Nominations for the 2009 Icelandic Advertising Awards or "Lúðurinn" (as we of course call them) are in.
We are happy to have contributed work to four of the nominated projects, and will of course use this opportunity to brag here on the interwebs, so you think we are really cool, and want to work with us. And as always, we hurry to do this while they are still nominations, because 2009 was a good year in advertising in Iceland, and all this work has strong contenders.
Nominated for best TV ad, and best campaign, is Netvarinn for Siminn.
Nominated for best work in open catagory is a song, Suzy Thunder's BIG, which we produced for Vodafone and their agency Fíton. More details about the campaign and TV ad here.
The song did well in Icelandic charts and got good airplay, we are still giving it away here, where it has been downloaded over 20.000 times now. YouTube plays are up to almost the same number. We did club remixes as well, and gave them away here. The song hit the youth market spot on, and is still being played in clubs and discos, adding great value to the campaign for Vodafone.
Finally we produced this radio ad "Kattskar", a clever script nominated for best radio work, for IKEA and their agency Íslenska. Unless you were born on a cold rock in the North-Atlantic you won't understand it though:
More recent work for you: Metro, a brand new fast food chain, opened their doors with big fanfare in the last quarter of 2009. They needed a catchy and lively song for their radio and TV campaigns. Who you gonna call?
Don Pedro and Eberg joined forces and wrote and recorded "Feels like heaven". And now it can be heard all over the place. And here, of course:
Time to put up some more work and catch up on this site so that you don't think we are locked up in the studio listening to great saxophone records all day long (trust us, we aren't).
Anyway. Here is a project we enjoyed working on. Arni Thor Jonsson @ Republik Film Productions directed this clever commercial for convenience store chain 10-11 and ad agency Vatikanid. The ad, well received locally, will be featured in the next edition of Shots magazine - which guarantees that it will be copied in all continents before the end of 2010.
Eberg composed and produced the music, and to be absolutely sure that the spot would sound gorgeous, all audio post production and sound design was taken care of in-house as well.
What do Dj Sean Danke and a couple of frogs have in common? Suzy Thunder's BIG. That's what. The chart hit we did for Vodafone for their prepaid campaign gets two rather different makeovers this week.
Firstly, we are very happy to present Sean Danke's remix of BIG. It's great. Two versions, available to the dancing public right here and now, free of charge, with our warmest regards. Spread the word, please. Suzy Thunder - BIG - Sean Danke's Radio mix
In case you missed them, click here to grab Dj Gisli Galdur's remixes as well!
And now to the other one, courtesy of Vodafone, ad agency Fiton and post house Miðstræti: A frog. Actually the most famous frog in Iceland. His BIG friend. Descriptions are futile. You have to watch this one yourself :-)
Directing duo Samuel and Gunnarjust finished a new spot for Egils Gull beer for Saga Film. (Gull, of course, means gold in anglo-saxonic). The commercial, commisioned byFíton for Egils brewery Ölgerðinshows what is really worth committing a crime for, and was scored by Don Pedro using up a year's supply of wah effects:
Here you can stream the full track, be sure to visit Snorri on his MySpace or Facebook and follow his progress as the album gets ready, judging from what we have heard already we are sure it is going to be great.
They're here, and they are yours for free. First approved remixes for Suzy Thunder's BIG are in the house.
Beloved DJ Gisli Galdur worked his magic and presented us with 2 edits of his remix, pick your poison, we really prefer the long one, but then of course we would :-)
It's safe to say that BIG has become one of Iceland's hottest tracks this summer, 7 weeks in the charts by now, massive airplay and great club response.
More remixes are on the way, and we're happy to inform you that new Suzy Thunder material is in the making in our own studio.
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.
