Filk MP3s and Audio Files on the Web
Updated December 27, 2003
If you want to hear filk instead of reading the lyrics, here's some links for you! .Wav, RealAudio, and every other kind of audio file have been put out there by filk artists for you to hear. Enjoy them in the smug awareness you are acting legally, promoting independent music, and frustrating RIAA corruption. Try before you buy! Listen to filk styles from around the world and steal their good ideas! Increase your own personal repertoire! Or just use them to introduce your friends to filky goodness....
UPDATE: As MP3.com is no longer in service, please ignore mp3.com links until I can change them, or make a search engine your friend. Thank you.
Large Collections and Link Pages
FilkArchive: an growing UK filk mp3 site featuring live filk recorded in its native convention habitat. Good stuff!
The Virtual Filksing: MP3s and RealAudio files. Send Eli a tape with a song, and he'll play it for the world!
Cantaria offers Society for Creative Anachronism medieval songs. Many sound files (RealAudio, MP3, and .wav) on the various lyrics pages. Some only include the verse and chorus (for learning the song), though many are full length.
Kilor's Minstrels on the Net is an mp3 link site of huge proportions. Over 100 Russian filkers (and other fantasy/sf-related music groups) are found or linked here. Lyrics and chord sheets are also found here, as well as filk and filk-related news. Login required for download, or at least asked for!
Fangorn Audio has mp3 files on the pages for the albums. You can also visit their MP3 Basement or download convention, LARP, and even filk videos from Fangorn Video's Palantir. A great incentive to learn Russian!
Individual Performer/Group MP3 Pages
Avalon Burning (Not to be confused with Avalon Rising!) Progressive power metal filk.
Avalon Rising is a Celtic/folk band. Broceliande is a classical/Celtic/folk band. Margaret Davis and Kristoph Klover are filkers from way back. They did the Tolkien/Marion Zimmer Bradley CD "The Starlit Jewel". If you like acoustic music of this type, this is definitely the kind you'll like! RealAudio samples only at this time.
Terence Chua, a Singaporean filker. Very good songwriter. MP3s galore! But use your download software; the connection can sometimes be pretty intermittent.
Meg Davis' songs "Wind in the Pipes" and "Captain Jack and the Mermaid" are often listed as traditional by those who don't know better. She was one of the first really good modern American Celtic singers. When her albums were released through a filk recording house in the early eighties, it was an important moment in filk history. More than twenty years afterward, her exquisite singing and musicianship, inventive songwriting, and immersive album production are still influential, and it is one of the great griefs of my life that I never saw her perform live in her glory days. Be sure to visit her homepage for sample .mp3 files from several of her albums and info on how to glom some for yourself.
Lawrence Dean is from the UK.
Descramble by Joe Wecker. Also here. Good code doesn't die; it always leaves a legacy.
Julia Ecklar is today best known as a writer (she's part of the best-selling Star Trek novel collaboration known as "L.A. Graf"). But she's also one heckuva many-octaved singer, songwriter, and guitarist. You can also hear her singing Bob Kanefsky's hilarious filk "Eternal Flame" over on Kanef's album page, and Leslie Fish's long Darkover ballad "Horsetamer's Daughter" over on Eli's Virtual Filksing. Not to be missed.
Filk.com has a station on live365.
Jak'o'Shadows by Erica, .au file only.
Nancy Louise Freeman has .au files and soundclips.
Colin Gagnon has Lovecraftian instrumentals.
Geektones has some new Christmas songs.
Martin and Andy Gordon-Kerr have MIDI files for many of their songs.
Joy Green includes the Antti Lehtola Memorial CD for downloading in his memory.
Marc Gunn: you know anyone who writes songs about Buttercup from The Princess Bride and Ernie from Sesame Street is a filker. Also a member of the Brobdingnagian Bards.
Michelle Hansard has a lot up.
It's a Long Way to Amphioxus with RealAudio
Rhodri James with MIDI files. Too bad he doesn't have any MP3s up; he has one of the best voices in filkdom and does some nice work on instruments, too.
Kim Justice writes instrumentals based on the popular webcomic Megatokyo, as well as M.A. Foster's old novels. Well worth a listen or a hundred.
Kaminniy Zal, a Russian filk page with many Tolkien songs.
Bob Kanefsky is a truly great parodist. Here the original artists (or others equally well-known) somehow perform his parodies with a straight face. Also, listen to his popular track "Dear Departed", placed on a separate page to avoid shocking the easily shocked.
Lady Lavender (Michelle Bottorff) has MP3s and MIDI files. Nice lady. Nice songs. Download, already.
Dave Lasher does include some filk stuff on his page, but it all seems to be on the bawdy side.
Steve Macdonald has mp3s up of a couple of songs. He's more on the rock side than the folk, but his music's tasty no matter how you categorize it. His albums are excellent and his live performances, too. But I'm somewhat biased; he's a friend of mine.... :)
Jordan Mann is an excellent singer and obviously likes musicals. He and his partner in crime Blake Hodgetts have some wonderful songs for you to download.
Kathy Mar is a wonderful singer/songwriter and a real nice person too. You can hear her singing Bob Kanefsky's hilarious filk "Mineral Rights" over on Kanef's album page, and his wonderfully twisted "Dear Departed" over here. I wish my voice was one-tenth as clear and lovely as hers.
Die Milchstrassenstreuner: German filk band.
Minstrel used to have RealAudio songs up, but changed his ISP. Check back occasionally to see if they're up again yet.
Ookla the Mok stuff, including sound files and lyrics archive. You can also hear them performing Bob Kanefsky's great medley/parody "Comforts of Home" on Kanef's album page.
Francis C. Parker, Jr. (@ztec, FilkFerret) has many MP3s and .wav files. Pavel Fomitchov's Music of the Elves is Tolkien-inspired, and I'm fairly sure the tune "My Solaris" has something to do with Lem. Good instrumentals that need no translation.
Phoenix (the English filk band) has several live MP3's up here and a few more on the page for their new album Into the Fire. Highly recommended if you like your filk to rock.
Raven Boy station and SCA Songs station
Mike Richards' filk page includes midi and RealAudio files of several of his songs.
Roberta Rogow has permitted MP3s from her old tape Rec-Room Rhymes #2 to be posted here.
Robbie's Filk Page includes MP3s. Australian filk!
Acacia Sears is a disgustingly talented filker. She sings and plays incredibly well, and is a nice person to top it off. Here's her website, which has more mp3s available. (The mp3s up have no overt filk content, but you won't care.) You can hear her singing Bob Kanefsky's hilarious filk "Wise Men Feared to Tread" over on Kanef's album page.
Tom Smith is one seriously funny guy. ROFLMAO really happens when you listen to him. You Have Been Warned.
Jacob Sommers includes MP3s.
Martin Springett on Bright Weavings. MP3 musical settings of Guy Gavriel Kay's poems.
Theforce.net's Musical Humor includes MP3s.
Carla Ulbrich has been a songwriter for a while and has even been on Doctor Demento, but GAFilk 2001 was her first filk con. Needless to say, we like her....
Urban Tapestry is a wonderful group. Highly recommended for their songwriting, their lovely harmony and instrumentation, and their bizarre sense of humor. See also their new Ampcast site.
Dave Weingart's UNCool Music, with MP3's and RealAudio of some wonderful songs.
Filk MP3 Resources
CBC Radio show episode about filk!
bloodHype's Filk the World -- station at MP3.com.
Prometheus Music's Filk Page -- station at MP3.com.
Sound Samples
Heather Alexander's page includes sound samples from the upcoming album Lion's Blood, based on the upcoming Steve Barnes novel. This is going to be a Big Deal. Sound samples are also available on the pages for the other albums. Unfortunately, I can't hear 'em 'cause RealPlayer 8 don't do Win95....
Chris Conway's Earth Rising CD page with Realaudio G2 clips, and album page
Meg Davis has sound samples here.
Firebird Arts and Music samples in RealAudio and .wav; artists include Michael Longcor, Mercedes Lackey, Lief Sorbye, Tempest, and Golden Bough.
Gallows Hill: Goth filk band
Gayleen Froese is a filker from Saskatchewan. New to me, but deserves her critical acclaim (from critics outside fandom, even!). Many many sample MP3s.
Laaxinas' Filk Page. Some mp3 song samples are here.
Das Lieder der Wandernde Raben Bits o' filk and folk in German and English
Sable Samples from her acoustic album Of Dragons and Unicorns
Steve Macdonald: Reap the Wind includes RealAudio sound files.
Puzzlebox: acoustic folk rock.
Tempest is mostly a Celtic rock band, but they hang with filkers a lot and perform filksongs, their album SERRAted Edge was a Mercedes Lackey tie-in, they were Michael Longcor's backup band on one album, and their albums were produced by a filk publisher for a while. So I'd say they're filk, wouldn't you? Some of their album pages contain .wav files.
Urban Tapestry sound clips in RealAudio
Other bands of interest to filkers
Annwn is a Celtic band...but it plays SCA and filk music...and its members include fannish people...so, yes, I continue to list them here.
Battlorn is apparently fantasy heavy metal from Istanbul! You can download all sorts of fannish songs here!
The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets formerly included Cthulhu song MP3s and a .mov video, but things seem to be down at present. They also have stuff on their mp3.com page.
Mark Jonathan Davis has many Star Wars parodies.
The Gathering III is a collection of Celtic songs of the fantastic and haunting.
Jodee James sings Welsh and original songs, many with fantasy elements.
Lintie features the hilarious song "The Widow and the Devil", some nice Gaelic songs, and a Kipling song.
Lot Lorien a Celtic/folk band from Bulgaria. Remember that Bulgarian doesn't have a "th", and the name will make sense.
Lothlorien features the original jig "Ghostwood", based on the Charles de Lint books.
Nuit is Leigh Ann Hussey's new band.
Fanfic Radioplay Productions includes both music and audio fanfic. "Nerima Home Companion", anyone?
FutureBlue Lots of sf-based classic rock -- they call it "story rock". Highly recommended, particularly that "Chronicles of Amber" song that keeps running through my head!
'nikcuS includes an ode to the Commodore 64. Definite points for geekness!