Kuba's Last Merged Commits: the story of arthel159
▶ Hear Kuba on Reuben's Train🐰🥕🐇 find a trail here[unverified] 11 Nov 2026
Today, we merge the last open commits of Kuba Hejhal, the finest hacker-fiddler of the early bluegrass-as-cypherpunk age. Kuba left this world two years ago at 27 years of age, and left us with his code and his music, but most of all, with stories that feel timeless and larger-than-life.
His stature as one of the preeminent European bluegrass fiddlers was and is well-known around the world, but his off-the-damn-charts skill at software engineering, with which he advanced his vision of a world of acoustic cypherpunk mayhem, was a well-kept open secret.
Kuba was the life of the party everywhere he went; few dared keep up with him in his unending quest to find the main nerve. The luckiest among us, though, came to bear witness and marvel at his ability to forge ahead with coherent logical expression into the depths of any state of mind his reality visited upon him.
In July 2024, on the heels of the 4masks sessions, in a short-term apartment in Brussels, to Kuba Hejhal and Skyler Golden, amidst the unfolding of a conspiracy to roll a spliff of some newly delivered Belgian cannabis, Justin Myles Holmes mused to the both:
- What if we showed the entire ensemble of every bluegrass track, right in the player?
- What if we encouraged our fans to support us not by enduring more bullshit ads, but by directly sponsoring our connections to the pickers we've reeled in to our studio sessions and tours?
Kuba, as was almost always his way, got directly to work, whipping out his laptop and pecking out the first few lines of what has become - and as we introduce today- The Rabbithole Player.
Kuba's last remaining open branch, known as arthel 159, or by its checksum a180946, was not his last work (though last to _be merged_), nor his best work, but in the two years since he left, it has provided us a fount of unending inspiration to continue our shared vision of a better way to listen to, and carefully examine, bluegrass.
Nary a day goes by when we don't hear the fuckin' fiddle in our heads and in our hearts, little brother. And as long as we do, you live.
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Kuba's `lastSong` and `nextSong` logic -
A rendering of the player as built by Kuba (hacking at his typical incredible pace, he used the Vowel Sounds cover art as a placeholder, although Silver .44 is on 4masks, not Vowel Sounds.) -
Kuba's last show, Berlin, August 20 2024. Photo by R.J. Partington III -
The man himself, at the helm
