helixrider's hideout

Author: helixrider

  • Polizeipräsidium Frankfurt

    Polizeipräsidium Frankfurt

    I think, I took the cover photo of my upcoming release last night… 😉

  • Reflect

    Reflect

    Reflect.
    It widens the view.
    Breaks paradigms and spans boundaries.

    But wait to see the clear reflection, otherwise they will try to obfuscate and modify reality.

    Reflect.

  • New single “Floating” released today

    New single “Floating” released today

    Oh, yes! 🤩🤩 Today I am releasing the single “Floating” of my album “Always Trust The Machines, Pt. 1”. This track marks a turning point for me, going from rather heavy, industrialish music to deep, downtempo electronica.

    A bass-heavy, moving and morphing pad is filling the room, a laid back rhythm provides structure for vocal snippets meandering back and forth. All topped by a slightly detuned lead line. This is chill – and it is not. A bit of glitch, some crackles and sparkles in the background.

    I am in love with this tune 😍!

    “Floating” is available via streaming services, here are a few links:

  • Goattracker and SIDplayFP on Macbook 2008 Unibody MX Linux

    Goattracker and SIDplayFP on Macbook 2008 Unibody MX Linux

    “Will my old Macbook 2008 Unibody still go strong today?”

    Straight forward answer: Yes, it will!
    I decided to get out my old Macbook and install a dual-boot Linux distro on it (MX Linux 23) because I wanted a better screen for my Goattracker machine… Well, that might not be everybody’s use case, but for me that sounded wild. So I dug out a USB stick, put MX Linux 23.4 64 bit version on it (via my Eee PC on Linux, as I struggled hard to get the ISO written to the stick…) and booted the old Macbook from it.

    This machine already featured an 256 GB SSD from some old adventures, so there was plenty of space available to resize the MacOS partition and create three new: (Late learning) An EFI partition to allow for bootmanager integration and a SWAP- and the root partition.

    MX Linux installer did its job without issues and I could take care of activating the new partition in the boot process. This was the only task in the whole process that required some tough prompt actions. See this MX Forums Post for details. This will replace the Macbook EFI with ReEFInd, that will allow integration of multiple bootable partitions. Then I was able to dual-boot the Macbook to either MacOS 10.11 or to MX Linux.

    Following some customization of the desktop (new background, different conky script), I installed the Goattracker and Sidplay. Goattracker ran without any issues (YES!!! Goal achieved!), Sidplay threw an error, stating Audio hardware would not be available. Before messing with any settings, I tried SidplayFP from the MX repositories – and it worked.

    Some tests with network were initially not really successful – loading webpages or YouTube videos took literally ages. I could quickly related this to the Wifi settings; I am having on my access point both 2,4 and 5 GHz bands activated and the Macbook Wifi driver did the same. Restricting it to only one band (by right-clicking the Wifi-widget and configuring the settings for my Wifi) solved the issue and both downloads as well as webpage loads are running smoothly and very responsive.

    Update 1 (11.12.24): To setup a VPN connection to your FritzBox, one module is missing, the vpnc-gnome. It can be installed by the package manager.

    To summarize it: Wow, this machine is really still usable after 16 years! And I am looking forward to using it for my Commodore C64 adventures.

    Of course, this article was written on my 2008 Unibody.

  • C64 track released at Classic Computing 2024

    C64 track released at Classic Computing 2024

    A few weeks back, I learnt about a new C64 software release: Quantum Soundtracker by Aleksi Eeben. As I love tracker UIs and was very impressed by the QS new features (three tracks of sequenced samples music from a stock C64 machine!), I decided that this would be an awesome project for me during exhibiting old computers and consoles at Classic Computing 2024 congress.

    So I sat there with my headphones on and learnt the features of Quantum Soundtracker, at first by using the default samples, then by bringing own samples over to C64. The most tricky part was to convert the “House Music” sample down as far as possible, so that I could load it up together with the other samples into the approx. 40 kb free RAM of the Commdore computer.

    Arranging the song in the tracker was straight forward, three tracks, sample usable per step, two tracks feature sample tuning, one track oneshots. The later I used for the beat, the other two for the bass and the chords plus the vocal sample.

    As C64 creates the sound with the SID chip in mono, only, I decided to add the @KorgOfficial‬ kaoss pad NTS-3 to add width and some performance effects to the sound.

    Recording and mastering was done on my iPad.

    I hope, you enjoy my house ;-).

    Find Quantum Soundtracker at CSDB: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=245053

  • ‘Always Trust The Machines, Pt. 1’ is out now on Bandcamp

    ‘Always Trust The Machines, Pt. 1’ is out now on Bandcamp

    Hey – it’s release-day, today!!! 🤩🤩🤩 Following up to me recently joining Petite Victory Collective, we released my new album “Always Trust The Machines, Pt. 1”.

    Where there is darkness, there is also light. Where there is fear, there is hope. Inside lushness, edges hurt.
    helixrider draws musical inspiration from the broad range of everyday life’s experiences and transforms them into new tracks.
    Join the ride on the baseline of helixrider’s work, the ever-meandering, hypnotic patterns, ranging from lush lo-fi and housey tunes to energetic electronic and techno tracks.
    This is helixrider’s most diverse album, yet, a journey through life.
    A threat. A hope. A relief.

    You can check it out on my Bandcamp site – Don’t be a stranger. 🙌

  • Petite Victory Collective welcomes helixrider

    Petite Victory Collective welcomes helixrider

    I joined Petite Victory Collective, an independent label and collective run by a group of awesome artists focussing on further developing the electronic music scene. The group around it’s founder Guillaume Blanjean aims at creating fresh compelling content, integrating other disciplines of art and providing great live experience for fans and artists.

  • Salted Caramel – MC-707, TR-8s, TD-3, MS-1

    I used some time this weekend, to dive into the soundscapes of my machines. As the Hardware-Jams group challenge was to create a track inspired by “food” in any of it’s flavours; be it great moments with family and friends around a large table or munching crackers on the sofa.

    As life’s a bit hard, lately, I chose one of my favourite sweets “Salted Caramel” and jammed to it.

    Thanks for listening to my music!

  • Electr(0)ic Disorder

    I went back to the dancefloor with this acidy live jam – hope you like it ;-).

  • Watch The Stars – Dawless Synthpop Jam

    The HWJ group’s weekend challenge was to create an „epic“ jam.

    So I took the MC-707, the Microfreak and a microphone and gave it go. OMG, what did I do here…
    Thanks for listening to my music, hope you like it.