News

05.02.19

Catching up
or
What have I done?

Hello everyone!

How have you been? Getting into the new year? Can’t believe it’s February already? Same here. As I try to catch up with myself, I realise that it’s been I while since I’ve been in touch, so let’s catch up together.
I haven’t heard from some of you for a while – what have you been up to? Email me – let me know – if you’re getting this you’re doing something interesting and I’m always interested in interesting things.
I’ve been doing All Sorts since my last mail out, but what have I been making that youmight be interested in? Well, I worked on one major thing that took up a lot of last year that I will tell you about as soon as I’m allowed, and some other exciting things that I shall tell you all about now:

The Ghost Of Peter Sellers

The Ghost of Peter Sellers official festival trailer

This feature length documentary has been receiving excellent reviews from film festivals around the world and rightly so. Peter Medak directs his own story and sees one of my favourite storyteller-editors Joby Gee applying his inimitable edge and slant to the whole thing. It’s worth a quick google to find out a bit more about it – it’s an amazing story and an excellent watch, giving an incredible insight into an extraordinary man and point in the movie industry in general, whilst never losing track of the very personal and emotional journey being taken by the Director. In a tale filled with co-incidences, my dad was almost certainly on the island playing in a band at the time they were shooting the original film.
Check out the greek bazouki playing on this one – the booked musician was unable to make the session so I quickly sharpened up my chops and played it myself – like riding a bicycle, right?

Music for ads

I’ve been making music for adverts a little more recently. Rather than a conscious effort, it’s been a natural progression as some directors that I have regularly worked with in other formats have asked me to be involved in this new adventure. In particular, I have been lucky enough to work with the incredible team of Wilkins&Maguire. Having scored many of their projects in the past, it’s been a privilege to work on some of their short-form work. Although intimacy and personal openness are a particular feature of their full-length works, I’m constantly impressed at how they manage to concentrate so much human-ness and emotional honesty into the format – in a way, they are poems to the novels of their long-form documentaries.

I’m really pleased with how these turned out – each has it’s own musical space and story, but they sit together really well, with a group identity in sound and atmosphere.
These first four are deservedly multi-award winning:

Guinness: Gaelle

(On the subject of awards, I decided not to fork out for a D&AD pencil The ‘Membership and Awards Sales Executive’ informed me that Each D&AD Pencil is £315 + Shipping + VAT – what a swizz!)

Guinness: Wisdom

Guinness: Goodluck

Guinness: Tabitha

Fun fact – some of this music was made and arranged in a tent in the middle a stormy Wales. Laptops are so powerful nowadays that my portable rig is pretty much as effective as my main studio set-up – just limited by how much physical stuff (microphones, outboard etc) I can fit in a rucksack.

Esso: Reindeer Princess

Another beautiful Wilkins&Maguire film. The score for this was written mostly in the edit; time was pretty tight for this and we wanted to have my music in early to work to and integrate. I guess that’s the main difference and challenge for advert music making – often, the music is thought about at the last minute, and when nothing else can be changed to ‘fix’ a project, it’ll be the music that’ll go, often because someone ‘upstairs’ didn’t explain that they actually DID want piano even though the brief said NO PIANO or that someone feels it’ll feel more uplifting if they use a Toploader or Chumbawumba track.

If you haven’t yet got RSI from clicking, there are a couple more at the bottom – they’re really good too, but I know your attention span and I’ve still got lots to tell you – they can be a treat when we’re done if you like.

UN Sex Abuse Scandal Documentary

I also managed to find time to work on another excellent documentary. As most of you will know, I’m never one to shy away from a politically heavy topic and director Sam Collyns will always deliver a powerful and moving angle. This got 5 stars in the Guardian who said it was ‘careful, dignified and gruelling’, and I must say I agree. I really found a voice for this project and so much of the final music poured out in the first couple of sessions – low heavy sliding double basses and cellos, driving pulses & beats and unsettling beds.

Click here for a couple of examples

Off-piste or Other hats

I’ve also done a fair bit of non-sync work since we last spoke – if you’ve stuck with me this far you might want to know about how (engage invisible bullet-point mode):

I developed, co-wrote and produced several artists and bands including the legendary Marry Waterson, UK Americana artist of the year Emily Barker and Dublin ground breakers Cloud Castle Lake.

I was invited by mercury award-winning Kathryn Williams to perform in and arrange pieces for a BBC tribute to Leonard Cohen alongside many excellent musicians; this may be broadcast later this year.

I produced and co-wrote a collaborative project ‘System Hold’ (with Jo Mango) commissioned as a human response/enhancement to be listened alongside an academic paper ‘Pervasive Punishment’ by Fergus McNeill examining issues raised in the study of supervision and parole/probation in the penal system.
This is getting incredible responses from the highest echelons of the prisons&penal system and academic experts alike.

I contributed to some wonderful movie scores as a musician.

I was excited to be asked to make music to eat bubbles to. Food historian, chef and experimentalist Tasha Marks (AMV Curiosities) runs irregular crossmodal events called ‘Sonic Sensorium’ and I was thrilled to be invited to develop music integral to the experience of eating/feeling the edible bubbles she has developed. I was incredibly proud that when described, the music “Sounded like Aphex Twin covering ‘Popcorn’”; no higher praise could be asked for.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. I’ll be in touch later this year with my Big News and in the meantime please feel free to contact me if you want links or further details and do let me know if you have anything coming up that needs music!
Thanks for listening,Jack Ketch
Music made for pictures
info@jackketch.tv
07761 288 161

p.s. More music for ads

Pedigree: Dog Dates

Tesco finest: Laura’s ‘Unmissable’ Scallops & Prawns

Tesco finest: James’ ‘Big City’ Stuffed Chicken

The Beatles, Hippies and Hell’s Angels
Saturday 17th 9pm Sky Arts
and
Where I have been for a while

Hello all. I’ve been mostly away from synchronised music for the last year or so. I know I should have called. A postcard at least. Let’s catch up. How have you been? Me? I’ll tell you all about it, but first: news!

The Beatles, Hippies and Hell’s Angels
Inside the crazy world of Apple
(feature doc – Nerdtv for SkyArts 9pm 17 June 2017)

The only records my mum had through my early childhood were by The Beatles. I listened to those records a lot and love them. Needless to say I was excited and a little nervous when I was asked to score a film about The Beatles and their Apple Corps. Ben Lewis, the director had a strong concept for the music: Mad Professor meets the Fab Four. It sounded great from the outset, using the instruments and familiar sounds of the Beatles and treating them in a different, more modern way. The tricky bit for me was to make the music functional within that remit, which took a bit longer – themes came easily, but applying them to certain situations took a fair bit of cajoling. An interesting breakthrough happened when I worked on the music in the edit. We could apply our various instincts simultaneously and shape the music with the film and respond to each other in the moment. It’s a set-up that is potentially stressful for a composer – it’s not necessarily a quick process to make good music happen – but with proper preparation and an honest dialogue it can be a very productive way to get things done. I’m definitely interested in exploring this more.

The film is incisive, irreverent and enlightening. It features wry and insightful interviews and archive and witty animation throughout, presenting a fresh perspective on a group of people and a time in history that we often see through one particular lens.

What I’ve been up to for the last while

Got your tea? Sitting comfortably? Let’s catch up. So its been a fair while since we last talked – I have been focussing a little more on non-sync stuff:

I released and toured the ‘Adem‘ album ‘seconds are acorns‘.
After winning the Paul Hamlyn Foundation award for composition, I decided to spend some time focussing on developing my contemporary classical composition – I’ve been exploring new ways of writing music/communicating music to musicians.
I was shortlisted (final 3) for Musician in Residence for King’s Cross – and was narrowly beaten by Dame Evelyn Glennie at the popular vote.
I made music for photographs to be seen to: the arresting Rosa series by Leo Maguire as part of the FOAM TALENT photography exhibition. It’s at Beaconsfield Gallery, Vauxhall until 18th June.
I also produced the excellent Pictish Trail album ‘Future Echoes‘.

So why am I bothering you with all this? Well, it’s to say I’m back! I’ve missed you and I’ve missed scoring to picture (so much so that I even snuck some in…)

What else I’ve been up to for the last while

I wasn’t able to stay completely away from synchronised music world as some great projects came up from directors I enjoy working with. A large portion of my work is from people I have previously worked with. I really value returning directors and tv houses – it shows to me that the people I work with like what I have done and trust me to come up with the goods. It makes a lot of sense too – I put a huge amount of effort into getting a mutual vocabulary of music/sound, getting to a position where director, editor and composer can actually communicate effectively about music from broad strokes to nuance and atmosphere. Working on further projects together, the team already has that under the belt and have shared references and experience which makes for a much more immediate translation from imagination to eardrums. Anyway, just in case you wanted to know, here are the projects I worked on over the last 12-18 months:

The Moorside – I co-scored the drama ‘The Moorside’ (itv for BBC1) with Badly Drawn Boy with whom I have worked with on a number of projects in the past.Notes on Blindness – I provided additional score and mixes/production for this beautiful (multi award-winning) film and VR experience

Jenius – I did a series of eight fun adverts for the ‘Jenius’ app with the excellent ‘Trunk’ animation house (who incidentally made my first music video back in 2004 for the track ‘These are your friends‘)

Gatorade x 2 and Aquarius – I scored three international drinks commercials for Andrew Lang (I previously scored his multi-award-winning feature doc ‘Sons of Cuba’ – check it out!) Gatorade – ‘Break The Mould’, Gatorade – ‘Sweat’ and Aquarius – ‘The Lost Phone’.

Spark Films – Director Sasha Snow (I previously scored his multi-award-winning feature doc ‘Hadwin’s Judgement’ – check it out!) started Spark Films and I jumped at the chance to work on his new shorts ‘NPL’ and ‘Fives’.

King Arthur – (!) I contributed some low chugs and weird twangs for the awesome King Arthur score by the inimitable Daniel Pemberton.

Ok. I think that’s about it for now. I have a couple of things in the pipelines. Please feel free to contact me if you want links or further details and do let me know if you have anything coming up that needs music!
Thanks for listening,

Jack Ketch
Music made for pictures
info@jackketch.tv
07761 288 161

Catching up or What have I done?