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C Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

The Changes – music by Paddy Kingsland and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

6 min read

Order this CDOriginally released for Record Store Day 2018 and then given a general release in digital form, this album is the complete soundtrack composed by Paddy Kingsland (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who) of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for the 1975 post-apocalyptic series The Changes. Filmed in 1973 but held for two years, as if the BBC thought that the political and societal troubles that might coincide with the show’s subject matter would fade with time, The Changes is an evergreen. It’s tangibly a product of the early 1970s, and yet it has aged like fine wine. And so has its music.

At least on paper in the BBC Enterprises sales material, The Changes is a children’s adventure series, but hey, you know the drill: much like ’70s contemporaries like Children Of The Stones and Pertwee/Letts/Dicks-era Doctor Who, there’s a lot more to it than that. The story involves a piercing sound that suddenly renders all machinery inert, a “bad sound” that somehow traveled through the electrical wires criss-crossing the U.K. Now everyone – including the show’s lead character, adventurous pre-teen Nicky – has an aversion to “the bad wires” and to anything mechanical, be it a car, a television, a radio, or a toaster oven. The world is plunged back into a dark age of superstition, something that surely could only happen in a speculative fiction piece like this, and yet Nicky knows that the world used to be different – and better – and tries to find out what happened, with the help and protection of a band of traveling Sikhs, who find themselves unwelcome in a world that has suddenly grown paranoid of progress, outsiders, and anything different. Who would do this, what would they stand to gain from it, and can it be reversed? Yes, definitely just fiction.

Kingsland’s later work with the Radiophonic Workshop includes both the radio and television incarnations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and almost ridiculously memorable episode scores for Doctor Who (among them Logopolis, Castrovalva, Full Circle, Mawdryn Undead, and others). One of the things that makes him the most musically distinctive voice in the Workshop is that he never relies entirely on electronic sound. He has a gift for instantly-catchy earworm melodies, almost-funky basslines, and marrying purely electronic sounds with well-judged acoustic elements. That’s his style in a nutshell, and it’s dialed up to 11 for The Changes.

The main theme, a compact morsel of percussion, synths, a succession of dissonant chords, and a funky synth-clavinet line, is practically the least memorable thing on the album. The second track establishes a world-weary theme for Nicky as she sets out on her travels. The series is something of a travelogue, filmed entirely on location (and entirely on film, a rarity for the BBC in the early ’70s), and the music rises to meet that challenge. There’s time for the various themes to breathe and develop, and incidentally, that makes the album a great listen as well. There are some short tracks, sure, but for the most part the music is given ample time to explore themes and their variations. The family of Sikhs who accompany Nicky arrive in “A Special Kind Of People” with added percussion and a lovely persistent sitar presence.

A combination of the Sikh theme and Nicky’s traveling theme becomes the show’s end credit music, which frequently changed throughout the ten episodes as new plot developments arose. Unique to the various formulations of the end credit music is a heraldic, noble brass statement that concludes in a troublingly unresolved chord progression, sort of an unspoken musical “to be continued” – and when I mention these various instruments, they’re the real deal, not synthesized approximations. Kingsland’s use of synths throughout justify the Radiophonic Workshop’s name on the cover, but this album is more Kingsland unleashed than it is purely radiophonic. All of it is anchored by Kingsland’s almost supernatural ability with a bassline, which simultaneously provides some propulsion and rhythm and opens up interesting harmonics with the other instruments.

4 out of 4When I binge-watched The Changes for the first time sometime around 2016, I strongly suspected that I was hearing Paddy Kingsland’s greatest musical achievement with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, even though the rest of the sound mix was competing for prominence at times. Hearing this album without the rest of the show’s sound mix and dialogue strongly confirms that suspicion. Even if you’ve never heard of the show for which this music was made, I give this soundtrack a hearty recommendation. It stands up very well to listening without the context of the TV series, and between this and his handful of other memorable music highlights, I’ll never understand how Paddy Kingsland managed to avoid a huge career and worldwide recognition. Everything he’s done – including The Changes’ fascinating fusion of synths, electric bass, and layers of ethnic instrumentation – has stuck with me for a very long time, and the soundtrack as a standalone experience was long overdue.

By the way, the noise from the “bad wires” – three piercing, discordant minutes’ worth of it! – is included as a bonus track, but in controlled laboratory testing, it failed to incite me to smash up the electronic device from which it emanated. So there’s that, at least.

    Episode 1: The Noise
  1. The Changes Opening Titles (0:35)
  2. Home Alone (Nicky’s Theme) (3:05)
  3. Everybody’s Gone (2:07)

    Episode 2: The Bad Wires

  4. A Note On The Door (1:14)
  5. A Special Kind Of People (3:34)
  6. Your Ways Are Not Our Ways (1:08)
  7. The Changes Closing Titles (56″ Version) (1:01)

    Episode 3: The Devil’s Children

  8. The Bad Wires (0:58)
  9. The Barns (1:36)
  10. Life On The Farm (1:45)
  11. The Devil’s Children (2:17)
  12. The Village Court (0:56)

    Episode 4: Hostages!

  13. The Forge (1:34)
  14. Hostages! (4:48)
  15. Rescue (5:43)
  16. The Changes Closing Titles (67″ Version) (1:10)

    17. Episode 5: Witchcraft

  17. The End Of The Rescue (0:30)
  18. A Farewell (0:43)
  19. A Journey, And Arrival at Henley Farm (3:21)

    Episode 6: A Pile Of Stones

  20. Sentence Of Death (3:07)
  21. Leaving Shipton (3:09)

    Episode 7: Heartsease

  22. Heartsease (4:09)
  23. At Purton Bridge (1:10)
  24. The Changes Closing Titles (63″ Version) (1:07)

    Episode 8: Lightning!

  25. After The Bridge (1:59)
  26. Michael And Mary (2:09)

    Episode 9: The Quarry

  27. Necromancer’s Weather (3:19)
  28. The Quarry (2:46)
  29. Mr Furbelow (0:59)
  30. Qui Me Tangit, Turbat Mundum (2:39)
  31. The Changes Closing Titles (48″ Version) (0:53)

    Episode 10: The Cavern

  32. Into The Rock (2:59)
  33. The Cavern (1:53)
  34. Merlinus Sum (0:19)
  35. It’s All Over (1:40)
  36. Everything’s Alright Again (End Titles) (0:49)

    Bonus Tracks

  37. Nicky’s Theme (Stereo Demo) (1:35)
  38. Theme 2 Demo (1:47)
  39. The Noise (3:10)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: April 20, 2018
Total running time: 1:17:47

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Categories
1977 2022 C Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Children Of The Stones – music by Sidney Sager

4 min read

Order this CDI discovered that there was a soundtrack for this 1977 children’s fantasy/horror series almost by accident, and when I recovered from the shock that it existed, it was an instant purchase. The opening theme of Children Of The Stones by itself is a classic of TV/film scoring in the horror genre: just the music is scary as hell, starting out with a hush of pleasant but eerie choral voices that becomes disharmonious, breaks up into chanting instead of singing, and then crescendoes in a massed scream before resuming singing something more akin to what most people would think as music. If you’re not ready for it, it’ll scare the piss out of you. That single piece of music is responsible for about 80% of the effectiveness of the show as a piece of scary television.

The soundtrack album then turns into a horror of its own for completely different reasons.

As was often the case with this particular genre of television – at which regional UK broadcaster Harlech Television (shortened to HTV) excelled – the composer behind the music was Sidney Sager, ho also contributed music with choral elements to such HTV children’s series as King Of The Castle and Into The Labyrinth, both utilizing the Ambrosian Singers, who are front-and-center in the Children Of The Stones score. With the story’s heavy reliance on druid lore, the singers spend as much time chanting as they do singing, and yes, the opening titles are not the only place that they reach a fever-pitched shriek. It’s amazingly unnerving music. (And this show was for kids?)

That’s the good horror. The bad horror began to set in with only the second track. At the end of “Mrs. Crabtree Views The Painting”, as the singers again reach an unnerving climax, there’s the sound of broken glass. Because in the show, Mrs. Crabtree drops an entire tea tray as the creepy painting that sets off the story gets into her head. But…that would mean…

Oh no. Yes. It means what you think it does. Later tracks include footsteps, doors opening/closing, rustling graas, rushing wind, even occasional non-musical voices. Yes, they just took the sound from the DVD, did some EQ, and released that as a download and a pricey limited-edition vinyl album with a poster of the aforementioned painting.

I could’ve pulled the DVD off the shelf and done that myself. And since I already bought the DVD, it wouldn’t have cost me seven-and-a-half quid for the privilege. Hell, I probably could’ve run it through some demixing software to at least attempt to remove the extraneous sounds from the show.

It’s not too much to expect that the original scoring tapes might still exist from a show of this vintage; look at the numerous releases of Doctor Who music from the ’60s and early ’70s, or even the BBC’s release, several years ago, of the complete score from the 1975 children’s fantasy series The Changes, also presented without the rest of the show’s sound mix intruding. There may be some notes about the production process of this album in the liner notes of the LP; I don’t know, I only got the download, and there was no warning that this was what the soundtrack collecting world refers to as “archival sound” – dialogue or effects stems that were part of the only available source media for the music. Yes, that is a thing that happens, on official releases, but I’m accustomed to labels warning me about that being the case.

2 out of 4Sidney Sager’s music is stunning, scary work – it’s the only reason this release gets as much as a two-star rating. But the lack of warning that this is basically an audio presentation of the musical moments of the show as-aired is infuriating. Let the buyer/listener beware.

  1. Children of the Stones (Opening Title) (1:15)
  2. Mrs Crabtree Views the Painting (0:06)
  3. Someone Who Is Happy (0:11)
  4. Matthew and Dai (0:35)
  5. Adam Touches the Stones (0:27)
  6. Circle of Fear (I Can’t Wait) (0:17)
  7. Nobody Ever Leaves (0:12)
  8. Being Alone (0:32)
  9. Within the Painting (0:33)
  10. Matthew’s Accident (1:29)
  11. Serpent in the Circle (0:46)
  12. Tom Browning (0:30)
  13. Looks, It’s Jimmo (0:16)
  14. Narrowing Circle (1:14)
  15. Premonition of Dr Lyle (0:22)
  16. Dai Casts the Bones (1:55)
  17. The Barber Surgeon’s Amulet (1:17)
  18. Never, It’s Mine (0:20)
  19. He’s Not There (0:35)
  20. Anger the Fire (0:27)
  21. Such Power (0:23)
  22. It Is Time (0:43)
  23. Squaring the Circle (1:16)
  24. We’ve Lost Them (0:18)
  25. Go Now and Be Happy (0:29)
  26. I’ll Return This at the Same Time (0:34)
  27. We’re Trapped (0:07)
  28. The Circle Is Complete (0:34)
  29. The Circle Is Broken (1:19)
  30. Children of the Stones (End Titles) (0:31)

Released by: Trunk Records
Release date: October 20, 2022
Total running time: 19:33

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2017 C Cosmos Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Volume 2 – music by Alan Silvestri

3 min read

Order this CDContinuing the four-volume set of music from the updated Cosmos series, Volume Two gives a very strong impression that all four volumes should be heard together. The main theme from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey doesn’t appear on the second volume, which instead kicks things off with “S.O.T.I.”, the theme for the show’s Ship of the Imagination, which starts out playfully before embarking on a more adventurous theme. Some tracks, such as “Interspecies Partnership” and “Living In An Ice Age”, almost sound like horror film material, as the music continues to do some heavy lifting in conveying the drama behind what would otherwise be somewhat dry scientific descriptions. There are some lovely lyrical pieces as well, including “Natural Selection”, “Family Tree”, and “You And Me And Your Dog”.

There are hints of the show’s main theme in “Titan”, but the real heart of this second volume is a recurring, percolating theme first heard in “The Eye”. Though that piece eventually simmers down into something almost resembling Paddy Kingsland’s music from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, that rapid-fire theme reasserts itself forcefully in “Tardigrades” a few tracks later. It almost evokes clockwork with its precision – it’s kind of mesmerizing, and it’s really this volume’s “recurring theme”. Of the many themes that recur throughout the series’ music, this really emerges near the top for me.

There are three pieces presented on CD that weren’t included in the original digital release: “Interstellar Clouds”, another theme played out with clockwork precision and hints of the main theme from the series, the big-screen drama of “The Hardships Of Space”, and an alternate take on “S.O.T.I.” (with a slightly different middle section) to bring things full circle.

4 out of 4As much as one might expect the music for a science documentary to end up with well-intentioned synthesizer acrobatics (I still love you, Space Age), one of the best things about all of the music from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is that… it simply wasn’t that. Especially with Seth MacFarlane and his love of real live music on board, the budget and the resources were allocated to getting a full orchestra to play this stuff on the epic scale warranted by, well, the story of all life everywhere. The resulting lush music – and, one hopes, an increase in scientific literacy – are the real lasting gifts of this series.

  1. S.O.T.I. (1:29)
  2. You And Me And Your Dog (2:27)
  3. Interspecies Partnership (2:23)
  4. Artificial Selection (3:09)
  5. Living In An Ice Age (1:08)
  6. Genetic Alphabet (2:41)
  7. Natural Selection (3:05)
  8. Family Tree (3:49)
  9. The Eye (3:55)
  10. Theory Of Evolution (2:52)
  11. The Permian Period (5:11)
  12. Tardigrades (1:53)
  13. Titan (2:57)
  14. The Story Of Life (3:08)
  15. 4 Billion Years Of Evolution (1:03)
  16. Interstellar Clouds (3:17)
  17. The Hardships Of Space (1:39)
  18. S.O.T.I. – Alternate (1:29)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: September 11, 2017
Total running time: 48:20

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2014 2017 C Cosmos Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Volume 1 – music by Alan Silvestri

3 min read

Order this CDWhen the original Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, premiered in 1980 on PBS, it was tracked with a hand-picked combination drawing from the classical orchestral repertoire and the synth-heavy works of Vangelis. It defined the show beautifully. Doing something even remotely resembling Cosmos in the 21st century, however, has a whole different list of demands. Photorealistic CGI allows actual images from space to be incorporated into beautifully choreographed and detailed simulations of space. It’s movie quality. The music should probably step up and meet that definition of epic as well.

With that in mind, it was no surprise to see veteran Hollywood composer Alan Silvestri selected to bring the new Cosmos to musical life. Silvestri’s score for the film version of Sagan’s Contact was one of the highlights of that movie, and if you understand the musical vocabulary of awe and wonder that his music brought to Contact, you’ll dig this, for that’s the same sensibility he brings to the 2014 series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Four generous albums of music from the series have been available digitally for some time, but this is their first official CD release, and the discs bring previously unreleased material with them (the music from a sequence covering the planet Venus and an alternate version of the deceptively gentle main theme).

The 21st century Cosmos has a sense of awe and wonder worthy of the original, but its more filmic sensibilities get a wide-screen musical treatment that would do any sci-fi movie proud. It’s unapologetically bold and adventurous, and very much the real thing – a real orchestra and choir are embellished, but very seldom overtaken, by electronics. Each episode featured at least one lavishly animated tale of a pioneering scientific mind, and Silvestri deftly navigated the narrow strait between “music from the part of the world that person was from” and “ethnic musical stereotypes”, usually by erring primarily on the side of scoring it like straight-up live-action drama. This volume’s suite of music from the sequence depicting the life of Giordano Bruno is really its emotional center, an island of human drama in an album of what might otherwise be considered “space music”.

4 out of 4But there’s nothing bland here – every moment of music has mystery and drama propelling it, much of it originating from that first episode in which Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us that we’re all starstuff. This soundtrack would be equally at home on the flight deck of Tyson’s “ship of the imagination”, or on the bridge of any movie or TV starship you care to name. Best of all, it accompanies a story much more grounded in reality. Just a beautiful listen, and if the existing downloads are any indication, the later volumes are even better.

  1. Cosmos Main Title (1:38)
  2. “Come With Me” (2:00)
  3. “The Cosmos Is Yours” (6:23)
  4. Virgo Supercluster (4:05)
  5. Multiverse (2:10)
  6. Giordano Bruno (2:39)
  7. Revelation of Immensity (3:57)
  8. The Inquisition (3:35)
  9. The Staggering Immensity of Time (2:11)
  10. Star Stuff (4:12)
  11. Chance Nature of Existence (3:27)
  12. New Years’ Eve (3:49)
  13. “Our Journey Is Just Beginning” (3:04)
  14. Venus (2:50)
  15. Cosmos Main Title – Alternate (1:54)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: June 13, 2017
Total running time: 48:31

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1987 2012 C Soundtracks Television

Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The Future

Captain Power And The Soldiers Of The FutureRemembered these days primarily as a controversy magnet representing an ugly peak in the debate over children’s TV and toy tie-ins, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was also an attempt on the part of its creators to craft a mature sci-fi saga for kids. Sadly, this goal was often elbowed out of the way by Mattel demanding lengthier sequences to trigger features of their quasi-interactive Captain Power toys, and despite actually achieving a lot of what they set out to do, the writers were justifiably disgruntled at the thought of serving two masters. (The story editor, J. Michael Straczynski, ditched Captain Power to take a similar position on the writing staff of an relaunch of the decidedly more adult Twilight Zone.). Captain Power’s meditations on duty, honor, freedom, rights, and war are seldom remembered as often as the series’ status as a half-hour toy commercial.

Also seldom remembered is that this show had a great soundtrack. Assembled by Gary Guttman from his master tapes, the Captain Power soundtrack CD is a testament to the series’ surprising grab for orchestral grandeur befitting its mature storytelling style. Once past the predictably bombastic series theme, the Captain Power soundtrack is ful of startlingly effective dramatic music, wearing its John Williams/Star Wars influence on its sleeve unashamedly. The contrast to the usual kids’ show fare is huge: some shows from this era seemed to repeat a small handful of synth-and-drum-machine loops and call it a day. That Guttman and the producers of Captain Power were willing to go further is impressive, and so is this soundtrack as a result.

The “Love Theme” is more sweeping and romantic than you’d expect from a half-hour live-action kids’ series about a dystopian, cyborg-ruled future, straddling the line between John Williams and James Horner at his best, while action pieces like “Big Battle”, “Soaron”, “Pursued” and “Air Battle”, while obviously performed by a smaller ensemble than the average Star Wars soundtrack, still pack a powerful punch thanks to skillful orchestration. Some of the quieter cues are the bigget revelations here (my personal favorite is the short, sweet, and mysterious “Eerie Mood 3”).

A great many of the album’s tracks are under a minute, which brings us to perhaps the most amazing thing about the Captain Power soundtrack: Guttman composed and recorded all of the music without any footage in hand, essentially creating a library of shorter cues that could be strung together by the series’ music editor as needed. The number of tracks exceeding two minutes in length can be counted on one hand. But it’s a testament to the composer’s work (and, admittedly, the music editor’s work) that the material was composed with the actual footage sight unseen, and yet seems to fit it perfectly.

3 out of 4And all this for an underbudgeted half-hour show about a war against cyborg oppression (and, yes, about a line of toys too). This soundtrack is an impeccable reminder of an era when orchestral scoring for TV, esven kids’ TV, wasn’t the rarity that it is now.

  1. Captain Power Opening (1:32)
  2. Get Ready (1:45)
  3. Love Theme (1:53)
  4. Order this CDBig Battle (2:12)
  5. Sad Heroic Vamp (0:32)
  6. Pursued (1:37)
  7. Jumpship 1 (0:19)
  8. Air Battle (1:41)
  9. Sad Heroic (1:45)
  10. Bursting Through (1:17)
  11. Abandoned Streets (1:14)
  12. Stinger (0:22)
  13. Quiet Buildup (2:25)
  14. Soaron (0:30)
  15. Pursued Vamp (0:41)
  16. Eerie Mood 2 (0:25)
  17. Action Filler 1 (0:14)
  18. Captain Power Beware (0:21)
  19. Land Battle (1:23)
  20. Volcania (0:17)
  21. Sneaking Around (1:24)
  22. Eden 2 (0:47)
  23. Captain Power Vamp (0:32)
  24. Beware Of Dread (0:23)
  25. Power On – Alternate (0:19)
  26. Light Moment (0:31)
  27. Eerie Mood 3 (0:26)
  28. Captain Power To The Rescue (0:53)
  29. Action Filler 2 (0:34)
  30. Quiet Buildup Alternate (0:35)
  31. Action Filler 3 (0:13)
  32. Triumphant Battle (2:02)
  33. End Of Act (0:16)
  34. Captain Power End Title (1:04)
  35. Castle Volcania 2 (0:44)
  36. Seconds Ticking (1:11)
  37. Serious – Somber (2:16)
  38. Flame Street (0:58)
  39. Dark Mist (1:53)
  40. Captain Power Opening: 2012 Version (1:26)

Released by: Goddard Film Group
Release date: September 25, 2012
Total running time: 40:52

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1984 2010 C Film Soundtracks

Cloak & Dagger – music by Brian May

3 min read

The early ’80s saw a spate of video-game-oriented films, trying to cash in on the public’s seemingly unstoppable infatuation with that new entertainment medium. Cloak & Dagger, starring Henry Thomas (still a fixture in the public eye thanks to his then-recent appearance in E.T.) and Dabney Coleman (the king of early ’80s video game / computer flicks, having already appeared in WarGames, was easily the most kid-oriented of the first wave of video game movies.

For some reason, my memory had cheated a little bit in recalling this movie’s music. I hadn’t actually seen Cloak & Dagger since just a few years after its release, and for some reason I had it in my head that the soundtrack was somewhat similar to the music from WarGames, which was constantly on-edge and, thanks to some synth work, hip to the audience’s expectations from a movie featuring computers as a key plot point. In fact, Cloak & Dagger – getting its first soundtrack release thanks to Intrada – is nothing like that. For a supposedly tech-oriented movie, it’s startling just how old-school the soundtrack is.

Scored by the late Australian composer Brian May (not Queen’s lead guitarist, who’s still alive and dividing his time between astronomy and being the world’s best axe man), Cloak & Dagger‘s old-fashioned, strictly-orchestral scoring is almost out of place: it skews a lot older than the rest of the movie. Even the way the music was arranged, and the way the recording sessions were miked and mixed, makes the music sound older than the 1980s – in a strange way, it sounds like a recording from the ’60s or early ’70s, and not like the music from a kiddie techno-thriller at all. It’s nice music, but just seems strangely unhip next to the images it accompanies.

The action sequences fare better than the more contemplative moments. Coleman’s swaggering hero Jack Flack gets a nice signature theme, which gets turned around into a nice reveal toward the end of the movie when Thomas’ character realizes that it’s not military superhero/action figure Jack Flack, but his father (also played by Coleman), who has come to his rescue.

Cloak & Dagger could probably have done with a punchier, “younger” soundtrack, and it’s a great example of how misremembered a piece of movie history can be. As always, Intrada packs the accompanying CD booklet with a wealth of information about the movie (including something I’d missed: the plot of Cloak & Dagger is so close to Hitchcock’s Rear Window that the writer of the short story upon which Rear Window was based actually gets a story credit for Cloak & 2 out of 4Dagger). Aside from a mostly-forgotten arcade game by Atari (whose attempt at a movie product placement for an upcoming Atari 5200 Cloak & Dagger game – represented here by footage of the arcade game – turned out to be a product placement for vaporware), this may be the only other merchandise Cloak & Dagger has ever inspired. It’s a decent soundtrack… for the wrong movie.

  1. Jack Flack Arrives (0:59)
  2. The Tower Of Life (3:33)
  3. Help, Police!… Murder (4:13)
  4. Return From The Mission (5:32)
  5. I Guess We’re On Our Own (1:38)
  6. Davey Gets Away (1:20)
  7. Run, Davey, Run (3:34)
  8. Nightmare Drive (5:05)
  9. Parking Lot Chase (3:56)
  10. We Gotta Save Kim! (1:06)
  11. Back To The River (2:01)
  12. Run Like The Wind (1:55)
  13. The Cross Fire Gambit (4:42)
  14. I Don’t Wanna Play (1:10)
  15. The End Of Childhood (2:21)
  16. Airport Prelude (1:28)
  17. Davey A Hostage! (1:22)
  18. Captain Jack Flack (6:49)
  19. Cloak & Dagger (End Credits) (3:49)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 57:13

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Categories
2009 Battlestar Galactica C Soundtracks Television

Caprica – music by Bear McCreary

4 min read

Order this CDI’m reviewing this slightly out of order, as it was released a few months before the Battlestar Galactica Season 4 soundtrack (which runs a damn good chance of being the best film music release, by anyone, in any medium, anywhere this year), and indeed I listened to Caprica before the Galactica soundtrack arrived. I held back on a review to see if a closer listen to both at the same time would reveal more connecting tissue, musically speaking, than there appears to be at first.

On reflection, though, I’m not sure why I’d expect there to be; Capirca isn’t Galactica. It’s a landlubber show as opposed to its spacefaring forebear, serving as a prequel to Galactica, with its events taking place over half a century before the destruction of the twelve colonies. Musically, it’s more traditional than Galactica; as the show takes place in a society that’s modeled somewhat on post-WWII America (except that there are maglev trains and interplanetary travel, and racial and political tensions to go with them), the music is in a minimalist orchestral vein. The exotic instrumentation of Galactica is replaced with a more traditional string ensemble here.

That’s not to say that there aren’t hints of Galactica here and there; a few tracks in particular jump out as being the very connecting tissue I was looking for. Galactica’s wall-of-percussion sound returns for three key scenes: “Terrorism On The Lev”, “Zoe Awakens” and “Cybernetic Life Form Node”. All three of these cues accompany pivotal moments that are just the beginning of putting Caprica on the road to hell, and two of them involve the very first Cylon.

There’s a subtler reference back to Galactica with the instrumentation of “Monotheism At The Athena Academy”, hinting at the “ancient” Mediterranean sound of Caprica’s predecessor, and an overt reference in “The Adama Name”, which is a warm, string-based rendition of “Wander My Friends”, a song from Galactica’s first season which became the theme for Bill Adama (not coincidentally, this music accompanies virtually the only major scene in Caprica’s pilot movie for Adama, who’s still a child at this point).

Much – if not most – of the rest of the score revolves around variations on “The Graystone Family”, the first thing you hear on the CD. And indeed that family’s story is absolutely vital to Caprica, but the funereal tone of the soundtrack here makes it all seem to blur together at times. I’m reluctant to pass judgement on the Caprica soundtrack because it is just the pilot – think about how much bearing the soundtrack from the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries has on, say, the music from the series finale. (And at the same time, if that same downer “feel” pervades the show and not just the music, I might pass on Caprica altogether.)

3 out of 4The booklet accompanying the CD gives the impression that Galactica house composer Bear McCreary wasn’t necessarily considered a shoo-in for the job on Caprica. But at the same time, there’s no reason for him to not have automatically gotten the job; in the end, Battlestar Galactica’s music was one of the best things about the show, and as the story got murkier and more depressing, the music was honestly one of the few things that kept me around at times. If the tone of the pilot movie is any indication, Caprica’s going to need him too.

  1. The Graystone Family (3:02)
  2. Terrorism On The Lev (3:15)
  3. Grieving (3:46)
  4. Lacey and Zoe-A (4:08)
  5. Cybernetic Life Form Node (3:16)
  6. Zoe’s Avatar (3:04)
  7. Daniel Captures The Code (2:29)
  8. A Tauron Sacrifice (2:46)
  9. Amanda Graystone (3:05)
  10. Joseph and Daniel (4:18)
  11. Tamara’s Heartbeat (1:42)
  12. Delivering The Message (2:56)
  13. Monotheism At The Athena Academy (3:34)
  14. Children Of Caprica (2:30)
  15. Irrecoverable Error (2:47)
  16. The Adama Name (1:39)
  17. Zoe Awakens (2:22)
  18. Caprica End Credits (3:38)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: 2009
Total running time: 54:17

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Categories
2006 C Soundtracks Television

CHiPS: Season Two – music by Alan Silvestri

CHiPS: Season Two - music by Alan SilvestriYes. You read that right. We’re talking CHiPS. Ponch and Jon. Erik Estrada and…that other guy. On motorcycles. Set to the sounds of unashamedly disco-fied music. And this is that music.

For those needing a justification, remember that Michael “Worf” Dorn guest starred in numerous episodes as a recurring fellow cop back at the precinct, and that this is a CD of music from the second season, mostly composed by Alan Silvestri, later of The Abyss, Contact and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fame. Needless to say, CHiPS represents a very early entry in Silvestri’s career, but as far as disco goes, this CD – an unlikely entry from the guys at Film Score Monthly – certainly makes it sound like he swaggered into that career with confidence.

Things open up with the main theme, which Silvestri didn’t compose, but did rearrange for his first year in residence on the series. I’d actually forgotten how brassy and fun the CHiPS theme is, and Silvestri poured on extra layers of synthesizers, drenched with a flanging effect, for his arrangement. If that’s the packaging on the outside of the box, then Silvestri’s library of score cues is exactly what’s advertised on the box: definitely ’70s, with in-your-face brass and strings backed up by a cheerful rhythm section of flanged guitar, drums, bass and synths.

Silvestri has always been on the bleeding edge of bringing synthesizers into film scoring, earning a lot of attention for being one of the first relatively big-name mainstream composers to make heavy use of the Synclavier in the late 1980s. He’s not shy about putting synthesizers front-and-center here, either. There’s also a track of music composed by Bruce Broughton, another big name these days, created for a Halloween-specific episode, which uses synths to good effect, as well as some familiar string section horror effects – all with that ’70s beat underneath it. You almost expect it to break into “Other Galactic Funk” at any second.

3 out of 4Is it cheesy? Yes, it is – but when you’ve got a big CHiPS publicity photo on the front cover of the CD’s booklet, you really shouldn’t be prepared for anything but. If you grew up with CHiPS on television, this’ll probably bring back memories of sitting in front of your grandmother’s tiny color TV, wolfing down Cheetos and Dr. Pepper. (Actually, no, that’s my childhood – get your own.)

Order this CD

  1. CHiPS Main Title composed by John Parker / arranged by Alan Silvestri (1:19)
  2. Peaks And Valleys (3:55)
  3. Family Crisis (5:44)
  4. Disaster Squad (6:22)
  5. Neighborhood Watch (3:36)
  6. High Flyer (6:18)
  7. Trick Or Treat composed by Bruce Broughton (5:59)
  8. The Grudge (5:15)
  9. The Sheik (5:48)
  10. Return Of The Turks (5:40)
  11. Supercycle (2:48)
  12. High Explosive (4:49)
  13. Down Time (2:51)
  14. Repo Man (2:15)
  15. Mait Team (4:07)
  16. Pressure Point (2:46)
  17. Rally ‘Round The Bank (2:28)
  18. Matchmakers (2:42)
  19. Ponch’s Disco (4:00)
  20. CHiPS End Credits composed by John Parker / arranged by Alan Silvestri (0:29)

Released by: Film Score Monthly
Release date: 2006
Total running time: 79:11

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Categories
1997 C Film Soundtracks

Contact – music by Alan Silvestri

3 min read

One of the most atypically-scored science fiction films of the 1990s, Contact is also yet another chapter in the long-running collaboration between director Robert Zemeckis and composer Alan Silvestri (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forrest Gump). While not as epic an ongoing partnership as, say, Spielberg and John Williams, the Zemeckis/Silvestri pairing has resulting in some fine marriages between imagery and music, and Contact may well be the best of those collaborations.

Before I get much further with my rantings about how atypical a science fiction movie score this is, it’s also worth pointing out that Contact is hardly a typical science fiction movie. It does have imagination-sparking ideas and some fine action and special effects set pieces, but it’s also a character study at its heart. So given those moments of intense action, and the even greater scenes of awe and wonder, Contact gets a surprisingly subdued musical treatment; a good chunk of the almost eight-minute-long end credits is solo piano, as are some of the other cues selected for the soundtrack album.

I did like Silvestri’s equally low-key moments of menace and revelation, however: “The Primer”, which plays during one of the movie’s most pivotal moments, is one of those cues that just opens up like a flower at a certain point, introducing a slithering, arpeggiating synth motif that shows up a few other times in conjunction with the aliens’ message and technology. That sound weaves its way in and out of what is otherwise a much more acoustic, orchestral score, and while it makes for a noticeable contrast, it’s subtle enough to never quite become jarring.

When the opportunity arrives to do big action scenes, Silvestri doesn’t hold back – “Ellie’s Bogey”, “Good To Go” and “Test Run Bomber” are great examples of those moments, even if they’re not necessarily the heart of the movie or its music.

Overall, it’s probably not quite what you’d expect, but the same could be said of the movie itself. (And for all 4 out of 4those who have written me over the years to tell me that Contact the movie bears almost no resemblence to “Contact” the novel, I get the message, thanks.) If not one of the best – that’s really subjective – it’s certainly one of the most interesting SF film scores of the late 1990s, and I recommend it at least for that.

Order this CD

  1. An Awful Waste Of Space (1:43)
  2. Ellie’s Bogey (3:25)
  3. The Primer (6:21)
  4. Really Confused (1:18)
  5. Test Run Bomber (4:27)
  6. Heart Attack (1:31)
  7. Media Event (1:25)
  8. Button Me Up (1:19)
  9. Good To Go (5:11)
  10. No Words (1:42)
  11. Small Moves (5:35)
  12. I Believe Her (2:32)
  13. Contact – End Credits (7:59)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1997
Total running time: 44:31

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Categories
1995 C D Doctor Who Literary Soundtracks

Cybertech Part II: Pharos

3 min read

An interesting and somewhat obscure release, Pharos is the second collection of musical atmospheres by Cybertech (a.k.a. Michael Fillis and Adrian Pack). The two Cybertech CDs share a common thread: they try to evoke the atmosphere of past eras of Doctor Who music and, at the same time, pay tribute to what was the only source of new Who in the early 90s, Virgin Publishing’s Doctor Who: The New Adventures novels. In a way, Cybertech’s works are rather like the Doctor Who equivalent of the infamous Star Wars soundtrack-to-a-book release Shadows Of The Empire. Pack and Fillis composed original scores for specific scenes of some of the books (with the relevant passages quoted with permission in the CD’s lavishly illustrated booklet), while other adventures are given a score more evocative of a general mood, and some are accompanied by original, non-novel fiction. A few pieces unrelated to any specific book are dotted throughout the disc as well.

Lending the proceedings more of a stamp of Who authenticity are brief cameo appearances by Sylvester McCoy and the late Jon Pertwee, and their respective fellow time travelers Sophie Aldred and Caroline John. McCoy and Aldred’s appearances are “in character” as the Doctor and Ace, even though they each only speak a handful of lines of dialogue in their respective tracks. On the other hand, Jon Pertwee and Caroline John don’t seem to be playing the roles of the third Doctor and Liz Shaw, but instead act as narrators delivering the overall mood in the album’s opening and closing tracks. Mark Gatiss also makes a vocal appearance for the musical theme to his own novel, “Nightshade”.

And the music itself? Pack and Fillis toy around with the Doctor Who sounds of both the 70s and 80s, and nail some of the best approximations of those eras’ moods I’ve heard. Some of the non-story-specific pieces pick up the pace a little bit with more of a dance beat, but nothing terribly incongruous. It’s all very atmospheric, 4 out of 4and right in line with where the music of Doctor Who left off when the series vacated the small screen.

So, overall, what do I think of Pharos? I think Big Finish Productions should really be talking to these guys about joining their rotating cast of composing characters. They’re that good.

  1. Precipice (1:45)
  2. The Pharos Project (3:12)
  3. Time’s Crucible (3:15)
  4. Prometheus Bound (6:45)
  5. Prometheus Unbound (2:50)
  6. First Frontier (3:45)
  7. Yeti (9:15)
  8. Iceberg (8:00)
  9. Nightshade TV Theme (4:20)
  10. Trevithick’s Monsters (5:55)
  11. Interstitial Time: A Static Vortex (1:20)
  12. Legacy (3:20)
  13. Type 40 (3:20)
  14. Master Mind (10:30)
  15. Cyberia (4:45)
  16. Wavelength (2:00)

Released by: Jump Cut Records
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 75:25

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