What Are Your Favorite Free Albums?

[downbyariver]

There are some garage bands out there which might never gain wide distribution, up and coming bands or unsigned bands that want to be heard so they can get picked up by a label or get bigger audiences at their shows, old local acts that have basically folded and want to be remembered, and even occasionally well known bands giving back or experimenting, who offer free albums, or pay what you want pricing that includes the option of paying nothing for an album, on the Internet, as downloads. I think in the case of the garage bands, they'd rather have a few hundred people download and listen to their album online than have 20 people pay for it, or something like that.

I hear less about this kind of stuff than I used to. At the height of the trend, Radiohead even released a pay-what-you-want album where "free" was an option.

What albums are currently being offered by the artists or labels for free on the Internet, with no legal strings or gray areas, just straight out offered for free, that you think are worth the download? I'm not talking about piracy, I'm just talking about bands and labels that just legitimately said "Why not?" and have their albums out there to download without charge- albums that you think are worth listening to.

[Soundwaveseeker]

I think all of Kit Watkins solo albums are available on his site as free downloads. Occasionally I see free downloads from electronic/ambient/world music type people on bandcamp.

[Frumious B]

Smashing Pumpkins-Machina II has some nice stuff on it.

[Drone Decipher]

Phideaux doesn't charge for his music on bandcamp so his Doomsday Afternoon album gets my vote. It's all pay-what-you-want with free as an option which is wild to me because it's such professional sounding music. Also, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's Polygondwanaland (that was a fricken typing-tongue-twister) is free and that album slaps.

[downbyariver]

I just discovered last night that John Wesley (Prog Collective, Porcupine Tree), a guitarist and vocalist, has his first five solo albums available as "pay what you want", including free, online:

http://www.john-wesley.com/free/

It sounds pretty good. Like 90s alt rock meets prog rock.

[luna65]

When Trent Reznor did this with the Nine Inch Nails release The Slip, it took me a while to get into it but I ended up enjoying it, though not as much as my favorites (The Fragile and Year Zero).

[Enlighten]

Fire and Water and Highway………….ohh, you meant free albums, ok.