Very cool instrumentals from Memphis.
Sunshine the Nightmares (mpfree)

There’s a little bit of everything in this EP of instrumentals with a world music/hip hop flavor. My personal favorite is Sunbay Hotel, with it’s little hits of James Bond.

Es muy cool.

2011 instrumentals album from Italy.  Very good.  Check it out.

Modern Surf Rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Free album!!!!!!!!!!!

You should hang out at Bandcamp. Great stuff there. Like this instrumental record. Which you can get for “name your price” at Bandcamp.

That means if you put a zero in the $ field, it’s free.

How are you not getting this yet?

Check out this very cool instrumental record–the third from San Francisco/Melbourne 5-piece Beaten by Them.  It’s real music, recorded with a live band actually playing their instruments.

I really loved this record!

Salvador Divinorum

Jet Age

Instrumentals don’t usually get play on my site, but sometimes I find one that’s so cool I make an exception to my rule. Grimes‘ latest album, Visions, is an example. Pitchfork gave it an 8.5 and called it “airy cyborg-pop,” and frankly I don’t think I can do much better than that. Think Cocteau Twins on Postal Service.

In short, it’s far from grimey.

Visions, the latest Grimes album (the pseudonym of Montreal’s Claire Boucher) combines atmospheric beats, hypnotic, repetitive beats, with a low-key vocal that can not be easily heard or understood. The most unusual thing about it, is that on this record, the vocals support the music rather than the other way around. Very cool, very interesting, and well worth a listen if you’re a fan of beat music, hipsway, or smoking out and zoning.

She’s offering Genesis as an mpfree (direct link), and a video….

Beats. Very, very cool beats.

Free at Bandcamp.

They’re Russian!

But there’s so much more to this beautiful, powerful album of acoustic instrumentals. And me, I usually hate instrumentals. They’re usually boring. But Mooncake know exactly what they’re doing.

The album is billed as “post rock,” but honestly I’m not sure what that even means. I hear some soaring prog rock here (especially since there’s a song title that references Arthur C. Clarke), and there’s wonderful use of violin so there’s a little “classical” rock, but there’s nothing cliché about this record. Nothing mainstream, nothing conventional, and certainly nothing bound by genre.

If you’re turned off to these kinds of projects, don’t be. This is easily one of the most wonderful records I’ve heard in a while. You can buy it in all kinds of formats on Bandcamp.

Here’s a video.