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Coldplay wristband “Xyloband” – a look inside

The Coldplay concert at Rose Bowl was a big show (see http://www.zweimalsommer.com/2016/08/a-rose-bowl-full-of-leds.html). The major element of the show was a wristband which everybody got at the entrance. This wristband is called “Xyloband”. Their homepage shows some other great shows, in which the Xyloband was used: http://xylobands.com/gallery/.

Let’s take a look inside: The main PCB has three ZIF-connectors. A flexible PCB with 4 LEDs is connected to the middle connector.

Another LED-stripe is connected between the two remaining ZIF-connectors. This LED-stripe is the actual wristband.

The Xyloband gets its power from three batteries on the back side of the PCB.

The main components of the PCB are:

It is amazing, which light effects can be achieved with this little circuit.

There is an interesting interview with Jason Regler, the inventor of the Xyloband, where he explains that he got the idea for the Xyloband in 2005 during the song “Fix You”, which Coldplay played at the Glastonbury Festival: http://www.coldplay.com/newsdetail.php?id=906. The song text “…lights will guide you home…” was his inspiration.

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The sound of summer 2016

It’s summer in the northern hemisphere! Perfectly in time for the season, great summer songs have been released. The Norwegian duo Simen Eriksrud and Espen Berg, called “SeeB” have already released an impressive remix of “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” by Mike Posner. Now they have released another great song “Breathe” featuring Neev. Turn up the volume and dance!

Just listening to the SeeB remix, the refrain sounds like a female voice – but it is not! Neev is a male music artist. This is the acoustic version of “Breathe” by Neev himself.

It you don’t have dance music production equipment at hand, a piano will do it as well. In this cover of “Breathe”, the young pianist is playing all the tracks by himself and the singers voice fits nice into the sound as well.
Another very relaxing summer song: “Howling at the moon” from Milow.
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“Don’t be so shy”, sing live!

A great live version of soul singer Imany “Don’t be so shy”. This song is in the German charts since 12 weeks, currently on #1.


An acoustic version.

Imany doesn’t need much more than her pure voice, however, the remix of Filatov & Karas is great as well.

If you like it “heavy”, enjoy this one. 

This song makes everybody dance, even if played on a saxophone.

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80 million will support the German football team

Germany has a song for the UEFA European Football championship 2016 “Europameisterschaft”:
It is the “EM Version” of Max Giesinger’s song “80 Millionen”.

This is the original version of “80 Millionen”. Max Giesinger selected Stefanie Giesinger as main actress. She is one of the winners of Germany’s next Top Model.
This is a funny making of “80 Millionen”.
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Fading between music styles

Alan Walker is just 18 years old but he has produced an impressive song “Faded” with an impressive success. The song inspires many other artists as well.

Alan Walker (image sourced by last.fm)

The 25 year old Norwegian singer Iselin Solheim is the original voice of “Faded”.

An introduction to the EDM version.

The original EDM version.

This is the version of the twins Marco and Alessio Bianchi from Italy, who call themselves Ciuffi Rossi (red bush of hair).

Now fading to the classical version by Brooklyn Duo.
And finally fading to the rock version by Stansbury.

“Faded” was performed as well by Zara Larsson during the German 2016 ECHO awards in Berlin.


Zara Larsson currently has her own hit “Lush life”.

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Movie or Reality?

Everybody who has seen the “Terminator” movies will recognize this company name. This is real!

http://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/

At the moment, the main intention of Cyberdyne robots is to assist elderly people.

Other companies like Boston Dynamics produce even more realistic robots, more and more similar to humans.

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The power of simplicity

Radio stations are currently playing the Seeb remix of Mike Posner “I took a pill in Ibiza”. This is the non-remixed original video from 2016.

In 2005, the German band “Wir sind Helden” released a song “Nur ein Wort” which had the same simple video concept.