Welcome to week #21 of the Steel Orca Songs of the Week.

Grizzly bear searching for berries. — Waterton, Alberta 📸:Clara Beth/steelorca.io

This will be another short(ish?) post as I’m on another ski vacation; this week with the family in beautiful Kimberley, British Columbia. Trying to bang this out as fast as I can before the other families arrive, and the chaos ensues. That means I’ll probably be heavy on the opinions and light on the research. My kid would describe this as me being “chatful.”

In personal news, I’ve been playing with all of the new AI technology that’s come out lately (I assume, like many people reading this newsletter). In particular, I’ve been seeing how I can use ChatGPT to help bang out quick proof of concepts for whatever coding whim I’m into at the time. Based on that, I also got into Github Copilot and immediately paid for that subscription. It’s only $10 a month and free for the first 60 days if you want to cancel before then (spoiler alert, I won’t be).

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To say my mind has been blown by the potential of both of these technology platforms would be an understatement. I plan to write extensively about this in another Steel Orca Tech Support post (the first of which was pretty successful), but the gist to me regarding the use of the new AI technology is something like the following:

I ask ChatGPT to build a prototype application by giving it a prompt like, “Write me a Node app using Express that gets my current playing song from the Spotify REST API.” I know that’s not the most incredible prompt; I’m sure it could be improved, but as I said, I’m writing this quickly while I’m on vacation. Watch any of the popular videos on Youtube about the best way to prompt ChatGPT for things like this - I’m not an expert; this is anecdotal.
I then use the code generated from that and further refine it and iterate on it in Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ (depending on what I’m doing) with the assistance of Github Copilot. I haven’t looked into it in depth, but based on my experience, Github Copilot seems to learn what to do next based on the code already available in whatever file you’re working in. I’m not sure if that’s right, as I only played with it over a weekend, but I’m pretty sure that’s close. I would ask anyone more of an expert than me to comment below with additional info.

Anyway, Copilot, in particular, has been a game-changer for me. The benefit is its ability to autocomplete functions that are at least close to what you want, and the fact that it autocompletes it with correct syntax and whatnot is mindblowing. Yes, great devs who already have a bunch of shorthand and hotkeys for this sort of stuff are not going to benefit as much - for us middling devs, this is going to be a huge boon. One thing is abundantly clear; I will not be telling my boss about it anytime soon.

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Playlist Breakdown

Here are the songs for the week of February 10, 2023 🌄.

▶️ Youtube Music: Songs of the Week #21

This playlist is one of the most recent I can remember that is an absolute banger - from start to finish, these songs are great, and all of them have what I’m looking for in a song when I include it on this list - something of a build-up, a great drop (or drops), and maybe some arpeggiated harmonies. I’m a simple man.

This playlist will also be my Superbowl playlist because I will not be putting out another post specific to the Superbowl (Superb Owl? I don’t want to get sued). I don’t care who wins that game. For some random reason, all of my friends here love the Chiefs (I'll ask them why and update the next post, I have no idea), and I have a friend or two in Philadelphia, but fundamentally I don’t care about the outcome. Rihanna is supposed to be playing the halftime show, so that’s probably the only thing I’ll be watching.

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CloZinger - Harpsichord

Release Date: May 15, 2019
Spotify Plays: 183,223
Plays Per Day: 134
Label: Symphonic Distribution
Genre: Dubstep
Origin: Toulouse, France 🇫🇷
Instagram: @clozeeofficial / @scarfingerlive
Twitter: @CloZeeOfficial / @ScarfingerMPC

Ok, so this is CloZee + ~~Scarf~~inger = CloZinger. I don’t think I had to explain that to you after reading their respective Instagram and Twitter details above.

I wanted to share one anecdote about this song: I saw CloZee live at Shambhala 2017 at the Grove stage. I was sure I had, and I was sure my friends and I loved her, but you know how those nights go. This was 5+ years ago, so I had to double-check that CloZee did play Shambhala 2017, and I was right; she did. So I can confirm that I have that as an accurate memory, and upon further reflection, it was awesome.

Again, I hate to say it, but I don’t have time to research - from the few minutes I’ve spent, it looks like Scarfinger is one of her buddies from Toulouse, and that’s why they’ve put together this collaboration.

I looked, and CloZee is playing Ultra Miami and Lollapalooza Paris - she’s come a long way from the Grove Stage. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any dates listed for Scarfinger.

Grayson Repp - RISE

Release Date: March 25, 2022
Spotify Plays: 233,058
Plays Per Day: 730
Label: Proximity Music
Genre: Dance / Electro Pop
Origin: Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪
Instagram: @graysonrepp
Twitter: @graysonrepp

Ok, so I thought that the AI I was playing with earlier in the week had blown my mind, but I just did one minute of research on Grayson Repp, and my mind was blown even more.

I looked him up quickly initially, and it says he’s from Berlin. Ok, fine. Upon further research, however, he was born in Vancouver and spent ten years in Kimberley. What a bizarre coincidence to find that out while writing from Kimberley. Kimberley is a tiny town. No one spends ten years in Kimberley. So it turns out he’s a BC kid who now lives in Berlin.

This song came out in early 2022, and later in the same year, Repp would become the official DJ and music director for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He has significant accolades and accomplishments for someone seemingly so young, but he has his stuff together. This song is a testament to that.

I barely looked, but I couldn’t find any pending live dates or shows on his profiles or listed anywhere for him. Further, I noticed that he hasn’t tweeted since New Year’s Eve - it looks like he’s taking a bit of a break after a big year.

KISLOW - Mandala

Release Date: April 23, 2021
Spotify Plays: 830,757
Plays Per Day: 1268
Label: Future Classic
Genre: Melodic House & Techno
Origin: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Instagram: @kislo
Twitter: @Kislomusic

This is a great techno song - in my mind, as someone who has never DJ’d a night in his life, this would be one of my go-to songs in 2023 - it’s sort of long (for a techno song) but is intricate and unique enough to give you a lot of street credit.

Here is my complaint with Kislo - if you go to his website, his Instagram, or his Twitter, you have no idea who he is or where he lives other than the fact he is a good-looking blond guy. Other than that, you ostensibly cannot find any information on him.

I would call that a marketing failure on his part, as only being referred to by casual fans as that guy who looks like young Diplo won’t be helpful for his career going forward. I’m guilty of this to a degree too, but if you’re going to have a career as a professional musician, you have to explicitly tell us (the audience) who you are as an artist. The issue with techno is that most of the time, there aren’t lyrics, or you’re not the one singing them, so the music isn’t enough for you to solidify your image, as it were.

This is a good song, but this Kislo guy should tell us more about who he is. His website, which aesthetically is beautiful, has a page for 2023 tour dates, but he doesn’t have anything currently listed.

SoDown - Turn the Lights Out

Release Date: October 5, 2021
Spotify Plays: 463,024
Plays Per Day: 945
Label: GetDown Records
Genre: Trap/Wave
Origin: Boulder, CO 🇺🇸
Instagram: @sodownbassmusic
Twitter: @SoDownBassMusic

Except for this song, I had never heard of SoDown until now, so I delved into his Wikipedia page (what little there is of it):

Wright began his exploration into electronic music after seeing Pretty Lights perform at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado in 2010.

Now I’m not going to spend any time researching it tonight because, as I said, I’m on vacation, but let’s assume that’s true. To relate this to myself (because that’s the point of this), I saw Pretty Lights perform at Shambhala 2012:

This was Pretty Lights at the peak of his powers. It was one of those dance party nights where images from it are seared into my brain. I had to text my friends to confirm this, but there was a guy there (this might be a relatively common gag now) who dressed up in a full suit with a briefcase with the sign “it’s business time” on it (Flight of the Conchords reference). I remember thinking it was cool at the time.

Anyway, SoDown is another member of the Colorado DJ scene doing his thing. I haven’t had a chance to delve into his discography, but I assume it’s worthwhile and will be doing so later.

For shows, it looks like he’s playing the Backwoods Music Festival at Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas, at the end of April. If you’re interested, you can get tickets here.

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Song of the Week 🙌

Tomatow - Pretty Little Smile

Release Date: April 8, 2022
Spotify Plays: 529,979
Plays Per Day: 1737
Label: Dancing Dead
Genre: Electronica
Origin: Indonesia 🇮🇩
Instagram: @tomatowmusic
Twitter: @tomatowmusic

Well, I’d like to say that I successfully made it to the Song of the Week, and it’s still only Thursday night. So I still have time to edit, add additional content, and spruce this issue up further. I’m so organized.

Ok, in all seriousness, the playlist this week was already super solid, but I feel this song deserves the moniker of Song of the Week because this song is a certified banger. 💥

In my mind, Tomatow (real name Ricky Martin Wijaya) has at least three different things going for him off the bat (four if you include the fact his first two names are Ricky Martin):

He picked an awesome DJ name by adding a “w” to the end of “Tomato” - that’s a silly choice, and I love it.
He’s from Indonesia, and there are not a lot of prominent Indonesian DJs on the global scene (at least that I know of).
This song slaps.

This song is from his debut three-song EP, Avarana. Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to listen to the rest of that EP, but I’m planning to.

I can’t find any tour dates listed for Tomatow, but I would not be surprised if we start seeing him pop up more regularly on the international DJ circuit moving forward. Keep an eye out.

Mule deer relaxing on grass. — Waterton, Alberta 📸:Clara Beth/steelorca.io

That’s it for this week from all of us here at the Steel Orca.✔️👋

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🎧 Songs of the Week #21: Don't let them see…