I’m really excited about WMFU’s free music archive which will open in November. Anyone who has listened to the radio station or perused its blog has a good idea about how much great music must be hiding in their vaults. The new Selected Sounds From The Free Music Archives may be just a teaser to what we can expect. Since it is volume one, we might get a few more of these which is fine with me.

Volume one will more than do for now. The offerings are split between cuts from indie produced albums and tracks from live studio performances. The 21 tracks range from punk to experimental rock to world music. In other words, the album is as far-out as the radio station. Most of the artists are obscure so I hope the archive will provide more info on these musicians. It’s hard to pick favorites but Fursaxa’s eerie “Song of the Spindle Berry” sent shivers down my spine which continued with Nautical Almanac’s bizarre take on the children song “Rolling in The Green”. Of the live studio takes, I especially liked New Bomb Turks, Kinski and Citay’s somewhat Celtic “On The Wings”. Of the others, Lucky Dragon does a good job mixing cute with bizarre while Food For Animals w/ Faust provides the only hip-hop track of the anthology. This album will certainly hold you over until the full archive is unveiled in November. Thanks WFMU!

The album is available in separate tracks or a full album zip in varying MP3 bitrates.

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