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The Holiday Gift Guide from NOTCOT features a music player loaded with tracks from our very own catalog of licensed music here at Burst Labs.

8 songs from our holiday collection, Naughty + Nice, are available for shoppers and browsers while perusing the new tastemakers website.

Dear Mr. Dupri,

I just finished reading your exhausting treatise on The Huffington Post for the third time, trying desperately to glean some sort of insight on how you could be so agonizingly out of touch. If ever someone needed to be told to shut up and make music, it is you. Listed below are some of the most embarrassing passages from your diatribe.

We’re just not that worried about showcasing creative work that we had no part in. There are some fantastic artists, composers and companies doing good work way under the radar these days, and we figure what comes around goes around. Well, we hope, anyway. It’s a karmic thing, I guess… like if karma were less religious and more of a secular ethic of reciprocity. But I digress.

Browsing some of my favorite inspirational feeds and blogs last night I happened across this trailer for OFFF 2007

I occasionally get asked about the gear I use for composing. While Burst HQ does have some expensive goodies (of course we spare no expense for YOU, our friends and fans), and I’ve already mentioned my beloved toys, some of my favorite things are free plug-ins. Because I’m a cheap bastard, I love to troll KVR Audio looking for that ever-elusive “free” tag.

I’ve compiled here my 8 favorite free plug-ins.

Two problems related to Burst in the November issue of Mix Magazine :

1. This month’s Sound For Picture section is titled Creative on Demand : Composers Reap Benefits From Production Music Libraries and, in our not-so-humble opinion, misleads their readers as to who’s responsible for the stature of FirstCom’s Velocity Music Library (through the beginning of this year, that would have been us).

2. The Track Sheet column for the Midwest region falsely credits us with recording “Chester French’s first release.” We did record overdubs for their Star Trak debut, but that’s it.

So Mix gave us credit where we didn’t deserve it, and didn’t credit us where we did (though a case could be made that they were getting their information on Velocity from FirstCom or the new producers of the library, in which case we’ll take this opportunity to set the record straight).

The Daily Mail has a comprehensive write-up on exactly how the production team pulled off a realistic gorilla playing along to the music and grooving for Cadbury.

The video website, featuring Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight, has been a big success for Cadbury, their ad agency Fallon, and even Collins himself (his 1981 song was re-released and entered the Top 20 again).

We love PASTE. Always have. We’ve even advertised in their pages back when we were spending a little more time - and a lot more money - on our record label (we’re a little busy with our other endeavors right now).

They even dug Julie Moffitt (a Burst Records artist) earlier this year… her song Let Him Be was selected by PASTE editors to be featured alongside Lucinda Williams and The Shins on CD in their Feb 07 issue.

So… two cool bits of news today from our favorite music mag :

As has been previously noted, I have a borderline-unhealthy predilection towards toy instruments. I scour thrift stores, search Ebay obsessively, and hit up Craigslist every day.

However, since my wife and I bought our first house, the pile of farthings available for vintage Casiotone purchases has dwindled to nothing.

Luckily, there is a man that I can live vicariously through. His name is Eric, he lives in Germany, and he has what I consider to be the coolest collection of vintage electronic noise-makers in the world. Not the most extensive, mind you, but undoubtedly the coolest. Sometimes, when I’m looking longingly up at the stars, I wonder it he’s looking up at the same stars (or rather, the blue sky where the stars are going to be in 8 hours). In a totally platonic, “hug-you-and-hit-you” sort of way.

One of our favorite unsigned bands, The Real Efforts Of Real People, is comprised of two talented musicians and good people, Ben West and Kristopher Pooley.

Both have a list of credits a mile long, are touring with pop artists we know you’ve heard of (Pooley is currently the Musical Director and Keyboardist for Gwen Stefani), and they’ve created some of the vibiest and chill new music that we’ve been fortunate enough to represent for commercial licensing opportunities at Burst Labs [check out their library of music here].

We’ve been so swamped producing music for our catalog updates that we blanked on letting you all know there’s an article and in depth interview with Kristopher in last month’s Keyboard Magazine.

Halloween is almost here, and though we know most of you have wrapped up your ghoulish productions a while back, there are more than a few of you who are finding our site this week by searching for Halloween Production Music and Sound Effects.

Most of those searches also, of course, include the word ‘free’ among the search terms… while we’re not a ‘royalty-free music library,’ nor do we typically offer our music without sync fees (though we do for certain clients - check our FAQ), we always appreciate people stopping by and checking out our music and sound design.