Category: 2011

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2011 Film Q Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Year

Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey

2 min read

You can probably be forgiven if the name of this movie – shown primarily in museums and other educational venues – doesn’t ring a bell. Animated in Taiwan to accompany an all-star voice cast that included the likes of William Shatner, Chris Pine, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, Brent Spiner Robert Picardo, Hayden Christensen, Jason Alexander, James Earl Jones, future Star Trek: Discovery star Doug Jones, and rookie first-time actor Neil Armstrong, Quantum Quest incorporated real-time data from a number of NASA missions that were then ongoing: Cassini, the sun-watching SOHO, Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER, Mars Odyssey, and ESA’s Venus Express and Mars Express orbiters. I’m kind of sorry I missed this one, because the real-time, interactive nature of it precludes any kind of home video release (or at best would result in a home video release robbed of its most compelling features).

But there’s the soundtrack. Shawn K. Clement (composer on several early episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer) pulls out all the stops, with the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra delivering a score worthy of a sci-fi epic (complete with theremin performed by Clement himself). With a barrage of percussion and occasional ethnic flourishes, Quantum Quest‘s score shows a bit of Battlestar Galactica influence (but then, so does a lot of other post-2005 sci-fi scoring). But it’s a very different animal, leaning more heavily on traditional 19th century orchestral influences and using the other elements as flavoring rather than foregrounding them.

4 out of 4Given the subject matter and the talent involved, it’s a bummer to have missed Quantum Quest while it was still a current concern. (Even the spacecraft upon whose data the movie relied are not all there now: Cassini, Venus Express and MESSENGER have all ended their missions by crashing into their respective planets.) The soundtrack makes quite a souvenir of both the movie and that very busy era of interplanetary exploration.

Order this CD

  1. Cassini (0:47)
  2. Anti-Matter (1:34)
  3. Sun City The Game (3:11)
  4. Opportunity To Serve (0:45)
  5. Departure Station (1:45)
  6. The Core (1:11)
  7. The Battle (1:14)
  8. Ignorant Moronic Fools (1:05)
  9. The Void (1:39)
  10. Ghost Fight (0:44)
  11. Incoming (0:55)
  12. Fate Of Trillions (2:06)
  13. Dave In Space (1:05)
  14. Fear / The War Machine (3:25)
  15. Ring City (0:35)
  16. Are You Milton? (1:18)
  17. Destroy The Dave, Destroy The Light (1:54)
  18. Cassini Commander (0:44)
  19. Flipping Switches (1:25)
  20. Destroy Me (1:02)
  21. Operation Photon Extermination (3:17)
  22. The Message / Dave Delivers (4:18)
  23. Universe Of Possibilities (2:18)
  24. The Quest (remix) (5:23)
  25. The Message / Dave Delivers (demo) (4:11)
  26. The Message (remix) (6:32)

Released by: BSX Records
Release date: September 1, 2011
Total running time: 54:23

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Categories
2011 A F Film Soundtracks

Another Earth – music by Fall On Your Sword

It’s an interesting notion, pairing a somewhat morose, navel-gazing (but still compelling) movie with a soundtrack that veers between percolating electronica and moody piano and cello, but the resulting soundtrack is an interesting new entry in the debate about electronica-as-film-score (a conversation that’s been unavoidable since Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won an Oscar with their music from The Social Network.

The main themes of the movie are laid out in two punchy pieces of electronic music, “The First Time I Saw Jupiter” and “Rhoda’s Theme”. The former isn’t a piece of music with any great variety – it stays mostly within a single chord – but it does have an insistent, almost Morse-Code-like rhythm. “Rhoda’s Theme” is more interesting musically, by far, with a repeating but long-lined tune that evolves additional layers and counterpoints, eventually including a wordless female vocal and cello. A new sound emerges in “The End Of The World”, but as it mostly consists of a wall of noise and industrial percussion, it’s difficult to classify it as a theme.

Tracks like “The House Theme” and “Naked On The Ice” are no less synthesized than the tracks mentioned above, but they achieve a more “organic” feel simply by leaving the drum machine off. “The Specialist: Am I Alone?” and “Making Contact” lean more heavily in the electronic direction, without becoming dance tracks like “Rhoda’s Theme.” “I Am Over There” and “Purdeep’s Theme” employ percussion without quite becoming rave-worthy.

Fall On Your Sword turns in a decent score, but somehow it never 3 out of 4quite fits the movie like a glove. The subtler cues are the most at home within the movie, and the more “active” music, while it’s a better stand-alone listening experience, never quite fits as well. It may be best to hear the soundtrack before the movie, and soak up the music independent of the imagery, rather than the other way around.

Order this CD

  1. The First Time I Saw Jupiter (2:54)
  2. Bob The Robot (1:12)
  3. The Specialist: Am I Alone (4:52)
  4. Naked On The Ice (1:46)
  5. Rhoda’s Theme (5:54)
  6. The House Theme (1:22)
  7. The End Of The World (1:54)
  8. Rhoda’s Application (1:37)
  9. Making Contact (1:15)
  10. I Am Over There (4:14)
  11. Purdeep’s Theme (4:22)
  12. The Cosmonaut (2:01)
  13. The Specialist: Look At Ourselves (3:59)
  14. Sonatina In D Minor by Phaedon Papadopoulos (1:18)
  15. Rhoda’s Theme / Running To John (3:50)
  16. Forgive (2:39)
  17. Love Theme (1:58)
  18. The Other You (1:43)
  19. The First Time I Saw Jupiter / End Titles (5:21)

Released by: Milan Records
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 54:11

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1984 2011 Film G Soundtracks

Gremlins – music by Jerry Goldsmith

5 min read

Order this CDHorror and comedy are two film genres that many have tried to mix, but few have managed to meld successfully. Part of the problem is that horror films tend to fall into one of two categories: so overbaked as to be almost unintentionally funny, or so repulsive as to strip even the slightest opportunity for humor out of the proceedings. If you try to add “widespread popular appeal” to the mix, you’re begging for trouble, because that all but violates the Prime Directive of making a horror flick. One of the very few movies to have landed right in the middle of that improbable Venn diagram was 1984’s Gremlins, directed by Joe Dante and produced by Steven Spielberg. Gremlins manages to be funny – and even endearingly sweet – and scary all at the same time. And as for popular appeal, the last time my son and I ventured through the toy aisle, we spotted freshly-minted, newly-produced Gremlins figures on the store shelves. Not bad for a movie that’s nearly 30 years old, even if I did have to explain that the movie that they’re from is too rich for his blood since he’s only 4 years old.

Helping to sweeten the movie’s cute moments and lend bite to the scarier scenes was an outstanding Jerry Goldsmith score. Always experimenting with unconventional instrumentation and electronics, Goldsmith was firmly into a phase of adding off-the-shelf synthesizers to the usual orchestral palette. Early samplers were also in play here, adding strange howling-cat noises and an almost-funny “Gremlin chorus” to numerous scenes where appropriate. Film Score Monthly’s 2-disc set corrects one of the longest-standing gaps in commercially-available film music by presenting the full score, alongside the remastered-for-CD “mini-album” released in 1984 which was previously the only way to hear any of the movie’s score. (As it turns out, even the barely-adequate mini-album has its charms, of which more in a moment.)

Goldsmith’s music for Gizmo, the adorable Mogwai who was the movie’s most marketable image, reinforces the adorable part,

Of course, once Gizmo’s kids have their fateful post-midnight snack, Goldsmith gets into more, well, Goldsmithian material. The first strains of the “Gremlins Rag” – heard in full in the movie’s end Gremlinscredits – are heard in an off-kilter, almost toy-piano style as Billy’s mother gets her first look at the grotesquely mutated pods. Once these hatch, all hell breaks loose and Goldsmith upends his entire toybox on us, frequently using the unearthly cat-howl sample mentioned earlier. That occurs through several vignettes early in the Gremlins’ spree of mischief, but once that becomes an all-out reign of terror that threatens to raze the entire town to the ground, the music officially goes balls-to-the-wall. “Too Many Gremlins” would be an epic orchestral music cue for any horror movie, but it helps to sell the Gremlins as a serious threat here (don’t forget, the movie was made in 1984, and its effects were limited to the state of the art of puppetry and animatronics in 1984 – the music had a lot of work to do in making the Gremlins a credible hazard). (That being said, I’m glad that Gremlins has been neither remade nor – shudder – CGI “enhanced” in the years since it was made.)

The second disc will either be a jolt of harmless ’80s nostalgia, or a collection-completer. It’s hard to trawl through theLogBook.com’s music reviews without picking up on me being a Peter Gabriel fan, and the inclusion of “Out Out” may just be that song’s first official appearance on CD, and it’s a notoriously hard-to-find piece from Gabriel’s early career, not having appeared on any of his albums to date, right in the middle of the four-year gap between Security and So. For that alone, this is one “contractually obligated re-release of the original album” (a bugbear of these classic soundtrack remasters) I’ll let them skate by with.

4 out of 4It’s amazing that so much of one of Jerry Goldsmith’s most memorable scores had to wait this long for an official release, but the sound quality and the abundance of previously unreleased material make Gremlins worth the wait.

    Disc One: The Film Score
  1. Fanfare in C / The Shop / The Little One (4:30)
  2. Late for Work (1:46)
  3. Mrs. Deagle / That Dog (2:22)
  4. The Gift (1:45)
  5. First Aid (2:17)
  6. Spilt Water (3:02)
  7. A New One (1:10)
  8. The Lab / Old Times (2:35)
  9. The Injection (2:56)
  10. Snack Time / The Wrong Time (1:49)
  11. The Box (1:24)
  12. First Aid (1:39)
  13. Disconnected / Hurry Home (1:03)
  14. Kitchen Fight (4:06)
  15. Dirty Linen (0:43)
  16. The Pool (1:07)
  17. The Plow / Special Delivery (1:16)
  18. High Flyer (2:22)
  19. Too Many Gremlins (2:06)
  20. No Santa Claus (3:27)
  21. After Theatre (1:39)
  22. Theatre Escape / Stripe Is Loose / Toy Dept. / No Gizmo (4:36)
  23. The Fountain / Stripe’s Death (5:42)
  24. Goodbye, Billy (2:56)
  25. End Title / The Gremlin Rag (4:10)

    Bonus Tracks

  26. Blues (2:17)
  27. Mrs. Deagle film version (1:27)
  28. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen (1:12)
  29. After Theatre (With “Silent Night”) (1:36)
  30. After Theatre (Without “Silent Night”) (1:36)
  31. Rabbit Rampage composed by Milt Franklyn (0:47)
  32. The Gremlin Rag full version (3:35)
  33. Gizmo’s New Song (0:35)
  34. Gizmo’s Trumpet (0:30)
    Disc Two: 1984 Soundtrack Album
  1. Gremlins…Mega Madness performed by Michael Sembello (3:52)
  2. Make It Shine performed by Quarterflash (4:11)
  3. Out Out performed by Peter Gabriel (7:02)
  4. The Gift (4:58)
  5. Gizmo (4:14)
  6. Mrs. Deagle (2:54)
  7. The Gremlin Rag (4:13)

Released by: Film Score Monthly / Retrograde Records
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 76:01
Disc two total running time: 31:25

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Categories
2011 D Doctor Who Soundtracks Television

Doctor Who Series 6 – music by Murray Gold

6 min read

It’s rare, but not unheard of, to claim to have enjoyed the music from a movie or TV show tremendously, while not enjoying the story that spawned the music. Much of the sixth season of revived Doctor Who is like that for me – the season’s reliance on, and constant referral to, the Doctor’s apparent date with death, just rubbed me the wrong way. It might’ve been a brilliant device to use if it had been the final season for the incumbent Doctor, but in this day and age the general public knows that the actor in question is contracted for several years, and won’t be bowing out at the end of his second season. All the constant refrain of the season’s already-witnessed cliffhanger did was remind me how suspense-free the whole enterprise was. It was right up there with the third season (the “Martha season”) as my least favorite year of the show’s revival.

Could I separate my noncommittal grunt of a response to the season from the music? Yes and no. Murray Gold gamely gives his all to every episode, though there’s a lot of referring back to the Doctor’s new theme established in the previous season (and on that season’s soundtrack). There’s also a lot of referring back to the style that Gold employed for much of the Davies/Tennant years – unashamed orchestral bombast, even in scenes that don’t always call for it – and less of the promising experimentation of the fifth season. The season’s opening two-parter is at its best when it’s using a slightly twangy electric guitar to signify its setting, although the “Apollo 11” cue is as good a musical theme for the launch of the first moon landing mission as I’ve ever heard. “Another Perfect Prison”, “Day Of The Moon” and “I See You Silence” are the best examples of this, recalling the best of John Barry’s James Bond scores.

The Curse Of The Black Spot and The Doctor’s Wife have outstanding music, with the latter being a standout of the season both musically and story-wise. The “Run, Sexy” cue is one of the few overt examples of the orchestra-and-electronics-joined-at-the-hip style that made the fifth season’s soundtrack such a welcome change of pace from what had come before. The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, a two-parter dealing with clones demanding independence, are more subdued to make way for dialogue.

But things crank up for the second half of the mid-season cliffhanger. (Sadly, it’s one of the silliest episodes in the series’ nearly-50-year history, but nobody’s perfect.) Let’s Kill Hitler gets a snarlingly oppressive march for the Nazi terror, a good place for orchestral bombast if there ever was one.

The second half of the season has more interesting episodes and more interesting scores. Night Terrors has a deceptively calm opening theme and sinister passages, while The Girl Who Waited is dripping with uncertainty as Amy comes to grips with a TARDIS-free reality on the run, and then learns that even that isn’t immutable. The God Complex has some very unusual keyboard/synth-heavy cues (including the recurring “muzak” motif). “Room Of Your Dreams” opens up with the kind of electronics that haven’t been heard since the original series.

Closing Time sounds almost like a sitcom in its opening track, and most of the cues presented here stay light-hearted. The music from the season closer, The Wedding Of River Song, starts with a rollicking opening track, “5:02 PM”, before becoming surprisingly quiet. One of the better tracks, “Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart”, accompanies the kick-in-the-gut meta moment where the Doctor learns of the his old friend’s death (Nicholas Courtney, the actor who portrayed the Brigadier in all of his appearances, had died earlier in the year) to a wistful tune.

Wedding finishes off by rehashing the Doctor’s theme in various ways, and includes the cue that sees out the season, accompanying the closing moments in which a portly severed head bellowing “DOCTOR…WHO?” over and over. The soundtrack itself closes by wrapping around to a cue from Day Of The Moon which, again, repeats the Doctor’s theme.

3 out of 4There’s some music here that I’ve had no desire to re-listen to, but that may well represent a failing on my part to separate music from story subject matter. Murray Gold still delivers a unique, full-blooded sounded that’s unlike anything else on TV, and the soundtracks released by Silva Screen are uncommonly generous with their double-disc set covering all 13 of the season’s episodes. Next year, I just want the stories to be as good as the music.

Order this CDDisc One

    The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon
  1. I Am The Doctor In Utah (1:44)
  2. 1969 (2:01)
  3. The Impossible Astronaut (3:16)
  4. Trust Me (1:39)
  5. Help Is On Its Way (3:59)
  6. Another Perfect Prison (0:53)
  7. Greystark Hall (2:53)
  8. Apollo 11 (0:54)
  9. Day Of The Moon (2:44)
  10. I See You Silence (1:05)

    The Curse of the Black Spot

  11. You’re A Dead Man (1:40)
  12. Deadly Siren (5:30)
  13. Perfect Reflection (1:03)
  14. All For One (3:49)
  15. The Curse Of The Black Spot (1:14)

    The Doctor’s Wife

  16. I’ve Got Mail (0:45)
  17. My TARDIS (1:30)
  18. Run, Sexy (1:56)
  19. Locked On (1:11)

    The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

  20. The Chemical Castle (1:30)
  21. Which One Is The Flesh? (1:39)
  22. Scanning Me (2:31)
  23. Ransacked (2:01)
  24. Always With The Rory (1:22)
  25. Double Doctor (2:02)
  26. Tell Me The Truth (3:48)
  27. Loving Isn’t Knowing (The Almost People Suite) (5:29)

    A Good Man Goes to War

  28. River’s Waltz (1:53)
  29. Pop (1:36)
  30. Tell Me Who You Are (1:52)
  31. Melody Pond (2:36)

Disc Two

    Let’s Kill Hitler
  1. Growing Up Fast (1:21)
  2. The Blush Of Love (1:22)
  3. Terror Of The Reich (3:05)
  4. The British Are Coming (1:07)
  5. A Very Unusual Melody (2:53)
  6. When A River Forms (1:32)
  7. Pay Attention Grown Ups (2:10)
  8. The Enigma Of River Song (3:59)

    Night Terrors

  9. Bedtime For George (2:24)
  10. Tick Tock Round The Clock (2:11)
  11. A Malevolent Estate (3:58)
  12. Night Terrors (1:19)

    The Girl Who Waited

  13. Apalapucia (1:29)
  14. 36 Years (0:55)
  15. Lost In The Wrong Stream (3:25)

    The God Complex

  16. The Hotel Prison (0:47)
  17. Room Of Your Dreams (1:21)
  18. Fear Enough (1:17)
  19. What’s Left To Be Scared Of? (1:00)
  20. Rita Praises (1:08)

    Closing Time

  21. Stormageddon, Dark Lord Of All (1:34)
  22. Definitely Going (1:56)
  23. Over Your Shoulder (1:11)
  24. Ladieswear (0:45)
  25. Fragrance (2:17)
  26. My Time Is Running Out (4:55)
  27. Tick Tock (vocal track) (1:23)

    The Wedding of River Song

  28. 5:02 PM (2:43)
  29. The Head Of An Enemy (1:15)
  30. My Silence (1:13)
  31. Brigadier Lethbridge–Stewart (2:19)
  32. Forgiven (2:31)
  33. Time Is Moving (1:31)
  34. The Wedding Of River Song (4:32)

    Day of the Moon

  35. The Majestic Tale (Of A Madman In A Box) (4:01)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 68:05
Disc two total running time: 55:27

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2011 Artists (by group or surname) F Non-Soundtrack Music

Liam Finn – FOMO

FOMOThe eagerly awaited second effort from Liam Finn was a major event for indie music in 2011; indeed, it was easier to find his new album than it was to track down the latest efforts from his famous father or uncle. I’ll Be Lightning had set the bar incredibly high, with across-the-board great songwriting, crisp (if occasionally slightly lo-fi) production, and mind-boggling performances from Finn, who played and sang every note on the album. How could he surpass that opening act?

With FOMO, it would seem that he wasn’t trying to surpass it, but to steer clear of it. As universally lauded as Lightning was, it was a pretty good bet that the follow-up wouldn’t live up to everyone’s expectations. FOMO‘s lead single, “The Struggle”, was a sonic mess compared to Lightning‘s panoramic production and gorgeous harmonies – swampy, even more lo-fi, and more suited to fans of shouty punk rock than to fans of the previous album. It was evolved from the loop-based style that Finn had adopted during endless one-man-band touring for Lightning, but was a little off-putting if you’d grown accustomed to I’ll Be Lightning‘s house style.

Fortunately, it’s also an oddball song on FOMO, which opens with four songs as good as anything on Finn’s debut album. “Neurotic World” picks up where the Lightning‘s relaxing, harmony-based pop songs left off, while “Don’t Even Know Your Name” is a jumpier rock song with improbable ascending vocals in the chorus. The one-two punch of “Roll Of The Eye” and “Cold Feet” is the strongest pair of songs on FOMO, and it’s no accident that the latter was quickly rolled out as the album’s second single with an amusing video to match. It’s with these two songs that one of Liam Finn’s major influences can be found: while his father may be aspiring to be the 21st century’s answer to Paul McCartney, Liam is exploring Lennon territory and doing so boldly. If you’ve been missing the John Lennon sound, just as melodic as McCartney but occasionally bolder and more unpredictable, you need to be following Liam Finn’s musical exploits. “Cold Feet” was one of the catchiest songs I heard in 2011.

“Real Late” has a faux-Eastern flavor to it, but loses a lot of the energy built up in the first four songs. This is followed by “The Struggle” and “Little Words”, another low-key number with some great harmonies. “Reckless” gets things back on track with a jumpy punk-pop feel that – as much as I don’t want to make the obvious comparisons – would’ve fit right into the early ’80s Split Enz setlist. “Chase The Seasons” is a pleasant, beautifully-harmonized shuffle, while “Jump Your Bones” closes things out with a bit of a free-form jam – the closest any other songs on the album gets to “The Struggle”.

4 out of 4Most of the album is a real joy, even in its quieter moments. Liam Finn continues to show expert songwriting and performance chops, and some impressive production skill to boot – bits of “Cold Feet” are almost Lindsey Buckingham-esque (perhaps even moreso than anything Buckingham himself has turned out in recent years), and that’s not a bad thing.

Order this CD

  1. Neurotic World (3:00)
  2. Don’t Even Know Your Name (4:09)
  3. Roll Of The Eye (4:40)
  4. Cold Feet (4:16)
  5. Real Late (3:11)
  6. The Struggle (2:52)
  7. Little Words (2:37)
  8. Reckless (2:36)
  9. Chase The Seasons (3:01)
  10. Jump Your Bones (5:37)

Released by: Yep Roc
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 35:59

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2011 Artists (by group or surname) G Gotye Non-Soundtrack Music

Gotye – Making Mirrors

Gotye - Making MirrorsRapidly gaining notice outside of his native Australia, Gotye is yet another one of these artists who plays and sings nearly everything himself, and produces his own material as well. Originally starting out with a heavy reliance on sampling, Gotye has managed to emerge as an musician with originality and a style not unlike something I’ve been missing for a while: it certainly doesn’t hurt that, when the man lets rip vocally, he sounds like Peter Gabriel at the height of his powers, or late-Police-era/Dream Of The Blue Turtles-era Sting. Put that voice together with a quirky approach to instrumentation and you’ve got a pretty potent brew that’s hit the top of the charts in Australia and New Zealand, and might well do some damage elsewhere in the world.

The single that brought Gotye to everyone’s notice (mine included) was “Somebody That I Used To Know”, a song that’s uncompromisingly Gabriel-esque in its execution (and the striking-but-not-flashy video’s not a million miles away from the groundbreaking stuff that a younger Pete used to do, either). Featuring a guest vocal from New Zealand jazz singer Kimbra, it’s a handy jumping-on point for those unfamiliar with Gotye. The rest of the album isn’t necessarily just like it, but with songs that walk deftly between such well-defined genres as techno and reggae, we shouldn’t be expecting any two Gotye songs to be alike: this guy clearly loves to kick down the barriers that common sense and received wisdom tell us should exist between these styles of music, and the result is startlingly original cutting-edge rock.

Much of the album is sunnier than the somewhat angsty “Somebody That I Used To Know”, but it’s no less listenable. “State Of The Art” is as close as Making Mirrors gets to revisiting “Somebody”‘s dark feel, relying on samples, spoken word, and instrumentation that doesn’t normally get paired together. It’s a stranger specimen than “Somebody”, but it’s still listenable and re-listenable. The echoing “Smoke And Mirrors” and the low-key, atmospheric “Giving Me A Chance” Gotye has some fairly daring ideas on what kind of percussion and 4 out of 4instrumentation to use – it’s innovative and unconventional, but not alienating. Which really sums up the album as a whole.

Go ahead and give Gotye a listen. I think this one’s going to wind up being on a lot of people’s “new discoveries” lists for 2012, and I for one plan to also put him on the “track down his older stuff and watch closely for what he does in the future” list.

Order this CD

  1. Making Mirrors (1:01)
  2. Easy Way Out (1:57)
  3. Somebody That I Used To Know featuring Kimbra (4:04)
  4. Smoke And Mirrors (5:13)
  5. I Feel Better (3:18)
  6. In Your Light (4:39)
  7. State Of The Art (5:15)
  8. Don’t Worry, We’ll Be Watching You (3:18)
  9. Giving Me A Chance (2:56)
  10. Save Me (3:53)
  11. Bronte (3:18)

Released by: Eleven
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 38:52

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2011 F F Non-Soundtrack Music Tim Finn

Tim Finn – The View Is Worth The Climb

2 min read

Order this CDA new solo album that put the lie to Split Enz co-founder Tim Finn’s claims that he was done with his solo career, The View Is Worth The Climb is a welcome, if slightly subdued, new chapter of that career.

A little over ten years ago, Tim Finn was railing against turning 50 by turning out throat-thrashing, experimental albums that dipped their toes into electronica and yet were still a great listen. Now staring down the barrel of 60, he’s mining his material from the almost-normal home life that eluded him for so long, and it’s translating into pleasant listening that’s solidly in middle-of-the-road rock territory rather than actively looking for barriers to break down; it’s no accident that the album’s first track is “The Everyday.”

The lead single “Going Going Gone” is an apt opening act for The View Is Worth The Climb, demonstrating the album’s acoustic-leaning sound and hopeful lyrics. The only tracks that even threaten to break the album’s mid-tempo groove are “Wild Sweet Children” and “Can’t Be Found”, and those are really only a faster flavor of mid-tempo. My two favorite tracks, “Certain Way” and “Keep Talking”, dispense a bit with the carefree tone of the rest of the album, and the latter of the two almost has a ’70s AM radio groove going on.

3 out of 4Overall, The View Is Worth The Climb is a very pleasant listen, if not necessarily one that’ll get everyone out of their seats to dance. Laid-back and relaxing, it’s a nice bonus round of new music from someone who – as of his career-spanning retrospective just a couple of years ago – said he was ducking out of the studio for a while.

  1. The Everyday (3:13)
  2. The View Is Worth The Climb (3:57)
  3. Going Going Gone (3:49)
  4. All This And More (3:59)
  5. Wild Sweet Children (4:13)
  6. Everybody’s Wrong (3:16)
  7. Can’t Be Found (3:40)
  8. Opposite Sign (4:07)
  9. People Like Us (4:06)
  10. Certain Way (3:39)
  11. Keep Talking (3:49)

Released by: ABC Music
Release date: 2011
Total running time: 41:38

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2011 G Non-Soundtrack Music Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel – New Blood

Peter Gabriel - New BloodPicking up conceptually where the too-tame orchrstral cover album Scratch My Back left off, Peter Gabriel’s follow-up is another orchestral cover album, this time drawing from Gabriel’s own back catalog. I was so unimpressed with Scratch My Back that I elected not to review it here (in a nutshell: Gabriel’s cover of Paul Simon’s “Boy In Then Bubble” was the only track I bother to revisit since the first listen), so the thought of Gabriel giving his own material the same treatment didn’t excite me: would he pick the right songs? Would he saddle them with uninspired, Scratch My Back-style arrangements?

And yet some of Gabriel’s music just oozes widescreen majesty. Surely translation into a symphonic idiom could only expand on that… right?

Well… yes and no. Gabriel is working with the same arranger with whom he collaborated on Scratch My Back here, so it’s hit or miss. “Rhythm Of The Heat” is pretty typical of the album as a whole”: for the most part it’s a competent enough translation of the original version of the song, but adds nothing new except a swap-out of rock instruments for orchestral instruments. It’s unadventurous. That description applies to many of the album’s covers. Very few songs break the mold and make me go “wow” – “Intruder” is a good example of this, taking the (already disturbing) original song and reshaping it into an unnerving piece of horror movie music – but most fall into the spineless category. Worse yet, Gabriel’s voice isn’t capable of the acrobatics he could pull off in his younger years, stripping even more of the “oomph” from the songs as he tones the vocals down along with the instruments.

If you’re detecting a recurring theme here, aside from “this could have been so much better,” you’re not imagining things. Peter Gabriel is a maker of mind-expanding, widescreen music. It’s not for nothing that he’s scored movies before (Birdy, The Last Temptation Of Christ), and it’s not for nothing that he was selected to assemble the world-music-rock-opera for London’s Millennium Dome (OVO). And yet New Blood seems to sap the blood from the same songs that made me a Peter Gabriel fan in the first place.

Maybe what this album needed was some TLC from someone who actually does soundtracks, rather than the same numbingly dull approach as Scratch My Back. Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica soundtrack fame, who is credited by a lot of that show’s fans for exposing them to new and different styles of music, would have knocked this out of the park and (excuse the pun) straight into orbit, fusing orchestral and ethnic music with ease.

2 out of 4I hope Peter Gabriel resumes his more traditional style of music for whatever he releases next. The songs selected for New Blood were enthralling in their original versions because they were so unconventional. New Blood squandered the opportunity to expand on those songs by make them not just convention, but watered-down shadows of their former selves.

Order this CD

    Disc One – Vocals
  1. The Rhythm Of The Heat (5:41)
  2. Downside Up (3:52)
  3. San Jacinto (6:58)
  4. Intruder (5:07)
  5. Wallflower (6:25)
  6. In Your Eyes (7:13)
  7. Mercy Street (5:59)
  8. Red Rain (5:15)
  9. Darkness (6:10)
  10. Don’t Give Up (6:40)
  11. Digging In The Dirt (4:57)
  12. The Nest That Sailed The Sky (3:54)
  13. A Quiet Moment (4:48)
  14. Solsbury Hill (4:35)
    Disc Two – Instrumentals
  1. The Rhythm Of The Heat (instrumental) (5:41)
  2. Downside Up (instrumental) (3:52)
  3. San Jacinto (instrumental) (7:12)
  4. Intruder (instrumental) (5:06)
  5. Wallflower (instrumental) (6:24)
  6. In Your Eyes (instrumental) (7:13)
  7. Mercy Street (instrumental) (6:00)
  8. Red Rain (instrumental) (5:15)
  9. Darkness (instrumental) (6:10)
  10. Don’t Give Up (instrumental) (6:40)
  11. Digging In The Dirt (instrumental) (4:58)
  12. The Nest That Sailed The Sky (instrumental) (3:54)
  13. The Blood Of Eden (instrumental) (6:05)

Released by: RealWorld
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 77:34
Disc two total running time: 74:30

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Categories
1988 2011 D Film Soundtracks

Die Hard (Limited Edition) – music by Michael Kamen

6 min read

Action films rarely age like fine wine. Most are so rooted in the time period they were released, it’s hard to look past the menagerie of dated cinematic conventions and appreciate them for the fun fluff that they are designed to be. Personally, it’s hard to separate Dirty Harry’s vigilante ambitions from all the sideburns, deliberate camera zooms and funky background music that so characterized ’70s action flicks. Despite their greater leap toward modernization, ’80s films don’t fare much better in the rear-view. The desperate, tortured hero of the ’70s action film was replaced by larger-than-life supermen capable of escaping any trap they were up against. Explosions were bigger, special effects were grander, and if your first name was Arnold, Sylvester, or Harrison you were guaranteed a very secure future in Hollywood. It was a refreshing change from the dreary nihilism that characterized the ’70s, but by the end of the ’80s, the new action formula was itself beginning to grow tired and predictable and not even Steven Spielberg could enliven a genre of action films that he himself helped to inaugurate with Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Then came a little movie called Die Hard in 1988.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a little movie. Bruce Willis was already an established star and the movie had some of the best production minds in Hollywood working on it. But nothing about the movie conformed to the established ’80s action-movie style. Deliberately stylized with a wry, tongue-in-check tone, Die Hard banished the superman lead in favor of an anti-hero – an everyday guy caught up in extraordinary circumstances who prevails against the villains – in this case, a group of German “terrorists”. It’s worth buying a special edition DVD just for director John McTiernan’s commentary, who talks at length about the initial resistance he faced for his unconventional, European style of directing and editing. Die Hard ultimately won over just about everyone, becoming a monstrous success and spinning off a new genre of action movies. It also further catapulted McTiernan and cinematographer Jan De Bont into stardom (De Bont would turn in equally impressive DP work on The Hunt For Red October and Basic Instinct before getting his first crack at directing with Speed in 1994).

Critical to Die Hard‘s success was its score by Michael Kamen. Embracing the movie’s dark sense of humor, Kamen loaded the score with sleigh bells and melodic nods to famous classical musical compositions and holiday tunes to give his driving, rhythmic assault a subversive sense of whimsy. As good as the score sounds when viewing the movie, it is even more astonishing in its intricacy and creativity when listening to it by itself. La-La Land’s newly remastered, two-CD set of the Die Hard score spoils you with nearly every note Kamen threw at this movie, and then some. With over 107 minutes of total music included, it’s easy to see just how musically dense Die Hard was. Today, Kamen’s Die Hard score remains a celebrated achievement in action movie scoring.

It would be easy to say the best tracks in the set are the ones where Kamen truly cuts loose, and “Assault on the Tower” is unquestionably his most thrilling composition. The music is both playful and relentless as it unscores the SWAT team’s ill-fated attack on the terrorists in the Nakatomi building. But Kamen’s real genius is how he perverts the innocent spirit of songs such as “Ode To Joy” by Beethoven and “Winter Wonderland” and “Singing In The Rain” by using them as motifs for the German terrorists (Listen: “Terrorist Entrance”). Elsewhere, there’s certainly enough pounding hyperbole to justify the more bombastic action sequences in the movie, but its Kamen’s subtlety and ability to validate some deliberately cartoonish arrangements that make the score so shockingly good. One of McClane’s early motifs is a corny steel guitar arrangement that is nonetheless highly effective in identifying him as the “cowboy” Hans sees him as (“John’s Escape/You Want Money”). Later, Kamen crafts a more fatalistic four-note motif that grounds the character more and suggests his survival is much more tenuous then we at first believed (“And If He Alters It”). In the overall, however, Kamen stays loyal to the movie’s playful spirit, using tip-toeing pizzicato and other strange electronic effects to highlight the fun cat-and-mouse movie moments.

Film score critic Jeff Bond provides an exhaustive, yet illuminating, track-by-track analysis of the score in the CD set’s liner notes. The set naturally includes tracks that weren’t included in the movie or were heavily piped down in the final mix. An example of an omission that actually benefitted the movie was an arrangement Kamen crafted for the exploding office chair McClane’s throws down the elevator shaft to thwart the terrorists. Stopping the music just as the chair begins its descent, as it does in the movie, heightens the feeling of anticipation; this effect would have been lost had the producers decided to score this section (“Assault On The Tower”).

4 out of 4As a longtime fan of the movie, I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about Die Hard. Eric Lichenfeld, in his liner notes, proved me wrong. For example, I did know Alan Rickman was attached to a quick-release harness and released to capture his shocked expression when he plummets from the tower at movie’s end, but I didn’t know the producers tricked Rickman as to when he’d fall in the 3-2-1 countdown (he was dropped on 1, rather than the expected zero!). La-La Land Records sold out their entire supply of the CD set within 72 hours of release – no doubt a testament to the enduring popularity of this groundbreaking score.

    Disc One
  1. Main Title (0:38)
  2. Terrorist Entrance (4:05)
  3. The Phone Goes Dead / Party Crashers (1:51)
  4. John’s Escape / You Want Money? (6:00)
  5. Wiring the Roof (1:51)
  6. Fire Alarm (2:04)
  7. Tony Approaches (1:41)
  8. Tony and John Fight (1:11)
  9. Santa (0:56)
  10. He Won’t Be Joining Us (3:01)
  11. And If He Alters It (2:39)
  12. Going After John (4:29)
  13. Have a Few Laughs / Al Powell Approaches (3:31)
  14. Under the Table (1:55)
  15. Welcome to the Party (1:09)
  16. TV Station (2:47)
  17. Holly Meets Hans (1:19)
  18. Assault on the Tower (8:35)
    Disc Two
  1. John is Found Out (5:03)
  2. Attention Police (3:54)
  3. Bill Clay (4:09)
  4. Shooting the Glass (1:07)
  5. I Had an Accident (2:37)
  6. The Vault (3:07)
  7. Message for Holly (1:07)
  8. The Battle / Freeing the Hostages (6:53)
  9. Helicopter Explosion and Showdown (4:00)
  10. Happy Trails (1:12)
  11. We’ve Got Each Other (1:57)
  12. Let it Snow (1:43)
  13. Beethoven’s 9th (End Credits Excerpt) (4:00)
  14. The Nakatomi Plaza (1:47)
  15. Message for Holly (Film Version) (2:46)
  16. Gun in Cheek (1:03)
  17. Fire Hose (1:00)
  18. Ode to Joy (Alternate) (2:11)
  19. Let it Snow (Source) (1:58)
  20. Winter Wonderland (Source) (1:26)
  21. Christmas in Hollis performed by Run-DMC (3:00)
  22. Roy Rogers Meets Beethoven’s 9th (Muzak) (1:36)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 49:42
Disc two total running time: 57:36

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2011 S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Star Trek Television

Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection Volume 1

8 min read

In 2010, when Film Score Monthly took a huge financial gamble on the release of a lavish 14-disc box set chronicling all of composer Ron Jones’ contributions to Star Trek: The Next Generation, the label found itself having to fight not just protests about the price tag, but the commonly held misconception that TNG’s music, from its first season to its last, was a wall of droning synth music. (In fact, the show frequently boasted one of the biggest music budgets in TV, with at least a partial orchestra booked for most episodes.)

Weighing in at three discs, La-La Land’s Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection Volume 1 devotes one disc to a broad selection of music by Dennis McCarthy, another disc to Jay Chattway, and a third disc to composers whose stints on TNG proved to be one-offs. This is far from an indication that these musicians were never invited back, however – rather, they soon became far too busy on other projects. These one-off composers include John Debney (seaQuest DSV, Doctor Who, The Passion Of The Christ), Don Davis (the Matrix trilogy) and the late Fred Steiner (the only composer to score both original TV Star Trek and TNG).

This set puts the lie to the “wall of synths” accusation often unfairly leveled at the series’ music by fans who either have a short memory or simply don’t know any better, but one of the three discs proves the critics’ point about droning.

Dennis McCarthy remains the alpha and omega of post-original-series Star Trek music: he scored the pilot episode of TNG in 1987 and the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. In between, he scored computer games, theme park rides and one movie based on the series. McCarthy’s sound is expansive, with French horns frequently sounding almost heraldic chord changes and strings arranged to give the show a widescreen, cinematic sound. While Ron Jones’ music may have been more “involved,” it’s hard to argue that McCarthy’s often comes across as more sophisticated. This first disc is full of series highlights, among them my favorite early episode, Conspiracy, which seemed on the surface like it should have spun the entire rest of the show in a different direction. Other big, brassy, noteworthy McCarthy scores include Sarek, Time Squared and The Child. Some of the cues where McCarthy eschews his usual style are among the most effective in the entire three-disc set, with The Survivors and The Big Goodbye being particularly worth a listen.

With Jones vanishing halfway through the series – having irked executive producer Rick Berman one too many times – the fourth season saw the introduction of his replacement, Jay Chattaway, who had filled in for Jones on the episodes Tin Man (already released by GNP Crescendo) and Remember Me (included here). Though those two early entries were very strong, Chattaway settled into a groove – or, perhaps arguably, a rut – where he frequently reused chord progressions. Some of Chattaway’s work used interesting, almost eastern chords, while other pieces went heavy on dissonance.

The problem with Chattaway’s disc is also the problem with his scoring of the series: the reuse of material is very noticeable. Episodes like Starship Mine, Journey’s End and I, Borg, which feature scenes that should crank up the action or the menace, are lulled into a somnolent daze where the music says “nothing is happening here.” Chattaway is at his best with more contemplative, exotic episodes as Darmok and The Inner Light. Also featured on the Chattaway disc, mainly because the fans would form a lynching party if it wasn’t included, is the “Scotty on the holodeck bridge” music from Relics.

The third disc is the most eye-opening surprise. Original series composer Fred Steiner wakes up everyone who fell asleep during the second disc with Code Of Honor, a busy, boisterous score that would’ve been right at home on Kirk’s Enterprise, and sadly represents Steiner’s only voyage aboard Picard’s Enterprise. Had Steiner stayed on, creating a McCarthy-Jones-Steiner rotation, the show would’ve benefitted greatly – and Steiner likely would’ve been spaced long before Jones. Code Of Honor boasts some great music (pity about the script it accompanied, though).

Fred Steiner sadly died just before this set was released.

Don Davis’ Face Of The Enemy isn’t quite as stunning, but compared to the state of TNG’s music circa season 6 (the almost complete lack of music from that season from either McCarthy or Chattaway is both conspicuous and telling), it stands out almost as much as Code Of Honor did in season one, with bold flourishes and a big sound. Less surprising is John Debney’s The Pegasus, which almost sounds like a McCarthy score. Debney’s score is at its best when illustrating the episode’s dark moral dilemma for Commander Riker.

Rounding things off are various arrangements of the opening titles, end credits, and even the post-fade-out “bumpers” that were seen and heard at the end of each act before the commercial break (now forever consigned to the aging memories of those of us who saw the show before it was on DVD). Two oddball arrangements of the original series theme are on disc three – the liner notes reveal that these were recorded for use on the gag reels shown at the cast and crew’s private end-of-season wrap parties.

3 out of 4This would be a four-star collection, except that a bizarre choice of Chattaway material makes the composer sound sleepy, when a different selection of episodes would’ve yielded much better music (Chain Of Command is very conspicuous by its absence). And again, La-La Land Records has found itself battling the age-old perception of TNG’s music as synthesized dreck – after an impressive initial burst of sales (including the set’s debut at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con), much of the inventory remained in the warehouse, casting doubt on the label’s promise to mine the Deep Space Nine and Voyager music vaults. This nicely-prepared collection didn’t deserve that fate, as a lot of it (chiefly discs 1 and 3) is better than even I remembered.

Order this CD

    Music by Dennis McCarthy
  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Season 3 (1:49)

    Haven

  2. Haven / Harpies / Gifts (2:06)
  3. Starship / Lost Love / Wyatt & Troi / Mom Arrives (3:26)
  4. In Practice / Tradition / Cuestosity (Not Used) / Mental Flame / Leper Colony (4:44)
  5. Petty (0:54)
  6. Desert Panorama / Proposal / Tractor Beam (2:51)
  7. Ariana / Plan to Die / Preparation / Alien Vessel / Departure / Next Adventure (7:54)

    Hide and Q

  8. Miracle Worker / Lights Out / Time Lapse (5:24)

    The Big Goodbye

  9. (You Came Along From) Out of Nowhere (3:24)

    Conspiracy

  10. Worf Down / Invader / Dinner Treats / Retching Remmick / Recovery / Cliff Hanger (7:44)

    The Child

  11. Rendezvous / Liaison (2:15)
  12. Aucdet IX / Containment Out / The Birth Growth Spurt (5:11)

    Elementary, Dear Data

  13. Stardate / Holmes’s Pipe / Holmes’s Pipe 2 (0:54)
  14. Denouement / The Challenge (0:57)

    Time Squared

  15. P-2 Arises / Hall Twins / P-2 Dies / Escape / No Repeat (6:08)

    The Survivors

  16. Music Boxer (1:03)
  17. Telepathic / Kevin’s Waltz / Unbridged (4:36)
  18. Music Box (0:39)

    Sarek

  19. Logging / Solution / Mind Meld / Angstosity / Back to Reality / Goodbyes (6:26)

    Conundrum

  20. MacDuff Exposed / Meeting the Girls / Confused (4:40)

    All Good Things…

  21. Saved Again (2:27)
  22. I Have a Gun (0:52)
  23. Star Trek: The Next Generation End Title: Season 3 Long Version (1:55)
    Music By Jay Chattaway
  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Season 2 (1:39)

    Remember Me

  2. Old Friend / Return to Starbase (1:06)
  3. The Traveler / Through the Bubble (7:08)

    The Host

  4. Sorry / Jay (3:34)
  5. No Pain, No Gain (2:04)
  6. Can’t Be Apart (2:18)
  7. Surprised / Last Waist Kiss (1:12)

    Darmok

  8. Doo Doo Occurs (3:04)
  9. Telling a Story / Gone Forever (4:07)
  10. Tired of Sitting Around / What’s a Life Worth? (4:55)

    Silicon Avatar

  11. Running for Cover / Someone’s Comin’ (3:25)
  12. So, We Finally Meet (3:51)

    The Perfect Mate

  13. Hard to Resist (3:07)
  14. I’ve Bonded With You (1:19)

    I Borg

  15. The Borg Pick Up Hugh (2:40)

    The Inner Light

  16. Lullaby #1 (0:50)
  17. Naming Dance #1: alternate (1:15)
  18. The Answer to a Mystery / Lullaby #1A (4:20)

    Relics

  19. Scotty’s Bridge (0:40)
  20. Captain in Rank Only / Scotty to the Rescue / Mister Good Hands (4:43)

    Starship Mine

  21. Greedy Double Crosser / Fight to the Death (6:51)

    The Chase

  22. Message Received (2:50)

    Journey’s End

  23. War or Peace / Wes Goes on His Way (6:08)

    Bonus Tracks from The Inner Light:

  24. Naming Ceremony, Alternate (Not Used)

    25. (1:20)

  25. Naming Dance, Up-Tempo Version (Not Used) (1:08)
  26. Star Trek: The Next Generation End Title: Season 3 Short Version Alternate (0:48)
    Other Composers
  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Season 3 (1:49)

    Code of Honor – music by Fred Steiner

  2. Sky and Starship / Meet Lutan / Lutan Impressed (2:43)
  3. Bronze Horse / To the Holodeck / Snatch Tasha (1:50)
  4. Waiting / Code of Honor II (1:39)
  5. Chez Lutan / Lutan’s Honor / The Centerpiece / Yareena Upset / Combat Ready / Hatching a Plan / Code of Honor Again (4:16)
  6. Code of Honor (Not Used) / Yareena’s Threat / The Glavin (2:12)
  7. Officer’s Log / Competition / Deadly Blow / She Lives / Poor Lutan / Mission Accomplished (6:39)

    Face of the Enemy – music by Don Davis

  8. Troi Delirious (1:35)
  9. Ear Trauma / Romulans in Romuland / Troi Trouble (1:29)
  10. It’s Huge / Riker Ridiculous (Not Used) / Jean-Luc Benign / Romulan Dissident Mummies / N’Vek Trek (3:32)
  11. Clash of the British Titans / Placating Picard / Untitled / Face of the Enemy (Act Out) (3:27)
  12. Toreth’s Revenge / N’Vek Nervosa (5:48)
  13. Destructed Plan / Another Cruel Hoax / Noble N’Vek Dies for Our Sins (8:15)

    The Pegasus – music by John Debney

  14. New Orders / Pegasus (0:22)
  15. On Impulse /Romulans Appear: alternate / Stand Down / Pressman Plots (2:06)
  16. Act In / Scanning the Belt: alternate (3:31)
  17. Romulans Depart / Duty Calls / Riker’s Dilemma /Relieved of Command (2:43)
  18. The Discovery / Trapped (5:12)
  19. Secret Weapon / Federation Cloak / Second Chance (6:57)
  20. New Orders: alternate (0:22)
  21. Romulans Appear: alternate (1:03)
  22. Stand Down: alternate (0:38)
  23. Scanning the Belt: alternate (3:17)
  24. Secret Weapon: alternate (3:53)
  25. Star Trek: The Next Generation Bumper Season 1 (0:06)
  26. Star Trek: The Next Generation Bumper Season 3 (0:08)
  27. Theme From Star Trek – Polka Version (0:55)
  28. Theme From Star Trek – Torch Song Version (1:34)
  29. Star Trek: The Next Generation End Title: Season 3 Short Version (0:48)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: 2011
Disc one total running time: 79:06
Disc two total running time: 77:17
Disc three total running time: 79:32

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