wizz, bang, boing – paradine psytrance demo mix

My old trusty Sony headphones broke where the headpiece joins the earpiece a while back. I tried gluing them a couple of time but by the third break I knew they would never work out. I got myself a nice pair of Sennheiser HD25 Mk II’s which I’ve always loved. I took them for a test drive this weekend and recorded the result and named it Wizz, Bang, Boing.

It is 2 hour psychedelic trance journey to a damp land inhabited by heavy wild things stomping about bending balloons into fantastic shapes as robot insects flit between the speaker stacks looking for their guitars.

Update: I have moved this 200+ MB mix to adrive.com. You should be able to download it with no problems now!

linkage: download via the demo mix page

diversity music festival 2008 video clips, texada island

DJ Soma rocking the Diversity stage with some sweet Psychedelic sounds

diversity music festival photos 2008, texada island

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to cruise up to Texada Island for Diversity Electronic Music festival. What an experience! Rolling into a festival by boat and unloading onto the beach to camp is something to experience! Thanks so much to all the lovely people we met and played with – you make it all worthwhile!

linkage: see part 1 here, see part 2 here, main photography page

entheos festival 2008 – video clips

I captured a few short (30 second) video clips while at Entheos Music festival 2008 on my Canon S80 digital camera.

The main dance floor looks pretty dark – but thats what you get under Psychedelic lighting conditions! Enjoy

entheos festival photos 2008

Entheos electronic music festival and conference was held near Robert’s Creek on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia. The site was stunning with camping in the trees on the moss, two music zones and market area by the lake. Lots of beautiful and wonderful folks.

Thanks to all those who put on such a nice festival for us.

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entheos festival 2008 main dance floor night

linkage: entheos festival photos 2008, main photography page

trance genres – acid through vocal

If you were ever wondering what type of trance you were listening to – this is the list for you. A clearly defined list that covers the full spectrum of trance and the sub-genres including the origins and links to Artist profile who represent the style.

linkage: trance genres via wikipedia

paradine downtempo – demo mix

I am enjoying all the extra time off at the moment as it is giving me some time to do some mixing. I’ve just uploaded a new downtempo demo mix Fluidity. You can find the details on the demo mixes page.

linkage:  download via demo mix page

paradine psytrance demo mix – void that binds

I have just uploaded a new full on Psytrance mix journeying into the Void that Binds. This was recorded the first time I mixed this set. It’s on the quirky side with a solid pace and nice and psychedelic. 144 – 149 BPM. The divshare player doesn’t seem to like it for some reason – but downloaded plays fine

linkage: download via demo page

psytrance festivals europe 2008

There are a couple of phat psytrance festivals this year in Europe. Boom is on this year (it is only every second year) as well as O.z.o.r.a. Ozora is in Hungry from 6th to 8th of August and Boom from the 11th to 18th. If there was ever a month that’d be good to kick up some dust – it’d be August I reckon.

Booms Website

Here’s highlights from the line up for Ozora. (I can’t see one posted for Boom yet – but you know it’ll be even better)

Juno Reactor, Shpongle, Hallucinogen, Alpha, Talamasca, Ott, Asura, Aes Dana, Total Eclipse, Andromeda, Prometheus, Atmos, FREq, Nomad, Blue Planet Corporation, Jaia, Pleiadians, Logic Bomb, Tristan, Neuromotor, Naked Tourist, Doc, Cpc, Laughing Buddha, Horror Place, Allaby, ANS, Highcosmos, Mael, TrippyHippies, Star Sound Orchestra, Nanda, Simon B, Driss, Edoardo, Peter Didjital, Psychotrop, Dj Marios, Shane Gobi, Irgumburgum

linkage: Boom Festival, O.z.o.r.a.

update 10 April:

Tshitraka Project Open Air Festival – July 3 – 9 (Northern Germany)

With 7 days and 6 nights of non stop music and culture we are going to celebrate the festival with an enhanced and refreshed concept, bringing you a carefully selected balance of full on, psychedelic and progressive trance.

Live Acts: Astrix, Basic, Biotouch, Bitmonx, Chakra, Dualsnug, Earsugar, Freakshow, Freakulizer, Galactika, Gms, Klopfgeister, Krunch,Liquid Soul, Pralhad, Sun Control Species, Vaishiyas, Vibrasphere

If you are looking for something a bit more twisted you might want to think about heading to Russia for Khan Altay a solar eclipse festival with both Progressive and full power Psytrance

linkage: Tshitraka Festival

Khan Altay – Solar Eclipse Festival: 25th of July – 2nd of August, Altai mountains, Russia

Khan Altay is a space out of time, a festival of art and creation. We gather here with friends from around the world for the cosmic moment of the total solar eclipse.

In this planetary alignment, a way between worlds is opened in the ancient land of Altay. This moment is guarded by a dragon, whose fiery spirit watches over our dreams from the deep blue heavens.

Live Acts: Astropilot, Bluetech, Electripnose, Fragletrollet, Kraft, Liquid Cristal Fait, Noises of Russia, Ocelot, Reality Pixie, Sattel Battle, Sensient (TBC), Shadow Fx (TBC), Troll Scientists, Tsabeat, Utro-Tra-Tru

linkage: Khan Altay Festival

Psychedelic Circus Open Air Festival Part 10 – 06 June – Mon, 09 June, Strohkirchen, Germany

Live Acts: Rinkadink, Fatali, Penta, Magoon, U-Recken, Day.Din, Nizzel, Midimal, Naked Tourist, Philter, Timedrained, Deeper, Lightsphere, Slackjoint, Audiomatic, Ski Fi, Magnetrixx

linkage: Psychedelic Circus

update 9 May 2008:

Glade Festival – July 18-20 Berkshire (1 hour from London, UK)

The Glade festival originates from a renegade stage at Glastonbury. It has evolved into one of the UK’s finest electronica festivals. You’ll have to be open to other music styles to really get the most out of the event as it isn’t really a Psytrance festival. There are a load of stages and some interesting acts however and I even saw that Pitch Black from NZ’ll be there. If you are in the area and into Electronica – it’ll be worth a listen I’m sure

photo borrowed without permission from Graham Joys photostream on flickr (thanks Graham)

linkage: full details for Glade Festival

Hadra Trance Festival – 25 -27 July, Pontcharra, Isere (France)

There are some nice full on live acts booked for Hadra Trance festival as well as some sublime downtempo acts:

Space Tribe, Cpu, Parasense, Gaudium, The Commercial Hippies, Ldb System,Barak, Reality Grid, Shotu, Psymmetrix, Kularis, Solar Fields, Sine Die, Pirated Machines, Fluid, D_Root, Lunarave, Lumin Feat. Irina Mikhailova, Solar Fields, H.U.V.A Network, Slackbaba, Asura, Terra Nine, Orchid Star, Kick Bong, Secret Vibes, Lipo

linkage: full line up and more info here

update May 13

Fullmoon Festival – 16 – 21st July Wittstock (1 hr from Berlin, Germany)

A long running and well supported and large festival. Expect German precision and some of spectacular deco, sound and lighting.

Seperate stages for full on and progressive psytrance as well as chill out area. Another impressive line up – here’s the list for the full on stage which will cover the lighter melodic sound through the dark nasty stuff for the night time fanatics. Yum Yum:

Star Sounds Orchestra, Juno Reactor, Sun Project, Etnica, Cosmosis, Protoculture, Bizzare Contact, Vibe Tribe, Deedrah, Absolum, Transwave, Space Buddha, Shanti, Electro Sun, Atomic Pulse, Aquatica, Slug, Polaris, Digicult, Atomiculture, D-Maniac, Sick Addiction, Tryambaka, Kindzadza, Electrypnose, Yab Yum, Atriohm, Drury Nevil, Mubali, Noise Gust, Whicked Hayo, Irgum Burgum, Stereographic, Gappeq, Shagma, Slackjoint, Hyperion, Digital Efx

Borrowed without permission from Hotterra.de

linkage: full details at Fullmoon website

Antaris Project – 11 – 14 July (Rhinow, West of Berlin, Germany)

You want to go back to the roots? Well Antairs have been around since the early nineties and this is their 14th festival. The Antiris crew promise an evolved concept and some new deco! Hoo ra!

“Laugh & Dance, it is for your eyes, your ears and your heart !”

Come and be enchanted by the delicious Antaris mix of spiritual ambience, tribal psychedelic music, superfriendly audience, awesome location and a crew devoted to make the festival a magical experience for everyone.

Live Acts: Ace Ventura, Ajja, Braincell, Commercial Hippies, Flooting Grooves, Ganga Giri, Headroom, South Africa Hilight Tribe, Hyper Frequencies, Genepool, Irland Kalyug, Klangstrahler & Tarzan , Master Margherita, Lars Lee, Parasense , Psymmetrix, Sangeet,
Whicked Hayo feat. Hilight Tribe, Yab Yum

linkage: antaris project (english)

Sky Gravity Festival – 30th July – 3 Aug, Sudak, Crimea (Ukraine)

Sky Gravity enters it’s fourth year – with a new venue near Sudak City, Ukraine close to the Black Sea and the warm micro climate. Expect a smaller more intimate gathering

Live Acts: Penta, Ajja, Yab-Yum, Goasia, fungus Funk, Histeria, SynSUN, Overdream, Kadasarva, Saikosarus, Cifroteca, SOM, Madgentel, Liquid Mind Project, Spirit Medicine Project, Nimb, Roof Raiser

“First of all, we would like to mention, that it’s not only event for fans of psytrance, goa, full on, suomi, progressive and break trance, but also for chillout crew, who like such music as ambient, dub, downtempo, idm, electronica, experimental, raggey”

linkage: Sky Gravity festival (english)

updated: 21/05/2008

Psytasia Castle Festival – 6 – 8th June, Schloss Leiben (Austria)

As far as I can tell you’ll be partying in a Castle over a couple of night on three different stages at this new festival from the BassIsland collective.

Live Acts:

Bitkit, Cos Cos, Delysid, Kajola, Khopat, Klopfgeister, Lagun, Luap, Manju, Noise Hunter, Psysex, Rinkadink, Soth, Sun Collector, The Alchemists Dream, The Path, Visionautica, Volu-men

linkage: Psytasia Castle Festival

Spirit Base Festival – 19 – 23 June, Sand Quarry, Rauchenwarth (15 km from Vienna, Austria)

This is Austria’s largest trance festival and 2008 will be the sixth successful year with the motto for this year “Desert Journey to Ancient Cultures”

The multimedia journey of Austria ’s biggest festival of electronic music in 2008 leads us back to the ancient cultures of the South American continent before the cultures of Olmecs, Aztecs, Mayas and Incas

The main stage will be constructed as a Maya temple, from where the magicians of psytrance will fill the dance floor with sound. Four decoration teams are already working on huge presentationsof the pre-Columbian cultures which will enframe the dance floor. Projections up to ten metres high will create fantastic worlds of colour and light. Videoshows by the video artists El Geko, Fade X, The Funny Astronaut and a new act by Visionautica will create a background setting „beaming” the visitors into the fantastic world of Stargate. During the festival there will be fire shows, performances, workshops and further surprises.

Live Acts:

Talamasca , Pixel , Fatali , Rocky , Phanatic , Digicult , Tranan , Alternative , Perplex , Sangeet , Pop , Delysid , Combinations , Slider , Shiva , Ibojima , S , Neelix , True , SKI , Jey , Nizzel , Odiseo , Ix-Lam-At , Trancemission , Human , Klopfgeister , Feuerhake , Vaishiyas , Day.Din , Symphonix , V-tunes , Brisker , Materia , Desert , Visionautica

linkage: Spirit Base Festival

Summer End Festival III – 31 July – 3 August, Tinizong-Rona (Switzerland)

The Summer End festival enters it’s third season and promises an interesting and varied line up. Some very good acts playing on the chill stage as well.

Live Acts:

Silent Hill, Freq, DNA, Injection, Freakulizer, Atma, Liquid Sunshine, Pitch black, KUBA, Slackbaba, Chilled Cquence, Dymons, Flooting Grooves, COSMOSOPHY, Kukan Dub Lagan, Dubrizona, Argaman, Eastern Spirit, Spectral Paradisis, Mercury Fall, Chill Devil, Big Fish Little Fish, Etnomorph

Photos Stolen from Roger

linkage: Summers End Festival

all linkage: Boom Festival, O.z.o.r.a Festival, Tshitraka Festival, Khan Altay Festival, Psychedelic Circus, Hadra Festival, Glade Festival, Fullmoon Festival, Antaris Project, Sky Gravity festival, Psytasia Castle Festival, Spirit Base Festival, Summers End Festival

paradine downtempo demo mix added

I spent a while working on the arrangement of this set as it proved decidedly tricky to get the diversity of tracks to flow together into some sort of coherent whole. Still I’m happy with the outcome. Enjoy!

linkage: jan 2008: paradine dj demo – thorn of crowns (105mb, 1:17 mins), all demo mixes

amazing research facilities

I see these ‘amazing facilities’ photos and can only think what great sites they would be for a party…

linkage: via deputy dog 

how to best tag and manage your music collection for digital dj mixing (mp3 flac ogg etc)

The media browsers and database collections of most digital DJ mixing systems can be a bit painful to use (e.g. Virtual DJ). I have found that accurately tagging my collection in another program like Media Monkey and then copying the collection over in bulk to the mixing laptop is the best method of managing my collection.

Every incoming file on my computer automatically ends up in a folder called _untested. The _untested folder is further divided into sub folders Completed Torrents, From People, GetRight, and Soul Seek . In each root folder there will be individual files like in the picture below

Whenever I have the time I troll through all the folders and clean them out. All the software gets deleted or moved to the Software Drive (S:), same for the Watching Pleasure (W:). All the music I extract and play next in Media Monkey. I quickly skip through a few tracks to get a feel for genre of the album. I’ll delete the whole album fairly ruthlessly if it sounds at all cheesy or not really my style.

review: torq xponent dj system on clevo D990k mobile desktop

A friend was visiting a few weeks ago and brought in his M-audio Torq Xponent in for me to have a mix on. I enjoyed my self so much over the next 24 hours that I went and got myself one.

I had been having some problems with my existing system a M-Audio external Audiophile sound card and Virtual DJ software. The Audiophile sound card with ASIO drivers crashed way too often to be performance worthy. The pitch would drop and the sound would start distorting, usually as a second track was added to a mix.

The Xponent includes a two channel sound card so I wouldn’t have to worry about using the crappy on board Ac97 sound card for the headphone channelas an added bonus of upgrading.

Having had the system for a couple of weeks now using the included Torq mixing software I have been pretty happy with the results. The Torq software still seems to have a few problems and has crashed a number of times, which is a few times too many. The software is a year on and up to V1.04 so they are addressing problems – but more to resolve. I don’t have 100% confidence to play live with it at this point in time, but I hope that will change by the next version.

I have set up a dedicated 3 GB partition on my mobile desktop, a Clevo D900k, with WinXP SP 2 and all Windoze updates installed. The partition is on a striped RAID array for optimal performance. Base system drivers installed ie. RAID, AMD processor management, as well as WiFi for Windoze updates. All unnecessary Windows components have been uninstalled and I have disabled any service (see this post) that isn’t going to be required. There are a lot that you do not need for DJ’ing and diasbling them can give any computer a performance boost.

shambhala music festival photos 2007

Had a great time at the Shambhala Music Festical, locallly here in BC. We’d booked a hire a van but were loaned a fully kitted out one so took that instead. It took a day there and back with four nights camping at the party. Lots of people (8000 odd) and loads of good music and a nice vibe. We’ll plan on heading back next year. I’ve uploade d few pics. Enjoy.

linkage:  Shambhala music festival photos 2007, official site

new psytrance demo – hall of the mountain king

I have just finished a new Psytrance demo mix. It begins at 144 bpm and steadily advances to 148. Lots of layers and pretty hectic in some places. I hope you enjoy your trip to the Hall of the Mountain King.

linkage: direct via divshare, all mixes on the demo mix page