Nocreeps opened up a door for me

When I first heard about a website that offers hundreds of thousands of music tracks for free, with the only catch being that it doesn’t have anyone I’ve heard of, I was a bit skeptical.

Not about the free songs. I’ve spent enough time with free software to know that sometimes people are more interested in sharing than in getting money.

I was skeptical that I would find anything I like.

My music tastes tend to be rather... eclectic.

I have a really hard time finding a music radio station that I like. No matter what station I try, I find I rarely hear a song that I like.

So I didn’t have high hopes when I went over to Jamendo, and I had no idea where to begin. But I found a link for the most listened to songs over the past week and hit play.

I didn’t particularly care for the first two or three songs that played.

Then “It’s Up to You” by a group called nocreeps came on.

The lead singer’s voice wasn’t fantastic, and he has an accent I couldn’t place right away (I later learned the group is actually German, although the songs were in English). But I loved the music and I thought the lyrics were really good. Then I stopped listening to the top 100 songs and tried their album, “Time to Differ.”

And then I listened to their second album, “Nice Noise.”

I was hooked. I even use three of their songs as ringones on my phone. I have "It's Up to You", "Fallen Star" and "Invisible Enemy."

They have a third album, but that just has live versions of some of the songs from their other two albums.

Unfortunately, the group has broken up, so they won’t be producing any more music, which is a shame.

That one group changed how I felt about Jamendo. I’ve since found many other groups from Jamendo that I like, to the point where more than 2/3 of my music collection is from Jamendo. But if I hadn’t heard nocreeps in the first couple of songs, I may not have found any of them.

I'll write about some of my other favorites later. For now, this is nocreeps' time to shine.