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Long time no post! The past week I’ve been glued to the BBC Drama Five Days. One highlight of the show was the music, especially the haunting song that played whenever the going was getting really tragic. Haje and I couldn’t identify the vocalist, and nor could Google (shameful!). All we could tell was that she was Swedish or Icelandic (it was hard to tell). This warranted some detective work. I’m posting this here in case it helps anyone else who’s searching for it.

The credits listed Magnus Fiennes as the music producer (who Wikipedia informs me is the brother of Ralph and Joseph). If anyone could tell me, it would be him. Of course, I couldn’t find a way to contact him, but I did find his agent. I dashed them off a quick email last night, then promptly forgot about the whole thing until this afternoon when I get a reply.

Thankyou for your interest in Magnus Fiennes’ work on Five Days. He is
delighted with the response he has had from it! The female soloist was
Heidrunanna Bjornsdottir, Im afraid I dont know who she is represented
by but more of her music, seperate from her work on Five Days, is
available on Myspace. At the moment we are not involvred in any plans to
release the soundtrack. The best people to discuss this with are the
BBC. If we have any news on this release all info will be available on
our website in the future www.coolmusicltd.com

Some more digging around identified her as Heidrun Anna Bjornsdottir (or should that be Heiðrún Anna Björnsdóttir?), an Icelandic singer currently based in London. Back in the day she was part of Icelandic band GusGus (whose other members have included Emilíana Torrini, who I am a fan of. Others may know her as the singer of Gollum’s Song from LotR, but her own stuff is loads better.). Her previous band was called Gloss (they have some stuff on iTunes and some singles on Amazon). Her current band is Cicada - you can listen to their stuff on their Myspazz and they have an album out. It’s nothing like the Five Days stuff, but it’s some good dirty electronica and I’m liking it.

Success! Now we just need the Beeb to release the soundtrack.

After the frustrating wait, tracking the delivery all the way from China, I now have my shiny new MacBook. The thing is fantastic, though there are a couple of niggling issues that bug me. First, while the shiny screen looks great, I already have a fingerprint on it, which seems really hard to remove. More seriously, it’s a bad idea to use the optical drive while holding the machione on your lap. I was burning a DVD, and picked the thing up off my lap. There was a worrying sound from the drive, and up popped a warning that the burn had failed. Seems the drive assembly and case are a little too bendy for comfort.

Edit: The 65° idle temperature is a little worrying too.

I bought a copy of Flash Pro a couple of days ago (or rather my company did). Our main business is based on QuickTime VR panoramas, and I decided it would be useful for us to have a Flash viewer. Beware: this gets a bit technical and boring for most people, but there is a pretty example.

Edit: I just realised that I have consecutive posts entitled “Ming” and “Flash”. Hehe. Retro joke.

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