Thursday 1 October 2009

Featured Music Maker for October:

NeoKitsch is a music studio in the heart of trendy Crouch End, London, which specialises in producing original musical scores, sound design, voiceover and foley for film and TV. Five albums have been released under NeoKitsch, some classical music, and some fusion electronic music, and they can be downloaded from iTunes and other leading stores.

NeoKitsch has been active in composing music for filmmakers worldwide including productions in LA, Milan, Berlin, Zurich, Hamburg and London, collaborating with names such as UK Film Council, The League Of Gentlemen, Arts Council England, Sky One and MTV, with works presented at BAFTA screenings and film festivals.
The NeoKitsch Blog is regularly updated with reviews and articles on unusual musical instruments, films and new music. You can check out all the serious and silly things NeoKitsch gets up to at: www.neokitsch.com

Current projects NeoKitsch is involved in includes the full score for the stage production of Frankenstein which will be performed in March (date and venues TBC). The lead instruments will be the Violin and Etherwave Theremin.

NeoKitsch is a huge collector of unusual and vintage instruments, and the studio often uses acoustic stringed instruments such as the violin, mandolin, and cello. Some of the more far out instruments include the Omnichord, Micro Garden, Theremin, Circuit Bent Synths, and Stylophone. Among the hard to find, vintage gear NeoKitsch collects, are the Moog Rogue, Yamaha CS10, Korg MS2000B, Roland JV1080, and the famous Roland TB-303. NeoKitsch also uses more modern synths, although arguably, they tend to lean towards the nostalgic 70's and 80's sounds. Some of these modern machines include the Elektron Monomachine and Machinedrum, and the Sid Station.

NeoKitsch is familiar with composing music for a wide range of different genres, but the speciality genre seems to lean in the direction of classical music for violin and piano, fused with electronic glitch and experimental music.

The NeoKitsch studio is run by one person, Danny Hahn, but he often collaborates with classical musicians and specialists in fields which help broaden the possibilities of composing music.

When NeoKitsch is composing with computer software such as ProTools, Max MSP, Logic and Sibelius, novelty Midi controllers are often used such as the Monome. Interesting videos of some of the weird instruments NeoKitsch uses, including the Monome, can be found on YouTube. Here are a few examples:






More info can be found here: neokitsch.humtoo.com