Inside Nokia Music

Somewhere in between Glastonbury and the work I’ve had to catch up as a result of being away for it, The Smashing Pumpkins sneaked this beauty in below my radar and as a result, I feel a little violated for missing out on a few extra days of absolute bliss!

If you haven’t heard Freak yet, the first track from Vol.2 of the one-track-at-a-time mega 11 EP 44 song project Teargarden By Kaleidyscope then do yourself a favour and stop reading this, do not pass go, do not collect $200 and listen to it immediately!

Freak is classic Pumpkins with murky overdrives, Zwan-like optimism and Na-Na-Na-Na sing-alongs. Having thrown countless hard earned reddies at The Smashing Pumpkins for half my life now, I’m completely stunned that tunes of this quality are up for grabs free for the anticipated 5 year duration of this project (if it’s seen through to the end).

It’s worth pointing out that 19-20 year old drummer Mike Byrne is beginning to show signs that he may well be capable of filling the horrific void of Jimmy Chamberlin’s departure and that The Smashing Pumpkins 3.0 are about to hit their stride.

The Smashing Pumpkins are available to download from the Nokia/Ovi Music Store and if you’ve got Comes With Music download the lot for free!

The last track for the first of 11 EP’s from forthcoming epic project Teargarden By Kaleidyscope has dropped and finally brings something heavier in the form of Astral Planes.

More akin to the sound of the Pumpkins in their hay-day, it’s a welcomed addition to the catalogue and will hopefully redeem Billy Corgan in the eyes of his detractors… The poor dude just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper with some poorly made decisions like performing live at an Urban Outfitters on Record Store Day… Silly Billy!… oh well, never mind.

Here it is, I’d place the sound somewhere between Siamese Dream and Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Astral Planes by The Smashing Pumpkins

Hey Rihanna fans, there’s an “Incoming Message On Your Nokia!”

Anyone remember the cute way Rihanna pronounces Nokia? Now you can get the free Rihanna theme for your compatible Nokia Smartphone, and Ri-Ri will tell you whenever you have an incoming call or message.

Don’t forget, you can still watch all the videos from the Rated R album launch party in glorious High Definition at Nokia’s Now Playing: Rihanna website.

Tweet this post and leave a comment with your twitter username and We’ll give one lucky winner 20 tracks from the Nokia Music Store (Nokia Ovi Player) to download the Nokia exclusive version of Rated R with 2 bonus tracks!

Important Things To Note

• Competition is only open to Australia and the United Kindgdom as we’ve only got pin codes for these Countries at present (sorry, we promise to get these codes for all the Nokia Music supported countries for future prize draws).
• You’ll need to download the Nokia Ovi Player and register to redeem tracks.
• Nokia Music is currently only PC compatible, here are the system requirements

Application requirements:

* Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP (32-bit) with SP2 (Mac, Linux and Windows versions before XP with SP2 not supported)
* Processor: 1.5 GHz (recommended: 2.5 GHz, or 1.5 GHz dual core)
* Memory: 512 MB (recommended: 2 GB)
* Free disk space: 500 MB (recommended: 40 GB)
* Graphics: 32 MB integrated (recommended: 128 MB dedicated)
* Screen resolution: 1024×768 pixels
* Audio: Sound card and required drivers, connected speakers or headphones
* Internet: connection for buying and streaming music (recommended: broadband connection)
* Additional recommended hardware: CD-RW drive for burning CDs

This guy is on fire – get to know. This New York based, New Orleans born MC is taking hip hop into the new decade with absolute flavour and new school flows (with a knowing nod to the old school). Now before you new school fools let that word put you off before even checking him out, then let me point out that this MC’s style contains all the best bits of Nas, Kanye and MF Doom all rolled into one headstrong, poetic delivery. Possibly the most talented MC to emerge over the last couple of years.  There… I said it. I could go on descibing whats great about this guy but I’ll let you figure it out by yourselves.

Click on the image above to get redirected to the free download link of his current mixtape – Victory. DJ Furious Styles and DJ Dub have put together this 26 track collection of  recorded tunes, live excerpts and exclusives that have been floating around on the blog scene for a while.  The beats, like Jay’s rhymes, are thick with head nod swagger - some of the best beats I’ve heard for a long time, in fact.

Damn, hip hop ain’t dead. It was certainly suffering but 2010 is sounding mighty healthy right now.

Anyone who heard the return of Raekwon on his Only Built for Cuban Links II sequel album will know that the WU are back and heavier than ever. To follow the original 1995 album (thats right, ‘95!) with something as dope is a rare and impressive feat indeed. A testimony to the Rae and crew’s talent and passion for the art.

So with that album still pretty much on weekly repeat, there’s some new WU to get your ears accustomed to.

First up is the new J-Love and Ghostface mixtape – Hidden Darts Pt 5 which can be found on the Nokia Store right now. Copy and paste this catelogue number into the Title search box to get taken straight to it: OD2DI6952366

I was going to spread this out over a few Blogs but I thought I’d better let you know about this free mixtape before the links die…

Avenging Eagles presented by DJ Mathematics features Meth, Ghost and Rae on absolute fire once again. I’ve been listening to it all week and I can honestly say that Meth has never sounded so good! This is a pre-release taster to the much hyped WU Massacre album from the 3 MC’s set for release on March 30th on Def Jam.

I personally, cannot wait that long!

Download the Avenging Eagles mixtape here or here.

F’ Whut!

You can download loads of Wu-Tang, Ghostface, Raekwon and all the other clan members stuff from Nokia Music Store - if you’ve got  ‘Comes With Music’, you can get it all completely free!

A Stitch In Time by The Smashing Pumpkins

The next instalment from the epic forthcoming Teargarden By Kaleidyscope has landed sooner than expected with the release of A Stitch In Time - hopefully this is a sign that the project may begin to progress a little quicker.

It seems that on my previous post I may have been mistaken about something. Clues are beginning to show and suggest the “album” will be 11 x 4 track EP’s and not 4 x 11 track EP’s as I originally thought (yes, I know that doesn’t constitute an EP). But there are still a few things that suggest I was right in the first place.

A Quote from Billy’s Blog

“The story of the album is based on ‘The Fool’s Journey’, as signified in the progress of the Tarot. It is my intention to approach this by breaking down the journey of our life here into four phases as made by these different characters; the Child, the Fool, the Skeptic, and the Mystic.”

I think I’m sticking to my guns on 4 “EP’s”!

Can’t say I think much of the track just yet, but I usually have to chew food and allow it to tantalise both the sweet and the sour sides before I can say anything with wholehearted honesty.

All 3 tracks so far have been pretty tame, but the smart money’s on the “fool” and the “sceptic” chapters bringing the thunder!!!

I’ll be posting on the entire progression of this project.

Smashing Pumpkins albums are available to download from The Nokia Music Store - if you’ve got ‘Comes With Music’ get them for free!

Having skipped a beat with my finger off the pulse (a rather poor reference to the single The Beat That My Heart Skipped), I missed the opportunity to blog about this when it was still news… and then just sorta left it for fear of being last to the post, but the tune’s been invading my every waking moment, quite literally! For about a week so far without fail I’ve been singing/speaking the chorus before I can even focus my eyes beyond the foot of the bed, and the experience has been rather uplifting and motivational.

So here it is, Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip’s first single Get Better from their forthcoming second album The Logic Of Chance, officially the first release of 2010 that I’m truly excited about.

Here’s a soundcloud with a few remixes compliments of the boys from their blog

… and since I’m on the subject, and at the slightest chance that someone reading this may never have seen it, here’s the brilliantly amusing fake X Factor audition they did… totally worth the endless hours of queuing the must have endured to pull this off, probably what helped them keep a straight face during the audition… Love Dan’s puppy-dog eye’s @1:18

Get Better is released 1st March 2010 followed by the album The Logic Of Chance on 14th March 2010. The debut album Angles (Not Angels) is available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

Get better, get better get better get better…

What a wonderful surprise to start Monday with the second track from The Smashing Pumpkins in-the-works album Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. It would seem the new song Widow Wake My Mind was not announced by the band when it became available, but instead only came to light due to the cunning investigative skills of a fan on an unofficial Smashing Pumpkins forum… good job there my friend, keep up the good work!

As I reported earlier, all 44 anticipated tracks from the album will be free to download as they become available, and as each of the 4 EP’s that make up Teargarden By Kaleidyscope is complete, they’ll get a commercial release too. Thankfully, as it would seem that part of this strategy is poor quality audio files.

The entire Smashing Pumpkins back-catalogue is available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

So the first track of The Smashing Pumpkins‘ 44 track 4 part album Teargarden By Kaliedyscope has finally surfaced about a month after first anticipated in the form of A Song For A Son, freely available to download from the bands website or the above widget.

As with A Song For A Son, all the songs from Teargarden By Kaliedyscope will be freely available to download as each new song becomes available. As each of the 4 parts of the album is complete they’ll be released commercially… Why bother with a commercial release if the album is free to download?… We’ll let’s be frank, the bit rate of this download is pretty shocking!

A comprehensive back-catalogue of The Smashing Pumpkins is available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

Read my first Teargarden By Kaliedyscope report here

The folk running Nokia Music Store are a generous sort, and they’re giving away free Christmas music (for technical reasons, this link works in Internet Explorer only). No word yet how long it’ll be around for, but you can grab classic tracks from the likes of The Raveonettes, Frank Sinatra, Twisted Sister and the omnipresent Bing Crosby, and a whole lot more. You’ll need to download and install Nokia Ovi Player (get it here), as well as create a Nokia Music account (but you’ve got one of those already, right?) to get your hands on it, but trust me – it’ll be worth it.