Media Music Supervision

I have always loved watching the way music is incorporated into movies and documentaries, particularly how it can enhance the story.

My Music Supervision journey began by chance when I was asked to source music for a documentary by a person who had seen me DJ at a party (it was a dream came true)

Since then, I have gone on to work on BBC and RTE productions and films shot in Ireland and for Screen Ireland and Aid charities, which is very rewarding. I bring my extensive knowledge of music genres to the mix.

Dust Devils, documentary on the legendary Burning Man Festival

Many of the projects I have worked on were documentaries. Having helped with the sourcing of music for her first film Painting for Miles I was approached by director Dearbhla Glynn (Luachra Productions) to work as music supervisor on her documentary Dust Devils based on the legendary Burning Man Festival. Putting together the soundtrack I focused exclusively on music produced by Irish-based artists, including established acts such as Kila and Cathy Davey as well as less well-known artists such as Rollers/Sparkers and Nurse with Wound. I have subsequently acted as music supervisor on a number of feature and short documentaries made by Dearbhla and have typically used music produced by leftfield Irish acts, for example Seti the First, Hulk, Halfset and Chequerboard.

A perk of the job: travelling to Mali for the Festival au Desert for the world premiere of Dearbla Glynn’s documentary Dambe: The Mali Project which focuses on the musical adventures in Mali of musicians Liam O’Maonlai and Paddy Keenan.

Other projects...

In 2012 I worked on series 2 of the BBC comedy-detective series VEXED starring Toby Stephens & Miranda Raison. For this series I drew on a very wide range of international artists and genres including Muse, the Black Keys and Paloma Faith. Other artists featured included Wise Guys, Shirley Bassey and Chaka Khan. For Irish TV I have acted as a Music Advisor for the popular RTE series ‘Raw’, sourcing Irish-produced music for the show.

I was delighted to act as music consultant on My Name is Emily directed by Simon Fitzmaurice which was selected to open the 2015 Galway Film Fleadh. Starring Evanna Lynch the film is a classy coming of age road movie and I worked hard to select tracks which chimed with the director’s distinctive aesthetic. A stand-out track for me was Lisa Flume’s haunting What we Call Love and the movie also featured beautiful tracks by Lisa Hannigan and Cat Dowling and a track specially written by James Vincent McMorrow.

Transmission!

My first foray into broadcasting work was in 1994 in Barcelona when I co-presented a two-hour radio show on Contraband FM. Back in Dublin, from the late 1990s until 2002 I had two shows on Jazz FM playing soul, funk, jazz and rare grooves on Fridays and jazz/easy listening on Sunday mornings. More recently I had a show on internet station Power FM which centred on Irish Electronica. For Electric Picnic 2006 I was behind the mike for Body and Soul FM playing tunes from artists performing at the Picnic and interviewing artists and musicians about their work.

In addition to my breadth of musical knowledge I am told that my strengths as a broadcaster lie in my relaxed presenting style and passion for diverse musical genres as well as a sense of fun. I have quite a bit of acting experience and have appeared in various commercials and radio productions over the years – I enjoy getting into character and this experience has been useful for my presenting work.

Scenes from DAMBE- The Mali Project