alionmind News February 10. 2015 - Rising from the ruins ;)

Hello, and welcome to the first alionmind news since a long time and also the first in 2015. Why has this blog suddenly been awakened from it's deep sleep? The reason will please the friends of music and the friends of the videos will maybe get a little grumpy: Due to recent events, I have decided to restrict work on videos and finally put more work into creating new music. This is now possible and necessary.

The Situation
I had a musical creative crisis, which meant that I could not work on music since last fall. To compensate for this, I then decided to work more on videos section and even started 3 new Youtube channels. For whatever reason - but we are happy about it - it seems that the music crisis somehow "dissolves". Just like that ... And now it would be stupid if I would continue to invest a large part of my time in creating various kinds of videos. The listeners of Cimelium and Willma Poppen music are not just slowly getting a bit grumpy, because they are waiting for ages for the promised albums. And I also do not ommit the fact, that the sales of songs and albums still bring more profit than the advertising revenue on Youtube. So we start again with the music, and that with full force, so you finally get new music.

AlionLive - Spring in Madeira?
Friends of the videos, don't be sad. I'll still work on videos from time to time. The "AlionLive - Spring in Madeira" series is completed just to slightly more than 50%, the next Madeira trip is already booked and the series will be finished in any case until the start of the trip. No, I will not tell you the date for security reasons, but let's say I have about 3 months left.

Tutorials?
Since this takes a huge amount of time to prepare and create, I'll will restrict this most of all video formats. Currently the channel is indeed amazingly well visited, but not as much that I could say that it would have the highest priority. But it will definitely go on.

Music videos?
Since one can always work a bit on those and most of them can be done fairly quickly, there'll be something going on from time to time. Let me surprise you.

Let's Play videos?
I guess I'll still do a lot of those. If I work hard on music again, of course I need one or the other hour of leisure that I can spend on a little game. One can then also record the gameplay and we get a lot of nice little Let's Play videos. So this will go on!

Ok, that was it actually for this news. As usual, and as in the previous news, I want to briefly wrap up again the little that has been done at the house of alionmind since the last blog entry. There is only one, somewhat strange, new piece in music, but a lot of new videos.

Willma Poppen - Ding Dong Merrily On High
Quite unnoticed, because not announced on the official Willma Poppen blog, I created a little christmas song, just for fun. It's a pop-techno version of the old Christmas song that I've already dished out sometime ago for the alionsonny project in a Reggae style. I think it is, despite the creative crisis, quite well done ;) The song is available for free download on Soundcloud, so: Grab it!

AlionLive - Spring in Madeira
I worked on the video material of a total of two days and created four videos out of it. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it is necessary to divide a day in two videos. For both, day 7 and 8 this was the case. Otherwise, the videos would have simply became too long, and one or the other has already complained that those four videos are still too long, despite of the cutting. Overall these four new videos are a whooping 2 hours, 35 minutes and 22 seconds long!

Day 7 - Part 1 - The Fortress
At the beginning of the 7th day, we visited the fortress "Fortaleza de São João do Pico". More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Day 7 - Part 2 - ART!
Then we went into the old town to extensively visit the artists' quarter. More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Day 8 - Part 1 - Ponta de São Lourenço 2014
This video shows a wonderful hike in best weather at a place we visited in absolutely bad weather already in 2012. More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Day 8 - Part 2 - Bus ride Ponta de São Lourenço - Funchal
A veeery long video for the, surprisingly enough, not just a few friends of bus ride videos. More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Tutorials on "Multiversity of Alion"
Here we have just the series on audio visualization in Blender still, but it already grew by as much as 4 videos. By now everything is already quite complex. So, if you are able to endure my lousy English, are not completely inexperienced in Blender and want to learn a bit, have fun:

Let's Plays on AlionLiveLP
Now, that finally the problem with Youtube blocking my videos in Germany is solved (do not ask how), I have recorded a bit for you again. There's currently no AlionLiveLP blog, but all the info can be found in the video descriptions. A total of 18 (!!!) new videos have been uploaded. If I embed them all here in the usual size, this blog will be totally "unloadable". Therefore I just embed mini previews here. Simply switch to full screen, or just visit the channel ;)

The Forest - English Edition
If you want to experience my lousy English again, there's a little "The Forest" series, in which I steal a native's house and defend it against the owners, sometimes using evil tricks. Here are the videos in order:

       


       

The Forest - German Edition
Yes, if you are able to understand German, there's also a series. Unfortunately, after an update of horror, the game started to stutter like hell. After a time, this was really no fun anymore. However, some funny and some amazing moments happened during this series. See for yourself:

       


      

The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind (German)
Yes, my very first Let's Play series was also continued. A total of 7 (!!!) videos have been added, of which the first 4 show the rather arduous life of a weak cat in the dangerous Vaardenfell. BUT: The last 3 parts are very "special". Actually I wanted to play while being a little drunk on New Year's Eve, but the glorious idea was then to also record and upload it. Oh well...

       


       

alionmind records music videos
On the music video channel unfortunately only three new videos have been uploaded. More is in the works. Patience: Sometime the complete alionmind catalog will be available. I promise! Here are the latest 3 additions:

alionsonny - Exploring Alion Forest
For this song from the 2010 album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" I have decided to create a video from pictures that Malina and I have taken some time ago in a forest near Hamburg.

alionsonny - Individuality
The video for this alionsonny classic from the album "Dub Antiquities"  was once more created using  the ZGame Editor visualization software.

alionsonny - The Cursed Cemetery
For this song, which is also from the album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", I decided to go the easy route and simply cut together some pictures of the official cover art. Not every song needs a complex video ;

And this is the end!
Yes, it was more news than I actually expected ;). There could have been just a bit more music. We will change this now. Let's get to work!

Here is alionmind records!

Many times I thought about just closing this blog as there are the several project blogs and I have enough to do, keeping them at least a bit up to date. But I know that some of the listeners of alionmind music would love to have a central blog for all projects. It is quite obvious: Not just a few listeners of one alionmind project listen to the music of the other projects too. At least they want to be informed why a certain project makes no progress, because delay in project x is caused by heavy work at project y usually ;).

So after discussing the topic "alionmind Blog" with the crew, we were all convinced, that this blog has definately it's purpose... even though it was not used according to thast in the past. Crew? Aren't you doing this all by yourself, Sonny? Aren't you a one man team anymore? Nope! There is great news: Even though I am still not able to employ anybody, by now I have some "employees", or better call them volunteers. The team is by now 5 persons strong, including me. If you are a friend on Facebook, you may have seen 2 of my partners there. With the exception of Kate Kuhn, they prefer to stay anonymous. 3 of the team members live in Hamburg, the other 2 abroad. Those kind folks help me to keep the promo running and to keep everything organized. No, we are not big yet, but we are prepared for everything that may be ahead.

So this blog will in the future be the nucleus of all announcements by alionmind records and also AlionLive. The alionsonny blog will from now on solely function as the project blog for the alionsonny project and AlionLive. So, the only RSS stream you need to get all the latest news about alionsonny, Cimelium, Willma Poppen, AlionLive and all the other stuff, is the one on this blog.

There will be a German version of this blog also once we see, that it has enough readers ;)

...AND NEARLY FORGOTTEN...
 There is some new music been just released by Willma Poppen


and also by Cimelium

Long time no news...

Yes, this whole website has been somewhat... errm.. abandonned for some time. The whole idea regarding the alionmind webshop has been not cancelled completely but stopped, because there were and are  a lot of more important things to be done. So I deleted the postings regarding the webshop and want to focus this Website/Blog a bit more on... well... more important things.

So what has happened at the alionmind tower of power high above the roofs of north-east Hamburg? A LOT! So here we go:

1. In October the album "Mesopotamia" of Cimelium has been released.
2. Also in October the album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture" by Willma Poppen has been released.
3. Songs for other projects have been finnished. Some of them have been showcased of Soundclous allready, many not ;)
4. AlionLive Madeira, my video series about my 2011 trip to Madeira, showcasing the (up to that date) complete catalogue of alionmind records has been finnished in October.
5. Sonny has visited the beautiful island of Madeira once again, brought back loads of raw video material. So it is time for "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira".

I want to highlight a special song release, which took place about 3 days ago. You remember the project TUBENWURST of the alionmind family? Yeah, maybe you thought that this would be just one more short living project by me, which I ditch after having some fun with it. But, no, despite the fact, that TUBENWURST released just 3 songs, of which one was originally still released under the name alionsonny, it is an important element of the alionmind projects structure.

That song released 3 days ago is titled Beatrice. And those of you who know me, will now wonder: Sonny does NEVER name songs after women, Sonny does not write love songs, Sonny is our well known robot-like authist from the neighborhood who doesn't show any feelings, eh? ;) Well, I will in fact not tell much about it, but the song Beatrice is in fact dedicated to a beautiful and very lovely person I met in Madeira. Yes, one could say, I fell somewhat in love. May the gossip spread like wildfire...
Ahh, nearly forgot: There's a little sweepstakes/contest going on and YOU can win 1 of 5 free downloads of the first album "Mesopotamia" by Cimelium. The contest finnishes on December 24th. So you still have a chance to win. For those who rather would like to win 1 of 5 free copies of Willma Poppen's "Heroes of the Popp-Culture": Wait until christmas. betweens the 24th of December and 1rst of January, you'll also get a chance to win what you desire.

Ok, what is happening now and in the near future:

1. With this blogpost, I am starting the alionmind records blog in german language also. For the near future a german version of the alionmind website will be here. This will take place in the course of a complete overhaul of all websites in my little empire. Be prepared for some serious changes.
2. AlionLive Return 2 Madeira will start as soon as possible.
3. More songs by the TUBENWURST project will be released so we can release an album called "Iss doch E-Wurst".
4. A new album of Cimelium is on it's way. Again it is a themed album. This time the title will be "Madeira"... and guess what is the theme of the album ;)
5. A new album of Willma Poppen is also on it's way. I have loads of wacky working titles for it, but... gimme some time.

Ok, that's so far everything comming to my mind. If I forgot something... well, who cares? ;)

A new start: Here is the new alionmind records!

Well, let's bury that idea of just another Weblabel amongst all the others. Let's bury the idea of getting lazy pot smoking bedroom musicians to get their lazy asses up to get something done. This has never and will never work. As a matter of fact we also ran across some serious legal issues while thinking about doing such a venture like a full blown Weblabel, totally independent from the big music industry, with total strangers from all over the world. To keep a long story very short: alionmind records will stay what it ever was: The home label of me, alionsonny, on which I release all my works and works with other musicians but of which I own all publishing rights. And HELL, this is really enough for that label. As I allready have 3 completely independent and exciting musical projects running and not just a few on my agenda, me and some great friends are a music industry on our own. We don't need strangers. So here we go, on the path of victory, we will take the world of music over and change it. Everything stays as it never was!