of subVariant has put together a special, exclusive mix for CDM of 117-119 bpm musical goodness, excavated from the “_blippy” folder of sketches on her USB drive. Matt Moldover, who has been working on his CD-as-electronic-instrument album, lent his laptop. (Watch him assembling CDs in the video after the break.)

It’s all in celebration of a Halloweeen party Saturday night in Chicago, headlined by Josh Davis (BitShifter). Party ringleader Liz joins Josh on behalf of subVariant to represent the IDM-glitch-minimal-tech-house side of things, and Mr. Automatic (Front 312) and Onefiftyone (Chicago Workshop) will be joining in. If you’re in Chicago, this looks like the place to spend your Saturday. If, like me, you’re not, well, we have some music and videos for you to bring the party home.

Chicagoans:
Going.com Chicago event link + discount
Presale tickets on FractalSpin

And yes, while Josh is working on Game Boys in 8-bit, our CDM mix is fully 16-bit, baby! I’m telling you, 16-bit is totally the future.

Play this track:

Download MP3

Now, for a bit of Josh tearing it up in glorious 8 bits:

To kick off your weekend listening with a full album of delicious IDM, our friend Quantazelle / Liz McLean Knight offers up a compilation from her label subVariant. While big-name artists have gotten lots of publicity for doing free or pay-what-you-will albums, oddly a smaller group of them have chosen a Creative Commons license. subVariant does do that with a noncommercial / no derivative license – a bit restrictive, in that it doesn’t allow remixes, but perhaps a decent start.

And licensing aside, this is a lovely, clever compilation of tracks.

Interestingly, the physical object did sell out on eBay. When it comes to enthusiastic fans, it seems digital isn’t reducing the value of tangible objects – it may be doing just the opposite. (Adding still more irony, the tongue-and-cheek name for the album was “Coaster,” just what CDs have supposedly become.)

My label’s latest glitchy techno / IDM compilation is now a free digital download: SubvaritraxTM [Liz Revision Blog]

Product page / download links on fractalspin (warning: autoplays)

I quite like this album, released in the heady days of 2005 – there are some lovely, delicate tracks on there. The price is right, though, so grab it (registration required) and let us know what you think. If you torrent it, which you can under the CC license, feel free to post a link.

Description: