These sort of end of year roundups are inevitable so just to add to the noise, here’s a handful of some of my favourite tracks & performances from this year. Not in any order but just a few things off the top of my head that I’ve liked in 2010. Happy New Year and hopefully will be making more music in 2011!

Gorillaz: Stylo

Hans Zimmer Feat. Johnny Marr: Mombasa (Inception OST)

Hybrid: Disappear Here

Massive Attack: Paradise Circus

Arcade Fire: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

The short film ‘First Darkness‘ by artists Wyllie O’Hagan, that I wrote the music for, has won two awards at the Monaco Film Festival: Best Art Short Film and Best Original Music Short Film. Pictured right are Denise and Clare at the awards ceremony in Monaco with Sir David Jason.

This is great news and my big congratulations to Clare & Denise!

You can find out more about Clare & Denise’s film at the First Darkness Facebook page here.

Click here for more details on the Angel Film Awards and here for the full list of 2010 winners – I’m listed under the Short Film section.

Here’s the promo video for my latest royalty-free music collection: Royalty-Free Film & Documentary Music Vol. 5: Cinematic Piano. The music collection contains 13 tracks (48 minutes) of dark cinematic and atmospheric royalty free piano music ideal for film and documentary makers.

The music styles range from gentle and melancholy to dark, eerie and dramatic along with some moments of light and reflection. You can buy the music collection as an instant wav or mp3 download from the shop here:

Royalty-Free Film & Documentary Music Vol. 5: Cinematic Piano

The 5th volume of my low cost royalty-free music collections for film & documentary makers is now available from my online shop.

Royalty-Free Film & Documentary Music Vol.5: Cinematic Piano contains 13 tracks (48 minutes) of atmospheric, melancholy, tense, dark (and some lighter!) piano tracks aimed at film and documentary makers looking for suitable music to use in their films at one low price, and with no additional licensing worries.

You can find out more, as well as hear full previews of all tracks and instantly buy and download the music as either an mp3 or wav download in the shop:

http://www.thebluemask.com/shop/royalty-free-film-documentary-music-vol-5-cinematic-piano/

My orchestral action track ‘Titan‘ was used in last night’s opening ceremony for basketball team the L.A. Lakers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Among the crowd were Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington and David Beckham.

The music introduced the Lakers in this introductory video clip just before they played their first game of the NBA season against the Houston Rockets (the Lakers won 112-110; maybe the music gave them the edge ;)

Update: You can also now view the original full quality intro clip to the right which was projected onto the huge screens among the crowds at the Staples Center.

Thanks to Peter Bailey at Sideshow Studios (www.sideshow-studios.com) who wrote, directed and edited all the graphics and video for the promo.

You can get the full orchestral track ‘Titan‘ to download or license for use in your own projects from my mp3 shop here:

http://www.thebluemask.com/shop/titan

The short film “Still Life: London” by artists Wyllie O’Hagan, which I provided the piano music for, is being featured in the East End Promise exhibition in London from the 9th to the 24th October (see a short clip from the film on the right).

East End Promise is “a multi-media event documenting and exploring the explosion of artistic and cultural activity that took place in London’s East End between 1985 and 2000″. For more details on the exhibition, check the East End Promise website at http://www.eastendpromise.com

ITV1′s Real Crime television documentary series will be featuring my music throughout the episode “Bringing Down the Gooch – Real Crime with Mark Austin” to be broadcast nationally this Monday 27th September on ITV1.

This episode focuses on the story of the specialist police team who took down the leaders of feared criminals, Manchester’s Gooch Gang. The show airs on Monday 27th September at 22:35 on ITV1 and you’ll hear my music throughout!

Update: here’s the first of three parts of the show “Bringing Down the Gooch – Real Crime with Mark Austin” on Youtube (you should be able to find the other 2 parts of the show at the end of this clip, or just search for them on Youtube).

My music features throughout the documentary, alongside tracks from DJ Shadow and a few other pieces of music.

If you’re interested in licensing any of my music for your own film or documentary, please get in touch here.

For the next week until 14th September, 50% of all sales of music and licenses from thebluemask.com will be donated to UNICEF to help in their Pakistan Flood Children’s Appeal. 

The floods from July’s monsoons in Pakistan have left millions of people homeless and the health and sanitation conditions are now critical.

Hunger, skin disease, respiratory infections and other waterborne diseases are putting the lives of millions of people at risk, including nearly 9 million children who are among those most vulnerable to disease and dehydration. UNICEF are trying to raise £90 million to help with the immediate needs, so until 14th September, half of all sales (everything, including mp3 tracks, music licenses and royalty-free music collections) will be going directly to their Pakistan Flood Children’s Appeal.

Click here to visit the shop.

You can read more about UNICEF’s mission here and if you’d rather donate directly to the appeal, click the link below:

Donate directly to UNICEF’s Pakistan Flood Appeal.

This is the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Pakistan so even if you’re not interested in buying any music, please donate what you can to this, or any of the other flood charities (e.g. OXFAM, DEC etc.)

Just added to the shop are a range of limited edition sound logos for use in audio branding for your business or film company. Sound logos are an essential part of a brand’s image and generally used at the start or end of commercials, adverts, trailers, idents, DVDs, business presentations, promotional videos etc to give personality and branding to a company’s image (think of Intel’s famous 4 note ident for example).

Click here to listen to the sound logos in the shop.

These sound logos will be exclusively licensed to one licensee per logo on a first-come first-served basis. Once a logo has been licensed, it will be permanently removed from the shop and yours to use forever in all of your company branding. For that reason, they’re not available to buy directly from the shop in the same way that my other music is – contact me here to license any of the sound logos for exclusive and unlimited use for your business or personal logo branding.

I’ll be adding more sound logos to the shop in future and I can also create custom sound logos and audio stings for your business or branding – please contact me to find out more.

Another video in my series of movie trailers rescored with my own music soundtrack (for promo use only). This clip is from the cult 2004 Japanese futuristic fantasy movie Casshern written and directed by Kazuaki Kiriya.

The movie itself is a beautiful stylised mix of stunning CG and live action and is well worth tracking down a copy of. I got hold of the beautifully packaged 3 disc box set a few years ago and I’ve been wanting to do a track for the trailer for a while.

Similar in style to the orchestral music of Hans Zimmer, the track is a new orchestral action piece I’ve written called Titan which is available from my mp3 music shop to download or license for use in your own film or trailer:

http://www.thebluemask.com/shop/titan