Reshuffling Until Result.



Reshuffling everything is the only constant. Song parts, releases, gigs, hardware, timelines, strategies... It gets tiring at times, but what always helps is remembering that it's about the music and the experience. With the first gigs in 2026 around the corner and quite a bit of work done on demos and back-office stuff, the results squeezing through chaos are mounting. Here's a few things that occupied our attention lately:

Final guitar and vocals for completing the demos recorded in the home studio and - as of today - submitted to the producer for review. Moving on to the next ones. Already restarted work on codename "Running Man". Also spent 30 seconds testing out what a prompt describing one of the demos produces using AI - if this sound is your kind of thing, you can start slopping it out in bunches TODAY: https://gemini.google.com/share/e5c0207290b4. The "looking back" part is kind of catchy. But so is measles.

We mentioned Ali would be supporting Hellion Stone on their 10th anniversary bonanza and we didn't lie. It was an emotional reunion. Lots of sweat, strings and alcohol got vaporized on stage. Two takeaways. One: community support is a special thing we should cherish. Two: the union of heavy Gibson-powered drop-D grooves, tight drum work and a perfect mix of enticing/classic vocal melodies is a forever formula a music fan can never get tired of. And one for the road: back vocals can work miracles! Kudos to the ladies, hope to hear more from them. Go to a quality concert near you to revivify the belief live music is special. We know you believe, you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't.

We postponed releasing Happiness until after summer. We want to do it right. Good news is we found an exciting option for the video, but we'll talk more about it when it's closer to happening. Since we're here to share, I have to say that investing in videos is a TOPIC. It's not cheap and it shouldn't be. Talented people invest lots of time and knowledge to create lasting artistic value. We want and will keep supporting those efforts. But constraints are tightening up. Budgetary ones. Return on investment from exposure videos create is also diminishing because of the algorithm. I'm sure we can do better to promote them (and plan to do so), but the number of views an independent band gets nowadays is disproportional to the effort. If created with quality (which we obviously believe is true in our case) videos should drive exposure, exposure should drive means, means should drive quality videos. But the middle-men (yes, plural) are greedy. In any case, we will make releases, and plan to do so every few months once we do.

So, yeah we reviewed budget for the year. Main goal is to gather up some green for the album release. Which means more gigs, better marketing for gigs, maybe a xmas party gig for the first time... we'll see. 

One thing we should figure out in the next few weeks is the video content for the live performance. Only talk for now, but something should come out of it. Lots of visuals in our library and a pretty good idea of the mood we want to set, just have to make it all move in unison. Curious ourselves to see what will come out...

In technical news, we are switching to our own server for filesharing. Hopefully, this will make exchanging home-recorded parts easier and faster. Tony got the hardware and a NextCloud/DuckDNS combination seems to be working in the test phase. Another consideration is kicking off a Discord channel for the blog. But need to follow up on that discussion item soon. Lastly, merch store restart. Attempt 3 or 4 - but who's counting? Front-end part is easy. Built the storefront using Lovable (AI tool) in an hour or so. Now need to fill all content and figure out the optimal payments/orders workflow for the Bulgarian market realities.

Best for last - we announced the Sofia gig officially! You can get your tickets here: https://ticketstation.bg/bg/e23833-ali-29-april. Pricing is pocket money-friendly. Let's get all of us in one place. It's been a while.

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