Last fall, composer/musician Ben Neill released the album Automotive—and subsequently brought new meaning to the phrase "going commercial." The CD consists of 10 new full-length versions of the jazz/electronica pieces Neill created for several Volkswagen spots out of Arnold Worldwide, Boston. "I feel it’s a new model of convergence between a record label, an advertising agency and a brand," says Neill of Automotive, which was released on Six Degrees Records. "Arnold was very supportive of the whole project," relates Neill. "In addition to writing the liner notes, they co-designed the album with us. It’s a real integration of all these different elements."
Though he had been recording albums (Goldbug, Triptycal), touring since the mid-1980s and had served as music curator from ’92 through ’98 for the New York performance space The Kitchen, Neill had never done any spotwork until ’99, when Arnold creatives asked him to score "Turbonium," a spot for the Volkswagen Beetle. "They called me based on hearing my albums, and said, ‘Would you ever be interested in doing some music for a Volkswagen commercial?’" he recalls. "Even though I hadn’t done that kind of work before, I was certainly aware of the Volkswagen brand, and their whole identity appealed to me."
The potential for a large audience appealed as well. "I really liked the idea of my music getting exposed to millions of people," Neill relates. "It was beyond what I was going to achieve as an instrumental artist, doing the kind of albums that I was doing."
Directed by Nick Lewin, who is now with Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago, "Turbonium" featured spinning VW Beetles and a voiceover describing the addition of a zippy new element to the periodic table. To accompany the spot, Neill created 30 seconds of danceable electronic music that evokes the image of atoms bouncing off each other. The Arnold creatives loved it, and a fruitful collaboration was born.
"I did twelve spots with them over the last few years," says Neill, who scored the early Volkswagen ads through Trillium, New York, before launching Green Beet Productions, New York, at the end of ’00. "I really enjoyed working collectively," says Neill. "As an artist, I had worked a lot in collaboration with visual artists on new media-type projects, and this wasn’t that different."
Neill says the agency gave him a lot of creative freedom when he was composing for spots. "[The Arnold team] would always ask me to make sure I really liked the music," he says. "I felt that they wanted me to be true to my own artistic instincts, and that made it very rewarding to work with them."
Expanded content
Even though Neill composed all the VW pieces quickly and says that "it’s important not to over-think things," the duration of his involvement varied from spot to spot. "In general, with the animated spots, we would start with storyboards," he says. "I would often be doing the music as the animation was being developed. In some of the other cases, like ‘The Chase’ [directed by Kinka Usher of House of Usher Films, Santa Monica], it was more like standard soundtrack scoring. They would give me a rough cut or something that was not totally finished, but pretty close, and I would do the music to that."
Early last year, Neill looked back over all the Volkswagen music that he had been creating. "I actually felt that some of it was the best music that I had done," he relates. "I was playing it for other people—friends of mine, and [executive producer] Eric Calvi, who I work with at Green Beet—and we got this idea that we could make a whole album out of this material."
Neill took the project to his own record label, Six Degrees, and consulted the creatives at Arnold, who had already commissioned a full-length track from him for their VW compilation CD, Streetmix. Subsequently, Automotive—an album inspired by commercial work—was born.
In choosing material for Automotive, the artist opted to include music from all but one of his Volkswagen spots: "The one that didn’t fit in was ‘Passing’ [an animated commercial directed by Will Barras of Bermuda Shorts, London]. It was more of a rock kind of ad," he explains. "I liked it, but it was very guitar-driven, and I didn’t feel like it gelled musically with the rest of the pieces."
In its place, Neill recorded "Radio VW," the theme for Volkswagen’s Internet radio station, which he had also composed for Arnold Worldwide. Neill involved the agency in the recording process: "I was giving [the creatives] rough mixes of all the pieces. They heard them as they were being developed."
For Neill—an avant-garde performer who has worked with such artists as John Cale, DJ Spooky and Robert Moog, and who invented a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument called the Mutantrumpet (which incorporates a trumpet, three bells, two sets of valves and a trombone slide)—collaborating with an ad agency was yet another way to experiment.
"As I’ve gotten into it more, I’ve felt that identifying with brands and working within the context of branding is a very contemporary cultural expression," he explains. "Brands are creating cultural identities now. That’s why I wanted to do the album. It’s something that’s brand-driven, but it’s not just a promotional vehicle for VW. It’s a legitimate record with my record label that’s promoting me as an artist. I think there’ll probably be a lot more of this thing going on in the future."
Neill’s recent Automotive tour took the concept one step further. Sponsored in part by Volkswagen and performed in 18 cities in the U.S. and Canada, the live concerts featured Neill’s music, as well as striking video installations, created by Bill Jones, that included images from the VW spots. For instance, an installation from "Nite, Nite," an animated VW ad directed by Barras of Bermuda shorts, features images from the spot mixed with flashing colors and other backgrounds.
"Part of my original idea was to not only do extended music mixes of the songs, but to take the commercials and do extended versions of them for live performance," Neill explains. "I’m using a software that enables me to use a similar approach to music re-mixing, where I actually play the video live. It fits into the whole advertainment idea. We’ve looped parts of the commercials, and added some parts. We’re very excited about this new media approach."
In March, Neill and Jones will perform Automotive at New York’s Sandra Gering Gallery. He hopes to create more ad-inspired art in the future. While he continues to work out of Green Beet, Neill, who also scored spots for the Travel Channel and Philips, signed with Spy Media International a month ago for commercial representation. "We’re very interested in working with other agencies on music, and in developing this kind of content," he says. "I feel like [Automotive] was just the beginning."
