Resident of the world, traveling the road of life
68557 stories
·
21 followers

Kurz-Doku: Goa Trance Started Here

1 Share

Als ich im Sommer 1995 auf meinem ersten VooV Festival und somit auf meiner ersten „Goa Party“ war, war das nicht nur eine innere Erweckung. Ich bin in den frühen Neunziger sehr viel im Berliner Techno-Zirkus unterwegs gewesen. Tresor, E-Werk das alte Matrix, aber sowas wie auf dem Flughafen in Neustadt-Glewe hatte ich bis dahin weder gehört noch gesehen. Da war einfach alles ganz anders. Und alles war exzessiv: die Musik, die Farben, die Gerüche, die Art zu feiern, die Drogen. Das alles hat mich komplett überwältigt und ich wollte nie wieder woanders sein.

Als im selben Jahr Electric Universes „One Love“ auf Spirit Zone veröffentlich wurde, stand ich an einem Wintermorgen mit meinem DiscMan und diesem Album auf den Ohren auf einer Brücke in Marzahn und schaute auf die gerade erwachende Stadt. Und wieder war es pure Überwältigung, die mich überkam. Es konnte doch nicht sein, dass man derartig Neues schaffen konnte, wobei ich dachte, alles schon gehört zu haben. Ich war komplett geflasht. Ein Moment und ein Gefühl, dass ich bis heute nicht vergessen habe.

Ich schenkte mein Leben über 10 Jahre dem Psytrance, der halt auch immer irgendwie „Goa“ genannt wurde. Ich kaufte fast ausschließlich diesen Sound, unsere Sommer wurden nach Festival-Terminen ausgerichtet und manche Jahre nahmen wir davon 6-10 in einer Saison wahr. Heute allein der jetzt dafür notwendigen Kosten wegen undenkbar. Damals ging das.

Ich hatte meine ersten Bühnenerfahrungen als DJ zu diesem Sound, denen später dann im Kleinen auch Live-Auftritte folgten. Mit einer Tapezierplatte, einem 32er Dynachord Pult, einem Atari 1040 ST und tonnenweise analogem Equipment. Hach, das war alles sehr wild. Wir veranstalteten selber „Goa Partys“ und trieben uns fast jedes Wochenende auf denen der anderen rum. Ende der 00er fand ich dann anderen Sound interessanter, die Szene schien auch irgendwie zu verkommen und das machte alles immer weniger Spaß. Dennoch höre ich auch heute noch hin und wieder einen Psytrance-Mix, der mir dann noch immer ein Lächeln ins Gesicht zu zaubern weiß. Ohne diesen Sound und ohne die Jahre in denen er mich begleitet hat, wäre ich heute ein anderer Mensch – und ganz, ganz sicher kein besserer.

Los ging es allerdings in Goa schon wesentlich früher. Hier eine Kurz-Doku über die Anfänge und die Pioniere von etwas, das am Ende viel, viel mehr war als nur ein Genre der elektronischen Tanzmusik.

Ich hätte nie gedacht, dass dieser Sound nochmal zurückkehren würde, aber die Aktualität belehrt mich eines Besseren. Auch gut.

Before Goa Trance became a global psychedelic movement… before the festivals, the superclubs, and the iconic compilations… it began with a small circle of pioneers on the beaches of Goa, India.

This BrainFuel documentary tells the untold origin story of the genre—through the lives and legends of Laurent, Fred Disko, Ray Castle, Antaro, Shiva Jörg, Goa Gil, and Raja Ram.


(Direktlink, via Groove)

Read the whole story
mkalus
40 minutes ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete

WordPress wants to force AI onto 43% of all websites in the world

1 Share

What if we put AI slop into half the websites on the internet?

WordPress is software to set up a website. It’s open source, it’s pretty easy to use, so it took over just by being more OK than everything else — to the point where nearly half of all the websites in the world run WordPress.

WordPress is a known quantity, it’s easy to get started with, and there’s a huge ecosystem of developers. You’re not stuck with the original developers, Automattic.

It started out as blog software, but WordPress’s overwhelming job these days is marketing sites. Blog posts are a minor sideline.

Automattic have big plans for WordPress. Specifically, they’ve got the AI virus bad. Automattic has decided AI is in such demand, they’ve declared “AI as a WordPress fundamental”: [WordPress]

Imagine if every single developer was empowered with AI capabilities without having to handle the complexities of AI integration.

… What amazing things would people create that are built on the reliable presence of a capable LLM?

Huge if true. What amazing things have people built with chatbots so far? Money burners that get things wrong and create liability?

This is completely generic vacuous hype. Imagine if every single developer was empowered with Metaverse capabilities. If they’d said “imagine if every developer was empowered with NFT,” you’d know it was spam. AI spammers work the same way. Here’s Automattic in July: [WordPress]

As the open web evolves in the era of AI, WordPress must keep pace.

If you don’t get into this year’s take on NFTs, you’ll be left behind!

One thing Automattic really needs for any of this to work is everyone else to go along with it. That means all the third-party developers who make WordPress an attractive prospect in the first place: [WordPress]

For AI to succeed in WordPress, it will require the innovation of the plugin and theme developer community.

That means Automattic have no idea what to do with the chatbot either. They want you to solve the problem for them.

Automattic has also been putting the hard word on the WordPress hosting companies to make Automattic’s AI push the hosting companies’ problem: [WordPress]

If AI is to be considered a fundamental component of WordPress, the same way databases are, our project depends on hosts taking ownership of this step and including it in their offerings.

Automattic says that three hosting companies are going to offer basic AI as part of their paid hosting plans. This is the Microsoft strategy, where you charge more for a feature that sucks ’cos you can force it on people.

If your WordPress hosting does this, demand a cheaper plan — whatever it would cost without forcing AI credits onto you. Because it’s not hard to move a WordPress.

Several developers and hosting companies responded to Automattic’s blog posts with concerns:

As a site owner I want to be sure I’m not enabling the proliferation of AI slop.

I’m concerned by how much we’re investing into MCP, but even more so how much we’re pushing it (@jason_the_adams even this post calls it “critical”), when we know both our implementation and the technology itself face significant issues in their current form.

We have clients who cannot use AI for compliance and legal reasons, and any proposed use has to be individually vetted.

if WordPress intends to invest this heavily in the use of AI, then it also needs to provide a way to turn every single AI option, completely off. Right from the very start!

this is a bit like asking “What amazing things would people create that are built on the reliable presence of an actual elf?”

How proud is Automattic of the new AI hooks they put into WordPress 6.9? The new “Abilities” API, which was put in specifically for the AI guff? They’re so proud they don’t even mention it. The release notes page on the WordPress website doesn’t mention one bit of the AI stuff. [WordPress]

The AI push is coming straight from Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. He’s very into the magical CEO-level promises of vibe coding, with his new tool Telex, which is supposed to compete with instant vibe-website builders like Lovable: [YouTube, 24:05]

Again, things that you used to have to, like, hire developers, do custom software, this would have cost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to build, even just years ago. We’re now able to do in a browser for pennies. It’s kind of insane.

You know what that means — huge job opportunities six months down the line for WordPress developers to clean up the steaming piles of poop this is certain to leave behind.

Automattic’s got a track record on AI. In February 2024, Automattic did deals to sell users’ content from WordPress and Tumblr — which the users own, not Automattic — to OpenAI and Midjourney. [404, archive]

Automattic also runs Gravatar. You might think Gravatar’s just a thing to add your own icon to blog comments. But Automattic has a vision — and it’s to add “decentralized identity systems.” The identity system would be controlled by Gravatar in a completely central way. So what’s the “decentralised” bit? It’s a blockchain grift! What else would it be. [Gravatar]

 

Read the whole story
mkalus
18 hours ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete

Vancouver House

1 Share

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Vancouver House



Read the whole story
mkalus
18 hours ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete

The Templeton

1 Share

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

The Templeton



Read the whole story
mkalus
18 hours ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete

Wind Vane

1 Share

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Wind Vane



Read the whole story
mkalus
18 hours ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete

Granville Street

1 Share

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Granville Street



Read the whole story
mkalus
18 hours ago
reply
iPhone: 49.287476,-123.142136
Share this story
Delete
Next Page of Stories