Toggi and the band have been rehearsing and writing new material, and this autumn should see them play live in several venues, including the Iceland Airwaves festival, as well as recording some more songs for you.
PRODUCTION NOTES:
I built this house was written by Toggi himself, both music and lyrics.
The song was recorded entirely at our own Wömbin™ studio. In the temporary absence of our drummer, Don Pedro and Bjarki took care of percussion duties and drums. The band's bassist, Helgi Egilsson brought his upright bass to the studio this time, as they wanted a slighthly older and softer sound for this song than normally associated with Toggi.
We have tried to give each and every Toggi song it's own character, and I built this house is no exception. This might lead to a lack of uniformity on the album, due in early 2010, but we tend to focus more on the life of the songs themselves than the arcane format that is 'the album'.
For this song, we tried to build a canvas of sound surrounding Toggi's voice. The song should be low key, intimate, but sound big. One of the references we had in mind was actually 'It's over' by Roy Orbison.
We got great help in arrangement and backing vocals from Gurrý Þóra, who sings backing vocals an plays keyboards and percussion in our live band, as well as from our friend Jóhann Vilhjálmsson, who popped by one evening and sang backing vocals for us.
Bjarki and Don Pedro split production and engineering tasks between them, in the presence and with the help of Toggi himself, and sit-ins by bassist Helgi. Strings and tubular bells were arranged by Bjarki, while Don Pedro busied himself with layer upon layer of his Gretsch guitars trough his beloved tube amps, creating volume swells akin to the sound of a steel guitar to add a stringlike guitar pad, as well as some acoustic guitar work.
We are no strangers to happy incidents. When Don Pedro had finished recording all these layers of guitars, he sent a quick bounce to the rest of the band. He then went about his business, cleaned all tracks from errors and all the extra doodles that tend to get recorded at the end of a song. But this got a strong reaction next time the band gathered to work on the song, and after a brief discussion, the odd and random guitar parts including full tremolo dives, became a long unplanned outro.
The song was mixed by Don Pedro and Bjarki as well, which is unusual, as they usually rely on mixmaster Addi800 for that, but as they grew closer and closer to finishing the song, they felt the curiosity to see how far they could take it themselves, and wound up liking what they had up to the point that they didn't want to work on it anymore. You be the judge :-)
I built this house was then mastered by Bjarni Bragi Kjartansson over at Syrland studios. Artwork for the release was designed by Holmes
We hope you enjoy it. If you do, please link to this page, tell people about Toggi, and join him on Facebook to get the latest news. If you are new to this site, please check out Wonderful and Silly Old Song.
For this occasion, Don Pedro and Ebergjoined forces and wrote and produced a song together, entitled 'You Can do Anything'.
They used bunch of stringed instruments ranging from Guitalele, autoharp and banjo to the more traditional acoustic guitar, and Eberg lent his voice to the song. The aim was to create a sense of lightness to fit the mood of the brilliantly made commercial and the product itself.
You should be dancing. And now you have no reason not to. Today marks the release of Suzy Thunder's BIG.
Originally known from this campaign, the full radio version of the song is now available here for your listening pleasure. And yes, it's free. We know you like that.
Vodafone just launched a new summer campaign for prepaid services, aimed at younger users, and masterminded by their agency Fíton.
This visually stunning commercial, directed byReynir LyngdalforPegasus Productions, needed a fun and catchy dance track that would make even the most reluctant hips swing to the beat.
Enter Sigga Þóra, who lent her vocals to BIG, a song written and produced by our own Don Pedro. Here is the result:
As soon as the campaign aired it was clear that there was a great demand for a full version of the song. So they went back to the studio and finished what they started, with help in the form of additional analogue synth tinkering byBjarki.
Suzy Thunder was born, and BIG was made available to the dancing public :-)
Here you can listen to the full version of the song. Go ahead and dance, you know you want to:
PSSST, You can download the track for free .:here:.
Well, as some of you might know, it turned out to be a very popular single, which has now been released in 2 languages.
It didn't take long for Ebergand vocalist Rosa to join forces again, this time for a Nova Telecom spot, directed By Arni Jonsson for Republikand agency Dagur&Steini.
The inevitable happened. Feldberg was born.
The pressure to release the song as a single soon became enormous, and when this is written 'Don't be a stranger' has stayed for 4 weeks on the top 10 list, with now real signs of being on it's way out anytime soon.
Check out the commercial, and you will understand why. Very catchy indeed. This is one of the many happy collaborations where a commercial gives a song it's wings so that it can take off itself.
You can buy the full song .:here:.And yes, Feldberg are now working on a studio album, of which you will of course receive more news here.
