Bill Corgan, Trent Reznor, and Radiohead got pawned quite a while ago. In the MP3 department, that is. Saxophonist and purveyor of M-Base funk-jazz Steve Coleman has had a great number of his out-of-print recordings sitting in his own corner of the internet, available for download, for quite some time now (the website looks a bit old, doesn’t it?). Coleman defends his generosity in an essay where he rhetorically asks “Why should everything always cost something?”
Not everything is for the taking, but there is literally hours of exceptional stuff here that won’t cost you a dime. Of particular interest is The Ascension of Light, an organic, intense, out-there album previously unreleased in the States. I’ve always wondered why American artists occasionally have certain releases only available as imports…
