• Band / Artist : General Fuzz – mySpace
• Genre : Down-tempo / Electronica / IDM
• Sample Track Download : Flow Tater
• Buy CD : N/A
• Free Digital Download : Artists Store
• Rating : 9.5 out of 10

I’m constantly amazed at the amount of amazing music I discover. I’m also occasionally amazed at the amount of artists that give away their music for free. I first reviewed General Fuzz back in September, with his great Messy’s Place album. I was totally blown away then, by the album that I’d found on my hard disk, with no recollection of downloading it. This time around however, I was conciously looking at his site, hoping that there would be something new, as I’ve done several times before. A few weeks ago I hit pay dirt and this is the album, that in his own words, when talking about his music “…raising the bar for free quality music a little higher”. I have to disagree a little. This doesn’t raise the bar a little, it elevates it into the stratosphere.

As with the previous album, the majority of the tracks weigh in at between 4 and 6 minutes, but there’s a few of the 11 tracks at around the 3 minute mark, the first track “Acclimate” being one of them. Man, what a way to begin an album. For anyone not familiar with General Fuzz’s music, it’s a kind of mix between Vangelis, Sven Vath and Tangerine Dream. Very atmospheric, moody and infectious as hell.

“Flow Tater” is a very interesting track, that feels somewhat disjointed, having several very distinctive sections, but they flow beautifully. “Fugal” continues to evolve the album’s sound, but that signature, is still omnipresent, as if it were scripted in gold. “Reasonable Ability” is one of those tracks that’s a feast for your ears, especially when you listen using headphones. Again new influences are introduced with the track “Cliff Notes”, with distinctive Indian drums, that add flavor, rather than conflicting sounds.

The album finishes off with “Acoustic Junction”, one of the mellower tracks and a great way to put an album to bed. You can’t help but feel you’ve listened to something rather special and indeed this is an album that has an interesting story. Every track has had different artists collaborating with General Fuzz, which accounts for the little twists and deviations throughout. If you go to the website you can read the story behind each track.

Conclusion : There’s just no excuse for not checking out this phenomenal artists. So far I’ve reviewed two of the artists 4 albums. All of them are available for free. In giving this album a 9.5, I’ve left myself very little room to manoeuvre should his future albums continue to improve. What do I care, I’ll worry about that with each subsequent release.

I can’t help feeling that General Fuzz is either a crackpot for giving his music away for free, or just a philanthropist, because this is one of the biggest cases of sharing the wealth.