Mosaic Music + Sound: world-class work because every brief gets cast like a film
Three years in, the Surry Hills studio’s work is going out globally. The way it gets made has not changed.
For most people in North America watching the World Cup this year, the ad breaks were carrying music and sound design made in Surry Hills. American Express Platinum ran through almost every break of the tournament, a suite of films built around Mexico, Spain, France and England, four national teams, four distinct musical languages, all of it original, all of it out of Hibernian House on Kippax Street.
That campaign came through Goodby Silverstein & Partners NYC, produced by Biscuit Filmworks and directed by Isaiah Seret, and ran alongside Anthem, Formula 1 and Golf films for the same client. It is the kind of job Mosaic Music + Sound was built for, and increasingly the kind of job that finds them. Three years in, the studio’s work is going out into the US market as a matter of course rather than as an occasion, and that has changed what a normal week looks like.
What has not changed is who makes it.
“We’ve worked hard to create the environment for great work to flourish by keeping our clients close to the product. Great work is all about creating access by removing any unnecessary layers, so the person you brief is the person creating the work”, says Bill Doig, Partner and Executive Producer.
CASTING, NOT COVERAGE
The assumption people sometimes make about a boutique team is that it means a smaller capacity.
“It has never worked that way here,” says Adam Moses, Partner and Head of Creative. “Most briefs get multiple composers on them, writing in parallel from day one, and they are the composers who should be on that job. It is casting. You do not put the same writers on a beer spot and a bank rebrand and hope one of them lands. You pick people whose instincts already point where the brief needs to go, then you let them push each other.”
The decision about who writes gets made before a note does. What arrives at the first presentation is range built on purpose, not one idea with two safety options behind it.
A brief arriving on a Monday is being worked by multiple composers with genuinely different reference points, alongside a dedicated sound department, an executive producer and a producer. World Cup campaigns the size of Amex get resourced the way campaigns that size need to be.
The other half of it is who gets called in. Mosaic brings in artists from outside the industry’s usual orbit. They arrive with fresh brush strokes. The senior team guides how those brush strokes land.
“Once we have the story arc, the structural beats and the emotional core of what the music and sound are doing, the hard part is done,” says Moses. “Everything after that is personality and colour. It means we can put genuinely different options in front of a client and know all of them work, because they are all built on the same spine. The choice becomes taste rather than risk.”
THE MUSICALITY OF SOUND
Sound at Mosaic is not a service bolted onto the music. It is its own room, with its own head, and on plenty of jobs it is the reason the studio got the call.
Michael Thomas leads it, and what he does sits closer to composition than most people realise. A clock bell tuned so it lands in the key of the track rather than fighting it. The flap of a bird’s wing placed rhythmically against the beat. Foley that is not just accurate but in time and in tune, so music and sound stop competing for the same space and start doing the same job.
“Most of what I do, nobody is supposed to notice, but they definitely feel it,” says Thomas. “If a mix is working, the audience just feels like the spot is better and cannot tell you why. That is the whole trick. It is not one thing sitting on top of another thing, it is one piece of sound, elevated.”
That symbiosis runs through the studio’s recent output, including Uber One ‘Mighty Action Squad’ and Uber ‘Ding Dong Deals’ for Special Australia and Allianz ‘Flight of the Finch’ for Howatson+ Company, which won Silver for Best Use of Existing Music at the AWARD Awards and named TV Ad of the Year at Mumbrella. The studio delivers stereo, 5.1, Dolby Atmos and theatrical.
THE YEAR
Beyond Amex, the last twelve months have taken in clever work for Somersby via Clemenger BBDO, with director Bianca Poletti through MOFA, series scoring for Contiki with Division, Hyundai through Innocean, and continued work with Special Group Australia, Rabbit, Thinkerbell, Leo and Today the Brave amongst other valued partners.
“Some of the most enjoyable work of the year has come from the independents,” says Doig. “The ideas coming out of those shops are sharp and fun, the process is direct, and there is always an appetite for making great work. We love to see it, and we want more of it.”
The remit runs across original composition, sound design, sonic branding, audio post production and music supervision, from a senior team in Surry Hills and a network of specialists across Byron Bay, LA, Austin and London.
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