Wednesday, December 4, 2013

End of the year..

We're wrapping up operations for the end of the year.. going to take a break in December, but meanwhile here's what we've been up to since October...

Just out today, one of two debut groups on Happy Puppy, Tytia Mina Teremina from Lithuania! Please enjoy their single "Blitzkugel" that comes from their new album Bananas Bankomate. Think early 80s' new wave German synth pop.

The other debut group is Fire To The Stars! This six-piece band features members from Melbourne and Stockholm and the two-track single Keep You Safe is recommended for fans of shoegaze/alternative dream-pop-ambient.

It's not exactly easy-listening, but it is very rewarding: Peter DiPhillips returns to Happy Puppy with his third outing for us.. this time, a concept album based on his Irish ancestors during The Great Famine.

Happy holidays! Thanks for visiting the site and we hope you enjoyed a little of the music we released this year. See you in 2014.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

MANOS: The Remix Of Fate - Volume 1!

Well, here it is! Volume 1 of MANOS: The Remix of Fate!

Back in June I discovered that in addition to the film Manos: The Hands of Fate being remastered in hi-def for DVD and Blu-Ray, the soundtrack to the cult-classic bad film was also released on Bandcamp, and licensed under CC-BY-NC. So the call for remixes was issued, and this compilation is the result.

This has been fantastic to put together, and I couldn't have done it without the generous help of Marc Weidenbaum of disquiet.com and everyone who contributed something from the Junto Soundcloud community, run by Marc.

Also major thanks for support from the fine people at the Free Music Archive for help getting the word out!

Please visit the artists pages and support them however you can. Due to the large number of entries, we've split everything up into two separate volumes - the second will be released next week on October 29th.

Cover illustration by mariods (used with permission).

Download it here!

Monday, October 7, 2013

The return of Uncle Neptune!

It is with great pleasure that Happy Puppy announces the return of Uncle Neptune!

Yes, after a long 7 year absence from being available online, Happy Puppy is re-issuing the first Uncle Neptune album with the permission of the Uncle Neptune estate.

After releasing his first album in 2001, Uncle Neppy received some notable national attention thanks to Richardson's Roundup on CBC Radio One, and then in 2005 the world found out about the wonderful music thanks to a mention on the popular site boingboing.net.

Uncle Neptune retired from the internet in 2006, never to be heard from since. We thought this was a terrible shame that nearly a generation of internet users never got to hear any of his delightful and timeless songs (save for one track appearing on a Kazoomzoom compilation).

But recently Lee Rosevere at Happy Puppy tracked down sources close to Uncle Neptune (thanks Billyblob!) and we are preparing to release as much as Neptune's music as possible, beginning with his debut album.

Please enjoy this music and share it with your friends, and if you do, it would make the world a better place if you would visit Jamie Ward's bandcamp page and support him and his current projects - and it would make Uncle Neptune very happy.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

September news

Our second #CCmixtape is out! It's all about the changing of the season, as autumn officially starts today (Sunday) at 1:44pm pst. Once again, this mix features BY-NC Creative Commons music accompanied by autumnal readings from the librivox site.

Happy September! We wanted to let you know that Lee's album Fluxwax, originally released for sale in 2010 is now available for free. Fill your boots!

And speaking of boots! Brand new music from a brand new band: Unthunk is the latest to join the HP roster, we're very pleased to release their debut single to the world. Please enjoy these two songs, as the leader of the band is currently working on new music that is expected to be released on Happy Puppy in the near future.

Monday, August 12, 2013

August news!

It's been two years since his last release on our netlabel, but we're pleased to present a new mini-LP from Cagey House. It's a little different from last time, but extremely engaging and accesibly experimental.

Well, there's a first for everything! Our thanks to radio station CFRC at Queen's University in Kingston for spinning Lee's album Time-Lapse Vol.2 enough times that it landed in the top 10 electronic charts for two weeks.. thanks CFRC! (who wants some screen shots?)

And we're very pleased to learn that Lee's track "Eileen" was used in a documentary about mining the moon on ABC radio! It's available as a free podcast download.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

New for July: #CCmixtape and Phreezounds!

We're pleased to announce a new series of Creative Commons mixtapes here on Happy Puppy! It's kinda like a podcast, but kinda not. The first one is all about clouds, featuring CC music and 'cloudy' subject matter readings from the librivox.org site.

We've posted the first release of the month over at Free Music Archive.org called The Phreezound Orchestra. It's an EP created from (almost) 100% sounds sourced from freesound.org... go check it out!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Manos: The Remix of Fate!


Announcing a brand new compilation that's looking for submissions... Manos: The Remix of Fate! Recently, Benjamin Solovey found a pristine work-print of the infamous bad film and has restored it for upcoming release on Blu-Ray and DVD.

He also put up the soundtrack for free (pay what you wish) download on Bandcamp and the Free Music Archive under a BY-NC-SA license, which includes music cues and dialogue.

Happy Puppy Records would like to celebrate this release by asking the Creative Commons music community to download the soundtrack and remix it!

Any genre, any style... just no explicit adult material please. By submitting, you agree to license your track under the same BY-NC-SA license. If you include outside samples in your remix, please ensure they are of a similar sharable license.

Send your remix via dropbox, wetransfer, soundcloud or email if it's less than 25 mbs. 320 Mp3s or FLACs only.

Deadline for entries is October 1, 2013 so we can have it ready for Halloween, which will please the Master!

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Drones to Make Dinner By is here!

A year ago, I put out the call for drones - not just any drones, but drones that would be good to make dinner by. The inspiration came from those thematic 50's and 60's "mood music" albums.. music to water the garden by, music to relax by, etc.

And I received quite a range of interpretations of what exactly drones would be good while preparing dinner.

After all the tracks were submitted and I began putting everything together, I really wanted to have no interruptions between the tracks.

And so I created a medley mix, where all the tracks segue into each other (with no gaps that mp3s can sometimes include) and bridged together everything with a few "kitchen sink" clips from public domain ephemeral films from the Prelinger Archives.

However, all of these tracks are new and unavailable elsewhere and I didn't want them to be strictly available as a part of a mix for obvious reasons (opportunity for playlists, remixing, etc), so they are also posted individually.

Many thanks to all the composers who took time to send in something, and I hope you enjoy their efforts as much as I do. Please visit their sites, download their music, or buy something to show your support.

Featuring Origami Mekka, Cagey House, Kai Nobuko, Mystified, echosonic and more.

Get cracking!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Things are happening here..

Well blow my lips off! Lee's most recent EP Xeno has got a great review from Vancouver's Georgia Straight! We're mighty pleased with this, even if the review colourfully implies you have to completely blitzed on spacebongs to full enjoy it. And not once does it get compared to Brian Eno.

Lee recently did a one-hour interview with Kent Davies at CKUW for the Amateur Hour program. Lee has been filling-in for Kent on a few occasions, and Kent wanted to have him on to talk what Happy Puppy is all about and spin some tracks (including a few really deep catalog cuts). Thanks Kent! Listen to the whole thing below:

Saturday, May 25, 2013

May updates!

A recent Disquiet Junto assignment called for a score for the trailer of Sense the Wind, a documentary on blind sailors, and Lee's submission was chosen! Thanks to director Christine Knowlton and Marc at Disquiet for the opportunity.

Happy May! Lee has released the second volume in the Time-Lapse series, this time focusing on slow-motion relaxing and meditative music. Here's a video for "Illuminations" that was set to a beautiful animated gif by Mr Div:

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Happy Puppy turns 7!

Hey... we're seven years old!

Happy Puppy went online April 10, 2006... and since then we've been so pleased with the reaction the music we've released has had. Never thought it would really get this far...

Anyway, to celebrate we've cooked up something for the all the lo-bit fans out there: every Happy Puppy album and single in one massive 16-bit box set!

That's right.. 69 albums, 17 singles, 610 tracks, 41 hours, 44 minutes and 5 seconds!

You get the very first release by Lee, all the way up to an advance copy of the most recent album that won't be available until later this month... all in squashy 16-bit audio. The whole shebang comes to about 300 mbs, which is waaay smaller than what the site would normally take to download.

However, we strongly caution that this be for lo-bit fans, or people wanting to sample the site quickly. The sound quality has been extremely compromised...kind like those K-Tel or Rondo records were they packed in a ton a of songs on one side of a record. It sounded like crap, didn't it? Well at least you got to hear lots of music.

So with that in mind, please note this box set is not a replacement for the high-quality files that live on the individual release pages... no way! But it is a little fun way of saying thanks for all the hits, the downloads, the emails, and to all the musicians who have generously shared their music with me and you.

Happy 7th birthday... or 41 in dog years.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

The Wonderful and the Obscure Volume 1: Rodd Keith

This compilation of song-poems by the great Rodd Keith is from the private collection of Bob Purse, music-lover and music-maker (see "The Many Moods of Bob Purse").

I’ve been a fan of Rodd’s a little over 15 years, when I first heard the MSR Madness CDs, and started collecting whatever song-poems I could. In Canada, there aren’t a lot of them to be found.. I imagine they are much more common in the USA (given the nature of many of the poets were from the States, this isn’t surprising).

However, it does make it difficult to discover them – ebay auctions have gotten tremendously over-priced since the PBS "Off the Charts" songpoem story documentary, and that’s why I can thank Bob for sharing his massive collection on his blog The Wonderful and the Obscure.

He posts not just Rodd Keith tracks, but many many other wonderful gems that you should really visit his site to find for yourself. However, since I’m a big Rodd fan and Bob’s online archive is massive, I thought it would be fun to put together this compilation of Rodd’s tracks that Bob has previously shared and I also thanks Bob for giving me permission to do this.

Some of the tracks might not seem all that special, or "weird", but not everything Rodd did was like that. Despite that, there are always little moments in the songs that make them special and make them distinctly unique to his productions.

As Bob puts it, "I'm not really part of the Rodd cult - I enjoy his records about on a par with any other song-poem artist or label, loving some and finding others deadly dull, and everything in between - but I know I'm in the minority with that viewpoint."

Download it here!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Two new items!

We've just posted the third volume of King For A Day: a fan tribute to XTC, and Adam Sigmund (aka Origami Repetika) has sent his a new EP called Little Bumble, full of bubbly chiptunes that we think kids might like too, not just adults. Share and enjoy!

Sunday, March 17, 2013

poems4songs!

Back in 2006, Tony "Phoneyfresh" Vosik created poems4song.blogspot.com with the intention of creating new 'song-poems' based on lyrics he was sent.

A little over 10 songs were created over the following months, including submissions from Otis Fodder and Trademark G of Evolution Control Committee.

Sadly, the files were deleted over time from the free filesharing sites, and Tony had a computer crash, losing all his originals.

However, fellow song-poem fan Lee Rosevere had been collecting these songs, and with Tony's permission have put them back online again. Unfortunately, Lee didn't get ALL the tracks - 3 songs are still missing in the ether, and if the original songwriters have their mp3 copy still, please get in touch so we can complete the collection!

Thanks to Tony and all the original lyricists for these wonderfully bizarre creations - download for free now!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Makers of Smooth Music

It's no secret that we love song-poems around here, so we're especially thrilled that Lee is doing a bi-weekly song-poem show on basic.fm!

The Makers of Smooth Music debuts this week, February 19 at 9pm UK time (4pm EST, 1pm PST) and replays twice more over the next two weeks. Tune in!

Saturday, February 2, 2013

New release: Peter DiPhillips - Midnight Sun

We're very pleased here at Happy Puppy to announce a new album by instrumentalist Peter DiPhillips. This is Peter's second album on the label, after releasing Omphalos last year.

Midnight Sun continues Peter's atmospheric and enveloping ambient music, with subtle dark moments that certainly take their time unfolding, with five pieces that run a little over an hour.

We really can't say it better than Michael Diamond, quoted "Peter creates electronic soundscapes from minimalist and meditative to darker and densely layered. There is a cinematic quality in a number of his compositions that could work well as a film soundtrack."

You can download more music from Peter over on his Bandcamp or Soundcloud page.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

New EP: DJ Fudge - The Jem Remixes 1998-2000

Back in 1998, the Jem Starlight Jukebox was a one-of-a-kind place on the internet. Sure, there were lots of fan pages and message boards (the biggest one is still going!) but for a time, the JSS was the only website that housed every single song from every single episode of the animated series.

This was not easy in 1998, as Geocities had limited storage space and kept changing the rules about how much you could put on a single account, and how much people could download from you.

Run by the mysterious character Fudge (yes, our very own Fudge.. Mr. Lee Rosevere) the site featured not only every song in streaming Real Audio format (the preferred choice of the day), but also instrumental versions, and specially fan-created medleys. It also was the home of the internet's earliest original remixes of Jem songs done by DJ Fudge.

These remixes were given away for free download in mp3 format for a number of years, until Fudge discovered that some unscrupulous "fans" were selling these remixes, along with every song from the show (some possibly taken from his freely-available Jukebox) on CD sets on Ebay (there are still a few out there too - but don't buy them, eh?).

As a result, all the remixes were removed from the site, never to return. Until now.

Happy Puppy has gone into the vault and remastered all the Starlight Jukebox remixes, originally created and released during 1998-2000.

With advances in Creative Commons licensing and the Internet Archive, DJ Fudge believes the time is right to make these available again.

Sadly, the main Starlight Jukebox will remain offline, since it's impossible to find a reliable home for the files - and with the re-release of the entire series on DVD last year, the copyright cops would likely have the files taken down quickly. Oh, for the golden age of the internet.

Meanwhile, the remixes live again and we hope you enjoy them, share them, do your own remixes... and to those greedy Ebay bastards, respect the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license attributed to them.

Truly Outrageous!

Friday, January 11, 2013

new EP release: Lee Rosevere - Xeno

Happy new year! We start off the year with a brand new release...

...an extended-play release featuring all new compositions by LR written over the past year. Styles range from outer-planetary space sounds, to dance music of the traditional rhythmic and interpretive variety.

The EP is available digitally in FLAC and mp3 from Bandcamp in a deluxe edition, which comes with front and back artwork, and an exclusive bonus 30-page PDF photo book.

The regular version will be released on iTunes on February 12, 2013 (only the front artwork, no back or photo book).

A review copy is available on request.

File under: electronic, library music