Merry Christmas! Part 1

Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having a good day. 'Finding Nemo' was on earlier and I've had some yule log so today is going well for me. My dad is looking forward to watching 'Speed' later for some reason - I assume everyone else on the planet has seen it at least once? Anyways, as promised in the last post, here are a multitude of Christmas freebies from artists all over the place. Part 2 will be arriving shortly....

Oceansize
When I saw Oceansize in 2004 or so, they gave me a headache. Their proggy, post-rock wall of noise was too much for my tender teenage ears to take. A few years on and I have a slightly greater appreciation for their stuff. They even had a song on The O.C! And who can resist an instrumental cover of 'Walking In The Air' from the rather good, yet rather sad Christmas film 'The Snowman'? Not me.

Oceansize - Walking In The Air [Yourfilehost download link]

The cover is also available on the Oceansize [MySpace]. And for those unfamiliar with the original, acquaint yourself via the Youtube embed below:



Lightspeed Champion
Lightspeed Champion, aka Dev, was one third of crazed beatniks Test-Icicles but if you heard his current material, you'd never have guessed. His folky pop seems to betray his roots somewhat but when he plays Weezer covers and writes songs about comic supervillains (see 'Mr Fisk'), you can't help but embrace his new persona. Plus, it's actually quite good. Here is one of the tracks from Dev's Xmas EP:

Lightspeed Champion - Another Song About Being Alone At Xmas [Yourfilehost]

Download the whole EP at lightspeedchampion.com. Apparently Dev turned 22 the other day - I turned 21 last week and doesn't some bloke called Jesus have a birthday around now? Talk about birthday season....

Rivulets
Keeping on the singer songwriter theme, but this time in America, we find an old compilation track from Nathan Amundson, under the guise of Rivulets. And by old, I mean seven years old. Mr Amundson considers Rivulets to be an "organic shoegaze" project, although to a simpleton like me, it's quite folky. Despite a favourable [Pitchfork review] and working with Shellac/Mission Of Burma member Bob Weston, Rivulets seems to have lacked much recognition at all. Which is a bit sad. But there's hope for better times. Like in this track.

Rivulets - This Christmas [Yourfilehost]

Download this track and the rest of the Silber Xmas 2000 comp at [archive.org]