Review Fix chats with Chris Wirsigwho discusses his Counter Communications Music Library and his upcoming projects.
About Counter Communications:
Creating scores and cues for film, TV, video games, and marketing pieces allows Wirsig to demonstrate his virtuosity as an instrumentalist and his ability to articulate emotion with sound. With regularity, he adds unique selections for music supervisors, content producers, and other media professionals to enhance their projects. Some of this year’s vibes include dark hip hop, dark folk, and electronoise.
Review Fix: How was Counter Communications born?
Chris Wirsig: I’ve always used Counter Communications as a home for my various creative projects, to run them on a professional level. It’s been a music production company and record label for a long time. Last year we re-launched it to also represent the latest venture - offering our catalog of dark intense soundscapes in our own music library for TV and film licensing.
Review Fix: What are some of the biggest projects you’ve worked on?
Wirsig: Very dear to my heart is the creepy award-winning short movie “20 Matches†about a serial killer in Vienna. I had all the freedom to write and perform the music for these intense 9 minutes, and even got a nomination for best score at a festival, which is a great compliment. Another big project was creating the music for the iOS game “Alien Tribe 2†that was in the Top Ten in several countries.
Review Fix: You have quite a few projects coming up. What are they and how are they unique from one another?
Wirsig: We’re releasing at least one new album of songs and cues every month in our music library. The upcoming ones range from ambient/electronica to orchestral tension cues and dark synthpop. We’re keeping it diverse.
And then there are my bands and projects, and the production work for other artists that give me more freedom. I love producing music for TV and film, but it’s nice to also have projects where I just can experiment with sounds and structure. There will be a collaboration project soon that’s in the triphop field with dark, jazzy vibes and new instrumental music that’s more in the style of Tangerine Dream and other classic synth artists.
Apart from the instrumental music, I’m preparing new songs for my electropop band no:carrier, that hopefully will come out soon. The songs are in the pop context but I don’t have to care about format, length, or even if it is mainstream enough. Come to think of it, a lot of the music in our library is also not typical mainstream, though!
Review Fix: What are your goals for the near future with all of these?
Wirsig: We definitely want to establish the music library and my work as THE source for dark, edgy, melancholy music. We’re building the Counter Communications catalog with my own music but also with other artists producing for us.
Typical fits are horror and science fiction movies, dramas, crime shows or documentaries. But my material has also been used in reality and game shows, when it gets more dramatic and tense. Other good fits are trailers or computer games.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Wirsig: We’re keeping the music dark – even in the Los Angeles sun.
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