________  ________  ________
   2018-12-05                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   Let me take you back a little ways.        /        _/         /         /
                                              \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
   About  a thousand  years ago there  was a    /        \/        \/    /   \
website  called  mp3.com   and   it  was   a   /        _/         /_       _/
beautiful  thing, independent  artists could  /-        /        _/         /
upload  and share their music,  labels could  \________/\________/\___/____/
upload and share music on  behalf  of  their
artists, it had really excellent discoverability through searching or browsing
tags and they also  offered a kind of on-demand CDr  service so  artists could
sell albums without having to worry about all the trouble of manufacturing  it
themselves.

   It was genuinely glorious  and for  a good  while the only place I would go
for music,  there are  so many  bands I  still  listen  to today that I  first
discovered through  mp3.com; the  Dryads/Some of  the Quiet, Lowsunday, Lycia,
The Moors, Tri-State  Killing  Spree, Not  Applicable, Vodka Lime... and those
are just off the top of my head, without even peeking into my collection.

   Unfortunately, like everything on the internet inevitably will, it ended in
a mess of  legal action and corporate buy-outs, a  couple ugly re-workings and
then sudden shut-down. To this date, to me it is one of the most heartbreaking
losses  I've ever seen  on the internet.  Some pieces survive on the  Internet
Archive and  Archive Team/Textfiles figurehead Jason Scott  has  said on a few
occasions that a near-complete archive does exist but is extremely complicated
to make available online, both in legal terms and in terms of its sheer size.

   A  few  bands I discovered  back then  are  still  around and a  few of the
artists have moved  on to other projects I've heard about, but so much - and I
really can't stress  just HOW much - was lost when mp3.com imploded. There was
a  brief period when a part  of  the mp3.com collection resurfaced  on a  site
called  GarageBand  but that quickly closed its doors too, handballing artists
to another site and on and on.

   One band I remember fondly from back then  and  still listen to was  called
Moya, it was the dreamy indie rock side-project of Seattle visual artist Aaron
Jasinski. I've been carefully dragging a handful of Moya mp3s  with me through
life for  probably  close to 20 years. Sometimes I'd search around  to see  if
they'd resurfaced anywhere and I had known for a while that Aaron Jasinski had
continued releasing music  under the name  "Jasinski"  but it  just wasn't the
same.

   Earlier in the week, on a whim I thought I'd reach out to him, just to  say
hi and let him know that  I was a fan from  those days and  to see if maybe he
had the  Moya stuff still kicking around and  to  my delight  I actually got a
response!  Not  just  a "thank you"  response either,  a really  amazing  one.
Jasinski has collected  what  Moya tracks he  still had into a compilation and
put them up, name your price, on Bandcamp.

   It's just amazing, I'm over  the moon. I was able to update the old mp3.com
mp3s I still had  to higher quality ones, replace the ones I  lost to  bit rot
and corruption and even hear some new songs I hadn't heard back in the day!

   Please, have a listen:

   https://jasinski.bandcamp.com/album/the-moya-tracks-1997-2000



EOF