Headshot of Amazing

After 2 years (!) of abstinence I finally found the time to release a new progressive house mix today containing a lot of tracks that i have been listening to while programming these days. This one is very much on the progressive side of house and techno with even a little bit of trance. Just one hour long but packed with energy and hopefully joy for you to listen. Head over to the Music section and download it right away. Feel free to leave comments, questions and feedback! All tracks can be purchased from Beatport. There is also a playlist available if you are interested (giving credit where credit is due). Oh and the picture is as usual from one of my trips, this time: Madagascar. Enjoy!

Take me to the mix!

Just stumbled over a game called Proteus while checking out some news on Steam – a fantastic looking and sounding exploration experience from the indie game scene. Can’t seem to find the “buy” option although it’s supposed to be released today. But I found some interesting “Let’s Play” on Youtube giving a little bit of a feel what it is (spoiler alert). Must say, I am curious and will definitely check it out. If you are into games also because you feel they are a piece of art and more than just objectives to solve or competitions to beat, you might want to do the same… If you constantly feel the need to blow shit up, please move along!

There is a new mix for download in the Music section. This time, I started out to be very minimal. The first couple of tracks I really love, mainly because of their fresh and unconventional underground feel. The pace increases after about 1/3 of the way and becomes a little more progressive and even a bit big room, taking a few turns into the melodic and then in the last third of the mix it goes down until ending up in my obligatory chill-out zone. It is roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes long, so take your time to enjoy the beast in its whole without interruptions. There are a lot of different styles covered within. It is again a mix of all the tracks I liked listening to the most in the past couple of months. I must admit, it was not easy to get them all working together this time and you might notice the fades are a little bumpy in the last half, but I just wanted to get all of them into one mix because they are just awesome. Hope you enjoy!

Direct download: here.

More mixes: here.

I have a new ‘mixtape‘ for you guys! This time it contains my favorite tracks of the past few months. I had them in a kind of heavy rotation while working, and now i put them together in a sequence.

I like to imagine it is going up like a rocket into the orbit in the beginning where suddenly (at around half of the mix) you stop moving and just kind of float around in zero gravity until you drop back down to earth (in the last 12mins). So it is kind of chillout with some energy boost here and there.

Hope you enjoy!! Don’t forget to provide some feedback in the comment section…

Listen now…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A

I know: it is old. I know: everyone has probably seen it. Get off my case! Somehow it came up at work today – i guess it was because of the second hack but i am not sure. In any case, I realized that i haven’t honored this piece by posting it on my blog yet (and I can’t stop asking myself why i haven’t done so before). Why do I? Because I also know: it is awesome! There are three things about it that make it worth watching over and over again:

1. It is not one of those obvious mind manipulating advertisement for some crappy product nobody wants but an emotional short clip that has nothing to do with the product in the first place.

2. It was NOT computer generated, to my surprise – because when I first saw it, I thought it was.

3. The song is just pure gold, thanks to José González and even without the clip worth listening to.

Overall, I might even go so far as to claim this to be the best advertisement I have ever seen. Sure there are some pretty funny heineken spots out there. But without being funny, good ads are rare and therefor ads are to be avoided altogether… Well, except like I said: this piece of art! Check out the making of, to see the idea behind it and most importantly: the firing of the ball cannons yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPjWZQ1lp0

PS: Did I mention that I find the song just beau-ti-ful?!

People (like me) are running around with their headphones on and their eyes on the phones all the time. Especially commuting to and from work is kind of boring if you have no music in your ears  and sometimes even spooky because you realize that nobody is talking to anyone at all. Why not break the silence and ask those people what they are listening to? I find this idea inspiring and the answers sometimes even surprising:

Totale Koerperbeherrschung, absolut unerschuetterliche Ausdauer und musikalisch grossartigster Geschmack – all dies sind Faehigkeiten, die ich mir selbst nicht zuschreiben kann – aber diesem Team! Sie sind einfach faszinierend im Breakdance on Dubstep und das auch noch synchronisiert! Besonders gefallen mir die fastforward und slomo moves, sowie die Wechsel zwischen eben diesen. Und was die Mucke angeht: Dubstep loest bei mir haeufig einfach nur ein innerliches Grinsen aus. In diesem Fall inbesondere das Stueck von Minute 3 bis 4… 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

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