(11.05.07) The past few months have been a watershed for the music industry. Supply has greatly
outpaced demand for quality music, as established artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails,
and others have released records for (mostly) free and sounding what may be the death knell
for traditional music distribution. The rise of netlabels has played no small part in
this development. Incredible artists who previously had no channels within which to
present their music to a receptive world are exploding all over the Internet, from well-known
electronic gurus to just-founded bedroom producers.
Sutemos, a netlabel and e-zine from Lithuania, has taken it upon themselves to drive the
nail deeper into the coffin of CDs with their most recent free release Intelligent Toys 4.
Spanning a whopping 2 hours and 24 minutes across 28 tracks, this release features new music from electronic stalwarts such as Esem, Machine Drum, Lackluster, and Vladislav Delay as well as a bevvy of previously unknown artists. The result is a chilled-out flow of music from start to finish that amazingly never grows old.
The songs across this release are primarily atmospheric, tending to understate rather than overload the listener. Mild beats and classic IDM glitches take a back seat to the drones
inspired by Pole and Monolake.
This is one of the finest IDM releases I’ve heard this year, and certainly one of the finest
free collections of music one can find on the internet. It won’t be long until the majority
of quality music is released this way, and from the sounds of Intelligent Toys 4, music
consumers have little to worry about in terms of quality free music.
Intelligent Toys 4 is out now on Sutemos.
