Stretching the limits with "RaumZeit". New song!

I'm getting easily further with the production of the songs for the second Willma Poppen album. I'm not quite sure if I get the remaining 8 songs done until my birthday on July 19th, but the album will most probably still be released in 2013. I do not exclusively produce sound material for this project, but also for Cimelium and alionsonny project.

The title of this blog entry fits quite well. The new song "RaumZeit" is actually stretching the limits. Ok, this is actually the case since at latest the second half of "Heroes of the Popp-Culture". Since I have taken over the project completely (at the latest), I try with each new song release, to test new boundaries, to set new benchmarks for the structure of the Willma Poppen sound. With "RaumZeit", I have, in my opinion, "pushed the pedal to the metal". I have learned some new tricks and a few cherished (now partly also hated) habits have been thrown overboard.

With "RaumZeit", which title is not coincidentally similar to the previous track "RaumReise" I "married" some proven concepts of the early days of the Willma Poppen project with the new, experimental style. "RaumZeit" is Willma Poppen's final goodbye to the concept of being just another pleasing pop act, and a fearless plunge into incomparability. From now applies: Nothing sounds like Willma Poppen and Willma Poppen sounds like no one else. It's not about complacency. Here is 100% individuality and originality. Willma Poppen is thus, contrary to the original idea, on the warpath with customs and the mainstream. But things are still danceable and funny and of course insane. Well, and after so much pathos and promise, here is the new song. Fasten your seatbelts, as we go on a pretty turbulent journey.

We have a Willma Poppen Homepage again!

Well, actually there has been one all the time. But those who visited it maybe recognized the following two facts: First, the site has not been updated for ages and second, maybe your virus scanner gave an alert that there was "something fishy" on the site. Yes, some "smart asses" managed it to somehow manipulate the site via a little vulnerability in the sites code which runs all alionmind sites, aka alionCMS. A code update to fix that vulnerability was long scheduled for a general code update and "unifying" of the alionCMS. This update has happened right now, and so we have a secure Willma Poppen Homepage again.

And here it is, under the old well known address: The new Willma Poppen Homepage!

New Song "RaumReise"!

With this fourth song on the album "Willma in Wonderland," the songs for a third of the album are finished. There is still a lot to do, but since I already have quite a few more titles in various stages of completion, I see it all calmly. The newest song is a consistent pursue on the path that I had in mind for the Willma Poppen project after the release of "Heroes of the Popp-Culture": From simple, pleasing Pop(p)-Techno to a kind of "Progressive-Popp-Techno. More experiments and above all fun!

"RaumReise" is in many ways a little different from the previous releases: It is much faster than most previous songs. This is, why this track has not the traditional five minutes play time. For a song like this 3 minutes 48 seconds are absolutely sufficient. The drums are quite spartanic with only a bass drum and a snare sample. The bass is booming throughout the whole track on a single note. This is neither caused by laziness nor lack of ideas, but simply by the fact that I found it quite adequate. Always something new! And new does not always mean "more". This song is an experiment in the direction of minimalism. And if you're thinking, the whole thing has been easy to produce because of that, you're wrong: The restriction of means of expression that I had jokingly imposed upon me for that title brought with it some creative hurdles. One thing is clear: I will research further in that field ;). Oh yes: For the professionals or ear-trained other folks with sequencer knowledge which may hear that some arpeggiators seem mistimed I have to say that I set the arpeggiators with intent "off-beat" to obtain an "organic flow". In addition, the one or the other funny rhythmic effect materializes out of that ;)

Ok, now you should have all the necessary and unnecessary information. Have fun with "RaumReise"!

"Willma im Wunderland" - New song & more...

I proudly present: A monster! A cute monster, but still a monster. Actually this was meant to become a track for the album "Madeira" by the "Cimelium" project, but after a time a majestic, calm and folk-ish typical Cimelium production morphed into that cute buttshaking... "thing". First I planned to release it still as a Cimelium track for "Curral das Freiras" (a little village in Madeira), but then yesterday a good friend visited me and told me about the consequencies this would possibly provoke. I had pictures of the folks from "Curral das Freiras" in my head suddenly where they chase me equipped with pitchforks and torches to take revenge for that song ;). Such thoughts finally convinced me, that it would not a great idea.

And at all: The "thing" contained meanwhile typical elements of the Willma Poppen sound and so a transformation was just the right way to go. I exchanged the rather soft kick drums for some "inna di face" kicks, the snare and some other sounds got sharpened to deadly razor blades and the typical "Cimelium" ethereal mud was cleaned up. Viola! We have a new Willma Poppen track!

Now the "thing" sounded THAT weird, that it was anything but easy to find a name for the monster baby. First I actually really thought to call it "thing" or so. But then there were those flutes, which reminded me all the time of gnomes, elven... you know all that little stuff ;) on my mind. Somehow then I stumbled across that errie looking drawing on the Web, which was inspired by "Alice in Wonderland". You see the drawing embedded above. Somehow I thought, that this would be a great cover art for the second Willma Poppen album. You know: Willma loves it weird and grotesque! Out of a small idea became a big one: "Willma im Wunderland" (Willma in Wonderland), a great title for the new track and ALSO for the second Willma Poppen album. The picture will become the cover art and all tracks on the album get German names. Why? Because it is funny :)

Ok, and that is REALLY enough text. Have fun with the new hit of the Willma Poppen project:

Willma's hymn for Madeira!

If you followed my news on Facebook during the past days, you know that I am working at this track since quite a time. After the alionsonny project released a Reggae track, titled Madeira quite a time ago, it was just a matter of time until the Willma Poppen project releases a song for Madeira too. This has now happened.

The track consequently follows it's (by me) destined path of evolution from Popp techno to what I call "Progressive Popp Techno". If you thought "Yeah, this year starts well", when listening to "Apocalypso", you will find this to be confirmed by the new track. It is so far the most complicated/complex track by Willma Poppen, what answers the question why in the end it took so long to finnish the track. So you will hear that this track is very rich in variety. This is, because while working at the track, I had many images and situations from Madeira on my mind and wanted to tell the story about them using this sonf.

So be prepared for a very interesting musical trip with Willma Poppen to the most beautiful island in the world:

...and the winners are...

I proudly present the winners of a free download of the album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture". At the end some more people signed up and so it was a real draw. Let's make it short. The winners who took part via Facebook are:

• Dachdecker Hansa
• Jojo Wolter
• Rene Hartmann

You will get a Facebook message containing the download link today.

The winners who took part via mail are:

• Jan T.
• Frank Walter

You will get your download link via mail today.

 

Please make sure you download your album soon, because my webspace isn't unlimited and I like to keep things in order ;)

We popp on!

Ok, that somewhat failed completely. What? Well, the sweepstakes where you were/are able to win one of free downloads of the album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture"... which should normally have ended yesterday with the announcement of the winners. So, what went wrong? For all your sleepyheads, who do not read my latest news on Facebook, Twitter, the Blogs etc., here's a summary: 2 weeks ago a otherwise great event, namely a massive hardware donation, turned into a kind of a desaster. After the installation of a new SSD and 8 GB additional RAM, my former system disk was no longer recognized by the system. The following repair and data recovery sessions kept me from getting ANYTHING done... amongst those things was the promotion for the Willma Poppen sweepstakes. And EXACTLY this is the problem now: Due to my unwanted abstinence from working, too few people got to know about that mega event. And currently there is such a little number of participants, that it doesn't make sense to draw the winners now. So I decided to delay the end of the sweepstakes to the 30th of January, to give more people a chance to participate. So, if you did not sign up yet, you still have 2 ways to win:

Facebook:
1.Like the Facebook page of Willma Poppen.
2.Wrtite a comment, which song you like most from the album.
or
3. Participate in this Facebook Event.

E-Mail:
Write a mail with the subject "We popp on!" to willma.poppen@alionmind.com and write in the mail, which song of the album you like most.

WHAT? You still have not pre-listened the album? Then simply do it on Soundcloud.



The album is also on Spotify. So you can stream it there too.

And now good luck to all once again!