A Beautiful Machine is usually classified as post-rock or space rock. Nonetheless, whenever I hear this other worldly music I think of Buddhist chants. There’s something almost spiritual about these soundscapes; music for a monastery on the edge of the universe.

There are four free and legal albums from A Beautiful Machine. Each is a journey into the cosmos. s/t is their first album. It is a meditative dream until the last two tracks when “Glow” erupts into a sonic explosion and “Coming Up Again” end in mid-tempo optimism. Solar Wind, White Noise, Antigravity is truer to the post-rock vision with more beats, clearer vocals, and reverberating guitars. Solar Variants is a collection of remixes. Their 2007 release is Home. By both titles and sound, this is the most conceptual of the albums. The music is harder and more rock oriented. It is also the most realized of the four and the one I would recommend the most. There’s a fine balance between the rock aspect and the almost spiritual sensation I mentioned earlier. The title track is a good example of this; 8 minutes of dark but beautiful tension between instruments and vocals. The other tracks are of the same good quality.

The albums are available from the Internet Archives in either MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format.

Download
Home
Solar Winds, White Noise, Antigravity
s/t
Solar Variants