A Collosus of Genius

While I have been near Lago Maggiore in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, I have also been going up the stream of one of the rivers – leading into the Verzasca Valley. And by “going” i mean “driving”. Anyway… After a while you find yourself in front of a cement wall: the Contra dam. Wait a second, I know that sight: From this dam James Bond took his famous bungee jump in Goldeneye! In fact you can even do the jump yourself if you dare. Even though i just posted all those adventurous things i would like to do some day, bungee jumping was not one of them.

Contra dam aka the favorite place for Bond to Bungee Jump

Instead I continued going up the river, beyond the enormous artificial lake of the dam, and I reached a wonderful river bed carved into solid granite near a very old roman bridge. Wow. What a sight! Around this river you can climb along the rocks from one small stream to another. Near the bridge you see the mountains in the back and the water is flowing very slowly and is several meters deep. Some small streams go all around the rocks so it may very well happen that were you climb along would turn out to be a dead end after a while because you cannot cross the water except by swimming. Continue reading

Creativity

This week’s top creativity inspiration for me goes to the people of Cyclecide. Those guys are plain awesome when it comes to the ‘just-do-this-thing’ mentality. I like the spirit and the circus appeal. Just would love to see them traveling around the country too… Continue reading

You are now invited to join me on a late afternoon walk along the lake of Locarno, Switzerland. It is the beginning of June and after a completely overcast day around 5pm the sun came out and bathed the trees on the esplanade in a warm light. People came out from cafes to take a walk in t-shirts or ride their bikes along the lake. Once in a while you can hear some waves hitting the stones when a boat came by a little bit further out on the water. Continue reading

This is the first recording I made today while walking around in my neighborhood. Summer finally started and you could feel the smooth warmth of the sun on your skin while a gentle wind was moving the air around you. Not far from my home there are some bank buildings, the stadium, a huge fair hall and a techno club called OXA (which is famous within the Zurich area). Even though it can be a very busy areal on weekdays and nights, during weekend days there are almost no people around, giving me the perfect opportunity to start my first recordings of the Auralfloat project. What fascinated me was the realization that when recording audio, i have to learn to hear from scratch – almost like a photographer has to learn how to perfectly frame his shots, perspectives, the constellation of objects and lights within the scene. For example in my recordings you hear the wind and footsteps, which i almost did not realize while recording it. I also did not realize how many airplanes or even distant cars are recognizable from where i have been. But i left the recordings as they are (no editing), because I think there will be a lot of learning going on and i am really looking forward to experiment with it in the future. I hope you will like it as well and I would be very happy about any feedback you can give. Continue reading

One year has passed since i published the last mix. And it was also on the 1st of May. Well, this time it’s a little bit later – but: I actually started working on it on the weekend of the 1st. So consider this my yearly contribution under the subject “Dance into May“.

This time i collected many very different tracks over the course of the year which i wanted to put together in one only mix. This i consider the perfect combination or “mixtape” if you will, for work or travel even though it was not that easy to jump through all the different styles. But i did not want to leave any of the pieces out.

So, I started with some of the most impressive ambient sounds i have ever listened to. One of them is by Lisa Gerrard, who in my opinion has the most amazing voice on this planet. I mean chill-down-the-spine-every-single-time kind of amazing! I really suggest you to look up some live concert’s clips on youtube if you don’t know her yet. Those sounds then will soon fade into some progressive house which climaxes in a pushing dubstep. After that the mix keeps flowing nicely up and down the electro/progressive and even minimal house line until it finishes with an excellent chillout track – which is kind of my favorite tune in the last couple of months.

You can download or stream the mix on the Music section of my blog. All I am asking is to please give me feedback on what you think about this journey of my favorite tracks of the past 365 days.

Listen:

Download or Stream in the Music section

Here is the playlist:

Bluetech – Worthy
Dead Can Dance (Lisa Gerrard) – The Host Of Seraphim
Cell – Floating Retention
Solar Fields – Introduction
Ten Madison – Humans
Trentemoller – Beta Boy
Dousk – Lein (Original Mix)
Tonecast – Murder Fingerprints (Original Mix)
Daniel Portmann – Virtual Suicide (Original Mix)
Noisia – Machine Gun (Spor Remix)
The Madison – Liquid Sky (Original Mix)
Evren Ulusoy & Sezer Uysal – Are You Deaf (Cid Inc Remix)
EE2 – Suddle Movements (Brian Kage Remix)
Ricky Ryan – Flower Bomb (Kobana And Mario Hatchet Remix)
Pleasurekraft – Tarantula (Original Mix)
Darin Epsilon & Paronator – Esperanto (Original Mix)
Trentemoller- Late night cab driving
Bodytemp – Kalm (Original Mix)
Carbon Based Lifeforms – Epicentre (Second Movement)
Secede – Leraine

There are some things that we all have in common… Bobby McFerrin is demonstrating this on the World Science Festival 2009, by making the audience spontaneously sing together without explicitly telling them what to do. As he said, this works no matter where on earth he is trying this. I also like the comment in the end “what the hell just happened?” and am smiling even without knowing the answer…

http://vimeo.com/5732745

Listen Google Translate beatboxing:

bsch. bsch. bk zk pv zk bschk pv zk zk bsch zk ktkt pv bscht zk ktkt haus.

Just play that line back in German Language. Oh, and even though i wasnt the one who found that out, the line above is actually created by me, so i am just waiting for someone sampling it in their next tracks and sharing some income. Rewind Selecta Baby!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ4DKBs40ec

This is just amazing!! Observe the work from the research of the sample sources, cutting, mixing, adding effects up to the mastering of what prodigy probably has been doing when making ‘Smack My Bitch Up’. All re-made and filmed by Jim Pavloff using Ableton.

Makes me want to create some music again. Awww…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI