A baseball colleague of mine, Julian Muhmenthaler, got hold of a hangdrum and some first class microphones. He asked if we could do some kind of hang-techno collaboration and I was willing to give it a try. Apart from an unfortunate crash of Logic Studio, all went well and I was glad to gain some experience in working with a live musician. To hold the top-down microphone, we improvised some pillar using an ironing board and a crutch (sic!) In the 3 hours we had, we produced quite a bit of recordings (thank god I just bought a new external harddrive) and even ended up having a good draft of what wil be an entire track soon (should be posted on my profile). Much thanks to Julian!

Here's the link to the final version:
Hoshpak vs. Julian Muhmenthaler - Hangdrum.mp3

I went to our local openair festival, the Gurtenfestival in Bern, for the first time ever this summer. Even though the weather was rainy at times, it was worth going there for fantastic acts like Peter Fox, Röyksopp, Tricky and Pendulum. While Tricky reminded me how "deep" trip hop music can feel like, Pendulum demonstrated the fusion of drum'n'bass with rock music in a most impressive way . Those performances inspired me to quit the minimal/trance thing I was working on till then (like "Perpetuum" and "That Moment") and to head instead in a new, more idiosyncratic direction, a kind of fusion of trip hop, minimal, d'n'b, techno, electro and downbeat. Tracks that feature electric guitars with a big beatish / d'n'b touch are "Gurtenfestival 09 Reflection" and "Milliways (the restaurant at world's end)". "Omnibeat" is still in the early works and might need some vocals. "The Call" is more of an ancient/mystic ambient track. "Arrival" captures my feeling of finally having arrived in a country far away. "Digital Native" is the closest I got to the fusion of the mentioned styles. "Vanitas" is an impression on impermanence and death.

http://soundcloud.com/hoshpak/kumquat-mix-2008

A selection of tracks released by the label Kumquat Tunes. My first dj-set if you want to call it that ;) Thanks to Ondrej from Kumquat for giving me the permission!

Last year I noticed that Mushroom Magazine is featuring an annual producers contest. It got me motivated to invest many hours into one track, called "That Moment", since there was a clear deadline. I took (for my standards) great care with producing and mastering, but it's terrible how myspace compresses the tracks. If you like you can download a high-quality version here:

http://hoshpak.galez.org/audio/Hoshpak_That%20Moment.mp3