free album releases...

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

To Per, Peter/Hoby (and all the others who did free/donationware releases 
in
the recent past):

First of all, thanks to you all for pointing me in that direction. As a
hobby musician who usually is able to cover running costs when making music
(but not investment), but certainly neither can nor has to rely to
"art-generated income" like album sales, selecting a proper distribution
method is a somewhat difficult task.

Print CDs - then how distribute them? How to get them to the people who
simply want to enjoy free downloads (if that is your concern?). Or offer
them for download from your website - then who's going to pay for the
bandwidth? Or sell them for download - an idea I don't like at all, simply
because this is a tad bit too virtual to me to spend money on...


So both of the distribution methods you found look equally convincing - in
Per's case (if I got this right) a site where you can simply offer your
stuff for free download - in the Peter/Hoby case, a "virtual record laber"
which offers the albums for download under creative commons license...I
assume I'll do something like this myself, then perhaps have a few hardware
copies of the album to sell at gigs etc.


But on to the music...

Peter, what I think is most interesting about your work that while you list
quite a lot of loopers in your post, it doesn't sound that aggresively
looping to me. What I'd like to say with that: if somebody chooses to use
all of the Repeater, EDP, Jamman, Vortex etc., I would expect it to be some
looping word which makes great use of the different capabilities of the
loopers used, as well as creating some music which is very openly 
"looping".
Instead, I'd judge the result as something which could also be recorded in 
a
"normal" way.

Per, again it's interesting to hear your steady progress in evolving your
sound. For my taste, way too few flute sounds in these recordings (and if I
may say that, too many tenor sax sounds - I don't know whether this is an
"ethnic" thing, but your sax playing always sounds like Jan Garbarek). 

My main critizism would be that at times, it sounds a little bit like
"showing off your new toy" - perhaps really caused by the fact that your
setup changes at such a fast rate?

All the best,

        Rainer