Monday, February 27, 2012

The new alionsonny Homepage is online!

For quite a while I promised my loyal fans that the somewhat aged alionsonny Homepage will get a major overhaul. And now the time has come! alionsonny.com has been completely new created. Currently the site is only available in english language, but this will change soon. The biggest, and for some of you most inconvinient change is, that the site is from now on no longer ad-free. To be honest, I do no longer want to be the only one who doesn't put ads on his site, while others generate a nice extra income by putting ads on their sites. The webspace doesn't pay itself and I am not a rich man. Didn't we talk not so long ago about the "generosity" of my listeners regarding to voluntary donations? ;) Well, and who doesn't want to listen, must live with the ads. In the near future I will offer a possibility to get the site ad-free for a moderate donation. Just wait and see...

Much of the new site will look familiar to you, but at some parts there have been quite some changes. Still you will not see anything of the biggest part of the changes, because most is below the surface. For example, I administered songs, videos and other media via the uncomfortable database administration interface in the past. Now I built a nice administrator interface for the website, which make it more convinient for me to get things on the site much easier and quicker. All the database functions have been completely freshly programmed and the site will run much quicker and smooth because of that. Ok, but what has changed for YOU? I'll briefly tell it to you, step by step:

Navigation
The navigation menu to access the various sections of the site has moved from the left to the top, below the banner. Here you also find now expandable submenus now. In the following I explain the sections accessible via the menu:

Welcome
This is where you end up if you type alionsonny.de or alionsonny.com into your browsers adress bar. This is the home page. This is has now a much cleaner layout. You can find here, as in the past an area with the news from the blog and the recent Twitter messages from me. These areas are now larger, because I expect you to use a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels as the minimum standard. Below that, you find, as in the past, the latest video and an embedded player with ALL SONGS THAT I HAVE EVER RELEASED. And that's it in this section. Iplan to to add something BIG to this section in the near future, but I tell you about that, when it's finished ;)

alionsonny
Here you can find, now more compact, the facts about me. Here, not much has changed ... rather ... nothing ;)

Blog
Again, there is nothing new. Clicking on it brings you, as always, the blog where you are reading this.

Shop
Since many have asked how and where one can buy my music, in this section will be a shop soon. Currently you find there just a temporary solution. It explains to you how you can buy music during the time until the shop is finished.

Music
Here you find, as in the past, a musical overview, albums and songs. At this overview and the albums section nothing has really changed, but something has changed in the songs part. For song entries for which a music videos exist, a link is provided that leads directly to the music video. The biggest new feature is that you can now filter the songs on the "genre" field by music styles. So anyone who is interested in a particular style of music can now just select it and will only see songs of this musical style listed. So someone who loves techno music and doesn't like reggae has no longer have to click through dozens of reggae songs, folk songs and soundtrack style songs. The page navigation has been simplified. Above and below the table you find song now links which allow you to scroll to older or newer songs or to the oldest and newest songs.

Video
Here the most changes have been done. Now you do not only find my well-known music videos here, but also AlionLive and my graphic works from alionvisual.

Contact
There is the well-known contact section -> no change.

Terms
Since this site will have a lot more features, especially the shop and offer user registration in the future, it is time for some general rules.

And that's it for now. As I said, the most of the work has been done below the surface and I've also tinkered a lot with stuff which is the basis for the soon to come, much further innovations. I'll let you know if there is something new again.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

AlionLive Madeira - Part 3 is ready for you!

Well, most of you mostprobably know about it allready, because in fact the video has been uploaded 3 days ago. Why do I mention it just now? Well, let's say, I hate some private not so nice issues to go thru, and because of that, not everything went as it was supposed to do. But enough of that! Yes, AlionLive Madeira is availble for watching now. This time the video is again about a hike thru the suburbs of Funchal, along the mountain chain in the north and back to Funchal center. This time you are also finally able to see me live & alive directly from Madeira and of cause there's also some fantastic nature views and MUSIC: I promised you, that I will create at least one new song for each part of AlionLive (except for the introduction part) and this time it is my Reggae version of "More than 2 sides" with Colin Mutchler. Most of you will know about this also. But now, witout any more talk, to the video:

Saturday, February 11, 2012

New Song "More than 2 sides (Reggae Version)" feat. Colin Mutchler!

Yes, it's been a while since I worked for the last time with an accapella of my good friend Colin Mutchler. I have quite a long history with Colin, in which I allways loved to mangle one of his accapellas he uploaded on CCMixter. It all began in the second year of the alionsonny project 2005 with my reggaeversion of "Language of my Reality" on the Skylarking Riddim and ended with my Eurotechno version of "More than 2 sides" in 2009. It has allready been planned back then to create more versions of "More than 2 sides" and as a matter of fact, the now released reggaeversion was allready on it's way as well as the not yet finnished and not yet released folkversion. Now, at a time where I want to release at least one new song for each part of the AlionLive Madeira series, I browsed thru my projects folder for allmost finnished and allmost ready for release songprojects und I stumbled across the allmost finnished reggaeversion of "More than 2 sides". Well, and I thought that the sunny feel of that track is absolutely perfect for AlionLive Madeira. Well, and now I finnished it, and it is rady for you to listen. Don't miss the soon comming part 3 of AlionLive madeira in which this song will be featured.

















Thursday, February 9, 2012

AlionLive - Madeira - Part 2 is now available!

The second part of my travelogue from the beautiful island of Madeira features recordings which were filmed during a hike along the south coast in the direction of Camara de lobos. Later we were hiking away from the coastline via Sao Martinho back to the hotel. The video features impressive views of nature, the church of Sao Martinho and views of Funchal and it's surroundings.Starting with this video, maps are shown, which show you the route of our hikes and walks. This video also features my latest song "Madeira". Have Fun!