Thursday 31 May 2007

Hypnotica Enters Entropia Universe

Now this is a new one on me. Spurred on by the increasing interest in Second life in the media I thought I'd seek out alternatives, the only real (or virtual...) alternative is Entropia Universe

First impressions are....graphics & sound great, controls to move tricky!

Keep you posted as I investigate further

Further reading:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/17/entropia-universe-a-better-second-life/
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=259436

Hypnotica Enters Second Life

Ok I've been there for about a year but if you haven't experienced the virtual world of Second Life yet - give it a go!!

Thinking about streaming my music to a location in second Life....

Every geek on the planet will want one - including me

Ok. Not strictly music related but this is so cool I had to mention it on my blog!

Yesterday, Microsoft took the wraps off "Milan", five years in the making and the first in what the company hopes will be a long line of "surface computers". The Microsoft tabletop PC, called "Surface", for which Microsoft has created both the hardware and software, offers shades of the technology seen in the sci-fi thriller Minority Report. The whole unit is controlled entirely through touch — there's no mouse or keyboard.

To me it resembles the table top space invaders that used to inhabit pubs in the 80's but with technology light years ahead

Read about the announcement here or go to the Surface website

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Tiesto - Elements of life

Although, originally a huge fan, I have drifted away from trance music a but as the market became saturated with bland, samey 'chart' trance. The supermarkets music sections were overflowing with talentless pap made to a formula with generic girly vocals over the top and predictable breakdowns. Which is a shame

When it kicked off, trance was exciting, energetic, melodic and original. The best stuff 'as always' German and Dutch. Talla 2XLC, DJ Taucher, BT, Ferry Corsten, Sasha, Paul Van Dyk and many others were exponents of the early trance movement and you could always guarantee good stuff from them.

Tiesto was another trance god and his mixes were always highly melodic and veered towards 'head music' to be enjoyed at home as much as 4 to the floor stuff in a club. Most genres become exhausted eventually and despite these artists being highly talented I felt that enough was enough so stopped buying compilations a while ago.

Since then only the odd trance album / artist has caught my attention, Armin Van Buuren has done a few corkers, Talla is still piling out awesome mixes and recently of all places I heard Tiesto's latest album blaring out over a small hi-fi in PC World at the weekend

"Elements of life" is a classic! only heard it briefly but it's definitely worth checking out - trance is apparently not dead....

Check Tiesto's website here

Sunday 27 May 2007

80's music fans come on down.....

Gig review: The Hitmakers Tour : Toyah Willcox, ABC & Howard Jones 15/11/06

Due to 'life' generally getting in the way, I have only just finished doing this gig review of a concert I went to at the end of '06. The bottom line being "I'm glad I went but with a sellout audience it could have been a very different night......"
You can find the full review on my website:

http://www.hypnoticbeats.co.uk/gigreviews.htm

Friday 25 May 2007

OMD Live at the Hammersmith Odeon Fri 18th May 2007

Still coming down from the awesome OMD gig in London I went to recently. ALWAYS wanted to see them live and failed to do so in the 80's so beat myself up about it every time I play music by them!

Anyway the gig was superb and if you have a spare half an hour to kill, feel free to read my 6 act play about the gig on my Hypnotica website here

I have managed to get good tickets for the Nottingham Royal Centre gig too so I will be getting another fix pretty soon :-)

Check out OMD's official site here

Musique Non Stop

Can't put it off any longer - lets get this party started!

This blog will be an unstructured collection of musical thoughts as they come to mind. Expect my current playlists, gig updates, news on my activities as Hypnotica and anything else that may appear vaguely interesting - but definitely with a large bias to music and technology

Welcome and I hope you enjoy the blog