Category: Allgemein

  • 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.

  • ‘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 siteDon’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.

  • Create a linktr.ee-like Instagram Bio landing page with WordPress

    I started a while ago, to use my WordPress blog to give further information on my musical projects to followers of my social media profiles by linking from my Instagram bio to the category “Music” of my blog.

    Well, this was ok, but in the end, I was not overwhelmed by the user experience, this provided. Interested followers had to scroll over several posts, which made it clumsy to allow them to quickly access multiple external content offers. State-of-the-art services like linktr.ee are successful due to providing a highly accessible page that enables users to quickly catch up with artist news and offers and to easily navigate through. Well, I wanted this, too.

    Having that said, I decided to not go with additional external services. My trusty WordPress site with Twenty Twenty theme should be sufficient to provide a similar feature out of my hands and not the hands of a third party. So I dug into the web and finally compiled a lot of hints and resources together to enable my feature. Here’s what you will want to do, if you intend to provide a similar service on your WordPress installation with theme Twenty Twenty:

    How to do it

    First step is to create a page that will be used as the landing page. Give it a title, in my case “helixrider news”. Although this title will not be visible to the user, it gives more convenience to identify the page in the WP backend and, if you are using titles in links, it will help with SEO.

    Add the entries as block-types “Button” with style option “fill”. This will not look too good in the WP editor, as the Twenty Twenty theme does not allow setting fixed width (like 100%) – we will handle this later.

    Example page in WordPress Editor

    Once you saved this page, take a note of the page ID, we will use this in the next step. In my case, it is 1236, you will find it in the URL while editing:

    Note the page ID while editing

    Second and last step is to reformat output of this one page. My idea was to divert from the Twenty Twenty standard by applying the following:
    – Set the buttons to full content width.
    – Hide the page Header.
    – Hide the page Title (I am using only my logo instead).
    – Hide the page Footer.

    This will be achieved by giving some customized CSS code. By doing it via the WordPress backend’s Configurator, you won’t mess with the theme and will (hopefully…) stay upgrade-compatible.

    Go into Design – Themes – Configurator and select “Additional CSS”. Copy the following lines into the text field, and remember to change the page-ID-tag (.page-id-xyz) to the ID you took note of above:

    .wp-block-button {
        display: block;
        width: 100%;
    }
    .wp-block-button__link {
        display: block;
        width: 100%;
    }
    .page-id-1236 .entry-title {
    display:none;
    }
    .page-id-1236 .entry-header {
    display:none;
    }
    .page-id-1236 .header-inner {
    display:none;
    }
    .page-id-1236 .footer-inner {
    display:none;
    }

    Save this and give your newly created page a reload and you see the changes.

    If you store the link to this page in your Instagram bio, you will be getting something like this – for me this looks like mission accomplished! 😉

    Hopefully this can help you in creating your own landing pages for your social accounts and reducing dependency to other 3rd party services.

  • Ans Licht

    Today is a very special day, as not only my album Meanders has been released, I am also very proud to announce my collaboration with Kay Emmess!

    I did an Edit of his brilliant song “Ans Licht” (“To the light”) that drove the catchy melodic lines to an eternal trance hype phase.

    Check out Kay Emmess awesome work on his Bandcamp account.

    Hopefully, you enjoy this track! It will be released on all major digital platforms on November, 20th. If you like to, you can give it a pre-listen on my Bandcamp site.

  • Two track “We Stumble EP” has been released

    Digging deeper, this time. The multiple times restructured, mutated and re-compiled voice sample builds a strong and intimate basis for the post-acid, psychedelic musical outburst.

    The lyrics evolve by reusing single words and rearranging them to give the original statement new and different meaning:

    They were told that it wouldn’t hurt, I proved them wrong.
    I told them, they wouldn’t hurt.
    They told them, I wouldn’t hurt.
    They told them, I wouldn’t hurt. They were wrong.
    I told them, they were wrong.
    They told them wrong.
    I proved them, they were wrong.
    I proved them wrong.


    I hurt.
    I hurt them.
    I hurt them.
    I hurt them.


    They were wrong.

    You can find this two track EP with the post-acid, progressive-house Original Mix and the vocals focussed Wrong Edit on all major streaming and music download platforms and on my Bandcamp site. Here are some links, I will update them as the release is published on different services.

    Bandcamp:

    https://helixrider.bandcamp.com/album/we-stumble-ep

    Spotify:

    YouTube:

    https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kq_2oJ0Eyl8OHEEwnWVEUivTAVKuvKxP0

    1. We Stumble  – https://youtu.be/HDgK2KRjMxQ
    2. We Stumble (Wrong Edit) – https://youtu.be/jvbefc0MWUo

    Beatport:

    https://www.beatport.com/release/we-stumble/2834111

    Amazon: 

    https://www.amazon.de/dp/B083JQRJHK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_LwbfEb2WVZCTF

    Apple Music / iTunes:

    https://music.apple.com/de/album/we-stumble-single/1493809676

    Google Play Music:  

    https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Helixrider_We_Stumble?id=B5zqjw3oebdsumzo7rkfkv2laxi

    Deezer: 

    https://www.deezer.com/album/125551172

    iHeartRadio: 

    https://www.iheart.com/artist/id-33617905/albums/id-87604056

  • New track “See The Stars” out now!

    I recently bought this little drum machine beast, the Korg Volca Drum. I really enjoy jamming around with it, as it delivers deep sound creation functionality together with an easy comprehensible, Korg-Electribe-style sequencer.

    So why not create a complete track from the 6-pattern device, I thought? Four patterns for the drums and percussions and two for constantly changing sounds based on the profound sound of the box should be a good basis for a minimal techno, house track.

    Good idea, as I had a lot of fun jamming around, creating the flow and playing with the Volca Drum. Everything has been played live in one take, out-of-the-box, the only two additions are a guitar pedal that was used for additional delay effects and a little bit of multi-band compressor added in Ableton Live 10.

    I hope you enjoy this track, too. 😉

    You can find it on all major streaming and music download platforms and on my Bandcamp site. Here are some links:

    Bandcamp: 

    https://helixrider.bandcamp.com/

    Spotify: 

    Amazon: 

    https://www.amazon.de/s?k=Helixrider&i=digital-music&search-type=ss&ref=ntt_srch_drd_B081DHNSBN

    Apple Music: 

    https://music.apple.com/us/album/see-the-stars-single/1489645220?app=apple%20music&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

    iTunes: 

    https://music.apple.com/us/album/see-the-stars-single/1489645220?app=itunes&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

    Google Play Music: 

    https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Helixrider_See_The_Stars?id=Bn2ucxoudj6afizq5cgiwvftciu

    Deezer: 

    https://www.deezer.com/de/album/120944662

    iHeartRadio: 

    https://www.iheart.com/artist/helixrider-33617905/albums/see-the-stars-84828642/

  • Ausflug zum Bodensee

    In den Herbstferien waren wir ein paar Tage am Bodensee unterwegs. Ausgehend von Überlingen besuchten wir auch Konstanz und Lindau, unten ein paar Impressionen.

    Im Herbst ist die Region definitiv einen Besuch wert!

    P.S.: Absoluter Café-Tipp für Lindau: 37 Grad, aktueller auf Facebook.

  • Nach der Tagung…

    …passt eine kleine Tagesauslaufrunde eigentlich immer 😉

    Was für eine herrliche Aussicht von der Burg Tannenberg!

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