Music and Audio Post-Production House

It has been a busy few months at the Dojo with our latest collaboration with Tourist With a Typewriter being awarded the The Tromsø Palm for the best documentary in the Films From The North programme at the Tromsø International film festival with particular attention given to the film’s unique soundtrack and sound design mention in the award speech!

We’ve also recently returned from Aswan, Egypt where Joe and Saeed have been working on a new documentary on the Nile Project. An incredible experience to say the least the Nile Project has set out to bring musicians from all the Nile Basin countries together to collaborate. The project concluded with a concert in Cairo. I think it is fair to say the experience was life changing for all involved.

More details can be found here:

http://nileproject.org

You can also listen to BBC Radio 3′s coverage of the project here:

Adding a new release to the limited but e ery expanding discography of Joe Sizzlax we’re putting out a new record in a couple of weeks. Some of it will be free but the majority of the record will be available from various online retailers. It’ll initially be released on Bandcamp followed by a release throughout all major retailers by the end of February. The record can loosely be described as future garage but, in keeping with Joe’s other work, it is definitely more of a chilled record than a dance-floor filler! Anyhow, here is a sneak peak at some of the tunes:

And another! This one feature Taji the singer from Joe’s band Columbo. More info and tune from Columbo can be found on their Myspace. Yes – MySpace! The address is myspace.com/columbotheband

It’s been a longtime coming but the post-production process for Even That Void is well underway in Tromsø. Joe is heading there this week to start compiling the music and preparing for the final audio edit and mix and things couldn’t be looking rosier.

Even That Void Logo on snowy background

The film, an experimental surreal sci-fi documentary, is a bit of a new direction for the Tourist/Dojo partnership. Leaning more on the side of fiction with a heavy dose of reality, Even That Void attempts to explore the potential effects on humanity after the polar ice-caps melt. Joe’s role is a departure from his usual one as a composer. This time the shoe is on the other foot, as he is acting as music-supervisor for the project.

The score is also pretty experimental. Drawing on the wealth of musical talent in Northern Norway, we have commission a number of electronic artists to write a track each for the film. Their brief is simple, they are given a character, a number of location recordings and a biography of their character. They are then expected to write music they feel is appropriate for the character using only the location recordings they have been given. Sounds tricky? It is but the cool thing is that Northern Norway is home to a pretty hardcore group of ambient composers who are heavily into synthesizing sounds from location sounds!

So far, we have artists such as Lasse Marhaug, Mental Overdrive, Kohib and Le Petit Garcon all onboard with more to be confirmed. If you are already a fan of Arctic Ambient then your gonna love this soundtrack, if you’ve never heard any before then welcome to a world of sounds you’ve never heard before!

The Runner

It finally happened! Three years in the making and Saeed Farouky’s latest film, The Runner, is complete!

Scored and mixed at Dojo Studios, The Runner is an interesting look at a sportsman’s daily struggle to highlight the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sub-Sahara. Deeply moving and beautifully shot, The Runner premiered at The Hackney Picture House in early November. MOre details of further screening will be posted here. Alternatively, head to Tourist With a Typewriter’s website for more info.

Something a bit different from Mr. Sizzlax. Once again collaborating with LA based singer/songwriter Emily Zuzik, Joe has yet again taken his music in a different direction. You could say he’s heading back to his routes.

After two years of exploring DnB and dubstep, Siz finds himself back where he started; in the world of UK garage. Caprica is a single of two halves. The first half is the traditional 2-step route but with flowing harps and clean breaks, this tune is sure not to bore. The b-side is alludes to the new world of future garage. Its a bit different and a bit crazy but don’t hesitate to embrace a bit of a wobble hear and there. We don’t want to go into much detail here as we’d rather let you make your own mind up! So stop relax and get down to Mr Sizzlax!

We recently started trying to compile a comprehensive list of project that have been worked on at Dojo Studios. This week we stumbled upon a few we had forgotten. This is a great show both informative and daring. With the music written at Dojo Studios check out Al Jazeera English’s Correspondents:

It’s been a busy few weeks in the Dojo as we’ve taken on the responsibility of supervising the music for Tourist With a Typewriter’s latest film. An experimental surreal documentary shot in the Arctic earlier in the year, Even That Void, is looking to charter new ground both in terms of film making and music.

From our perspective, it is a new world not being the composer. We have basically been commission a number of Norwegian electronic artists to write music using location sound recorded by award winning composer/recordist, Daniel Blinkhorn, in their compositions. They are assigned a character in the film and have been expected to use a small amount of footage and brief biography for inspiration.

More details can be found on: http://www.touristwithatypewriter.com