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Week of April 28th...

The joyful return of the sun to rained out California has inspired us to get active. This week's show is mostly English, a report from the intersection of downtempo, chill and deep ambient.

These artists have slowed down dance floor beats to a kind of expansive electronic lounge music for relaxed socializing. Of course, being a HOS show we follow it down to the deep ambient center, on a journey called DEEP GROOVE.

Music is by old faves STEVE HILLAGE and MIQUETTE GIRAUDY aka MIRROR SYSTEM, ABSOLUTE AMBIENT, MARCONI UNION, STRING THEORIES and more. Get moving, spacefans...winter's over!

[ view playlist ] [ play 30 second audio promo ]

Week of April 21st...

Ahhhh, spring at last. Once again California has survived nature's best efforts to wash it into the sea, and we celebrate by repeating a watery delight from the early days: Program 061, appropriately titled "AFTER THE RAIN."

There's great music by VANGELIS that shows how he earned his genius reputation, plus several pieces by Canadian environmental electronic specialists MYCHAEL DANNA and TIM CLEMENT. Though this show dates from 1984, it sounds fresh as the proverbial daisy.

What's In An Error Message?

0 This is an unexpected token. The expected token is 'NAME'. Line 1, position 181.

If you get this error message when you try to log in, it's not your fault, it's a software bug. To fix, please send an email to help@hos.com and let us know. We'll reset your account immediately and email instructions for you to delete the old cookies from our site. These two actions will banish the problem and allow you to log in again.

Bug Chronicles: For Those Who Wish to Know More (you know who you are...)

This bug developed because our technology provider's recent software update made First Name and Last Name mandatory for registration. They failed to provide for existing users with no data entered in those fields. They quickly realized the problem, and fixed it. However, a subsequent fix of another bug omitted the first fix, causing the error messages. A systemwide database update will banish all these buggies permanently on April 26. If you encounter this error between now and then, just let us know.

Our technology providers extend their sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. So do we, as well as a prayer that this be the last of the fallout from our recent system upgrade. Welcome to our world...it's not supposed to be yours!

As always, for any assistance on any issue, send email to help@hos.com, and a real person will get back to you within 24 hours.

Week of April 14th...

Back to one our "normal" genres this week due to the Easter holiday. Once again we've tapped long time guest producer ELLEN HOLMES, whose tireless research has uncovered another sublime group of sacred choral gems.

The theme and title is "QUIET PRAYERS" and the playlist is too long for me to condense here. Suffice to say it's another collection of exquisite vocal harmonies from the repertoire, spanning at least eight centuries of inspired music. Click over to QUIET PRAYERS to hear for yourself.

Note to CD buyers: Licensing issues still prevent us from offering you a CD of the program, but five of the tracks come from Ellen's most recent compilation SACRED TREASURES IV, which is available at Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Hot Fix?

Here's the latest on the software update story (please see previous Service Bulletin posts for the details):

After application of an, ahem, strategic amount of pressure by us, our service provider agreed to push fixing the latest problem up on their agenda from the end of April, to this week.

Yesterday whilst we all slept, the boffins applied a "hot fix" and lo, It Came to Pass. Now the question is, "Does it work?"

I guess we'll see. The normal tests indicate that all should be well. If you encounter any problem with streams suddenly stopping for no apparent reason, please let us know immediately by email to help@hos.com. Hopefully, we've vanguished this l'il buggie for good.

Week of April 7th...

This week we depart from format...sort of...to present the work of one of the finest singer/songwriters of the last 20 years. MARK HOLLIS was the genius behind the English pop group TALK TALK. If you've never heard of them, it's because most of their hits were in the U.K. and Europe 20 years ago. But Mark Hollis continued on his own creative trajectory, blending influences from jazz, blues, ambient and chamber music into timeless, introspective songs.

The contemplative music of MARK HOLLIS...this week on Hearts of Space.

Followup on our software update

For the last three weeks, we've been diligently responding to email from users and tracking down a few remaining problems caused by the upgrade to our "under the hood" log in and user interface software on March 14th. While the writing of this code is not directly under our control, we feel totally responsible for any inconvenience to our users.

We are still having a few scattered problems with streams stopping for no apparent reason. This only affects a very small percentage of users with specific types of broadband connections, but it's still really annoying. The good news is that the engineers now know exactly what's causing it; the bad news is that they can't guarantee a fix until April 24th. We are pushing them to get it done earlier and will announce it here if it's possible.

The other remaining issue is one of convenience: the current Log In screen is not smart enough to remember your email address and password, so you have enter it manually each time. Duhhhhh. We've been promised a fix on this too, but don't have hard date for it yet.

:: Stephen Hill