Five more free releases on Hybridize today, including Guld’s remix of Unhola! It’s one of my favourite tunes recently, and hopefully it’ll now get a lot of play from DJs in other parts of the world. Tyranoid & Strongstream also get their first releases for a long time, with three acid-suffused tracks. My favourite might be Saturn – that vicious filtered intro is really nice, and might have been quite a good tune for my set last night, actually. The last track is another remix from Jnks, this time Code of Silence – of course we’ve all heard a lot of CoS remixes before, but this one has more of a UK feel that might fit in well with that sort of set.

All five tunes can now be downloaded from the FINRG site.

A couple of weeks away, but Android Lime’s next LSO radio show is definitely worth mentioning early. Following on from Guld and BRK comes Proteus himself! I’m really looking forward to this, any set from Proteus is guaranteed to inspire, and he’s on fire with his recent production, too.

Android has also announced a few of the upcoming guests on his recent FINRG topic – they include Alek Szahala, DJ Rx, Hellraiser….and yours truly! What an honour to be in that sort of company – even if it’s a good way off yet, hopefully we’ll come up with some real NRG madness when the time comes. Big thanks to Android!

No need to explain the topic of this post, so here we go:

23.00 – PlasmaDancer

00.10 – COGI

1.30 – Full Circle DJs

2.50 – Betwixt & Between

3.40 – GULD

So, I’ll be opening an event for the first time – the plan for my set is to start off relatively slowly, but it’ll be full-on freeform by the end, I think. Still a bit stuck about what sort of thing to play, but having too many ideas is better than none, I suppose…

Don’t forget, it’s free entry this time!

The newest release from Alabaster, Rust World shows how far his production has come recently. Getting closer and closer to the Finnish sound while keeping his original style, there are some blinding tunes on this compilation – most obvious is Aether Storm, the track I first heard in his Operation Karma set a while back. Since then I’ve played it at NRGetic Romancer, and it’s an incredibly hard tune. A lot of other tracks just can’t live with it, and I found it quite tricky to find a decent mix, but the crowd definitely appreciated it. There are plenty of other quality tunes on there though, take a look at Alabaster’s site for the full tracklist.

Good news for people outside Japan too – it’s now available via the HardRave store.

I’m happy to say that it’s looking like the recent Trance Enough vs Hell’s Gate event might become a regular thing in the medium-to-long term. For the time being though, we’re trying to round up members for the mixi community – depending on how many people join, that’ll determine which venue to use (or whether to hold the event at all). If you’re on mixi somewhere, feel free to join up. Zio posted a topic on there tonight asking for interested potential DJs/staff, so that’s reason enough to get involved.

A couple more videos of the very talented Hard Dance Ravers – above is Miran (the double mask face, you might remember?) and Natsun glowstringing to Hatral. This one was taken at my first NRGetic Romancer as a DJ, but here Guld’s the one in the middle of some nice mixing.

Next is a 3-person ‘Box’, with I think Detch at the front (although it looks like it could be Silva, another of the Romancer ravers), Deb-4 behind him, and no idea who’s at the back…. Not too sure where this was filmed either, I’ve missed a few events lately, after all. Anyway, imagine the effect on a dancefloor when the HDR crew are in full flow – they’re definitely one of the reasons why guest DJs are always amazed by the atmosphere at events here.

Another mix from Nu-Energy, this time Kevin Energy’s 2008 set at Energy Cocktail. Over at the Nu-Energy site you can download or stream this one too, but to be honest it’s very much on the happy side…if that’s your kind of thing, then this set’ll be perfect. Others might be better off waiting for the 2009 set, which featured some much harder tunes at the start.

Now the Hybridize CD is ‘out’ I can put up a late Top Ten of what I’ve been into over summer. There’s been some great stuff from Hybridize lately (and there’s more on the horizon too), definitely stepping into the gap left by the few FINRG releases. I thought I’d take a break from freeform while I was on holiday, but ended up listening to Alek’s tunes on a Vietnamese beach..it didn’t really fit the mood, but I had to get my fix somewhere.

The video above was taken at August’s NRGetic Romancer – another amazing set from Cogi. I’ll try to get on the case with a proper report once some photos etc eventually turn up…

  1. Alek Szahala – Sunray
  2. Nomic – Desolated Dreams
  3. ADAM Lab 4 – Psychopath (Proteus Hard Boiled remix)
  4. Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
  5. Grimsoul – Global Killer (NRGetic Romancer edit)
  6. Alabaster – Aether Storm
  7. DJ Rx – My Serenity (Jnks remix)
  8. Carbon Based – Ancestor
  9. Nomic – Steradian
  10. E-Noid – Order Chaos