Sunday 30 September 2007

Incidental Music

Someone at ITV is now chewing their way through my CD collection (see here for the same with the BBC). I stumbled inadvertently across the X-Factor last night (whilst looking for Screen Wipe tthat took the piss out of it), and was amazed to hear yet more of my CD collection plundered for incidental music. Some strange choices as well – Roger Eno, anyone? (Brian’s little brother). We had the usual borrowing from Sigur Ros (Takk is turning into a real incidental music fave, both on BBC and ITV), and also a smattering of Craig Armstrong – all in the space of ten minutes. Wow. And there’s me saying that that the X-Factor is a programme for people who don’t like music (it is, but, yeah, well, you get my drift...)

What’s next I wonder? Boris on Emmerdale? Fugazi on Eastenders? Helmet on Country File? The mind boggles.

4 comments:

Oli said...

Then there's the ever popular Dirge by Death In Vegas, and the time Channel 4 used Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada to promote a documentary on Gordon Brown.

Jon said...

...and let us not forget various tracks by Unkle especially Reign (most recently C4's It's A Free World amongst others), Rabbit In Your Headlights (ITV's Whistle Blowers), Be There (can't remember), Lonely Soul (to many to mention) and so on and so forth.

I sometimes suspect that trailer producers get a single CD for Christmas and overuse it for the rest of the year! ;-)

Chip Smith said...

There was a point a couple of years back when you couldn't switch on the TV without hearing something from Geogaddi (which is a cracking good album, as if you didn't know).

I always worry when I hear music I own being used as incidental background music - it starts to make me think that I must have excellent taste in lift muzak :-)

Oli said...

At The River by Groove Armada reached such saturation point on various chillout albums and TV slots that it's hard to remember how good it sounded when I first heard it, but I still don't like hearing it on those bloody M&S adverts. I mean... it's M&S.

And yes, Geogaddi is indeed brilliant.