T-FREE-LP002: "tl;dr Happy End" (released 2011-07-07)

This LP concludes 6 years of T-FREE history and marks the end of all the label's activities, parallel to the final shutdown of Tilt-Recordings.

Mad props to all artists involved on both labels!


Few more things are left to be adressed on this final occasion.


Over time, T-FREE has frequently been subject to discussions, provoking disagreement on all aspects: its musical orientation and range of varying sound quality from release to release, the public opinions and Internet behaviour of the labelmaker, the absence of artwork, the used form of presentation and the ideological fact of T-FREE being an anti-commercial netlabel. Two opposing opinions usually dominate these debates:

"puts some more established labels to shame"
(crystl_lake @ www.freak-recordings.com/community 2008-06)

"96% of the shit you put out is garbage"
(djc @ www.techno-dnb.com/forum 2008-06)

Regardless of reactions, T-FREE has always followed a certain sound/style (with few exceptions), aiming at DJs, not critics. This final release continues that label policy to the end. Some of the tunes are old, some brandnew, some re-released. As usually, they came directly from the producers' computers without any additional mastering done on them. So they all have different mixdowns, loudness levels and sound characters.

Thus probably everybody will hate some tunes on this LP, but perhaps also everybody will like some tunes on it.

And hopefully this LP will stand worthy as a final release, after 184 tunes on 118 releases (plus these) in 6 years. The traffic statistics show that literally tens of thousands of people have downloded the releases (average circa 45,000). Some of the tunes have even cracked the 100,000 mark. T-FREE had a good run, brought a lot of music to many people and maybe even contributed to some Drum & Bass artist careers.

It was fun, inspiring and politically the right thing to do (from all three perspectives: before, during and after).

"Goodbye everybody!"


PS: A note for the haters. When your favourite bigname DJs play "dubplates" in their mixes, those also are unmastered tunes (from different artists) and they all sound differently.


PPS: Some quoteworthy thoughts about releasing older tunes and the general question of wether artists or audiences own works of art:

[quote]With all due respect to the artist(s), it's kind of idiotic and egoic to not give people what they want, when no almost no effort is involved in distributing a track these days.. When you have fans who fucking dearly want something you made, there are only a few reasons why artists tend not to give them out, and only 2 of those legit.

1) Lost the file (mp3 or sequencer file, DAT tape (LOL) whatever)