MUSIC+SOUND AWARDS 2023 WINNER SPOTLIGHT

BEST ORIGINAL COMPOSITION IN BROADCAST ADVERTISING

The New York Times: More of Life Brought to Life - Sneakers

Composer: Philip Kay at KO Music, Manchester

Music Producer: Andy Oskwarek

Agency: Droga5 NY

Agency Senior Music Supervisor: Mike Ladman

Agency Executive Creative Directors: Laurie Howell + Toby Treyer-Evans

Agency TV Producers: Kyla Bridge, Patrick Wood + Volney Guzman

Director: Mackenzie Sheppard

Philip Kay at KO Music was who came out top in this year’s Music+Sound Awards Best Original Composition in Broadcast Advertising category. His brilliant music on Droga5’s The New York Times: More of Life Brought to Life - Sneakers spot blew us away!

Watch again after hearing KO Music give us some insight into the magic behind the scenes…

“As part of the campaign we show in this film how a simple topic - Sneakers - can expand reader’s worlds by taking a journey across the different parts of New York Times journalism. At the core of the films is one long connected thread of type and stream of consciousness that mimics readers' curiosity and understanding.

Acting as the guide, the narration takes viewers on a delightful and unexpected journey of topics, all of which are interconnected through journalism, across the New York Times and returning to where the reader started.

To musically accompany this unpredictable journey our composer went down his own rabbit hole. Thinking about New York City, about the people, about its musical history. About frenetic jazz drums, of the sliced-up samples of Golden-Age hip-hop, incongruous sounds wedged together like the different architectural building styles on a single street.

What does this process of exploration sound like? What does the New York Times itself sound like?

“I sat down and tried to bring all those ideas together in this piece. There's a sound of what could be the beating heart of the modern city, which acts as a through-line; this builds and develops with elements of jazz instrumentation. There are quirky characters represented in woodwinds. Strident strings represent the tough edge of the city and people. All the orchestral performances were thrown into my old Akai sampler to get the cut-and-paste feel of 90s hip-hop in there. I didn't want to make anything too pretty, so there's no reverb on there – everything needed hard edges. There's a lot of subtle distortion and grit. The track evolves to the point where it almost feels out of control. And then we come back, as the films do, to that first simple seed of an idea.” - Philip Kay, Composer.”

Visit KO Music’s site for more info here