We’re now 20 years out from the launch of Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, and us old salts are having to remind people that such was the allure of Bear McCreary’s music for this series that he actually took a combined orchestra and band on the road, and played concert dates of nothing but Battlestar Galactica soundtrack music, and people ate that up. McCreary’s genre-bending Celtic-but-also-Middle-Eastern musical melting pot encompassed everything from the straightforward orchestral treatment expected of the genre to heavy metal to multi-ethnic-flavored covers of Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”. It was dizzying, bordering on intoxicating. And the good news is that it’s finally been captured in recorded form.
It’s important to note that this is real deal: many of the performers head in the recordings were the same musicians who played on the original studio recordings, and it’s not a small ensemble, nor is the music scaled down. There’s a lot of thunder and immediacy captured from the stage performances here, with enough electricity in the air to fry the nearest Toaster. Even pieces that I didn’t care much for in the show itself are given new life here. Things are rearranged and moved around, disparate pieces are glued together, but not reduced in power or volume. The only thing better would be to have seen one of the live shows in person, but this is a great consolation prize for those of us who couldn’t make it to those shows, captured in wonderfully crisp recordings best played loud. (Major rock acts could learn a lot from how these recordings were engineered before releasing their own live albums.)
“Something Dark Is Coming” is expanded into a hard rock epic, while “Apocalypse” (a brutally hard-rocking expansion of the series theme tune from the TV movie The Plan) is blown up as big as the ensemble can make it. Quieter pieces such as “Roslin and Adama” and “Wander My Friends” are given no less attention, though, and are played beautifully – it’s not all eardrum-splitting maximum volume. Other pieces, such as “Lords of Kobol” and “Fight Night” (the latter hailing from, admittedly, one of my least favorite hours of the show), strike a good middle ground and made me worry less about the heart rates of the percussionists.
My favorite track, however, may be an obvious case of saving the best for last: the rocked-out rendition of Stu Phillips’ original 1970s that segues into a piece of music that was already a favorite in its studio incarnation. The double-whammy of “Heeding The Call” and “All Along The Watchtower” runs a very close second, almost a tie for my favorite on the album. Your favorites will probably skew heavily in favor of favorite episodes or soundtrack cuts, but it’s lovely to have this little flashback to a time when there were sold-out dates for live concerts of soundtrack music from one series/franchise. It’s wonderful, and in places almost indescribably cathartic, to hear these pieces jammed out properly.
- A Distant Sadness (3:59)
- Prelude To War (8:10)
- Baltar’s Dream (6:02)
- Roslin And Adama (2:59)
- Apocalypse (5:34)
- Fight Night (4:04)
- Something Dark Is Coming (6:16)
- Wander My Friends (5:43)
- Lords Of Kobol (3:55)
- Storming New Caprica (8:02)
- Heeding The Call (2:45)
- All Along The Watchtower (4:22)
- Colonial Anthem / Black Market (7:30)
Released by: Sparks & Shadows
Release date: June 4, 2021
Total running time: 1:09:16
