The past few years have been completely surreal for me. I still can’t quite believe I’m working for Mozilla and helping the project in such a significant way. It’s one of those things you dream about but you never expect it to become true. Then it happens and you realize it’s just a matter of working hard and doing things right. Go figure.
I keep feeling the same about a side project of mine that began shortly before I joined Mozilla. A long time friend of mine has lead a heavy metal band called Pneuma for quite a few years now. They had to break ties with their production company recently because of unacceptable delays on their part, and lots of the typical crap professional musicians have to deal with. They were looking for people to invest in the independent production of their next album, and I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.
Of course I wouldn’t invest in them if I didn’t think they were really good. I have great expectations for their upcoming album and I’m helping them in every way I can. The best way I can help them is by bringing my knowledge of the web and technology to the table. So far I’ve helped them set up their temporary website and twitter account. I will also be helping them out with their online distribution, because not having your album listed on the iTunes Store is a very new and very big mistake a band can easily make.
But I digress. The point of this post is that I decided to use HTML5 on their site, and provide their first single in open OGG/Vorbis format (falling back to MP3 and Quicktime), with the added bonus that the band agreed to have the track available for download and free distribution. So anybody can listen and download the track in their preferred format, MP3 or OGG. The audio player looks fantastic on the site, by the way. Much better than QuickTime or WMP plugins. The audio quality is also great, and the file is much smaller than its MP3 counterpart.
Adding also to the surrealism of the whole “music producer” side of my life is the fact that Pneuma will be the opening act at the first Metallica concert in Costa Rica, next Sunday. This is the biggest concert in Costa Rican history, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be backstage. I haven’t really taken that in yet, there’s just too much work to do before the concert. But WOW.
If you like thrash / progressive metal, I recommend you visit http://pneumametal.com/ and have a quick listen. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The most random project I’ve ever contributed to is currently gaining momentum, and hopefully it will be public by the end of the year.
No, it’s not even close to being related to open source, and far from real coding. It’s closer to one of my biggest passions: heavy metal music. Metal is possibly my greatest source of inspiration, and I have more guitar-grinding heroes than technology-producing heroes. Sorry Steve Jobs, but I’ll take Luca Turilli before you any day.
Sadly, the metal scene in Costa Rica is mostly dead. There are very few professional bands around, and most have conformed with playing a few local gigs and selling a few hundred albums in the area. Lame. And this is where Pneuma steps in. Pneuma is a Costa Rican progressive thrash metal band lead by a friend of mine, Antonio Masís (vocals and bass). It’s also my favorite local band and pretty high up my global preference list. They’ve been around for a while, and already have a studio album which sold decently, although only locally. Their second album… that’s a long story.
They met with delay after delay in the production of their second album, until they decided to take matters into their own hands and record it again independently. Here’s where I step in. I volunteered to invest in their album, as well as contribute with my ‘Internet skills’ to give them more leverage in a worldwide market that no longer requires mega-corporate backing to enter. I’ve already studied several alternatives, such as CDBaby and TuneCore. They both look very promising.
The album is already fully recorded, and it’s now in the mixing/mastering process in California. It’s absolutely amazing. Nothing like this have ever been produced in this country, and I hope it will do well internationally as well. I’ll do my best to make that happen. For now, I’m setting up their website, pneumarock.com, which doesn’t have much now. We’ll begin more aggressive marketing soon, when we’re closer to the release date and we’ve sorted out a few details.
I’m very excited by this project. I’m happy to be able to make a contribution to local artists, specially artists as good as Pneuma. I also think there’s a very real possibility of making good money out of this, which is good because I’m not a complete socialist 
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