Music
Cubanate, lost opportunities, and licensing models.
About 5 years ago I approached Marc Heal of Cubanate fame to “license” one of his tracks for an upcoming, free game in the spirit of Tribes 2, that I was involved in from a development perspective.
The game was called “Legends”, and was a community and fan driven spiritual successor to the Tribes series after Dynamix was closed down by Vivendi Universal games.
Legends, was based on the then Indie-sourced Tribes engine, redubbed Torque, and released by the ex-Dynamix team under the Garagegames banner.
Marc and I had some discussions around the licensing of his songs, but in the end, I couldn’t really offer him anything else than fame and possibly (mis)fortune for having his music embedded in a completely free game.
I’m glad to see that a few years later, his tracks Industry and Oxyacetylene were released as part of the Gran Turismo series of games.
Cubanate’s music simply has the attitude, and gusto for action games, and would be a perfect fit for any future action games. I’ve not heard of Marc, and Cubanate for many years, but I hope that he has found a niche in sound production and making some commercial money off his great musical talents.
In a (probably overinflated, self-gratuitous) way, I hope that I may have had some influence on making him considering the game and electronic media as a sales avenue for his music.
The sad part is that there is actually very little live, or otherwise staged footage of Cubanate left on the internet. I reckon if Cubanate had ridden the Web2.0 wave a little longer like bands such as Sister Machine Gun, and Nine Inch Nails, they could have continued their awesome industrial electronic hit career. Of course, one can never predict or understand the band’s internal politics and cannot question their personal decisions.
I saw Cubanate live. Once. In South Africa, in Hillbrow, in a derelict broken down building that absolutely suited the crass, industrial nature of Cubanate’s music. It was one of the most awesome experiences in my life.
Long live Cubanate, and one of my favourite tracks:
Other Cubanate tracks to “look” for, in order of priority: