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We caught up with 2025 winner Jack Chown, who took home Best Re-Record in a Series or Programme Trailer for his striking reimagining of Sweet Caroline in the Touching Hands trailer.
Jack reflects on how that recognition from his peers reshaped perceptions of his craft, opened new creative doors, and reinforced the value of thoughtful, detail-driven work. From breaking down a globally recognised anthem to rebuilding it with tension, restraint and originality, his process is a reminder that standout work often comes from taking risks and pushing creative boundaries….
MASA: Winning Best Re-Record in a Series or Programme Trailer at the 2025 Music+Sound Awards for the Touching Hands trailer was a huge industry nod. Reflecting on the year since that win, what has this specific recognition from your peers meant for you and the team at Thought Collective?
JACK: Honestly, it still feels a little surreal. Re-Records sit in this interesting middle ground in the industry – they’re not original composition, but they’re absolutely not passive either. You’re taking something that already exists and has its own sense of cultural value, and trying to make it feel completely new without breaking what made it work in the first place. Getting recognition specifically for that craft felt meaningful, because I think it’s sometimes undervalued /overlooked.
For Thought Collective as a creative studio, it opened some doors we hadn’t knocked on before. We had conversations off the back of it that wouldn’t have happened otherwise – people who suddenly saw us in a different context. But I think what I value most is the internal confidence it gave the team. We’re a small, boutique operation; we do everything with real intention. Being acknowledged at that level was a reminder that the approach is working.
MASA: Rearranging an absolute cultural monolith like Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is an incredibly bold task. Everyone on Earth knows that track’s exact sonic DNA. What was your initial starting point for breaking down such a universally recognised, joyful anthem and reshaping it to fit the specific tone, pacing, and editorial cuts required for a high-impact trailer?
JACK: The first thing you have to do is forget what you love about it. That sounds counterintuitive, but if you go in as a fan, you’ll end up protecting things that might actually be exactly what you need to disrupt. So I started by stripping it right back to the melodic skeleton and asking: what is the emotional function of this piece of music for this particular piece of film? Not “what is Sweet Caroline,” but “what does this moment need?”
The chorus – those three hits, the audience response (“so good!”), the euphoric lift – that’s the DNA everyone knows. The question became whether to lean into that recognition or subvert it. In the context of a trailer, you’re usually building toward a peak, and a track with that kind of embedded cultural muscle memory can either work for you or against you depending on how you deploy it. We ended up finding a way to delay the gratification – holding back the elements people are waiting for, building tension through restraint, and then letting the familiar hit land with more force because you’d made them wait for it.
A lot of it lives in the production choices; the orchestration, the tempo, where you sit the vocal – it was fun playing around with those choices and where we ended up (with a minor-key version supported by a children’s choir) feels like something I haven’t heard before for a song that is so recognised / copied.
MASA: Can you give us a snapshot of your career path to date? And was there a specific project or pivotal first break that acted as the launchpad for the high-profile media work you’re doing today?
JACK: I came up through music engineering rather than straight into composition, which I think shaped how I hear and approach a score; generally starting with collecting sounds rather than transcribing notes. I trained at Oxford and the Royal Academy, then went into Abbey Road and Baltic Studios as an engineer, working across sessions with artists like MIA, Jessie Ware and Liam Gallager; and producers such as Kid Harpoon and Andrew Wyatt. That period was genuinely formative – you’re in the room watching extraordinary people make decisions about sound in real time, and you develop an instinct for what’s working emotionally before you can always articulate why.
I then moved more into composition, launching my own artist project (kiskadee) and, later on, Thought Collective as a creative studio for composers and sound designers working across film, advertising and trailers. Looking back now, I don’t feel like there was a specific project or a ‘big break’ but a series of opportunities and chance encounters that moved things along incrementally. I’ve also always tried to do a bit of everything, rather than focus too much on one sector, which makes it feel like there are a few moments in each part of what I do to reflect on – with Touching Hands being a significant moment on the advertising side of what I do as much as performing at Glastonbury was on the artistic side of what I do or scoring something like Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy for Sky Arts, way back in 2015 was significant to me on the film side of things; if that makes sense!
I also think founding Thought Collective was its own kind of inflection point. Having a studio identity gave me the framework to take on more ambitious projects and collaborate with composers I respect – it shifted the work from being reactive to being more directed. Increasingly, I’m definitely discovering that collaboration is key!
MASA: In recent years, we’ve seen a massive surge in trailers and ads opting for high-end re-records and bespoke adaptations over just licensing a track straight off the shelf. What unique narrative or emotional power does a custom re-record give a piece of content that a standard master sync simply can’t achieve?
JACK: Control, fundamentally. A master recording arrives with its own set of fixed decisions – tempo, arrangement, mix, length – and your edit has to bend around that. Whereas a re-record is a conversation between the music and the picture from the very beginning. You can breathe it in and out, hold a note a beat longer, drop into silence exactly where the film cuts. That kind of precision changes how an audience feels something, even if they can’t identify why.
There’s also something interesting about cultural familiarity. When a listener hears a track they know, there’s an automatic emotional association. A thoughtful re-record lets you redirect that association toward something new. You’re borrowing the emotional shorthand of the original and pointing it somewhere specific. That’s a really powerful tool when it works, and it’s genuinely complex craft when it’s done well. The risk of doing it badly – of it feeling cheap or derivative – is real, which is probably why the demand for people who do it ‘properly’ or bring a unique approach has grown. At least that’s what I hope!
MASA: What projects are you currently developing and what are you most excited to try next?
JACK: For me personally, the second kiskadee album is something I’m really excited about, and have just finished! The debut, A Room to Breathe, was quite inward-looking in a lot of ways – it was about stillness, breath, interior space. This one feels more outward. There’s more energy in it, and various collaborations and features which is cool. We’re hoping to release it sometime later this year.
On the installation side of things, Photo//Synthesis – the project I’ve been developing with Neal Coghlan at Studio Aszyk and in collaboration with Arthouse Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and The National Trust – has been genuinely exciting to bring into the world. It features photorealistic 3D plant and flower scans that respond dynamically to movement, with sound woven into that interaction. It sits in a space I find increasingly compelling: the overlap between ecology, perception, and participatory art. There’s more to come with that project later this year too, supported by funding from the Arts Council.
And I’m continuing to develop the film and trailer work – I’m particularly interested in longer-form scoring right now. There’s a depth of world-building available in a feature that a trailer, by its nature, can’t fully explore. That’s a space I want to move into more deliberately over the next couple of years but, at the same time I love the immediacy of short-form projects too – as always, a bit of everything!
MASA: Our thanks to you Jack for sharing your insight and experience with us. We’re excited to see what you do next – can guess that it’s going to be inspiring!
MASA: Winning Best Re-Record in a Series or Programme Trailer at the 2025 Music+Sound Awards for the Touching Hands trailer was a huge industry nod. Reflecting on the year since that win, what has this specific recognition from your peers meant for you and the team at Thought Collective?
JACK: Honestly, it still feels a little surreal. Re-Records sit in this interesting middle ground in the industry – they’re not original composition, but they’re absolutely not passive either. You’re taking something that already exists and has its own sense of cultural value, and trying to make it feel completely new without breaking what made it work in the first place. Getting recognition specifically for that craft felt meaningful, because I think it’s sometimes undervalued /overlooked.
For Thought Collective as a creative studio, it opened some doors we hadn’t knocked on before. We had conversations off the back of it that wouldn’t have happened otherwise – people who suddenly saw us in a different context. But I think what I value most is the internal confidence it gave the team. We’re a small, boutique operation; we do everything with real intention. Being acknowledged at that level was a reminder that the approach is working.
MASA: Rearranging an absolute cultural monolith like Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is an incredibly bold task. Everyone on Earth knows that track’s exact sonic DNA. What was your initial starting point for breaking down such a universally recognised, joyful anthem and reshaping it to fit the specific tone, pacing, and editorial cuts required for a high-impact trailer?
JACK: The first thing you have to do is forget what you love about it. That sounds counterintuitive, but if you go in as a fan, you’ll end up protecting things that might actually be exactly what you need to disrupt. So I started by stripping it right back to the melodic skeleton and asking: what is the emotional function of this piece of music for this particular piece of film? Not “what is Sweet Caroline,” but “what does this moment need?”
The chorus – those three hits, the audience response (“so good!”), the euphoric lift – that’s the DNA everyone knows. The question became whether to lean into that recognition or subvert it. In the context of a trailer, you’re usually building toward a peak, and a track with that kind of embedded cultural muscle memory can either work for you or against you depending on how you deploy it. We ended up finding a way to delay the gratification – holding back the elements people are waiting for, building tension through restraint, and then letting the familiar hit land with more force because you’d made them wait for it.
A lot of it lives in the production choices; the orchestration, the tempo, where you sit the vocal – it was fun playing around with those choices and where we ended up (with a minor-key version supported by a children’s choir) feels like something I haven’t heard before for a song that is so recognised / copied.
MASA: Can you give us a snapshot of your career path to date? And was there a specific project or pivotal first break that acted as the launchpad for the high-profile media work you’re doing today?
JACK: I came up through music engineering rather than straight into composition, which I think shaped how I hear and approach a score; generally starting with collecting sounds rather than transcribing notes. I trained at Oxford and the Royal Academy, then went into Abbey Road and Baltic Studios as an engineer, working across sessions with artists like MIA, Jessie Ware and Liam Gallager; and producers such as Kid Harpoon and Andrew Wyatt. That period was genuinely formative – you’re in the room watching extraordinary people make decisions about sound in real time, and you develop an instinct for what’s working emotionally before you can always articulate why.
I then moved more into composition, launching my own artist project (kiskadee) and, later on, Thought Collective as a creative studio for composers and sound designers working across film, advertising and trailers. Looking back now, I don’t feel like there was a specific project or a ‘big break’ but a series of opportunities and chance encounters that moved things along incrementally. I’ve also always tried to do a bit of everything, rather than focus too much on one sector, which makes it feel like there are a few moments in each part of what I do to reflect on – with Touching Hands being a significant moment on the advertising side of what I do as much as performing at Glastonbury was on the artistic side of what I do or scoring something like Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy for Sky Arts, way back in 2015 was significant to me on the film side of things; if that makes sense!
I also think founding Thought Collective was its own kind of inflection point. Having a studio identity gave me the framework to take on more ambitious projects and collaborate with composers I respect – it shifted the work from being reactive to being more directed. Increasingly, I’m definitely discovering that collaboration is key!
MASA: In recent years, we’ve seen a massive surge in trailers and ads opting for high-end re-records and bespoke adaptations over just licensing a track straight off the shelf. What unique narrative or emotional power does a custom re-record give a piece of content that a standard master sync simply can’t achieve?
JACK: Control, fundamentally. A master recording arrives with its own set of fixed decisions – tempo, arrangement, mix, length – and your edit has to bend around that. Whereas a re-record is a conversation between the music and the picture from the very beginning. You can breathe it in and out, hold a note a beat longer, drop into silence exactly where the film cuts. That kind of precision changes how an audience feels something, even if they can’t identify why.
There’s also something interesting about cultural familiarity. When a listener hears a track they know, there’s an automatic emotional association. A thoughtful re-record lets you redirect that association toward something new. You’re borrowing the emotional shorthand of the original and pointing it somewhere specific. That’s a really powerful tool when it works, and it’s genuinely complex craft when it’s done well. The risk of doing it badly – of it feeling cheap or derivative – is real, which is probably why the demand for people who do it ‘properly’ or bring a unique approach has grown. At least that’s what I hope!
MASA: What projects are you currently developing and what are you most excited to try next?
JACK: For me personally, the second kiskadee album is something I’m really excited about, and have just finished! The debut, A Room to Breathe, was quite inward-looking in a lot of ways – it was about stillness, breath, interior space. This one feels more outward. There’s more energy in it, and various collaborations and features which is cool. We’re hoping to release it sometime later this year.
On the installation side of things, Photo//Synthesis – the project I’ve been developing with Neal Coghlan at Studio Aszyk and in collaboration with Arthouse Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and The National Trust – has been genuinely exciting to bring into the world. It features photorealistic 3D plant and flower scans that respond dynamically to movement, with sound woven into that interaction. It sits in a space I find increasingly compelling: the overlap between ecology, perception, and participatory art. There’s more to come with that project later this year too, supported by funding from the Arts Council.
And I’m continuing to develop the film and trailer work – I’m particularly interested in longer-form scoring right now. There’s a depth of world-building available in a feature that a trailer, by its nature, can’t fully explore. That’s a space I want to move into more deliberately over the next couple of years but, at the same time I love the immediacy of short-form projects too – as always, a bit of everything!
MASA: Our thanks to you Jack for sharing your insight and experience with us. We’re excited to see what you do next – can guess that it’s going to be inspiring!
MASA: Winning Best Re-Record in a Series or Programme Trailer at the 2025 Music+Sound Awards for the Touching Hands trailer was a huge industry nod. Reflecting on the year since that win, what has this specific recognition from your peers meant for you and the team at Thought Collective?
JACK: Honestly, it still feels a little surreal. Re-Records sit in this interesting middle ground in the industry – they’re not original composition, but they’re absolutely not passive either. You’re taking something that already exists and has its own sense of cultural value, and trying to make it feel completely new without breaking what made it work in the first place. Getting recognition specifically for that craft felt meaningful, because I think it’s sometimes undervalued /overlooked.
For Thought Collective as a creative studio, it opened some doors we hadn’t knocked on before. We had conversations off the back of it that wouldn’t have happened otherwise – people who suddenly saw us in a different context. But I think what I value most is the internal confidence it gave the team. We’re a small, boutique operation; we do everything with real intention. Being acknowledged at that level was a reminder that the approach is working.
MASA: Rearranging an absolute cultural monolith like Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is an incredibly bold task. Everyone on Earth knows that track’s exact sonic DNA. What was your initial starting point for breaking down such a universally recognised, joyful anthem and reshaping it to fit the specific tone, pacing, and editorial cuts required for a high-impact trailer?
JACK: The first thing you have to do is forget what you love about it. That sounds counterintuitive, but if you go in as a fan, you’ll end up protecting things that might actually be exactly what you need to disrupt. So I started by stripping it right back to the melodic skeleton and asking: what is the emotional function of this piece of music for this particular piece of film? Not “what is Sweet Caroline,” but “what does this moment need?”
The chorus – those three hits, the audience response (“so good!”), the euphoric lift – that’s the DNA everyone knows. The question became whether to lean into that recognition or subvert it. In the context of a trailer, you’re usually building toward a peak, and a track with that kind of embedded cultural muscle memory can either work for you or against you depending on how you deploy it. We ended up finding a way to delay the gratification – holding back the elements people are waiting for, building tension through restraint, and then letting the familiar hit land with more force because you’d made them wait for it.
A lot of it lives in the production choices; the orchestration, the tempo, where you sit the vocal – it was fun playing around with those choices and where we ended up (with a minor-key version supported by a children’s choir) feels like something I haven’t heard before for a song that is so recognised / copied.
MASA: Can you give us a snapshot of your career path to date? And was there a specific project or pivotal first break that acted as the launchpad for the high-profile media work you’re doing today?
JACK: I came up through music engineering rather than straight into composition, which I think shaped how I hear and approach a score; generally starting with collecting sounds rather than transcribing notes. I trained at Oxford and the Royal Academy, then went into Abbey Road and Baltic Studios as an engineer, working across sessions with artists like MIA, Jessie Ware and Liam Gallager; and producers such as Kid Harpoon and Andrew Wyatt. That period was genuinely formative – you’re in the room watching extraordinary people make decisions about sound in real time, and you develop an instinct for what’s working emotionally before you can always articulate why.
I then moved more into composition, launching my own artist project (kiskadee) and, later on, Thought Collective as a creative studio for composers and sound designers working across film, advertising and trailers. Looking back now, I don’t feel like there was a specific project or a ‘big break’ but a series of opportunities and chance encounters that moved things along incrementally. I’ve also always tried to do a bit of everything, rather than focus too much on one sector, which makes it feel like there are a few moments in each part of what I do to reflect on – with Touching Hands being a significant moment on the advertising side of what I do as much as performing at Glastonbury was on the artistic side of what I do or scoring something like Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy for Sky Arts, way back in 2015 was significant to me on the film side of things; if that makes sense!
I also think founding Thought Collective was its own kind of inflection point. Having a studio identity gave me the framework to take on more ambitious projects and collaborate with composers I respect – it shifted the work from being reactive to being more directed. Increasingly, I’m definitely discovering that collaboration is key!
MASA: In recent years, we’ve seen a massive surge in trailers and ads opting for high-end re-records and bespoke adaptations over just licensing a track straight off the shelf. What unique narrative or emotional power does a custom re-record give a piece of content that a standard master sync simply can’t achieve?
JACK: Control, fundamentally. A master recording arrives with its own set of fixed decisions – tempo, arrangement, mix, length – and your edit has to bend around that. Whereas a re-record is a conversation between the music and the picture from the very beginning. You can breathe it in and out, hold a note a beat longer, drop into silence exactly where the film cuts. That kind of precision changes how an audience feels something, even if they can’t identify why.
There’s also something interesting about cultural familiarity. When a listener hears a track they know, there’s an automatic emotional association. A thoughtful re-record lets you redirect that association toward something new. You’re borrowing the emotional shorthand of the original and pointing it somewhere specific. That’s a really powerful tool when it works, and it’s genuinely complex craft when it’s done well. The risk of doing it badly – of it feeling cheap or derivative – is real, which is probably why the demand for people who do it ‘properly’ or bring a unique approach has grown. At least that’s what I hope!
MASA: What projects are you currently developing and what are you most excited to try next?
JACK: For me personally, the second kiskadee album is something I’m really excited about, and have just finished! The debut, A Room to Breathe, was quite inward-looking in a lot of ways – it was about stillness, breath, interior space. This one feels more outward. There’s more energy in it, and various collaborations and features which is cool. We’re hoping to release it sometime later this year.
On the installation side of things, Photo//Synthesis – the project I’ve been developing with Neal Coghlan at Studio Aszyk and in collaboration with Arthouse Jersey, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and The National Trust – has been genuinely exciting to bring into the world. It features photorealistic 3D plant and flower scans that respond dynamically to movement, with sound woven into that interaction. It sits in a space I find increasingly compelling: the overlap between ecology, perception, and participatory art. There’s more to come with that project later this year too, supported by funding from the Arts Council.
And I’m continuing to develop the film and trailer work – I’m particularly interested in longer-form scoring right now. There’s a depth of world-building available in a feature that a trailer, by its nature, can’t fully explore. That’s a space I want to move into more deliberately over the next couple of years but, at the same time I love the immediacy of short-form projects too – as always, a bit of everything!
MASA: Our thanks to you Jack for sharing your insight and experience with us. We’re excited to see what you do next – can guess that it’s going to be inspiring!