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COMPOSER OF THE MONTH - JUNKIE XL

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Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL) is one of the most famous film composers of the 21st century. 
He was born in Holland in 1967 and in his youth, he was a rock and electronic music player in several bands (Fear Factory, Dog eat dog...)

In the middle of the 90s, he started his productions for video games and films. At that time, his friends used to call him “Junkie”, because he was addicted to work in his production studio, were he spent a lot of his time.

At the same time, he put his focus on electronic dance music, playing in night clubs. In 1997 he won the Grand Prix to the best producer of house music in his home country. Some of his albums were among others Big sound of the drags, Saturday night teenage kick, Radio JXL, etc.

In 2003 he decided to move to Los Angeles, California, the city of the best film studios where he became into a great film composer. Some of his works in this field include:
  • 300: Rise of an empire (2014)
  • Divergent (2014)
  • Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
  • Deadpool (2016)
  • Batman vs Superman: Dawn to the justice (2016)
  • The dark tower (2017)
  • Tomb raider (2018)
We can’t forget his collaborations with celebrated musicians -such as Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, Depeche mode or Britney Spears-, his work for video games like The Sims, Need for speed or FIFA, and commercials for Adidas, Visa, Nike, etc.

 Tom is an active “youtuber” too. On his channel -Junkie XL- he teaches us how to compose music with a DAW (digital audio workstation), how to use a modular synthesizer (he has a huge one!) or how he did his works for films.

 He is a nice guy, who has no problem in showing us his secrets about writing music. We think he has been a good choice to open this monthly section. You can find some of his videos in this blog by clicking on the menu.

This new section is going to be a regular thing from now on.

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