A Little Slice of SpinTunes Christmas, Vol 1

Season's greetings to all in the SpinTunes community! SpinTunes regular Mike, who submits as The Dutch Widows / cardamom seed, has organized a SpinTunes Christmas album to celebrate the holiday season. It features twenty submissions, old and new, and can be streamed or downloaded at Bandcamp or embedded below. Enjoy!

ST23 Bonus Round

The SpinTunes 23 Bonus Round is full of great covers and remixes of songs from throughout the tournament, as well as some surprises from the SpinTunes vault. If you missed the Listening Party, you can stream or download the full album on Bandcamp or embedded below:

ST23.4 Reviews - Chumpy, Ryan, and Micah

SpinTunes 23 Champions Chumpy and Ryan discuss the Final Round entries and shadows on their podcast Two Jerks One Vote, where they are joined this time around by SpinTunes administrator Micah Sommersmith.

SpinTunes 23 Final Results

The contestants have cast their votes, and the results of the SpinTunes 23 Final Round have been determined. Congratulations to our SpinTunes 23 Champions, Cavedwellers!

Listen to Cavedwellers' winning entry, "The Only Way Out", the three other finalists' songs, and 13 shadow entries on Bandcamp or embedded below.

Read on for the full results and links to judges' reviews!

ST23.4 Reviews - ChasRock

Warning: Please don’t listen to the ST RD4 album while operating a motor vehicle or any other large machinery. 

It’s been a really long time since I’ve tried to write and record a song by myself in a day, so I took the only free afternoon I had last week to submit a shadow. Boy, that was humbling! I had that classic experience where I wrote, recorded, and mixed everything in the span of several hours, so by the end of the process, none of the sounds made sense anymore. 

I don’t hate the song I wrote, but when the round four album was released, I listened to the version I turned in and there’s an annoying, amateurish guitar that I left in when I was trying to create textural layers. It sticks out in a BIG way, especially in mono, which for me completely ruins the whole “go to sleep” vibe. Awesome. That’s awesome. 

Maybe someday I’ll re-record or rearrange, but ultimately I’m still glad I made something just to make it because the joy has always been in the process. The only reason I bring any of this up is because I really enjoyed judging this competition and I want to thank all of the artists for being vulnerable and putting a bunch of work into these brilliant little creations, only to have some stranger who is *alright* at songcraft tell them that they mixed a cymbal too loud or whatever. I have no idea who will win, but y’all rock. Micah rocks. ST4ever and thanks for having me. 

ST23.4 Reviews - Edric Haleen

My Process:

A little different this time, as I knew my Friday-through-Sunday wasn’t going to be available for SpinTunes-related things.  I listened and jotted down initial impressions during the Listening Party.  Then on Wednesday, after the beginning-of-the-week busyness and before the onset of the end-of-the-week busyness, I went through just the four official Finalist songs.  Sorry to leave everyone who shadowed hanging, but thanks for participating . . . and I hope you had an awesome time!

ST23.4 Reviews - Leonie Connellan

Glad I’m not choosing the winner this time. Unless it ends up being a four way tie, which I can totally see happening honestly. There is so little between all these songs that putting them in any kind of order feels like an exercise in randomness. At the end of the day, the winner on my list is the one that surprised me into crying the most.