Hey everyone,
just to let you know that now is an excellent time to get yourself (or your favorite human being) a physical copy of our latest album Beyond Good and Evil, because the price has just massively dropped from €12.99 to €9. Get it while it lasts!
As you might probably remember, Sylvia and I recently released our new Album “Beyond Good and Evil”, which has been the result of our crowdfunded “The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet” project.
While the album is already available to everyone as promised, the multi-tracks have not been released yet. This is mostly due to the enormous bulk of manual track-dumping work that’s ahead of me, but I promise it will all be up until end of February, latest. Then you can make your own mixes of our album.
So far we received a few mixed and a lot of positive reviews from our friends and fans, and not a single bad word from our patrons, who generally made the impression of being very pleased with the final CD we produced, especially the artwork.
Then, just a few minutes ago, I’m getting this in my Inbox:
from Anonymous Remailer (austria)
date Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 8:02 PM
subject Re: The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet
mailed-by remailer.privacy.at
“The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet” is probably
one of the biggest lies ever made in human history but
probably you mean the little “Planet Paniq” , there, in your
imagination it is “The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire
Planet”, in your small world, but in our reality it is NOT
- the earth is too big for you moron.
“The Most Remarkable Album On This Entire Planet” is just a
dumb basic LIE. Period.
I admit I picked the title because I wanted the album to be extraordinary, especially in relation to my earlier work. What I originally planned was a lot more ambitious, but I quickly discovered that it was impossible to pull off what I had in mind in just a three month time frame.
We wanted to do something amazing and breathtaking with open source alone, that we could then release under a free license, devoid of any ownership and say: see, it is possible to do it the right way.
But three months proved to be not enough time to do that. In the first three weeks I was severely struggling with the software, the music and the story (we originally planned a musical).
Sylvia and me were under way too much pressure. The additional criticism on the VIP mailing list on the first results cracked me. I pulled the plug on the original idea and started doing what was possible: write new tracks, improve the software, make the best out of the available time, try not to burn out, and hope people aren’t going to hate us for failing their expectations.
Well, that didn’t work I guess. Someone in Austria found us out and called it like it is.
I’m sorry I let you down, pal.
Update: that is not to say I don’t like the result. Far from it. I’m still listening to the album every day to work and back, and even at work. I believe that, musically, harmonically, it is the best I’ve ever done. I excluded myself from the loudness war. I put the ear-straining drums in the background. I’ve made great strides towards producing more wholesome sounds and writing good melody lines and chords. So, personally, the album has grown on me, and I love it, if even only like a dad can love it.
Sylvia and I just returned from the post office. All CDs are on the way and will hopefully arrive within the next week.
So this marks the end of the production phase for us. The public release is January 20th, when we will offer the album free for all, and professionally produced CDs for sale. In parallel, we will release all stem tracks, so you can make your own remixes of the album.
Again thanks to everybody who believed in our little project. We have proven that it is indeed possible to produce an open album professionally from zero, without the assistance of a major label, while maximizing public utility by putting everything under a liberal licence.
So, if you are planning to start something - these are the times to do it.
Hello, honored donors and everyone else,
November 7th, with two days of delay, our patrons all got their reward: a digital download of our upcoming paniq album “Beyond Good and Evil”, which is going to be publicly released in January in all its glory.
Now for the CD rewards that we promised. We originally planned to have the CD’s produced and ready to be shipped to reach you on December 1st the latest. As it turns out, we’ve been a bit too optimistic with the dates, and it’s more going to be like two to three weeks later, but for those who planned to give their CD away as a Christmas gift: don’t worry, you will still be able to, your CD will arrive in time.
What happened? For starters, we sent our track list to the GEMA (German RIAA) as soon as possible, as each producer is required by law to have the GEMA approve any mass manufacturing of CD’s, so they can at least make sure the CD’s don’t contain any licensed material. The GEMA took their sweet time in approving our little release, and we got the permit only this Friday. So that’s that.
Then, we had some trouble getting Sylvia’s A3 format artwork scanned. We found a copy shop in Hamburg offering cheap scanning, but later found out all the scans were overexposed. We tried a second scan shop, but they let us wait, announced high charges and finally didn’t show up as promised in their 11am-1pm business time (I kid you not).
So we tried to do it on our own using our A4 flatbed scanner (which provides no Linux driver, so we use a Windows XP VirtualBox for that) and Hugin, a stitching app for panoramas and scans, which was quite hard to figure out. but now we get it.
We still have trouble printing proofs with our Canon PIXMA iP4000. The fucker has two (!) cartridges for black ink, but refuses to print with the large one (3eBK), and rather prefers the small one (2BK), which is empty. We went to the supermarket to buy a new one, but apparently I mindlessly bought another 3eBK, so all we get right now is colorful but really wrong CMY-with-no-K print. We have to give it another shot on Monday or Tuesday. I don’t want to send off the printing material without having at least some half-assed amateur proof of it.
Did I mention the hoops of getting Color Management to work? I mean, GNOME/Inkscape/Gimp has full color management now, but it never feels right. Not that Windows is any different though. It’s outright impossible to replicate this deeply saturated brilliance.
Oh yes, and I got a nifty cold on Thursday, so I was kind of mentally impaired for the past days (that might account for above-mentioned 3eBK fail), but I’m getting better.
On the good side tho, master and GEMA permit are ready to be sent off to the manufacturer, the only thing missing is the finalized print material for CD, booklet and Digipak. We should be done with this on Wednesday latest, after which it is off to Inter-Disc, who will need about 7-14 days to get everything manufactured and shipped back to us by courier.
Once again, I’m sorry we’re letting you wait, but we want to make sure you’re not going to be disappointed with the quality.
41 days ago, Sylvia and me started raising funds for the next paniq album. I expected it to be a slow and exhausting uphill-battle, where we would have to convince each and everyone that giving us a few cents would become be the best thing they ever did.
Little did we expect the torrent of support that almost swept us away. Close friends and fans alike were the first to donate, and sometimes we even worried they spend a bit too much on us. After 14 days, the basic production costs were paid, but it did not take long to make the professionally produced CD a reality, this time from a lot of trusting first-time supporters.
You people are awesome. I simply don’t know what to say other than: thank you, times and times again. Never would we have believed that it takes only 190 people and a few days to make something good happen.
Until now, YOU did the hard work which turned a possibility into a fact; now it’s our turn to keep our promise.
What happens next? Fundraising will still run until July 12th for laggards who still want to receive the album early. After that, the fundraising page will be archived, and the album front page will reflect our ongoing production status.
Production starts July 31st, as planned.
If you backed the album with at least €10, you will receive your digital download November 5th, 2010.
If you backed the album with at least €20, you will receive your CD via mail until December 1st, 2010. Sylvia sent everybody a confirmation mail asking for shipping details; if you missed out on the mail, please let us know.
If you backed the album with at least €40, you have already received an invitation to the VIP lounge, where you will be able to watch the daily video log and check out new tracks early. If you haven’t received an invitation, please let us know.
Yesterday evening, after only 14 days of fundraising, we reached the first funding goal of €4588, which means that we can produce the most remarkable album on this entire planet exactly as planned.
It’s amazing how fast you guys & gals reacted. We are speechless, and we love you all. Again, a big thank you to everyone who carried us this far.
Now for the second and final goal: as soon as all of the money has been pledged, the manufacturing and shipping of CD rewards to our donors is secured. If you have pledged €20 or more, you will receive your CD until December 1st, 2010, ready for Christmas. If you have pledged less, it’s not too late to up the ante. Your donations will be accumulated, and you become eligible to receive larger rewards.
I will record a new video where I will explain what’s going to happen next and how we are going to organize production.
“Wha..what happened to the blog?” you may wonder, to which I softly whisper, with the intonation of a madman: “Like what I’ve done with the place?”
I like Tumblr’s nicer user interface, theme database and templating system. On first impression, it can do a lot less layout-wise than Blogger, but I like how clean and web 2.0-ish everything looks. I imported all old posts, but I couldn’t manage to move the comments as well. They are imported into Disqus, all right. But until I’ve found a way to move them, they will stay there.
Anyway, our fundraising is still running, and we have approximately 37 days to go. We passed the 50% threshold and raised €3634 so far. Thanks to everyone involved, you are crazy! And if you haven’t considered giving us some cash yet: now is a really good time to do so. We are closing in on the goal.
It’s only €821 until basic production cost are entirely covered - from then on it’s just the question when everyone will receive his CD. I hope it’s going to be on time for Christmas.
Here are the shout outs to our most generous supporters of the most remarkable album: Reza Esmaili, Yuriy O’Donnell, Martin Klein, Richard White, Andrew Holland, S.J.Bennett, Dominik Rothenberg, Mathias Garbe, Oliver Grünewald, Felix Bohmann, Fabian Giesen, Alex Brem, Richard Hafner, Malte Thiesen, Marcel Stritzelberger, Ulrich Bär, Tammo Hinrichs, Sandro Manke, Andrew Conkling, Andrew Denyes, Liam Jones, Felix Schütz, Tim Bartel, Kai Pöthkow, Peter Knight, Michel Meyers, Michael Sänger, Martijn de Boer, Johan Burell, Angela Grünewald, Michael Schulze, Johannes Grabowski, Holger Rosenlöcher and Jürgen Markert.
I held these two tracks back for a few months. Here they are.