jessybxx

So... I did translations of the German bits in the short video interview snippets found here.
Basically, the Rays talk about some songs from the upcoming album, and since Daniel and Henjo apparently were too lazy to speak English, I had some work to do on a lazy Saturday evening ;)
Anywho... enjoy ^_^

#1 "Rise"



Daniel: Melodic double-bass speed hymn. Recording it was really exhausting. I was sweating like a pig in the studio because, apart from the small middle part, there's lots of double-bass parts. Nice song, will work very well when played live.
Henjo: I enjoy Daniel's songs a lot, I like them very much. Daniel's got this thing I like to call an Eighties faible, which means that his stuff always sounds a bit Eighties-like. But I don't just mean Eighties Metal or Had Rock but Eighties music in general, especially when it comes to the melodies.

#2 "Deadlands"



Daniel: Good mit-tempo song, groovy like fuck. With this one, we tried out a lot of things. We just weren't sure what would work best for that song, we made a lot of parts.
Daniel: In the end, the song is carried by the guitar riff, it's a very heavy riff.
Henjo: Deadlands is a classic one. The chorus reminds me a bit of Tobi. However, he asked him and he's got nothing to do with it. So, no similarities, but it could be on an Avantasia album as well.

(If you ask me, Kai and Tobi probably wrote the song together... in bed. So there, mystery solved :P)
(Love Kai's game show vision. I hope he knows he's probably giving people ideas for fics ^_~)

#3 "No need to cry"



Henjo: He certainly needed that song to come to terms with the whole thing. Very nice ballad.
Daniel: The studio session with him was very good. He was very concentrated during the whole thing. That was one of the most concentrated sessions we had because he was 100% focused on the song. It was very important to him.
Daniel: The song is very powerful, full of feeling. I mean, of course, this sad stuff is not everyone's cup of tea. I like songs which are extreme, either extremely melancholic, extremely sad or extremely aggressive. I like extremes because they're so full of emotions.

I bet you were thinking I wasn't gonna do this one, huh?

( Click here for teh hotness ^^ )

You might think I forgot someone. And in a way I did.
Well, in the beginning, I wanted to leave him out of this completely but then decided to include him as a sort of bonzus.
For some reason, I feel like he doesn't quite fit in here, yasee?

( Finally - honorary mention (16/15)... )

There you go. That was MY weird little list.
Probably the most chaotic one yet. But who cares? ;)

After the report, it's my turn. Here we go, have some goodies!

( Seven pics. most of them rather bad )

I even managed to record a little video. Here it is!



Second half of "Heavy Metal Universe", including the sing-along part and Kai jumping off the drum kit platform. Sorry, I know, the sound is really bad, but my little N73 couldn't handle the volume. But I like the picture, considering it's just a cellphone.

Also, some not-quite-so-good DVD news:

Last weekend Kai and Dirk had a meeting during a concert day with SPV Records and agreed that the DVD will finally released in autumn this year.

Today the show in Barcelona will be filmed and the DVD will now be released as a triple DVD set. The content of the first two discs is already fixed since several months (Montreal Show plus bonus footage like road movie, acoustic tracks and video clips etc.). The third disc will contain many songs from the Barcelona show and probably some more bonus backstage footage from the actual tour. It will depend on the quality of the material which will be filmed today if the show will be completely released on DVD or only a part of it.

More official information will be announced soon in our news.

Cheeerrzzz,
Olli
OFFICIAL FAN CLUB

Okay, I like triple DVD sets. But autumn? AUTUMN? Hello?!
How long have we been waiting for this thing? Since 2006? 2005? I forgot. Because the waiting HURTS >:|
And "autumn this year" still isn't a definitive release date, so who knows what might happen in between?
Dammit.... *mumbles*

Finally, the Agglutination DVD is out! And guess who the two people on this picture are? It's even featured on the web site's front page O_O
silicondreams is getting the DVD for us cuz I have no idea how it works. Scaaary Italian site ;)
Can't wait to show it to all the people I know, going "See, that's us! We were really there! Look, now they're at it again! They're so doing...".
Er... Yeah ^_^;;;
It'll be cool to experience all the awesome moments again... and maybe even laugh about the bad ones, safely snuggled on the couch instead of squashed against... okay, okay, I'm not describing that again *shudders*
Anyway, yay DVD ^_____^

- So apparently, the 'Ray DVD will be released next spring. Well, better very late than never.

- Another try at the uni office tomorrow morning. yamasagi is driving me there. And although I have no need to worry, I still do. But that's just me. I just want this over with, hand in my documents and get my ID. Pretty please? *puppy eyes*

- My PC is slow, unstable and crash-prone. Vista has to go and I'm not trying it again before the first Service Pack gets released some time next year. yamasagi has one legal copy of Windows XP left. It's in German, which pains me to no end, but I guess I'll have to go with it because I really need a reliable computer when my classes start (the 15th).

- Also, because of said classes, there will be no NaNoWriMo for me this year. Maybe next, but I absolutely need to settle in and do well, so of course, that's absolute priority. However, Biffno next March? Count me in.

- Finally, a funny quote from tonight:

yamasagi (swearing): "Shit fucking"
jessybxx: "It's the other way around"
yamasagi: "Fuck shitting"
jessybxx: O_o

... the search for digital evidence of Agglutination 2007.

( Videos!! )

I recently discovered this shop on eBay. They print bags with costum logos.
Well, I wanted a bigger one anyway so I gave them two image fiels and asked whether they could put that particular logo on a bag for me.
The woman running the shop said sure thing, so I ordered.
When the finished item came in the mail, I was kinda impressed.
Even I didn't expect the thing to turn out this good...

( Woah Oo )

Also, happy tenth anniversary to everyone's favourite satirical, scandal-inducing cartoon - South Park!!
MTV Germany (They've had the rights to the series for a couple of years now) ran a countdown of the ten best episodes, as voted by users on their website.
"Woodland Critter Christmas" came fifth. I'd never seen it before but I think I now have a favourite episode. Stan refusing to do what the narrator says and the two arguing half the episode? Awesome, especially considering the narrator was played by that (un)fortunate audio crush of mine. I'm sure they had one helluva time dubbing that thing XD

On the other ahnd, I still don't have the slightest idea what to think about "Good Times with Weapons". Sure, the "Americans don't care about violence as long as there'S sex and nudity to ban" message of the episode was just brilliant. But the anime references? It just yelled "Japanese animation = Mindless violence" at me. Maybe I'm totally mistaken here, but I dunno really. Sometimes, I just get pissed when stuff I love gets parodied and I can't quite see the intention. I guess it's one of my more severe character flaws.

The Gamma Ray crew probably heard that Kai and his boys (XD) will play Agglutination on August 11. The festival's in Potenzia, Italy (!)
Of course, I'm hella tempted to fly down there to go see them and of course spend some long overdue quality time with silicondreams *lol*
Well, I'm still not sure whether I'll actualy be able to go, but I still checked for flights.
If I booked the thing right now, it'd be 58 Euros. For both tickets. Holy hell, compared to last year that's almost for free ^_~
(The thing with Germanwings is that the earlier you grab your seats, the cheaper they are.)
Flying in on Tuesday (August 7) would cost me (tax not included) a whooping 66 cents. Those dudes are insane.
The only thing that would even improve the whole thing would be if they finally set up flights directly to Torino, goddammit >:O

I just stumbled upon this while checking the official site:

Hi Rayniacs,
after leaving you alone several weeks without any news about our DVD project we can now proudly say that the production is completely finished so that now it would be the record company’s turn to bring it in the stores asap. But (unfortunately there’s always a but) we were informed last week that the Sanctuary office in Berlin will be closed by the end of this year which makes it impossible to release the DVD shortly . As next we have to find a solution with the Sanctuary office in the UK which is now responsible for the release timing and if we consider all the promotional machinery which starts working in front of a release we expect that the release has to be postponed to spring 2007.
Nevertheless we continue in parallel with the songwriting and the recording of the first demos for the next album "Land Of The Free II" so that we are hopefully be able to bring two new releases in stores during next year.
I know these are sad news for all of you who have waited since month for the release and expected to watch the DVD at the latest under the x-mas tree. But you can be sure that we’re also very disappointed with the actual situation and work hard on a solution for the release. As soon as the situation is clarified we will be back with more news.
Thanks for your patience and keep your heads up high
Cheeerzzz from da Rayzzzz

To quote Spock on Speed (from "Spock VS Q - The Sequel"): "Bum-mer."
Well, it was to be expected. The long silence was just too much for anything else than bad news to appear.
Still... *sigh*
But I've got a fitting song, dont'cha think?

Oh, and before I forget: A very Happy Birthday to Daniel Zimmermann!!!

I hope they don't get boring O_o

( Mew ^^ )

And... I had a Kai dream that was somewhat centered on his Hamburgerian accent. What. The. Fuck. O_o I blame the Wacken documentary because in there, you get that way of speaking ALL THE BLOODY TIME. And don't ask for details for I don't know them. More often than not, all I remember about me dreams are... the topics. I'm weird like that XD

Stay tuned for... yet more spam :D