More experimenting: not only did I play today’s show from a flash drive, I also recorded the show to a flash drive; to a second flash drive, nonetheless! And from what I can tell so far, everything has worked absolutely flawlessly, which actually saves me a good deal of work of every week, because connecting the player to the MacBook is almost infinitely more trouble than just putting stuff on a flash drive, which takes mere seconds and doesn’t even require a USB cable. Technology! ❤️
And again, the Stream Deck worked great. Really glad I finally got that, really mad that it took me so long. 😄
Anyway, we had a bunch of cool tracks, like “Venezia” by Alessandra Roncone, “Emotion FM” by Craig Connelly, and The Favourite of the Week™: “Timelapse” by John O’Callaghan (disguised as Joint Operations Centre), remixed by Sean Tyas (disguised as abstrkt). 🔥
But once again, there’s so much more music to listen to, don’t let my picks keep you from listening to all the tracks, right here.
I did another experiment today: I played the show from a flash drive. Even though syncing is blazingly fast, now that I installed an SSD in the player, it is still easier to move a flash drive from the USB hub to the player than it is to get out a cable, attach it, way for the player to boot into USB host mode, transfer files, then basically reboot the player. Next week I’m going to try and record the show on the flash drive as well; a backup recording with REAPER will be available.
The Stream Deck was also fantastic again. That investment really paid off fast!
Short nod to this week’s Favourite of the Week™, the Bogdan Vix remix of “If You Only Knew” by Amber Revival and Hel:sløwed!
There’s more tracks you could listen to, whenever you want!
The next show will be on Wednesday, August 7, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
So, first show with the Stream Deck! Did you notice all four light effects I kept triggering throughout the show? (Did you even spot the Stream Deck in its inconspicuous location, right next to the player’s screen, with the same angle, even, so it could blend in perfectly? 😄)
I really liked having it there, especially for switching scenes, like when the cat shows up, or when it leaves, or when it’s time to end the stream. For all those things I had to turn around and use the PC behind me which totally destroyed my flow.
I still need to integrate it with my overlay, I’m still planning to build in a playlist feature and then trigger the next track from the Stream Deck, so I don’t have to mess around with the browser for that anymore, either.
Alright, so, let’s talk music! What did we have tonight? New tracks by Alex M.O.R.P.H. and Luminn, John Askew, David Forbes and Mark Sherry, Signum and Superstrings, Cold Blue, Alan Morris and Macro Cera, and Ashley Wallbridge and C-Systems. And the Favourite of the Week™ is the 2024 Rework for “Don’t Give a Fuck” by Stoneface & Terminal.
But I’m sure you can find more tracks that you like if you listen to the show again, so: do it!
The next show will be on Wednesday, July 31, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Things will be getting exciting in the next couple of weeks! On Friday I will be picking up a Stream Deck from some random person, and I want to use it to have more direct control over my stream and don’t have to turn around towards the PC screen all the time. I am also already thinking about what else I may be able to do with it… if you have any suggestions, I’m all ear!
I already programmed a couple of buttons in the Companion app but that work is still far from finished; it is amazing, how quickly you can get results with it. If you need to automate stuff in your home and have control surfaces (such as the Stream Deck, or a MIDI keyboard/controller, or random other USB input devices, or a browser), take a look at it.
Okay, I have to get back to programming buttons, have a Favourite of the Week™:
There’s more good tracks in this show, just listen for yourself!
The next show will be on Wednesday, July 24, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Preparation for today’s show was less eventful than last week, the playlist was synced to the player on the first try! I mean, that is something that should be expected and it’s kind of sad that this is so unusual that I have to mention it, but what can you do? 🤷
Well, I know what I am doing: I am changing things in the background. This site is not what it was last week! It is now running in a Docker container, downloads are handled by my Nextcloud instance, and on top of that I am currently writing a bit of JavaScript that may eventually replace that (rather useless) Mixcloud widget.
Okay, enough of that. This has already been more information than has been exchanged in the chat during the show. 😄 I still ❤️ all my lurkers!
Really, enough of that now. What did we have? A couple nice openers, taken from the “other” trance charts, and then we got a couple of nice tracks from our regular trance charts, such as “The Pursuit of Perfection” by Inoblivion, “Nebula” by Aly & Fila and Richard Durand (which is actually from last week already but apparently it managed to slip by unnoticed), and then we have the track that I have picked as this week’s Favourite of the Week™: “Never Felt This Good” by DT8 Project, The Space Brothers, and Andrea Britton.
And maybe some other tracks managed to slip by without getting noticed today as well? If you hear something, say something, or leave me a comment, or whatever. You know.
The next show will be on Wednesday, July 17, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Hey there! If you are part of the demoscene and you are reading this page, you might want to check out the sets that I have played at demoparties! I spent a bit of time and added everything that I could find on a disk somewhere, and if you want to take a listen to those sets, in the navigation on this page (or right here in the text) there is a clickable category named “Demoparty.”
Today uploading the show onto the player only required two tries. Almost acceptable!
What may end up as “maybe not quite acceptable” is the number of tracks that I have added this year, and that have 4 or more stars. We have just entered the second half of the year, and I am already at 108 tracks that I would need to play at this year’s End of the Year mix. If the release rate stays that way (and on average it should) I’m looking at 200 tracks that I need to play. Two bloody fucking hundred! At five minutes a track that would be over 16 hours! I’m gonna die… 😵
For this week I’m only going to point to the Favourite of the Week™: Woody van Eyden’s remix of “Balearic Desire” by Sunstar.
You definitely should listen to the rest of the show as well, though!
The next show will be on Wednesday, July 10, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Of course it cannot directly do so, as it has no devices it can use to physically manipulate matter (except for photons) but holy crap, Engine DJ 4.0 is so incredibly bad for my blood pressure and my generally peaceful composure, it’s a miracle it’s legal. You could probably market it as a rage enhancer for soldiers.
I had to start late because for over an hour it was not possible to sync today’s playlist to the device. On the sixth try the playlist suddenly did sync, and I have no idea what I did differently and how I can reproduce that successfully, but I guess I will start even earlier with that next week. Like, on Tuesday, probably.
Anyway, fuck software. We had a bunch of bangers in tonight’s show, such as the Luca Morris remix of Andrew Meller’s “Born Slippy,” an old classic with a fresh new face, or “Into the Night” by Audorn and Sarah De Warren, or “Lenda” by DIM3NSION and Mirage, and Talla 2XLC’s and Zyrus 7’s version of Binary Finary’s “1998” was not a bad one, either! None of them can hold a candle to this week’s Favourite of the Week™, though, because that one is 🔥: “World on Fire” by Alex Kunnari and Bo Bruce, remixed by Alex himself.
If you want to light your ears on fire, here’s your chance:
The next show will be on Wednesday, July 3, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Two days ago I decided to bite the bullet and update the DJ software I use for feeding tracks and playlists to the PRIME 4, and it has been a wild ride — and I’m not sure it’s over yet! The only good thing I can say so far is that I am very much in awe that the player happily installs whatever firmware you throw at it; switching it between the oldest available and the newest available in either direction is not a problem at all. Bravo, Denon!
However, the software is still an unmitigated disaster. So far I have not yet found a way to use it without getting incredibly frustrated in a very small amount of time. “Everything is a playlist now” is one of the most stupid ideas any product manager has ever had, and “oh, it’s a playlist but you can’t put a track in twice” is a close second. Getting the software to re-order tracks (you know, a thing that one might want to do in a playlist) has me clicking far too often without a clear idea of whether it even should be working that way. And as soon as you attach the player (i.e. its drive which is exposed via USB) everything is simply fucked. You simply want to reverse the order of the playlist you’re looking at right now? Sure, let’s wait 85 seconds.
All of that led to the show starting 10 minutes late, and also I need to re-think whether I want to change the setup… before, I copied everything to a second MacBook which then had the software and did the whole syncing with the player, while I switched the screen to the Windows machine to prepare the encoding, and during the show I could use the second MacBook to talk to you and take notes in the playlist, like tracks I liked, and all that jazz. However, that would now require me to switch the screen back to my main MacBook. Not a good idea. I’ll have to give that some more thought.
Anyway, there were a bunch of cool tracks that I have shamelessly snatched from the Raw/Deep/Hypnotic Trance charts, e.g. the two Airwave tracks, or the Protoculture tracks, and also the Favourite of the Week™. In the second part of the show (where we’re most definitely leaving behind the progressive stuff) there was a bit more action going on, like with “Air Raid” by David Forbes, or “Space Time” by Digital Culture, RAM, and Richard Durand, or what about “Breathe Fire” by Pinkque and That Girl? They’re all good tracks, Bront!
During the show the volume was a bit all over the place but I fixed that for the recording!
The next show will be on Wednesday, June 26, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
Oh my, what a show! Due to a very low number of new tracks this week I was forced to gather tracks from elsewhere, and as a first source I chose the Raw/Deep/Hypnotic Trance charts which yielded in a couple of very cool and relaxed tracks that found their place in the first hour of today’s show. And I also managed to sneak in a number of older tracks that made the rest just so much more enjoyable!
So it is not a big surprise that this week’s Favourite of the Week™ is not from the usual trove of tracks: it’s “Captain Future” (great title!) by MRPHLNDR.
And you really need to listen to all the other tracks I pulled from the other charts, there’s a lot of good stuff in there!
The next show will be on Wednesday, June 19, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.
