In July of 2024, Meadownoise released their album The Foam Alone. Except, what you heard online wasn’t truly the album. What was posted to Bandcamp, Ampwall and all streaming services was a collection of reactions, recreations or remarks about the album but not the songs themselves. In one case, it was some quiet time doing some laundry.
If you wanted to hear The Foam Alone, you needed to get your hands on a USB stick dangling gracefully inside of a medicine bottle. Maybe you’d get this from Matt Glassmeyer himself at a show. Maybe you’d get it from a friend of a friend. Or maybe you’d be daring enough to find it in public and put it in your computer, unprompted.
It was a grand experiment and one that worked. We distributed the album to friends and family. They redistributed to their friends and family. We heard appreciation and insights from those that were listening offline to the songs in a covert and concentrated way. Streaming numbers be damned, the album was making its way into the world.
We even managed to get a copy to the Nashville Scene and they described the experience wonderfully:
Two hallmarks of multi-instrumentalist, composer and expert improviser Matt Glassmeyer’s project Meadownoise are his tendency for ingenious and thoughtful experimentation and his appreciation for grooves of all kinds. Those are in effect in a big way on his latest record. The album is also a playful experiment in disrupting the way that streaming isolates listeners.
We’re happy to announce the end of that experiment. The songs from The Foam Alone are now available in their original form on all the various platforms. For those of you that heard the Reaction Version, this will reframe the experience entirely. For those that heard the USB versions, these will be familiar and convenient. For those that heard neither, you’re welcome to a new experience.
The versions on Ampwall and Bandcamp contain both the album versions and the reactions. It may be interesting to listen to them on shuffle.
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