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.

Due to important procrastination reasons today’s show started right at the usual time but way more hurried than usual.

Today’s show was also the last show of November, which means that this year is almost over, and once again it did go by kind of fast… but that also means that my End of the Year mix is approaching! I don’t know yet when exactly you will be able to experience it; looking at a calender, Saturday, December 30 seems like a good choice, though. Let’s see if I can make it!

First we have to go through tonight’s tracks, and once again there was a whole bunch of great tracks in today’s show… David Broaders opened the show with his solid release “Undertow,” Robert Nickson followed right up with “Soul Doubt,” and Rub!k’s “Red-Five” was cool, too! Lange & Skye brought us “Drifting Away” (remixed by Marsh), Audrey Gallagher and SMR LVE contributed “Going Home,” there was a new release by LSR/CITY (aka Gareth Emery and Annabel) named “House in the Streetlight,” Cold Blue remixed “Te Amo” by Bryan Kearney, Ana Criado and BiXX released “I Belong,” Steve Dekay had a new release as well (named “Dimorphos”), Photographer’s remix of Solarstone’s “4ever” grew on me this week, and the show was simply not possible without “Heads Will Roll” by Kym Ayres and Leigh Green, last week’s Favourite of the Week. Still a banger, and it’s gonna stay with us for a while… 😀

Alright, so, this week’s Favourite of the Week is a no-brainer, if you have been following the CQAH Discord. It is, obviously…

There was literally no other possible choice: Above & Beyond’s 2023 Progressive Remix of OceanLab’s “Satellite.” Spotify has been peddling this track to me hard for a week now, I’ve been hearing it on other people’s streams (e.g. when @liquid_bongo, @djcquence and XiJaro & Pitch played it), and it was high time that I played it as well. Well, here you go. 🙂

I will be back next week at the usual spot, Wednesday, December 6, 19:00 CET/UTC+1.

I got held up at work so the show started a bit later than usual… but hold up, am I not forgetting something? I sure am.

Because last week I also played a show but I forgot to hit the record button (again) which means that I also didn’t create post for it so now it has been three weeks without Favourites of the Week and that is basically unbearable!

Okay, so… three weeks ago I wasn’t actually at home on Wednesday so two weeks ago I played another Newsflash Double, those were weeks 45 and 46 of the year (which is almost over, by the way!), so let’s see what we had in that show.

One of the tracks that I was most looking forward to play was the new Sean Tyas & David Elston remix by “All Over Again” by Plumb and Bryan Kearney, and it did not disappoint. There was also a new remix of John O’Callaghan’s and Audrey Gallagher’s “Big Sky” by Asteroid and Paul Skelton, Jodie Poye and Lee Hanlon gave us “Falling for You,” Kenny McAuley’s track “Universal Connection” was great, as was “Sanctuary” by Will Rees, there was the Alex M.O.R.P.H. remix by Ciaran McAuley’s new track “Love Wins,” and finally we also heard “Parley Pt. 2 (The Bassline Will Bring Me Home)” by Angelus which was wonderful, too!

And as that show was a Newsflash Double, I get to pick two Favourites of the Week! The first one has to be this one:

The second one, of course, is this one, and it’s not like I really have a choice in that matter. 😀

Alright, that brings us to this week’s show, which started with a very high amount of vocal trance tracks, and has actually delivered almost one banger after the other. The tracks that really stood out for me this week, are “Black Hill” by trance dinosaur Talla 2XLC, “Peripheral” by Andrew Peters, “Falling for You” by Jodie Poye and Lee Hanlon is still great, Plumb’s “All Over Again” does not need to be mentioned again 😂, Forza:Duo’s track “Detrimental” was anything but, “Losing My Mind” by Mark Sherry slapped hard, Spy and Yelow’s “The Remedy” also deserves to be mentioned here, but the Favourite of the Week is most definitely this track, a remix of “Heads Will Roll” by Kym Ayres and Leigh Green, originally by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It adds quite the kick to the original!

Because I forgot to record last week’s show, I built a little thing into one of my scenes in OBS so that every time I’m starting the show, it will automatically remind me to press the record button, and today it worked! I managed to record the show and that is why you can now listen to it again, by clicking this one simple button!

I will be back next week at the usual spot, Wednesday, November 29, 19:00 CET/UTC+1.

I installed a Windows update 30 minutes before the show, because nothing could go wrong, right? Right?

Luck was on my side tonight, I guess. No trouble from the software side, and nothing bad happening with the hardware, either!

Which means we can get right to the whole bunch of awesome tracks that we had tonight! We started with the still pretty great “Yes Man” by Ferry Corsten, then there was “Tears of the Kingdom” by Alex Sonata & TheRio, Giuseppe Ottaviani, and Tishmal (I really dig that one), John O’Callaghan had a really nice new track called “Flow Through” (and flow it did!), Stoneface & Terminal’s “Got My Need” was with us once again, the new Sam Laxton track “Into Me” was also pretty good, the Alchimyst remix of Ralphie B’s “Massive” still kicks, as does the Asteroid remix of “RAMplify” (by RAM, of course), and I simply needed to play Victor Riuz’s remix of 1998 again, and Airwave’s “Tears in Rain” brought this week’s show to a very, very decent close.

If you paid any attention you will notice that I skipped one particular track… and of course that is because it is the Favourite of the Week: “Pulse” by Ashley Wallbridge and John Grand. What a banger!

And you can check for yourself if you agree with my assessments:

I might not be back next week on Wednesday because there is a thing that I have to attend, and of course it’s from Wednesday till Thursday, and it’s not at home (and I won’t be taking the equipment 😀). Maybe I’ll play a show on Tuesday, maybe I’ll play it on Thursday after getting back, or you’ll get a double feature in the following week, or, like, whenever. I guess we’ll see!

Today was a very relaxed show, no trouble from any hard- or software, and during the last part of it even The Cat™ showed up and I rigged up another camera to put it on stream. I will have to improve the setup in OBS to make that easier in the future.

So, what great tracks did we listen to today? Well, first of all, we had a very interesting track with “Yes Man” by Ferry Corsten. We had a nice remix by John Askew for CJ Bolland’s “There Can Be Only One,” Stoneface & Terminal released “Got My Need” which immediately grabbed everybody’s attention, there was a Greg Downey remix (“The Chamber” by Inertia), Peetu S declared “You Broke Me,” Synthazia’s “Lumi” kept us busy for about 10 of its 12 minutes, I liked the Alchimyst remix of Ralphie B’s “Massive” a lot, and then we finally got to what I picked for Favourite of the week: a remix of Binary Finary’s classic “1998” by none other than Victor Ruiz (who already made it to Favourite of the week three weeks ago)!

All in all, today was a very nice show that you absolutely do want to listen to again:

I’ll be back next week, November 1, at 19:00 CET/18:00 UTC+1! Please take note that summer time is ending this weekend in Germany so next week I’ll be on one hour later than usual — unless you’re also coming out of summer time this weekend. 🙂

Last week my back decided to cancel the show for me, so this week there was another Double Feature! Oh, wait, that means I get to pick two Favourites of the Week! I’m lovin’ it! ❤️

As usual, there was a whole bunch of great tracks in today’s show! I already loved the opener, Jardin’s “Another World,” and the second track, “Tears of the Kingdom” by Alex Sonata & TheRio, Giuseppe Ottaviani, and Tishmal was also very lovely! Later on we had new tracks by David Broaders (“Pink Clouding,” remixed by Suncatcher & Exolight), Maarten de Jong (“Babylon”), Elle Mariachi and Nicholson (“Unstoppable (Winner)”), Allen Watts & Driftmoon (“Power of the Universe”), Modeā & Victor Ruiz (“Contrast”), John Askew (“Afterburner”), Andrea Ribeca (“Into the Future”), Ralphie B (“Massive,” remixed by Alchimyst), and Paul Denton (“Siren”), but there were many more great tracks and it feels kinda silly to list them all? 😜

Alright, so, Favourite of the Week™, yes. For last week, it’s gotta be this track:

And for this week I pick:

Absolute bangers all around! I’d say it’s high time for you to finally listen for yourself:

I’ll be back next week, October 25, at 19:00 CEST+2!