Our very own Daniel Holter and Mike Standal have scored another songwriting coup, placing their song “Fall” in the hottest flick at theaters this spring, Sex and the City : The Movie.

Through our association with the music licensing company Crucial Music (and Crucial’s Tanvi Patel), the producers of Sex and the City licensed the instrumental version (known as “Catch Me” in the movie credits) of one of our jazz ballads.

With a nod to the standards of yesteryear, the full version of the song features Marcella Mortellaro, a longtime friend of the songwriters and collaborator at The Burst Collective who now resides in Nashville.

If you’d like to support the creation of a full-length recording with Marcella, buying her songs through Amie Street is the most direct way of doing so. We’re hoping to parlay this movie placement into finishing the project we started a couple of years ago for Burst Records. Until then, enjoy the music!

In the mean time… official news here, personal perspective from producer Daniel Holter here.

As we’ve posted about at the Burst Labs blog, there’s a host of new features now available at our online production music catalog.

We’ve been listening to our clients and friends over the past 6 months as requests were made and complaints were registered. While there are a few issues left to tackle, we wanted to get an update activated so some of the major issues would be addressed (recently played tracks, all forms in Flash, that sort of thing…).

There’s a quick 5 minute video walkthrough at the end of the Burst Labs blog post about the update, for those interested in moving picture demos, and some more detail on the upgrades right here :

Production Music Discovery Engine

Our music discovery engine got a few cool new features… a larger ‘live’ area for clicking ‘play preview,’ previously played tracks are darkened in the specimen dish, and the most recently played tracks appear as a pop up at the audio player.

Search Catalog by Keyword

There are some subtle interface tweaks at the search function… the navigation of multiple pages of results is now consistent across the site, and the time (or song duration) is visible in all lists of tracks.

Featured Artists and Music Collections

Our featured artist tab has been modified a bit, and it’s supposed to also randomly select compilations of production music that have been tagged to be included on the home page… don’t get me started on the things that were supposed to be included here. Argh. Anyone know an amazing Flash and PHP guru who actually gets work done when they say they will?!

Our Music Licensing Blog

As always, the most recent updates to our blog are visible at our home page, but we’ve expanded the list of available news items to five.

One more tip… if you don’t get our updates via RSS yet, it’s the absolute fastest way to get the latest news and brand new production music.

The opening scene for the Dallas segment of American Idol’s 7th season featured “Heroes” (by D. Holter/C. Mosher), from VL-032 Dramatronica v3, part of the Velocity Music Library we created for FirstCom Music (from Dallas, of all places… appropriate, eh?).

Pulsing strings and stately horns underscored the first minute or so of the FOX hit show as the stage was set for another night of America’s favorite singing competition.

There’s more music where that came from, of course, as our good friend and regular Burst Collective composer Chris Mosher contributed to our new collection of dramatic trailer music at Burst Labs : Trailer Toolkit vol. 1.

Those of you who watched the 2 hour premiere of The Sara Connor Chronicles - the hot new FOX television show based on the Terminator movie franchise - may have noticed some “bumpin’ beats” (in the teenage vernacular) during the show’s pivotal scene at a shopping mall. I know you were probably jolted from the gripping drama, thinking “who on earth made that fabulous hippy-hop?” Well, quell your wonderings, because it was us.

The track “Come And Get It” was produced by us as part of a hip hop package called Chronic Crunk for WestOne Music (a production music library distributed here in the States by APM), composed by Burst writers Old Man Malcolm and Daniel Holter, and was, quite possibly, the dramatic turning point in a show that had so very many.

Here’s the full length song featuring killer vocals by Anacron (who along with Malcolm makes up the hip hop duo The Cornrowz) :

Come And Get It (D. Holter/M. Michiles)
WOM104 Chronic Crunk
[See post to listen to audio]

Congrats on the music supervisor for his sublime and uncompromising taste. [ms]

Back in 1999, when Burst creative director Daniel Holter was an in-house composer at LA-based commercial music house Groove Addicts, electric cars were all the rage… and General Motors’ launch of their EV-1 was ahead of the curve, ready to take over the car-buying public with thoughts of saving the planet and leaving our dependance on fossil fuels behind.

We had a produced a song for our Gravity Production Music Library that the agency was digging for their commercial that would introduce the EV-1 to the masses - “Aquatica,” a bit of throbby electronica featuring vocals by our friend (and fellow Milwaukeean) Keedy. With some tweaks and a new mix, the track was prepped for the advertising blitz to come.

Turns out GM was early with their timing of the market, but we still get inquiries and compliments about our music for this campaign to this day. Check out the full 30 second spot here :

We’ve made a collection of some of our latest holiday music productions available in a sweet little gift package called Wishes Dreams & Melodies.

It’s available exclusively as a gift at Groom (Milwaukee’s killingest salon for men, located in the Third Ward), or you can get it included with any CD from Burst Records during the month of December.

Wishes Dreams & Melodies preview (2:59)
[See post to listen to audio]

Some details on the songs and the artists :

• Deck The Halls - with our very own Julie Moffitt and Matt Smith on vocals
• Away In A Manger - featuring Chuck Mead of BR549 on guitar
• Jingle Bells
• O Little Town Of Bethlehem
• Emmanuel - Ameerah Tatum on vocals
• It Came Upon A Midnight Clear - Barb Stephan on vocals
• The Brightest Of Stars - an original song by The Farewell Circuit
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - with John Sieger
• Good King Wenceslas - vocals by Adi Armour of Growing Nation and Ameerah Tatum
• Joy To The World - christian and jewish traditions unite in music
• Auld Lang Syne - with Scott Montgomery and Matt Long

So don’t wait… we have a very limited supply of these CDs and they are available on a first come, first served basis only. Go get a hair cut at Groom in time for your holiday dinner, or grab a CD from Burst Records and enjoy a free holiday music sampler on us!

Happy Holidays, everyone. [dh]

Those of you looking for information on Feels Like This, the song heard in MTV’s The Hills, can hear the mp3 (and read the lyrics, as many of you have requested) at our Burst Labs music licensing blog.

The Burst Collective has licensed our holiday themed production music tracks to NOTCOT for their brand new Holiday Gift Guide.

We’ve been fans of NOTCOT since they featured our music licensing discovery engine, Burst Labs, at their design review site.

After scrambling to get all of the Christmas and Hannukah music produced in time for this season, all that’s left now is to figure out how to offer the songs on CD for those who request it (already a few requests coming in today, the first day of the Gift Guide being live). Ideas, anyone? We’re leaning towards free downloads for those who ask nicely, since we’re not in the retail music business. If people want to enjoy our music for the holidays, that’s quite a compliment. We’re grateful.

Star Trak recording artists Chester French overdubbed horns at Burst HQ earlier this month, with Daniel Holter engineering and D.A. and Max (of Chester French) producing.

Pharrell’s latest signing came to us by way of one of our favorite session drummers in town, Dave Bayles, who taught a teenage D.A. drum lessons.