A major archival project has recently been completed. In this mini update, we talk about the latest chunk of information posted.
The last time we posted a mini update was all the way back in February of 2021. At the time, we were excitedly talking about how we added the next show to the archive, the V Recordings Podcast. Shortly after that announcement, we announced what was the single most ambitious project to date.
On March 1st of 2021, we announced that we started working on another trance show, the Future Sound of Egypt. At the time we announced that particular show would get added, it had a very sizable 690 episodes. That is only 10 episodes short of the Corsten’s Countdown show. Of course, we knew that it would easily exceed 700 episodes by the time we completed it for the simple reason that there was no way we’d complete that show in 10 weeks or less. That would just be physically impossible. So, it was clear this was going to be the single biggest project yet.
While archiving a show with over 700 episodes is going to be a massive project, we actually underestimated just how huge this project was going to be. this is because every 50 episodes, Aly & Fila had this habit of having these massive music festivals that spanned different countries all over the world. When I discovered this, my heart did sink because I knew that this project was going to be far far bigger than 700 episodes would have you believe.
Examples of these massive music festivals include episode’s 300, 350, 400, 450, and so on and so forth. On the one hand, those are incredible opportunities to discover new music and very informative of the music that was known at those times. On the other hand, having to write all that stuff up, code in the Wiki markup, do all that extra research, etc. is also a nightmare. If you think just scrolling through those pages are intimidating, just imagine actually building all those pages by hand. This project being a royal pain to complete is a massive understatement and it is little wonder why so many either give up part way through such a project or skip large swaths of the mixes during those specials.
I, on the other hand, was idiotic enough to attempt it. Somehow, through some miraculous combination of stupidity and determination, I was, in fact, able to push through all of that as best as possible to offer what is arguably the single most complete data set on the Internet today. So, yes, the Future Sound of Egypt archive project is now finally fully complete to the best of my abilities. It involved countless hours of hammering the keyboard, and countless instances of eye strain, fatigue, burnout, headaches, neck pain, back pain, and people worried that I have absolutely no freaking life whatsoever. However, gosh darn it, the project is now finally freaking completed. I’ll let you sort out your bets as to whether or not I’d actually do it, but it is now done.
Don’t get me wrong, the music is fantastic. In fact, it was probably one of the few things that helped me get through this whole thing in the first place. So, this isn’t a knock on the music itself by any means, it was just an insane amount of work to get it nicely presentable to you.
Now, there are some things to consider when browsing these pages. Between, episodes 79 and 225 is almost a recording dead zone for this archive. There is the odd show here and there that has a recording you can listen to directly, but otherwise, you just have a playlist. I couldn’t for the life of me, find a way to stream those particular episodes for free. My understanding is that there are downloads on some Russian sites, but that’s about it.
Another thing to is the fact that there was absolutely no way to find every single mix in those specials. While I was able to find a couple mixes that were seemingly missed by everyone else, there are still gaps that exist. A lot of the information I was able to find are from old posters and lists floating around, so that is how I was able to discover who was actually there. If the mix, the tracklist, or both is missing on a lot of these, well, sorry, I legitimately tried to find them, but simply couldn’t.
Obviously, we are open to anyone with any information on what we are missing, what we got wrong, etc. This is a shockingly huge project, so it would actually be stunning if we got absolutely everything right. So, feedback is certainly welcome.
Otherwise, I hope you enjoy what 1 year, 2 months, and 16 days was able to produce. Judging by the analytics, a lot of you already are enjoying that archive a lot. So, we are very happy that you are already making use of this archive.
As for me, I am a glutton for punishment, so I’ll be off to the next big archive project in the mean time… and very grateful that the only thing I have to do now with the archive is update it with the latest episodes from now on.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
