Oops! I simply forgot to tell you something! New song "Farm Dub" is here and more!

I know: It went "a bit quiet" around the alionsonny project since the release of the "Continuity" album. And that was now a heavy understatement. Almost three months have passed since here since something new has been reported here... and then I simply forget to write an update here if something happens. I'm sorry for that, but as you can read in the monthly news on the alionmind records blog soon, I was anything but idle.

And while we are on the topic: Quite a few probably have not noticed that news concerning the other projects are no longer mentioned in this blog. I handle that very strict recently. This means, that there will be no longer news reported regarding the projects "Willma Poppen", "Cimelium" and new "AlionLive" videos on Youtube. So if you have thought these projects would be dead by now: No, they are very much alive and have made great progress. It is just, that news regarding to these project are posted only in the dedicated blogs, and of cause also on Twitter and Facebook since quite a time. I want to use the alionsonny blog solely for news concerning this project. And exactly this is why this blog does not get as much updates as back in the days. If you do not yet know the blogs of the other projects, here they are:

Willma Poppen Blog
Cimelium Blog
AlionLive Blog

And if you want to monthly (well , more or less ;) ) read my entire activities in the summary, it is recommended that you check the alionmind records blog.

Ok, and what he told of a new alionsonny song? Yes, actually the first track after the release of the "Continuity" album has been completed as a pre-release version. It is a work in the good old traditional way, ie one that will drive the purists crazy ;) . In fact, it is so traditional that one feels transported back to the early years of the alionsonny project. Of course, it is again not really Reggae. There is so much dubbing going on, that many will get vertigo. Also, I once again implemented a funny collection of rhythm changes. Overall it is, so to say, "colorful". After I - believe or not - have followed a more serious approach with the last tracks, I thought it would be time again for a little sillyness ;). Yeah, and there's are actually not more to say about it. Listen to it and judge for yourself. As with everything I upload to SoundCloud, this is a so-called pre-release version, ie a version that is good for now, but not really finished. The final version is created when the next alionsonny album is to be released... but that is still very far away. But for now, here is "Farm Dub". Have fun!

"Continuity" is now available on iTunes and Spotify!

Yeah, who would have thought this? This went quite fast. Big thanks to the Routenote team, because they managed it to set a new "speed record" for making an album available. For "Heroes of the Popp-Culture" and "Mesopotamia" it took a little more than two weeks back then. Now it took just 11 days! That's the way I like it (aha aha) :). I have just checked Amazon. There, the album is not yet to be found, but they always need much longer. I am absolutely ok with that, because from every download sold on iTunes I get a bigger share than from Amazon. Additionally, Amazon squanderes, at least the albums by independent musicians, in my opinion, at ridiculously low prices. Also on Emusic, the album is not yet to be found, but who really uses Emusic? If I remember it right, not a single download of my works has been sold there since June 2012. It seems, that this platform is not very popular. I can not say anything about the availability on the streaming platforms Rdio and Deezer, because they do not offer free access and the catalog can be viewed only by paying customers. I will not pay a single cent, just to see if my album is available there. If you, dear reader, are a customer of these platforms, it would be nice if you could have a look and see if the album is available there and let me know about it. Thanks in advance.

So, I have yet again written a lot. I did not actually expect that ;) So, here are the links, so you can shop comfortably. Make me rich! ;) :)

"Continuity" on iTunes
"Continuity" on Spotify

Album release! "Continuity" is here!

Yes, it has happened: Today, the album for which you have waited so long has been finally released. However, again I have to disappoint you a bit: Currently, it is only available in my Routenote Direct shop. Do not let the awful design of the shop and the fact, that, due to the lack of a playlist, you cannot can not pre-listen the songs, scare you away . Something is not working with the shop currently and the Routenote guys are most probably already on the job to fix it. I have already "complained" about it ;). And don't be puzzled about the fact, that the album is on position 3 of the album list. So if it is not visible on your superduper Smartphone -> please scroll down a little. It is definitely there. I also do not know why this is. You can also click here . This takes you directly to the album page. You can pay conveniently via Paypal or credit card. If you can wait, the album will soon be available on iTunes , Amazon, and many other well known shops. How long will that take? On average, 4 to 6 weeks, but for the album releases in fall of 2012 it took only 2 weeks for iTunes. Yes, so much time has passed already since "Heroes of the Popp-Culture" and "Mesopotamia".

Oh yes: And of course you can, as always, order the album directly from me for 10 Euros. Simply transfer the money via Paypal to alionsonny@alionsonny.com and to be sure, also send an email to the same address. Sending this mail is also a good idea, because otherwise I can not send you the download link. But if you want to transfer me money and get no album, you may also omit the part of sending the mail ;).

So, now that was a long wait full of ups and downs. I have good reasons to hope, that it will not again take three years until the next alionsonny album will be released. Of course, the work at the other projects will ensure that I cannot release another alionsonny album in just a few months, but I have learned some new strategies. Yeah, next is the "Willma Poppen" album "Willma im Wunderland". And next after this is Cimelium's "Madeira" album. But I also have some tracks for the alionsonny project almost done. How will I the next album be titled? Make some suggestions ;).

EDIT: To make up for the missing Routenote playlist, I embed the Soundcloud playlist here. But NOTE: This is NOT the final product. All tracks in this playlist are (some improved) pre-release versions of the tracks and most of them do not match the quality of the album. And please note another thing: On Soundcloud (at least for the free accounts) the audio is compressed to death. So this is just for a slight pre-listening. You have been warned ;)

It is done! alionsonny.de is up to date again and more ...

This went reasonably fast, but it was no mammoth project ;). You may still encounter sporadic side effects of the renovation, but generally alionsonny.de should be fully functional again and, much more important, up to date. On this occasion, I also improved some things, which unnecessarily increased the loading time of the page in the past. I have not touched the visual improvements, I mentioned in the past posting, yet, but these are not so important, that I would delay the work on the album any longer.

Continuity ?
Yes, some of you complain about it already. But I really needed that little break, because my ears urgently needed a break. Creating the release versions has really tired them plentiful and at the end I was not sure if I am still able to hear correctly. The musicians amongst you will know what I mean ;). So what's up with the album? It is almost done! I have finished the release versions of the oldest , and therefore most in need of a review, 10 tracks. The three remaining tracks require, in my opinion and the opinion of many listeners, no major overhaul or improvement. Currently I am working, with the involvement of voluntary test listeners, on the playlist, which determines the order of the tracks. This process is also completed, except for the judgment of a particular person, whose opinion is personally very important to me. This will happen this evening. In this respect, although I can not promise anything 100% as always, the album should be, at least in my Routenote shop, this week. ITunes, Amazon and Co. always take a while.

AlionLive is getting bigger!
First of all: Yes, "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" will be continued soon . But the album has priority. Nevertheless, there is good news for the fans of this project. My friends on Facebook, as always, already know about it... at least I hope so ;). The most important news, especially for readers of this blog, is, that no news regarding AlionLive will be posted on this blog anymore from now on. This blog is now exclusively reserved for the music project alionsonny. News about new videos etc. will from now on be posted on the new AlionLive Blog (CLICK!). There are also some other things that may be particularly of interest for those, who wish to follow my hikes. AlionLive now also has its own page on Facebook and I would be extremely happy if everyone of you would "LIKE" it. So no one should ask me questions why nothing about AlionLive is posted here anymore ;).

Yes, and that's it for this time. I am back at work!

Out of synch...

I don't know how many of you noticed it, but recently my homepage alionsonny.com is out of synch with this blog. Usually (until the beginning of the year), news which were posted here appeared almost immediately on alionsonny.com, at least to some extent. Also, new videos, music etc. could be found on the homepage with a bit of delay. The reason for this more or less long period of non-synchronicity is now also responsible for the fact that alionsonny.com is "frozen" since January 8th.

Why is it? For this I need to get a little bit into the "technical" details. alionsonny.com runs not on one of those well-known content management systems, which are quite popular amongst those who either have no time or desire to create their own website. And there is nothing to say against that. "Then why are you doing all the work yourself?" An answer to this can be still read in VERY old posts on this blog. I have used such a system for quite a time, namely the well known and very popular Joomla. At this time the website has been hacked so many times that it really was not funny anymore.  "And your great system is unhackable?". No, most probably not. Nothing is unhackable. But the well known CMSs all have one thing in common: They are very well known ;). A hacker or a so-called hacker crew usually has no desire to deal with a self-made CMS and puzzle out possible vulnerabilities if a so-called exploit for a known CMS allows the hacking of thousands of websites. This is exactly the same as with the viruses and trojans, which exist mainly for the most widely used operating system in the world. Monocultures are vulnerable. But please: Refrain from any OS flamewar here ;). And the other reason for my homemade CMS is that it's fun.

Ok, and the current version of my homepage has been hastily stitched together in spring 2013. It should work and be just finished. Here I have put the main focus on that the site visitors can visit my website and I have not only somewhat neglected myself, the guy who has to file in all the data. This caused the fact, that the procedure of filing in news, music and videos was quite complicated. I spare you the unnecessary details ;).

Earlier this year, this really got on my nerves and I decided to no longer update the homepage for a time and instead to build a convenient so-called admin backend, which makes the whole process a lot easier for me. And that's what I'm doing currently. If you see this text on my home page, at least the updating of plain text news is already done. The filing in of new videos and music will be the next step. So have some patience and maybe subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog. A simple bookmark is of course also a solution. Soon everything will be up again and a fix for some already reported "imperfections" is already on it's way.

AlionLive Return 2 Madeira - From Camara de Lobos to the Lido

And here it is already: The second part of day 11! This went quite quick this time. Ok, but to achieve that, I had to pause working on the new album during the past days. Don't worry: I'm already back on it, but more on that later.

The story: As already announced, this video shows a little "hike" from Camara de Lobos to the Lido, filmed using my inimitable "shaky cam technique". This video is especially recommended for those who plan to visit Madeira, because it shows the way from Funchal, along the coast to Camara de Lobos... but just in the reverse direction. And almost all newcomers to Madeira make that one mistake, that they think, that down at the beach it does not go further. The secret is the tunnel shown in this video where my camera did it's best to compensate for the bad light conditions , but once again failed miserably ;).

Größere Kartenansicht

The video shows also wonderful impressions of a sunny day on the promenade, accompanied by a few songs from the, hopefully soon to be released, album "Continuity". The soundtrack contains this time, except for one song, almost finished album versions (release versions). The soundtrack in detail:

00:00 - Madeira (Release Version)
04:55 - Bulletproof (Release Version)
9:58 - Green Hills (Release Version)
14:38 - Drunken Joe in Love ( Release Version)
19:03 - Going Bonkers (Release Version)
23:57 - A Sunny Day (Release Version)
28:55 - Flight of the Butterfly (Pre-Release Version)

As you can see, the video is once again a little longer, but 33 minutes is not too long, right? While we are at it: What do you think actually about the video lengths? Every now and then, there are people who write to me, that certain videos are too long. What do you think: Should I split such long videos generally into smaller parts? If so, what would be a good length? The good old 15 minutes? But I also want to point at the fact, that there are people who like to see things as a whole and they would complain if I split the videos into parts. Well, again the good old quote from Wilhelm Busch nails it perfectly: "To all people fairly done , is an art that no one can" (I don't know if this translation is even remotely correct).

Finally, I want to tell you of course a bit about the status of the album "Continuity". Slowly but steadily, the whole thing comes to an end. The song "Talking Cat" was transformed into the most probably final version yesterday and currently I'm working on "Flight Of The Butterfly". Don't worry: I know that the song is almost perfect and will not change too much. I just think that some things get too much presence and others do not ;). When this song is done, there are 4 songs left to work on, but all of these were produced in the period between August 2013 and now and therefore are quite up to date. So I would say very carefully, that there is not much left to do.

Ok, but now have fun with the new video . I am already working on the next one.

Finally: A new AlionLine Video! Come with me to Camara de Lobos!

Some of you already thought , I would have given up on the AlionLive channel, but did you really believe that? No, the reason for the fact that nothing went no further lately on AlionLive is much less spectacular. Anyone remembering the album "Continuity"? Yes, it has still not been released. But I can assure you that is not a musical "Duke Nukem 4 Ever". So the album will come and it will come soon. Well, and the work on this album occupied my whole creative energy recently. A little progress report: 5 of 13 songs have been "transformed" into the final release versions. The rest is pretty up to date and therefore it is unlikely to be much work.

But back to the video: When I decided shortly before the turn of the year to finally continue with the work at "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira", I noticed that a fresh intro would be quite appropriate. And as you know me, of course I once again went over the top and wanted a real Blender 3D intro. The ideas were blooming like a flower meadow and in no time I found myself in a whole lot of work. This then delayed the start of the actual video editing for a few more days.

The plot: As mentioned in the credits of the last video, on the evening of 10 Day, a little high-proof festivity took place. On the morning of 11 Day I felt absolutely unable to start serious ventures, namely hikes. As the weather was surprisingly sunny, it made ​​sense to insert a day of rest. And to not make things unnecessarily complicated, I decided to spend the day in Camara de Lobos. And this, with just under 15 minutes of run time unusual short video, is about that very stay in Camara de Lobos. It features, aside of the new intro, beautiful views of the picturesque fishing village of Camara de Lobos, the coast, Cabo Girao and there is a little "Sunday Sermon" - because it was a Sunday - from me also.

The whole is accompanied by three songs from the above-mentioned album "Continuity". Two are still in the pre-release version state and one in the final release version:

• Nero d ' Avola (Release Version)
• Pirates of Madeira ( Pre-Release Version)
• Ganja In the Jar ( Pre-Release Version)

This nearly 15 minutes of video is by far not everything that was filmed on day 11. I have decided once more to split the video material into two parts, because it fits thematically. The rest of the video material is about the somewhat long walk from Camara de Lobos to back to Funchal / Lido. I have captured large parts of that walk using my incomparable shaky cam technique and want to share this pleasure just do those who really want to view it. So it made ​​sense to separate the more quiet and short part about Camara de Lobos from the shake-o-rama, which will be soon available as part 2.

Yeah, what else to say? Actually nothing ;) . I am off to work again on the album and because of that, it may take some time until part 2 is ready. But now have fun with part 1.