Estándar describes itself (roughly) as “a platform for contemporary culture that encourages the production, research, dissemination and documentation of different disciplines under a sustainable model of self-determination and social inclusion.” Among their early projects are a couple interesting compilations as curators for the Free Music Archive.

I very much enjoyed listening to their first compilation, focused on the Guadalajara music scene. From Jason Sigal’s FMA blog post:

One of these artists — the avant plunderphonicollagist .RR (né Arturo Ortega) — may already be familiar to FMA listeners as a Classwar Karaoke participant whose work has been curated by suRRism-Phonoethics. The rest range from to shimmering pop (Hey Chica!), to dark-wave minimalism (Tzohto y la mente paisajista), to flavored folk (Cyané & Dorotheo) and revolutionary punk (El Sagrado). A shoegaze haze looms large throughout, and that’s a good thing; nod along with “Waitin’ for the Orange Sunshine“.

* COMPILADO 001 by ESTÁNDAR is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

If this is your first exposure to the Free Music Archive, check out how slick this is – you can download any track or the entire album right from the player or source page without creating an account. Each track, collection, and curator has its own info page. I also recommend listening by surfing the genres (I personally toggle for most interesting – example.) Signing up allows you to favorite tracks and artists while you listen and to create sharable, embedddable playlists and community blog posts via your profile.