Derek Sanders

Elysium is returning to the Internet radio waves on February 17th at 4pm ET. It will be starting anew on www.etn.fm, and will air regularly on the 3rd Thursday of every month. I made the decision to reduce the show to once a month because I will begin to have less time to devote to this hobby in the near future, and would rather keep it consistent from the beginning. ETN.FM has a nice lineup of both trance and house deejays, for which they provide separate streams for the respective genres. They also provide different qualities for the streams, specifically there is a 256kbps MP3 stream. I know I had complaints about the quality of the last station’s stream, so hopefully that will quell any quality concerns.

The journey continues!

The radio station that Elysium has been airing on since 2008 is closing shop, and this means an end to my regular releases of it. I could potentially do two more shows, but I have been needing a break for quite some time and so I will use this opportunity to explore some extended play mixes. I will be looking for a new home for Elysium, but it will be only a once a month show when and if it returns. I have been considering for a long time to discontinue Elysium for a variety of reasons. The main one being that it became more of a chore to do the show than I was having fun. The return to my EP mixes will mark a return of higher quality listening experiences, and better forethought to how I want you, the listener, to feel. I used to think Elysium should be a showcase of the best new songs out there, and while I think I did a very good job of that, the mixes became less about the listening experience and more about how can I arrange these new tracks in the least annoying manner. If Elysium the radio show doesn’t return I think will move it into a quarterly mix for each season of the year (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter). Anyways, I will keep everyone posted.

A happy new year (and decade) to everyone. To celebrate the new year, and give us something to remember 2010 by, I created an Elysium 2010 year-end mix. I wanted to bring together all of my favorite uplifting tracks from 2010. I think I could have kept adding to it, but I settled on 120 tracks for an 11 hour 44 minute mix. It is encoded with VBR, but it still comes to roughly a 1.2GB file, so this might not be for those of you under bandwidth constraints.

I thought I would also give a mention of some of my favorite producers from this year. By far I think the guy who impressed me the most was Ciro Visone. I heard some really nice work from the Italian producer late in 2009, but he really stepped up in 2010. Suncatcher also had a really nice year along with SoundLift, and group The Flyers & Mike Sonar. Some guys who are relatively new in 2010 (to me at least) that also stood out where Myk Bee, Hoyaa, Juventa, the duo Simon O’Shine & Sergey Nivone, and Imperfection.

I also got pretty heavy into progressive trance and house, though my mixes don’t reflect it. Audien had an amazing year from that style of trance, Arty/Alpha 9 did pretty well too, but I am not really familiar with enough of the artists to give any good synopsis of the genre for 2010.

The radio shows will be continuing as normal for now. Vocal Elysium 08 is scheduled to air on January 12, 2011 and the next airing of Elysium will be January 16, 2011. Sadly, I think I will be reducing Elysium to once a month, it is becoming too time consuming even doing it at twice a month. The costs of doing these shows is also becoming a factor, buying thirty new tracks each month begins to add up.

As for my other series of CD’s. I am going to begin work on Vocals Volume 6 (and 7) this month, which will be my favorite tracks from the last eight Vocal Elysiums. Probably by the end of March a new Grilled Sessions will be out, and I have a few other project mixes I want to get out.

Thanks for listening,
Derek

As promised my two radio shows will be starting up again. Elysium 042 airs this Sunday @ 6PM ET on www.totaalfm.com and Vocal Elysium 05 will air this Wednesday @ 2PM ET on the Vocal Trance channel. I also updated the past few Elysiums with their CUE sheets.

I am moving in the upcoming days, and so Elysium will be on hold until probably October 10th. Elysium 041 aired this past Sunday, but I forgot to upload it to the web server before the movers packed all my stuff. If I can get it off my iPod I will upload it. Vocal Elysium 05 will be airing October 13th.

Additionally, I have a few non-radio show mixes I have been thinking about doing. The birthday mix I did inspired me to do a well thought out mix with some of the tracks from early in that mix. Expect that probably in November, or when I have enough time. Also, at the end of the year, or when I have enough tracks, I will be releasing The Vocals Volume 6. If you have been keeping up with Vocal Elysium there won’t be anything new, but it will have a proper flow to the mix, with my favorite vocal tracks of 2010 and maybe a few from 2009. Additionally, I will try to make an effort to make a proper year end mix for 2010. More than likely it will be broken into multiple 80min mixes.

So today was my birthday, thank you for all the wishes. I had a bunch of songs in my 2010 folder I hadn’t used anywhere, since they don’t really fit into my Elysium style, and so I threw together a little birthday mix: http://derek-sanders.net/?p=930.

Also, voting has begun for A State Of Trance 500. While I won’t hold my breath, I thought I would ask any of you if you might consider listing me. If you recall I had won the bedroom DJ contest for 450, so it would be neat to be there live for 500. You can vote here: http://www.astateoftrance.com/news/a-state-of-trance-500-vote-for-favorite-djs/

Vocal Elysium 03 airs tomorrow (Wed. August 11, 2010) at www.di.fm on the Vocal Trance channel at 2pm ET, and Elysium 039 will be airing this Sunday on www.totaalfm.com at 6pm ET. Both shows will be available immediately following the airing.

On July 2nd there was a widespread WordPress exploit, I noticed as much that day when I had more than just me listed as administrator for the blog. In order to rid the site of any possible malicious content I wiped the user database and all wordpress files. I will be restoring the user accounts for the people I know, but everyone else will have re-register in order to post comments, or be updated on new releases through e-mail. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and see all the updates that way. I apologize for the inconvenience.

The next episode of Vocal Elysium airs Wednesday, July 14th at 2PM ET on www.di.fm Vocal Trance channel. Having just come off mixing Grilled Sessions 02 I have a very progressive mood in this mix. Don’t miss it!

I have completed the proper follow up to what at first started out as an experiment in Grilled Sessions Volume 1. The mix is a slight departure from the first volume which was mainly progressive house, and is not anything close to my radio shows. It is comprised mainly of progressive house, progressive trance, and some tech trance. In all it makes for a very fun mix. I had a great time organizing and mixing it, and I think it will be a refreshing departure from my normal style. I learned in the process that I enjoy quality tracks of this nature more than I do quality uplifting trance. However, this will likely be a once a year (if that) release since I don’t come across a large enough quantity of this style that I think is worthy of mixing. I hope you all enjoy it: Grilled Sessions Volume 2

P.S. –
Elysium 036 will be airing on www.totaalfm.com Sunday, July 4th @ 6PM ET, and my new vocal radio show Vocal Elysium 02 airs on the Vocal Trance Channel at www.di.fm Wednesday, July 14th @ 2PM ET