Dear musicians, music activists, bloggers, melomans and listeners!
The year 2011 will be over soon and 2012 will be starting thereafter. It was a prolific year, for musicians, for labels and for writers. I guess I will not be wrong just saying that there are not being around such a year with so many issues and truly qualitative music. While I have listened to enormous quantity of releases, however, a countless more time of albums was not to be listened to and waiting to be shed light upon in 2012, 2013, and so on.
However, I am going to point out some artists who did have huge impact by their impressive aesthetics on me. Mirabilia, Clinker, Nick Rivera, Woodworkings, The Hirundu, Possimiste, slept., Lee Noble, Brian Eno (on Warp), Ermine Coat, EDASI, Saito Koji, Bing Satellites, 2muchachos, Derek Clegg, Wonder Wheel, ~▲†▲~, Wreck And Reference, plusplus, Sejdman, The Womb, The Wreck Up, The Bilinda Butchers, Nick Rivera, fydhws, bryyn (previously Pinkle), VIYA, Gutta Percha, Super Random Knowledge Porridge, Valery & The Greedies, Cold Womb Descent, Bear Mountain, The Hatsune Mikus, Bob Ostertag, Starfire Connective Sound, Doug Sharp, Speculativism.
Unfortunately there were some unpleasant moments and tendencies as well. While lots of new websites and blogs appeared on the free music blogosphere, Free Music Galore, Peter`s Blog, and Netlabels Revue - very eminent blogs - decided to end up their activity. Another aspect is closely related to the possible pressure on free issued music and culture. As you know it is no surprise that some instances are intended to smother this movement. Let`s recall Bradford Cox case at the end of 2010 and this year they tried their "fortune" at Recent Music Heroes. I was really surprised how arbitrarily and absurdly these processes used to happen (for instance, blaming someone without the author`s approval who otherwise used to share this content legally at Bandcamp). Of course, don`t forget the SOPA case being relevant to it running on at the moment. I hope the common sense of the US representatives will win ultimately.
In a nutshell, we need even more blogs and websites to cover all the amount of free music as a kind of the expression of free people`s free will. God bless you. A Happy New Year in 2012.
