While Free Albums Galore primarily focuses on independent and relatively unknown artists, occasionally a heavy hitter comes out with something that makes you go “WOW!”. Such is the case with this free Pumpkin-approved online album that supposedly been around since the year 2000. This is the first time I’ve seen it and being a Smashing Pumpkins fan from way back I definitely had to tell you about it.

The story goes that Machina II / The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music was to be a sequel to The Smashing Pumpkins’ last commercially released album Machina / The Machines of God. However Machina was so poorly received that Virgin Records refused to release the sequel. As a slap to the label, the band issued a 25 copy vinyl printing to friends and allowed the lucky recipients to distribute mp3 copies free to its fans over various fan sites. You can get more detailed info from this FAQ. The recording is actually a set of albums; one full album of original material and 3 EPs of remixes, none having been previously available. This is all top-notch music with most of it harder and more experimental than their usual material. With all the talk about a reunion and a possible new album, this is a great time to download and listen to the Smashing Pumpkin’s last hurrah.

The album is available through several sites. I directed the main download link to a Billy Corgan fan site since its files are in 320kbps MP3 and each EP and the LP are zipped separately making for better organization. you can also get the whole set from the Internet Archive in separate tracks and full album zip of 192kbps MP3s. The Internet Archive page also has files in MP3s of VBR (around 192kbps) and 64kbps plus Ogg Vorbis format.

Update:The original site I linked to no longer has the MP3s for this album. However I changed the link to another site which is hosting them.

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