Music (Misanthropy)

Misanthropy has been recording music since 1998, and while each song involves many different instruments, the band in fact has only one musician, Sam Salter. This is possible because of multitrack recording - one instrument or voice is recorded first, and then each of the others is recorded 'on top' of it, one after another.

What sort of music is it?

The music is pretty eclectic; the songs and instrumentals fall into quite a few different genres and styles. That is because I write and record music for more or less the same reasons as I listen to other people's music - to look for sounds that interest, move, or excite me. I like music that makes me think, or that has some kind of feel to it, whether that's happy, off-beat, melancholy, exciting, beautiful, silly, or simply laid-back and enjoyable. I think that music should engage or affect the person who listens to it, rather than just being part of the wallpaper - and there are lots of different sorts of music that can be like that.

So, here you will find everything from folky acoustic songs with piano, acoustic guitar and singing, to electric rock and punk with heavy drums, distorted electric guitar and bass; from frenetic electronica with odd pattering rhythms and inexplicable synthesisers, to more classical progressive tracks, with cello and piano joining the guitars.

Listen to free mp3s

This website contains free mp3s of all of Misanthropy's songs and instrumentals. An mp3 is a highly compressed electronic copy of a musical recording - the advantage is that they are very small, in terms of the amount of 'computer space' they occupy (so you can listen to them instantly over the internet, without having to wait ages for them to start playing) - the disadvantage is that they are of much lower sound-quality than the original recordings (so they don't sound as clear, detailed, or impressive as CDs, tapes, or vinyl records).

You can use the 'Listen' link below to access the Misanthropy mp3s, and there are two different ways in which you can listen to them:

• High fidelity - If you have broadband, click on the song's 'Hi-fi Stream' button, and it will start playing within a few seconds, at 192kbps sound-quality.
• Low fidelity - If you do not have broadband, click on the song's 'Lo-fi Stream' button, and it will start playing within a few seconds, at 24kbps sound-quality.

Happy listening!

Buy albums on CD

As I mentioned above, while mp3s are convenient and quick to access, they lose a lot of the sound-quality of the original recordings; for example, while my high-fidelity mp3s have a sound-quality of 192kbps, audio CDs have a sound-quality of 1411kbps.

In practice, that means that mp3s are best used for finding out whether or not you are going to like a particular piece of music, before you've paid to buy it. If you do like the piece of music, then you will get far more enjoyment out of listening to the original CD recording than you will from listening to the mp3 - the detail, subtlety and depth of the sound are far greater.

So, if you enjoy some or all of the Misanthropy mp3s, and would like to hear the music at its original full quality, you can use the 'Purchase' link below to order the albums on CD. "Identity Crisis" was completed in 2000, and "Electric Music" in 2003; I also have a shorter "Non-album" CD of the songs and instrumentals that I have completed since 2003, as there are not yet enough of them to make up a full-length album.