When it's quiet here, it's because we are pumping out new material in the studio, meeting furious deathlines and advertising emergencies and can't spare the 5 minutes it takes to write something nice for you here. We're sorry about that, but in all honesty we are not sorry about being busy.
We will be updating our work here in the next days. But we have news for you.
Toggi and his band are in our studio Wömbin™ recording new material, produced by Bjarki and Don Pedro. We might be slightly partial, but we think it sounds brilliant, and we can't wait to share it with you. And we will. Expect to cough up your hard earned dollars for a copy of the new album in early 2010.
Hallur has just releasad a great album, Disaster Songs, containing material written and produced by him and recorded over a long period of time. You can enjoy a preview .:here:. Good stuff, we assure you.
Olafur is finishing a new album that we can't wait to get our hands on. We will give you a taste of it here.
Feldberg just released Don't be a Stranger, and Eberg has been in the studio writing music for both domestic and international commercials, work that we'll share with you as soon as it has aired.
Don Pedro is working on new material for Suzy Thunder, to see if they can live up to the success of BIG, and continue make hips swing to the beat in the name of dance.
And we're moving! The beginning of 2010 should see us moving to a bigger and better studio, which is both great and scary. Great because it's beautiful and we can sure use the extra room for our coveted instruments and recording gear, and scary because we will have to make it sound as good as Wömbin™.
And last but not least: We are almost 2 years old! On November 22nd in 2007 we opened our doors to your business. It's been great so far, and feels like just 2 months ago. And what we wrote then on this page is still valid: Peace, love and good music to you all...
So, do you come here often? Well, we know some of you do visit us regularly, and we are very happy about that. And we really want to do more for the people who follow what we are doing and help us spread the word about our company and our artists. Something extra.
Those who belong to our Facebook group already get new music downloads free of charge. This has in all honesty proven to be a win-win situation for us, as we have received valuable feedback from our friends that is very helpful to our music creating process.
Now we are building a new portion to this site that will be visible only to registered users, and we would be very happy if you would like to join us there as a member of our community. You'll receive access to free downloads with a comment system we hope will help us understand what you like, we will treat you with the best digital hospitality we know, and not try to sell you tooth whitening solutions or Viagra.
So please sign up now, we'll let you know when we are up (time is a very flexible concept when it comes to the time it takes to build websites, so we will not make the time-honored mistake of putting up a date here).
And you can of course follow our daily rants in Twitterspace .:here:.
Over and out, and on behalf of our team, good music to you all.
So, yesterday, while the rest of the world had to make do with the Brits, a bigger and more important award ceremony was being held in Iceland. (Or not)
When nothing happens here, it's usually because we are to busy making music to muck about with websites. And yes, we have been busy.
Busy doing what, you might ask? Well, we will post them as they are released, but we have been working on 3 commercials (one of them features a metal song, finally some use for old dandruff guitars), new TV idents for RUV, Iceland's state television, a 15 minute television film, as well as supervising audio post for a popular TV series (no less than 7 episodes of 30 minutes) that suffered from, well, shitty location sound and had to be nursed to life. Name of that TV series will not be revealed here, as to protect the not so innocent.
So, we just wanted to check in, and share a couple of nice things with you. First, Seth Godin is a favorite, and here is something he wrote about music that we like to bits. Here is a quote:
"The music industry is really focused on the ‘industry’ part and not so much on the ‘music’ part. This is the greatest moment in the history of music if your dream is to distribute as much music as possible to as many people as possible, or if your goal is to make it as easy as possible to become heard as a musician. There’s never been a time like this before. So if your focus is on music, it’s great. If your focus is on the industry part and the limos, the advances, the lawyers, polycarbonate and vinyl, it’s horrible."
Now, here at Medialux we do not only make music, we also Tumble, and we Tweet. We have been looking for a venue to post our production diaries with minimal hustle, and we suspect Tumblr will be our platform of choice. So check us out .:there:. if you want to have an inside look at what we do, as we do it. Or something.
Time to get back to work, we'll just leave you with this awesome picture of a beautiful recording console we can't afford for your viewing pleasure:
There are more of those .:here:. for GAS sufferers
Today, as the first full year of business lies behind us, it is traditional to brag about our accomplishments in order to make you think we are really clever and talented.
The short version of it is that for a first year in business, it has been absolutely great. We have had the opportunity to work on great commercials, a TV film and a documentary, made music for TV idents and produced and released well received pop hits released all over the world. Our roster of talent grows constantly bigger, and our studio is a busy little spot. The new year looks promising already, with quite a few exiting projects ahead.
So we are thankful. Thank you for checking out our work, thanks to you who bought it and hired us, and special thanks to you that spread the word about our company, and our music.
Hopefully your 2009 will be filled with good music. You deserve it.
It's been weird here in Iceland for the last couple of weeks, to say the least.
Our super-overextended banking system (run and fuelled by the greed and debt of a handful of billionaires in front of the blind eye of stupid regulators) exploded, leaving the Icelandic state with responsabilities and debt for future generations, and clients of Icelandic banks all over the world with a huge loss. If I never hear the word 'turmoil' again, that's just fine by me.
Our currency, (already a stupid idea to have a currency for only 320.000 people) plunged like a lead ballon, and the implications of what this will mean for our little island in the north are huge. Failure of banks and businesses and enormous debt is what awaits our country.
It doesn't stop here. Thanks to an unexpected PR war that supreme twat PM Gordon Brown won, and Iceland lost spectacularly without a fight, most people seem to think that the people of Iceland are now driving around in 4x4 Ferraris, drinking vodka from jewelery bought with stolen money from widows and UK charities. The trouth could not be further away, but this is what losing a PR war means.
On my desk I have a marketing campaign all ready, just waiting for my approval. Around 50% of the recipients are in the UK. I think I'll wait.
There are good sides to all this, believe you me. Music and culture tends to bloom in recession, and the fact that our currency just went tits up, makes us more competitive pricewise. Our company has a small overhead and can take the heat for a while. And I don't worry for a second about Icelandic music. Having heard all the new stuff that is being made, I can assure you that the future is bright.
Most of us took some well deserved time off to improve our tans, and have now returned to work twice as beautiful as we left (at least). So, it's back to work, and hopefully we will not have to disappoint you with lack of content for a while, there are very cool projects being recorded as we speak.
It can be fun to see what happens in the process of finding the right production for a song. Going trough files for backups and listening to the various versions of a song that was written, produced and recorded at our facilities, we got the idea of sharing an example of this process.
Let's call it a little "behind the scenes", if you will.
Client is Pall Oskar. Flamboyant dance icon in Iceland. He is looking for honest and catchy dance songs for his solo album. He asks for simplicity, and the production has to match other songs already made with another producer, or at least not stray completely away from that sound. He asks Toggi and Bjarki to team up and write and produce 2 songs for him.
Toggi writes a song, and sings a scratch vocal to it in The Wömb, our studio. Please note that the lyrics are something mostly made up on the spot, and remember that in all cases you are listening to unfinished work copies that we have not polished for you.
Now Bjarki goes to work, putting down the basic programming to make a dance song out of it, still using Toggi's scratch vocal...
Now Pall Oskar comes in and sings a scratch.
We often throw projects between us for inspiration. Don Pedro makes an alternative version. That version does not fit the overall feel of the album and is scrapped, but certain vocal and programming elements are merged with the original version.
Bjarki finishes the song with Pall Oskar, records the final vocal takes and sends to Addi800 for mixing. Here is the final result:
Story goes on. Hjaltalín, a very up and coming Icelandic band decide to record their own version of the song. It gains immediate popularity:
Next up is Retro Stefson, who do an impromtu cover of the song and release on YouTube:
The latest incarnation of the song is 35 second acoustic version performed by Pall Oskar himself and produced by Don Pedro for Byr Savings Bank.
Here is a full version of the song:
There are literally endless possibilities to how you can perform and produce a song. But the song is the core of every production, and it should shine trough it, no matter what style you put on it.
We have received a couple of emails with questions that we felt could and should be answered here. Here goes:
How much does custom music to a commercial / TV series / Film cost?
Well, this is a tough one. Ask a contractor how much a house will cost to build, chances are he will have questions for you. Like "How big?" and possibly "what should it be made of?". The difference between an allotment shed made of Milli Vanilli Cd's and a palace built out of Koala bones can be substantial.
So how do we do it?
Usually it starts like this. You tell us what you want, send us your references (if you have them) and tell us your budget. And for you, kind people of Germany: Your real budget. You know the number you put in your Excel sheet before client approval. That budget:-)
Then we will need to know a realistic timeframe, and the exposure area and mediums the license should cover. Simple as that. If we can accommodate your request for the kind of money you have to offer, we start planning and sending you drafts. With pleasure, and all our resources. If not, we point you gently into other directions. Everything depends on the job, really. No two gigs are the same. Just try to propose it, you have nothing to lose. We will do our best to find a solution that suits your needs.
Will my hard earned money buy me full buyout in all the galaxy forever?
We make contracts for specific uses in specific marketplaces, for specific periods of time, and sometimes yes, full buyouts. Again, it all depends on the job and on the budget.
Can I get suggestions for more than one artist for my commercial?
Yes, and this usually works very well. If you choose to go that way, we will negotiate a small fee for each artist that you want to hear from. They do a rough demo, and you choose a direction. They get to keep the fee, and the winner takes it home and gets the full job. This can be a very rewarding thing to do.
Do you do weddings?
Yes, for sultans, sheikhs and Forbes 100 clients.
What about sound design? Do you do that as well?
Well, let's put it this way. We have an enormous respect for sound design. That is why we usually hook up with people that live and breathe sound design. Because they do it better than we do. We are happy to include sound design in our jobs and supervise that work, but we take them to other facilities that we trust and like.
