Category: 2017

Categories
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

… Read more
Categories
2017 D Doctor Who Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Year

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol Remixes – music by Dominic Glynn

4 min read

Order this CDRemixing soundtrack recordings is fraught with difficulties and pitfalls. You’re taking something that probably wasn’t originally designed to conform to a certain number of beats-per-minute and you’re now imposing that rhythmic structure onto a piece that may not be best suited to that format. And as often as not, as with, say, the remixes of the themes from The X-Files or Mission: Impossible that accompanied those properties’ emergence as movie franchises, what you end up doing is rebuilding the whole piece from the ground up, resulting in something that is less of a remix and more of a completely new recording (as was the case with FAB’s tribute to The Prisoner). The music from the subversive 1988 Doctor Who three-parter The Happiness Patrol is definitely a tough nut to crack; though largely performed on synthesizers (and a bit of real harmonica), it creates its tension by stretching things out occasionally, and to try to force those occasional pauses or changes in meter to conform to a certain beat would seem to be a bit self-defeating to the atmosphere.

But wait! The advantage this release has is that the remix is done by the original composer for those three episodes, and not someone coming in later with limited experience or appreciation for the original music. Glynn has done prior Doctor Who remix albums (The Gallifrey Remixes, The Ravolox Remixes), and scored episodes of Doctor Who from 1986 through its final 20th century season in 1989, as well as creating the theme music arrangement for the 1986 Trial Of A Time Lord season. Glynn understands the feel; he wrote the music to begin with. The longest track, “Happiness Will Prevail”, begins without the slightest hint that it’s a remix. Layers of added synths deepen the harmonies, and by the time percussion that wasn’t in the original score starts to subtly creep in, nothing feels out of place – everything supports and strengthens the original piece rather than clashing with it. At around the four-and-a-half-minute mark, Glynn slips in dialogue from one of the story’s most powerful scenes (truthfully, one of Sylvester McCoy’s most powerful scenes as the Doctor), and by this time, you’re on board with it. The rhythm starts becoming more pronounced, the added synths more modern, but it all serves to enhance, rather than intrude on, the remaining elements of the original score. And yes, you could conceivably dance to it. I was originally skeptical of the ten-minute run time of this track, but that run time allows Glynn to layer things in without the additions feeling rushed or intrusive.

The shorter tracks introduce new elements over the original recordings from the word go, because surely by now you’re aware this is a remix album. “Brandy Of The Damned” does a good job of picking up the momentum from the first track and running with it; you’re over two minutes into this track before some very busy synths and percussion suddenly drop in. “Kandymania”, as the name implies, builds new layers on top of the off-key calliope theme for the Kandyman, an experiment that perhaps mercifully lasts only two minutes but is still enjoyably moody. “I’m Happy You’re Glad” brings the sinister mood to its conclusion, dropping in its own extra layers of percussion to round out the EP’s total run time which is, generously enough, almost equal to the length of one of The Happiness Patrol‘s three episodes.

4 out of 4It’s all very nicely done, and at no point detracts from the original cues from 1988; if anything, it’s like we already have a score on hand in case the modern Doctor Who ever decides to bring back the Kandyman. Which is something that’s very unlikely to happen, but then I would’ve said the same of anyone’s chances of building a decent remix EP on top of this story’s score. Now I have the urge to hear Survival get the same treatment beyond the tantalizing single track devoted to remixing it on The Ravolox Remixes.

  1. Happiness Will Prevail (Remix) (10:39)
  2. Brandy Of The Damned (Remix) (4:47)
  3. Kandymania (Remix) (2:02)
  4. I’m Happy You’re Glad (Remix) (5:11)

Released by: No Bones Records
Release date: September 18, 2017
Total running time: 22:39

… Read more
Categories
2017 Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television W Wonder Woman Year

Wonder Woman

1 min read

Order this CDOne of the greatest things to come out of the 2017 big-screen revival of Wonder Woman was the fond remembrance of the previous live-action iteration which, while perhaps cheesy in its own distinctly 1970s way, might just still be my favorite screen iteration of the character. (The fact that Lynda Carter turns up in the 2020 sequel, WW84, would seem to be validation that she has a well-earned permanent foothold in pop culture. She’s also a magnificent Twitter follow.) My attachment to the ’70s Wonder Woman series may be one of cozy nostalgia rather than any kind of referendum on which version is superior, or more “on message” with the character as seen in the comics, and needless to say, this is the long, long overdue soundtrack. … Read more

Categories
2017 Artists (by group or surname) Non-Soundtrack Music S Sarcastalites Year

Sarcastalites – Spaces For Strangers

3 min read

I discovered the Sarcastalites – not really a group as much as it is one woman with a studio, a lot of groove, and an immense amount of talent at her disposal – through a single track contributed to the Raymond Scott cover album The Portofino Variations (of which more another time), and the disco-flavored cover version of Scott’s gem of early electronic music stood out as my favorite thing on the album, so I wanted to find more. That search led to this EP-length BandCamp release, which, it turns out, is even better than Sarcastalites’ excellent Raymond Scott cover.

The whole idea behind Sarcastalites is a throwback to disco’s heyday. Admittedly, this may not be a thing that a lot of people are consciously pining for, but the seven tracks on Spaces For Strangers attempt to distill the best things about that genre of music and then to boil those ingredients down into something new. The best disco always had one foot in R&B and funk, and most of these songs show that songwriter & performer G.T. Thomas totally gets that. Stylistically, Spaces For Strangers is steeped in late ’70s disco, which was starting to play with the kind of electronic elements that would be taking over the following decade with the advent of new wave. But the backbone of each song is the real deal – bass, guitars, drums, all bringing that funk back where it belongs.

There isn’t a weak song on the EP, but there are some that are real standouts – “Advice”‘s sparse instrumentation lets the slinky breathless vocals command center stage, with lyrics complaining about the singer’s overbearing gal pal, who “gives terrible advice” before the bridge of the song becomes something modern and trippy. “Strange Nostalgia”‘s lyrics reminisce about the singer’s first mind-expanding experience of listening to a particular band’s records (Yes, in this case), with some great wah-chicka guitar work fading and phasing in and out. “Three Degrees” is a bit more Blondie than Chic, with lyrics obsessing over – of all things – DVD commentary tracks, and referencing The Manchurian Candidate. Thomas might be reviving disco, but she’s doing it on her own terms and with her own subject matter.

4 out of 4“Party People” may be the purest slice of the sound most people associate with disco here, with “Earth Is For Friends, Space Is For Strangers” following closely behind. It’s worth pointing out that each track has its own unique sound, a result of Thomas engaging the services of different sets of ears – all women, by the way – to mix each song.

If there’s a disappointment involved with Sarcastalites’ debut, I guess it’s the fact that it hasn’t caught fire and led to a follow-up yet. But that’s why I’m writing this right now to bring it to your attention so we can change that. It’s a tremendously enjoyable set of songs to which more people need to be exposed.

Go download it

  1. The Real Thing (3:21)
  2. Sand (3:43)
  3. Party People (3:03)
  4. Advice (3:16)
  5. Earth Is For Friends, Space Is For Strangers (4:16)
  6. Strange Nostalgia (3:51)
  7. Three Degrees (3:51)

Released by: Bullshit Night Records
Release date: December 8, 2017
Total running time: 25:08

… Read more
Categories
2017 Artists (by group or surname) B Black Mirror Sigur Ros Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Black Mirror: Hang The DJ – music by Alex Somers & Sigur Ros

3 min read

Arguably the 21st century’s most legitimate and enduring successor to the O’Henry-inspired twisted morality tales of The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror began on Channel 4 in the U.K. before migrating to Netflix and gaining an international audience beyond C4’s reach. Each of its stories are couched in the technology we have, or the technology we’re all but destined to invent given current trends of both technology and society. While many an episode of Black Mirror ends with a dark twist, Hang The DJ has a much happier one, an oddball among the show’s typical cynicism.

Hang The DJ‘s score is an exercise in barely-tonal minimalism. The episode concerns itself with an omnipresent matchmaking system, Coach, which pushes couples together for relationships of various lengths as it tries to determine their ideal match. Failure to abide by Coach’s matches risk banishment beyond an unspecified wall around the city/county/country in which the story happens, but when the alternative is being permanently paired with someone who isn’t one’s ideal match, and one is forbidden from doubling back to a former match, is that really such a threat?

Rather than hewing closely to the contours of the two protagonists’ budding-but-uncertain romance, the score almost seems to be providing accompaniment for Coach and its influence on the lives of everyone seen on screen: it’s atonal at times, almost a background drone that only foregrounds itself in melodic terms when the two main characters’ attraction increases. Even at the end, when they seriously contemplate climbing over the wall themselves rather than waiting for banishment, there’s little in the way of urgency or traditional tonality. It’s not an action scene, and the momentousness of it isn’t signalled by the score.

4 out of 4Things become more melodic and “human” once they’ve escaped – the constant drone of Coach’s presence is gone, and along with it the rigid matchmaking system that dominates everyone’s lives, and suddenly it’s Sigur Ros doing the music.

Hang The DJ is a fairly brief score, one whose impact and meaning may be a little hard to grasp when heard in isolation. But despite its brief duration, much like the story it accompanies, the score makes an impact.

Order this CD or download

  1. All Mapped Out (1:26)
  2. Sorry (2:58)
  3. Hours, Days, Months (1:31)
  4. Into Place (3:31)
  5. Match (1:31 – Sigur Ros)
  6. Out There (1:43)
  7. Sleeps (0:48)
  8. See You (1:53)
  9. Treasured (1:34)
  10. Ruined It (3:19)
  11. One Year (2:09)
  12. Doubts (1:58)
  13. Three, Two, One (1:12)
  14. We Agreed (0:33)
  15. One, Two, Three, Four (0:39)
  16. There’ll Be A Reason (1:28)
  17. End (4L58 – Sigur Ros)
  18. Over And Over Again (1:07)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: December 30, 2017
Total running time: 34:18

… Read more
Categories
2017 Film S Soundtracks Star Wars

Star Wars: The Last Jedi – music by John Williams

4 min read

Star Wars fandom may never be a cohesive whole again once the post-original-trilogy trilogy wraps up. The Force Awakens was knowingly derivative – on purpose, so we’re told in hindsight – to bring a new, younger audience into the familiar story beats of a Star Wars movie, while The Last Jedi‘s iconoclastic approach to the story’s remaining original trilogy characters seemed to split Star Wars fandom down the middle. The one unchanging constant in this whirlwind, however, has been John Williams, the architect of the orchestral Star Wars sound.

The soundtrack from The Last Jedi, appropriately for the middle chapter of a trilogy, leans heavily on themes already established. Themes for Rey, Kylo Ren/the First Order, and Poe/the Resistance are holdovers from The Force Awakens, with Rey’s theme given a great deal of development here. From the original trilogy, the Force theme (also frequently associated with Obi-Wan Kenobi) gets plenty of play here, as does a theme for another Jedi Master long past. The TIE Fighter battle theme is back as the Millennium Falcon shakes off its pursuers on Crait, with maybe two seconds of whimsy dropped in for Chewie’s new Porg sidekick. (Not heard on the album: the re-use of the Emperor’s theme for Snoke – perhaps a tacitly tuneful admission that the two were nearly interchangeable?) Luke and Leia’s reunion gets a somber, low-key treatment of their theme from Return Of The Jedi, tagged out by a short reference to Han and Leia’s love theme before Luke strides into battle against Kylo Ren.

Virtually the only truly new theme here is reserved for Finn’s winsome new partner, Rose (though that description should, perhaps, be the other way around). This leaves the movie’s major action setpieces for the majority of “new” material – percussive, raging battle music for Rey and Ren’s fight against Snoke’s guards, Finn’s final fight with Phasma, and naturally Luke’s climcactic duel with Kylo Ren. “The Battle Of Crait” rolls out a low, threatening motif for the oncoming First Order forces, as well as a choral interlude for Finn’s futile attempt to sacrifice himself for the Rebel cause.

The introduction to Canto Bight has an opulent opening (hearkening back to some of the “Coruscant” music from the prequel trilogy, which then segues into a boisterous jazz tune that sounds like it’s played by the same ensemble as the original Star Wars‘ Cantina Band music. It’s not a callback to that specific tune, but very much a delightful callback to its style. “The Fathiers”, accompanying the scenes of Finn and Rose lowering Canto Bight’s property value with large, four-legged help, is a callback of another kind – it sounds like a theme from an Indiana Jones movie slipped into the Star Wars universe.

I can handle a soundtrack falling back on old favorites more gracefully than I can handle the entire script of a movie doing so, and – spoiler alert – John Williams gives Luke Skywalker and Leia a truly epic sendoff, the 5 out of 4former with a mythic choral treatment, and the latter with her theme from Star Wars arranged for piano during the end credit tribute to the late Carrie Fisher.

With J.J. Abrams back in the driver’s seat for Episode IX, the question isn’t whether John Williams’ final Star Wars outing is worthy of the franchise. The question now becomes whether or not the movie itself will be worthy of Williams’ grand finale.

Order this CD

  1. Main Title and Escape (7:26)
  2. Ahch-To Island (4:23)
  3. Revisiting Snoke (3:29)
  4. The Supremacy (4:01)
  5. Fun with Finn and Rose (2:34)
  6. Old Friends (4:29)
  7. The Rebellion is Reborn (4:00)
  8. Lesson One (2:10)
  9. Canto Bight (2:38)
  10. Who Are You? (3:04)
  11. The Fathiers (2:42)
  12. The Cave (3:00)
  13. The Sacred Jedi Texts (3:33)
  14. A New Alliance (3:13)
  15. Chrome Dome (2:03)
  16. The Battle of Crait (6:48)
  17. The Spark (3:36)
  18. The Last Jedi (3:04)
  19. Peace and Purpose (3:08)
  20. Finale (8:28)

Released by: Walt Disney Records
Release date: December 15, 2017
Total running time: 77:49

… Read more
Categories
1980 2017 Film L P Soundtracks

L’uomo Puma (The Pumaman) – music by Renato Serio

3 min read

Known to the English-speaking world as the infamously cheesy, MST3K-mocked movie Puma Man, L’uomo Puma boasts a score that, heard in isolation, outclasses its accompanying movie in nearly every inportant way. Well, for the most part.

Let’s quantify the outclassing being done by the score here: this isn’t “the first Star Trek movie was okay, but Jerry Goldsmith’s groundbreaking score made it even better” territory. Instead, the orchestral portions of L’uomo Puma‘s score class up the adventures of Tony (the hapless nerd who receives “the powers of a puma”) and Vadinho just enough to give the perhaps mistaken impression that money was spent on the movie as a whole (spoiler: it really wasn’t).

This long, long overdue CD release – this score’s first release on any format – was issued by Italy’s Beat Records in late 2017 in a ridiculously small pressing of 500 units, and to be quite honest, its track titles are opaque and unhelpful at best, managing to completely obscure where that track falls in the movie unless you’re a Puma Man scholar who has memorized the movie (a status which your reviewer is slightly embarrassed to admit he may be approaching).

There are three primary themes in the Puma Man score: a noble-but-mysterious theme for the alien visitors who conferred “the powers of a puma” upon a selected member of the human race, an ominously menacing theme for the machinations of the character played by Donald Pleasence (whose sole instruction from the movie’s director must have been “that’s nice, but can you do it more like Blofeld?”), and of course, the goofily late-’70s-supermarket-commercial-jingle feel of Puma Man’s theme.

The former two categories of music are where the most praise is deserved; they’re nicely composed, marvelously played, and well-engineered. The hollow echo treatment on the cellos lend them more menace than usual. Composer Renato Serio, known primarily to Italian audiences, wasn’t fooling around here; this music outclasses the movie it’s in easily.

If you’re even slightly enamoured of late ’70s scoring that tries to force an orchestra to play to a disco beat, then you’ll be a sucker for the Puma Man theme, a cheery recurring theme that seems oblivious to 3 out of 4the fact that its hero seems to have stumbled upon his superpowers and doesn’t really know how to use them. There’s something hilariously compelling about it – you’ll find yourself humming or whistling it for days afterward.

Earlier, the small pressing of 500 copies of L’uomo Puma was described as ridiculously small; maybe it is. Or maybe it’s just right, given how far underground this movie’s cult following must be. But for those who enjoy this slab of finest Italian-made cheese, it’s almost certain to earn a place of honor on the soundtrack shelf.

Order this CD

  1. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 1 (2:14)
  2. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 2 (2:13)
  3. Puma Man #1 (2:03)
  4. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 3 (2:38)
  5. Puma Man #2 (2:07)
  6. Puma Man #3 (3:13)
  7. Puma Man #4 (1:43)
  8. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 4 (2:04)
  9. Puma Man #5 (2:26)
  10. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 5 (2:36)
  11. Puma Man #6 (2:28)
  12. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 6 (2:07)
  13. Puma Man #7 (2:26)
  14. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 7 (2:40)
  15. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 8 (2:24)
  16. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 9 (1:42)
  17. Puma Man #8 (1:57)
  18. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 10 (2:15)
  19. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 11 (2:22)
  20. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 12 (2:14)
  21. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 13 (1:35)
  22. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 14 (2:03)
  23. Puma Man #9 (2:38)
  24. Puma Man #10 (1:49)
  25. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 15 (2:46)
  26. Puma Man #11 (2:13)
  27. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 16 (2:08)
  28. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 17 (2:38)
  29. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 18 (1:54)
  30. L’Uomo Puma – Seq. 19 (2:04)
  31. Puma Man #12 (3:14)
  32. Puma Man #13 (2:45)

Released by: Beat Records
Release date: October 20, 2017
Total running time: 75:12

… Read more
Categories
2017 S Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Stargate Television Year

Stargate SG-1: Music From Selected Episodes

4 min read

If there’s a property I didn’t expect to resurface in the soundtrack world in the summer of 2017, it’s the Stargate TV franchise. In hindsight, though, I wasn’t paying attention to the clues – Intrada has long championed the musical output of Richard Band, brother of Full Moon Pictures producer Charles Band, and composer-in-residence on Full Moon’s extensive slate of low-to-mid-budget horror movies. And, patterned somewhat after the arrangement that governed music during the entirety of spinoff-era Star Trek, Band alternated on episodes of Stargate SG-1 with Joel Goldsmith for the show’s first two years on the Showtime pay cable channel, with other composers occasionally filling in (including, ironically, Star Trek’s Dennis McCarthy). This 2-CD set from Intrada gather’s Band’s carefully selected highlights from his time with the Stargate franchise.

The episodes for which Band felt he’d done his best work were Cold Lazarus, In The Line Of Duty, In The Serpent’s Lair, and Singularity – oddly enough, all early favorites of mine. Listening to the scores Band composed for these episodes, which feature small orchestral ensembles attempting to fill out and deepen the sound of synthesizers and samples, it’s easy to tell the real musicians from the electronic sounds. With the show opening every week with an adapted version of David Arnold’s theme from the original Stargate movie (for which Arnold had to be paid for every usage), the rest of the music budget – especially before Stargate SG-1 found its legs and popularity with its audience – was tightly constrained. But even when roughly half of what you hear is synthesized, it’s still a fun listen. Military drums, low, urgent brass ostinatos, and actual recurring themes (including quotes of Arnold’s theme) – the music of SG-1 was everything that the music of the show’s Star Trek contemporaries usually wasn’t: propulsive and threatening and dangerous. Stuff was happening in the music rather than it being relegated to background wallpaper. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the nearly-nine-minute solid cue covering the entire final act of In The Serpent’s Lair: literally wall-to-wall music for the show’s climax.

Cold Lazarus, which uncovers a painful incident from Jack O’Neill’s past, is the outlier here, with gentle piano accompanying the unfolding revelation that Jack had lost a child. In The Line Of Duty and Singularity are far more representative of the musical sound of Stargate SG-1 as a whole, with both quiet passages, mysterious music for the team’s discoveries of ancient (or is that Ancient?) mysteries, and gung-ho action music where needed.

3 out of 4I remember, when first seeing that Intrada was releasing a new round of Stargate TV scores, being a bit let down that Joel Goldsmith’s work wasn’t represented. Now I realize this wasn’t a downside: Richard Band was as much a part of SG-1’s sound in those heady formative years of the show – where anything was possible and the Stargate franchise had yet to fall into the trap that befalls many a long-running series, namely slipping its neck into the noose of ever-thickening continuity – as Joel Goldsmith’s sound was. Much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation box sets that finally gave Dennis McCarthy’s work exposure in the wake of a massive all-Ron-Jones soundtrack box set, this SG-1 soundtrack set redresses an imbalance and is worth a listen.

Order this CD

    Disc One
    Cold Lazarus
  1. Teaser (3:42)
  2. Is It Really Jack? (3:53)
  3. Jack At Ex-Wife’s House (3:25)
  4. Jack Visits Charlie’s Room (3:24)
  5. The Crystals (2:14)
  6. The Crystal Monitor (2:18)
  7. Jack And Wife On Park Bench (3:08)
  8. They Re-Activate The Crystal Monitor (2:03)
  9. Pushing Back Through Gate To Hospital (3:53)
  10. Jack Meets Alien Self And Finale (9:10)

    In The Line Of Duty

  11. Teaser (2:50)
  12. Medical Time (3:12)
  13. O’Neill Comforts Cassie (3:05)
  14. O’Neill To Burn Victim (0:38)
  15. Teal’c Gives O’Neill Advice (2:28)
  16. Daniel Talks To Girl Survivor (2:07)
  17. Bad Guy Bandages Doc (2:20)
  18. Daniel Talks To Alien Carter (2:26)
  19. Finale – Daniel And Then Others Visit (10:11)
    Disc Two
    In The Serpent’s Lair
  1. Finale (8:50)

    Singularity

  2. Teaser (3:34)
  3. From Stargate To New World (2:36)
  4. Sam With Girl And Back Through Gate (2:49)
  5. Sam And Little Girl Get Closer (2:58)
  6. Heart Attack And Operation (3:36)
  7. Jack And Teal’c Escaping Battle (4:22)
  8. To The Underground Site (2:35)
  9. Time Is Up And Finale (8:26)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: June 27, 2017
Disc one total running time: 67:01
Disc two total running time: 40:01

… Read more
Categories
2017 8-Bit Weapon Artists (by group or surname) E Non-Soundtrack Music Year

8 Bit Weapon – Class Apples

3 min read

I remember the Apple II. By way of the Franklin ACE 1000 clone that was later sued off the market, I grew up with the Apple II as my first computer. I programmed it – or tried to – endlessly. Trying to get music and sound right with the native Apple II speaker was an especially bruising experience: endless data tables, pokes, and very seldom getting what I wanted out of the machine. A whole sub-industry was born to bolt better audio capability onto the Apple II via add-ons like the Mockingboard sound card. It was never as easy as just plugging a MIDI-capable keyboard into it and just playing what was in your head.

Except that now, it is. And that’s how we got Class Apples – a new MIDI controller interface, and a modern-day software hack allowing for samples to expand the sound of the Apple II, and 8 Bit Weapon doing what 8 Bit Weapon does. The entirety of Class Apples is performed on Apple II computers, with minor post-production tweaks providing the finishing touches that the Apple itself can’t (reverb, stereo tricks, a bit of flanging here and there). It’s still the same lo-fi machine that it always was, but the Apple II can do more musically thanks to persistent fans of the machine grafting new abilities onto it, inspired by technological developments that have taken place since the Apple II’s heyday.

The music here is all from the classical repertoire, and heavy on pieces with complex counterpoint. Everything has a beat to it, and there’s a strong Hooked On Classics vibe to the whole thing. It’s hard to nominate any one track as a standout – each of them have their own charms – though I’m always a sucker for “Ave Maria” and, well, just about any flavor of Bach.

4 out of 4Computer music may be nothing new, and classics filtered through computer music may be nothing new, but there is something new here – significant musical capabilities have been grafted onto a machine that was known for little more than the plaintive PR#6 “BEEP” that accompanied a startup or reset. Just as 8 Bit Weapon helped alert the public to the possibilities of the NES and Game Boy as musical instruments, the same can now be said of the not-especially-musically-inclined Apple II. It’s a musical tech demo that is, if you know anything about the Apple II’s native sound capabilities, surprisingly listenable. You had me at INIT HELLO,S6,D1.

Order this CD

  1. Sheep May Safely Graze (Bach – 2:55)
  2. Two Part Invention (Bach – 1:03)
  3. Prelude and Fugue 1 in C Major (Bach – 1:29)
  4. Für Elise (For Elise) (Beethoven – 2:14)
  5. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) (Mozart – 5:24)
  6. Invention 8 (Bach – 0:51)
  7. Prelude in C Minor (Bach – 1:35)
  8. Rondo Alla Turca (Mozart – 2:07)
  9. Invention 14 (Bach – 1:13)
  10. Air Tromb (Bach – 1:29)
  11. Ave Maria (Bach & Gounod – 2:52)
  12. Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven – 4:43)

Released by: 8 Bit Weapon
Release date: July 22, 2017
Total running time: 27:55

… Read more
Categories
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

… Read more