Thursday, March 21, 2013

...and there it allready is: AlionLive Return 2 Madeira - Day 5B!

How many of you thought, that there would be a rather big time gap between 5A and 5B, eh? I have put pretty much effort into letting the 5B video follow as soon as possible. It was not particularly hard to get this done, because the video is only 18 minutes long. I have done that, so to say, as a byproduct ;). I made a little mistake during that. The intro of the video still says "Day 5A". Some very attentive viewers informed me about that. Sorry, I overlooked this and I don't want to re-uploaad the video.

This part of AlionLive Return 2 Madeira takes us to the most eastern part of the island. We hike from the most eastern point, accessible with a car, to the Cais do Sardinha. The video is that short because of the following reasons:
  1. The hiking path was far more challenging than I thought and at many parts it would have been practically suicide to play around with a camera instead of taking care.
  2. My footwear, sandals, was a additional source of hazard. Often I slipped out of them sideways while hiking on steep parts of the path.
  3. 3. The weather was changing all the time very quickly and so I again had to protect the camera.
  4. Especially up on the cliffs, the was a strong unpredictable wind blowing, which would push one off the cliff, if one doesn't pay a bit of additional attention. Also the wind was shaking the arm holding the camera quite heavily. This brought some additional shaking of the camera.
  5. I simply had to get the hike done and get back to the bus station in time. Because I started the hike quite late, I had to hurry up. Video filming costs time.
  6. At some parts, the heavy wind pushed the spray water from the oceans waves up the cliffs. This was another danger to protect the camera from.

Personally I think, that this part of AlionLive Return 2 Madeira, despite it's short runtime, is the best one so far, and that because of the quite great quality of the nature vistas. The soundtrack consists of cause of the brandnew alionsonny track "A Sunny Day" and three more tracks, not featured on any album so far.

Here is the tracklist:
  1. alionsonny - Dinnertime For The Cats
  2. alionsonny - A Sunny Day..
  3. alionsonny - Springtime 2008
  4. alionsonny - Summertime 2007

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

AlionLive Return 2 Madeira - Day five - Busride from Funchal to Canical is here!

I decided to divide the video material of my fifth day in Madeira 2012 into two part, part 5A and part 5B. You allready know that from the 2011 "AlionLive Madeira" series. On that day I took the bus from Funchal to Canical and it was rainy weather. The destination was the most eastern point of the island one can get to by bus or car. The nearer I got to my destinatio, the better the weather was and at the end I got a real good dose of blue sky and sunshine. The part I present here is part 5A and is all about the busride. I did not completely film the busride, because I think you know the center of Funchal from a bus view quite good by now. And this is why I started filming later. Still a whole hour of video is the result. The complete busride took about 1 1/2 hours. In the next part, 5B, I will show you the hike.

The soundtrack is partly from the 2009 alionsonny album "Reggae?" and partly tracks destined for the new alionsonny album. Of cause also the brandnew alionsonny track "A Sunny Day" is featured.

Here's the tracklist:
01 - alionsonny - Madeira
02 - alionsonny - A Sunny Day
03 - alionsonny - Drunken Joe In Love
04 - alionsonny - Dr. Funkenstein (Album "Reggae?")
05 - alionsonny - Bulletprrof
06 - alionsonny - Springtime 2009 (Album "Reggae?")
07 - alionsonny - Going Bonkers
08 - alionsonny - Behold The Crest(Album "Reggae?")
09 - alionsonny - Nero d' Avola
10 - alionsonny - Talking Cat
11 - alionsonny - Life goes ON!(Album "Reggae?")


Friday, March 15, 2013

The alionsonny project is ALIVE! New Song!

This took some time! The fans of elaborate Dub crazyness had to wait whole 5 months (to the day) for a new release by the alionsonny project. While all my other projects were plentyfully blessed with new releases, the reggae-ish part was completely on halt. This is now changing. ACTUALLY there has been an alionsonny album announced for the turn of the year. In the course of my "2013 - My Year" move it is now time to focus on that task.

The start for this has been made with the release of a new alionsonny track, titled "A Sunny Day". As the name tells, this track was inspired by a sunny day, the first one in Hamburg this year. Like the projects "Willma Poppen" and "Cimelium", the project alionsonny has now also a "roadmap" for a change, which will determine the style of all future releases of the project. At the alionsonny project this change is mainly to focus on the specialities of the typical alionsonny sound. To say it somewhat clear: I dont want to get distracted anmore. I found my sound an now it is time to finetune it. With the new release I think I accomplished that so far.

On one hand "A Sunny Day" is a return to the roots of the project, but also a step into a uncertain future. Many loyal alionsonny listeners bemoaned, that they missed those playfull and sometimes neckbreaking outbursts of Dub in the releases of the past years. "A Sunny Day" answers this with a straight "Here you go! Want more?". On the other hand, the regular alionsonny listener will recognize, that the sound is now much more structured and clean. I can hear the friends of the "old soundmud" scream in pain. Yes, folks who love merciless reverb mud and delay mangled drumloops exist. Well, dear "friends of the mud", that's it. Honestly, when I recorded my first works in 2004/2005 with 30 Euros PC speakers, I released (because those speakers didn't speak BASS) tracks, which make my toenails roll up, if I listen to them today. If one takes a look at the frequency spectrum, one sees the bass frequencies exploding and on the other frequencies is the silence of the lambs. Why do I tell this now? Exactly as I said goodbye to the "monsterbass" in 2007 and even more in 2009, I now say goodbye to the other elements which negatively affected my sound in the past. There were also folks who bemoaned the "monsterbass" when I said goodbye to it. Well, the train goes on.

The style of the alionsonny project is also changing. While I often released tracks and albums in the past like "I don't care what you want! Take this!", I decided - also in the course of the commercialization of the project - to listen more to you, my dear listeners. Actually there is a great deal of feedback comming from my audience, and so I can be pretty sure to know exactly WHAT my audience liked at my past releases. THIS is my roadmap: Excactly what you want. So flood my mailbox and the alionsonny Facebook fanpage with CONSTRUCTIVE comments. Only this way I can produce YOUR music.

A little sidenote/detail. While working at the song, I recognized a pattern in a particular melody when looking at it in the pianoroll (digital music sheet in a sequencer), which looked like DNA. I embed a picture here:


For the curious amongst you: The melody is that synth which sounds like a mix of a female voice and a flute. The "enemies of repetition" will recognize that it repeats the same melody pattern allmost all over the song. This is intended. I didn't want to break the DNA string ;).

Another good news: Since quite a long time no alionsonny music video has been releaased. AlionLive isn't really about music videos ;). Because I like "A Sunny Day" so much, I will soon create a NICE music video for it. And if I say soon, I mean REALLY soon. Ok, and that's really enough text. Here's the music.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new!

Now it is finally done. The new website is here; not 100% perfect, but quite ok. Some folks allready gave me feedback and of cause the reactions on the new site differ. Of cause, the site has been shrunken down. In the process of "professionalizing" of my work, I prefer easy understandable structures. The old alionsonny.com simply contained too much not really neccessary information. Just an example: Who is interested in an endless list of song titles and the corresponding exact dates of release? Ok I am, but I do not really think you are. Another example? How are fractal images and Raytracing experiments exactly connected to the musicproject alionsonny? Right: In no way!

What I simply recognized throughout the whole process of transformation from a "everything for free fun project" to a professional music project was, that my website was allways a mix between a private homepage and a professional musicians homepage. I tried my best to eliminate the first part now. If I have the time someday to run a private funhomepage again, I have the domain wolther.de for that ;). And even if some folks are complaining now about "losing the cool & easy private touch of the site" and missing (I think unneccessary) information, I think the new site is much cleaner and structured and more suiting it's actual purpose. So stop whining. To say it with the Bible: "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new", and it is great that way!

The site is far from being perfect. The layout sometimes freaks, especially on some Browsers. The more investigative guys amongst you will also have recognized, that not all possibilities to provoke errors on the site lead to a corresponding error message. But in general the site is safe, otherwise the few hours would have been enough time for my "russian hacker friends" to turn the site into a Viagra selling page. They are quite quick at this and they seem to love to try hacking my website.

The functionality of the site has been now reduced to the absolute minimum, to get the site online very quick. If you are missing one or the other thing, you will most probably find it back in a improved version during the next weeks. So please refrain from AT THIS TIME sending me loads of reports about missing stuff. Most probably I am allready at the job to bring it back. I plan a gigantic improvement regarding to the interactivity of the site. You will get a newsletter again and also a personal section called "MyAlionmind" or so, which will be, for example, very helpfull during sweepstakes etc.

Ok, so far the news. Have fun on the new alionsonny.com. I will now create a new alionsonny track. About time ;)

Monday, March 4, 2013

The first AlionLive in Full HD -> Day 4 of AlionLive return 2 Madeira is here!

Because my computer is quite fast now, I thought I will do the next logical step and release my videos in Full HD instead of 720p from now on. This eats up more harddisk space, rendertime and uploadtime, but there's nothing too much for my beloved audience. Was that too over-egged now? Anyway: Because of this, AlionLive is now even more pretty, colorfull, louder and unbeatable against foot odor. And to the critics, who analize the video and say that this is NEVER a bitrate for Full HD: Ir's not my fault, that my camcorder just does 15.000 maximum bitrate. If you want to sponsor me a better camcorder, you are welcome... exclusive adverts included. ;)

What you will see in the video? Good news for all those who get stomach cramps and diarrhea with vomiting when they see my pretty face: I'm not visible right from the start... but later. The video starts with very nice and very colofull flowers. Then we make our way to the Parque Ecologico do Funchal and experience a looong and exhausting hike across the plateau north of Funchal. During this we see beautiful, shocking and breathtaking vistas over Funchal and the wild mountainous landscape of Madeira. At the end the weatherconditions went apocalyptic, and that's no exaggeration, and prevented me from filming further. The video closes with a busride of about 15 minutes from Mote down to Funchal in the evening and some impressions from a nice meal at the incomparable O Dragoeiro.

The music is, with the exception of two tracks, from Cimelium and mostly from the album "Mesopotamia". But also the two new candidates for the upcomming "Madeira" album are present. "Pico Ruivo" even twice. The two exceptions are the two latest tracks by Willma Poppen "Apocalypso 2012" and "Madeira". By the way: I do not (yet) sell singles. Please tell me if you would like me to do it and I will... think about it ;)

And now, much fun in Madeira!