The Runners-Up and Composers to Watch of 2016

The Runners-Up

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC soundtrack and composer Alex Somers | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC 
(Alex Somers / Lakeshore)

More proof that those in touch with Iceland’s musical spirit animal are blessed with an ability to capture profound emotion through unusual means, American-born Alex Somers’ work with the band Sigur Ros (and its essential continuation with its bandmate as Jonsi and Alex) now yields a score of singular spirituality as Somers tracks a family of ultra liberals who’ve have truly gone off society’s reservation. His soundtrack’s beautifully ethereal melodies are a unique mix of alt. rock sampling, angelic choruses, Native American winds, accordion and the music box percussion all resonating with the gently troubled vibrations of normal childhood lost, along with the, lyrical nature of mad individuality. It’s a truly “Fantastic” road trip of reckoning and reconciliation that lights a soulful funeral pyre for alt. scoring.

EDDIE THE EAGLE soundtrack and composer Matthew Margeson| ©2016 Varese Sarabande Records

EDDIE THE EAGLE
(Matthew Margeson / Varese Sarabande)

In a year where 80’s retro electronics are all the rage when it comes to the sci-fi throwback realms of STRANGER THINGS, leave it to Matthew Margeson to salute to the era’s days of sports-ready synth glory with this run down the slope of power-pop electro artists like Harold Faltermeyer, Bill Conti and Vince Di Cola Margeson also layers on inspirational strings for his tribute to The Day’s most unlikely Olympic ski champion of them all.EDDIE is not only spot on with its glorious throwback beats and Eddie Van Halen rock swagger, but also the defiant underdog attitude of Margeson’s work on the “Kick-Ass” series to boot, making for a score that plays the retro thrill of victory with wonderful smile with just a bit of awesome computer keyboard cheese on its goggles after the big run.

HACKSAW RIDGE soundtrack and composer Rupert-Gregson Williams | ©2016 Varese Sarabande Records

HACKSAW RIDGE 
(Rupert Gregson-Williams / Varese Sarabande)

Rupert Gregson-Williams delivers a devastating war score that plays both parts emotional inner peace and the terror of one of the Pacific’s most devastating WW2 battles, a potent segue from melodically soothing, rustic nobility to the overwhelming, Asian-inflected darkness of waves of suicidal Japanese troops. Far from a musical time capsule, the rhythmic talent that flows through the musical lifeblood of Williams and his brother Harry make for the stirring, rhythmically contemporary heroism of a conscientious object as he rappels our boys from the heart of darkness. Yet always at “Hacksaw’s” center is a rousing sense of near-angelic nobility that hears hope amidst war’s instinctual need to kill.

THE JUNGLE BOOK soundtrack and composer John Debney | ©2016 Walt Disney Records

THE JUNGLE BOOK 
(John Debney / Walt Disney Records)

One might say it was his Disney family birthright that made John Debney one of the Mouse House’s most reliable composers with the likes of THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE and HOCUS POCUS let alone a reliable collaborator of director Jon Favreau on ZATHURA and IRON MAN 2 – all ensuring that Debney would get the plum assignment of that filmmaker’s live action remake of a charmingly carefree cartoon classic. That Debney’s muscularly exotic score doesn’t play like symphonic kid’s stuff is emblematic as to why THE JUNGLE BOOK exceeded just about everyone’s wildest expectations, as Debney’s majestic score that proudly swings through the jungle with Max Steiner’s KING KONG in terms of chest-beating, old-school symphonic power. For while the charm of the Sherman Brother’s songs might make an appearance here and there, Debney’s often scary score sings with the danger and excitement that make for a great, exotic boy’s adventure, blending choral majesty with drum-pounding savagery, yet in a way that’s firmly on the studio’s musical reservation as they terrifically expand their horizons with robustly flesh and blood scoring.

LA LA LAND soundtrack and composer Justin Hurwitz | ©2016 Interscope Records

LA LA LAND
(Justin Hurwitz / Interscope)

While referencing 80s synth scores is all the cool millennial rage now, it’s also nice to see their soundtrack tastes can go way back as well to the 50’s and 60’s singing and dancing days of George and Ira Gershwin and Michel Legrand, as embodied by the composing-directing partnership of Justin Hurwitz and Damien Chazelle. Ditching the drum-smashing darkness of their brilliant WHIPLASH, the duo create an effervescent updating of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS and THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG by way of Technicolor throwback LA. Working with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Hurwitz comes up with a truly wondrous tune in “City of Stars,” using it to form a beautifully thematic basis for the surprising amount of underscore here, his excellent, spot-on retro arrangements going from the simplest guitar and piano to swooning, planetarium-elevated orchestral melody. There’s also more than enough reason to convert jazz haters as well as Hurwitz effortlessly segues from O.G. improvisation to the electronically hip in this engaging slice of musical LA dream life and its myriad musical styles, turning a seemingly lost golden age of musical storytelling into the hippest tune around.

THE MONKEY KING 2 soundtrack and composer Christopher Young | ©2016 Intrada Records

THE MONKEY KING 2 
(Christopher Young / Intrada)

As a master of unabashed, epic sci-fi and supernatural scoring with the likes of the world-shattering CORE and the Asian-accented GRUDGE Christopher Young is an ideal travelling companion for a legendary Chinese manimal trickster god, whose second outing with him is even more spectacular than their first journey to the west. With the morally uncertain MONKEY KING 2 battling mountain-sized skeleton demons and flying witches, he’s the closest thing that China has to a superhero (and likely one of the oldest in the world at that), Young jumps off such robust Marvel scores as SPIDER-MAN 3 and GHOST RIDER for a series of hellzapoppin orchestral battles, as a battery of millennia-old Asian instruments like the erhu are skillfully blended with raging electric guitars, the score’s numerous themes bursting with the honor of eternal warriors and choruses thundering from the heavens. The score is given extensive action workouts that draw on Young’s rousing magical powers where the symphonic sky is literally the limit. Yet his score is just as grounded in the calming, melodic lyricism of the Buddhist Sutra as it is spectacular, magic-powered musical action that Dr. Strange would be envious of.

MOONLIGHT soundtrack and composer Nicholas Britell | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

MOONLIGHT 
(Nicholas Britell / Lakeshore Records)

An urban, down low relationship forged in equal parts tenderness and violent self-hatred receives a contrastingly refined, classical chamber treatment from Nicholas Britell, who last dealt with race in the somberly effective FREE STATE OF JONES Upon hearing the refined strains of MOONLIGHT you might mistakenly think you’re listening to a costume drama, the kind of music that accompanies emotionally constricted aristocrat. Yet that might be the ironic point of Britell’s hauntingly beautiful score for two urban men’s potentially punishing relationship through the years. Beyond its delicate string and piano approach, Britell also affects the instrumentation through a hip-hop “chopped and screwed” technique that only adds to the score’s poignantly anguished emotion.

THE SECRET LIVES OF PETS soundtrack and composer Alexandre Desplat | ©2016 Back Lot Music

THE SECRET LIVES OF PETS 
(Alexandre Desplat / Backlot Music)

Sure French composer Alexandre Desplat had no shortage of big, serious work this year like AMERICAN PASTORAL and THE LIGHT BETWEEN THE OCEANS (while not forgetting his affectionate score for the seriously bad singing of FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS). But the most exuberantly enjoyable soundtrack in any composer’s talking animal realm goes to the Gershwin-accented THE SECRET LIVES OF PETS. It’s a sort of “Rhapsody in Blue” for the CGI toon set as 30’s-style swing mixes it up with bouncy poodle cuteness and bridge-hanging adventure that manages to hit every pet nationality to boot – all cohesively playing the madcap toon humor without Mickey Mouse’ing the comedy. For a composer often beset with tragedy, PETS proves that nothing can be as enervating or fun as hearing the pure joy of being unleashed. The result is Desplat’s pure, lushly sweet imagination on an outing with a big, tail-wagging, jazzily nostalgic heart.

STRANGELY IN LOVE soundtrack and composer Austin Wintory | ©2016 T-65B Records

STRANGELY IN LOVE 
(Austin Wintory & The Controversy / T-65b Records)

Amin Matalqa’s beguilingly quirky updating of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” plays like a Buster Keaton silent that somehow has a literary master’s dialogue in it, all the better to get the most wonderfully eccentric score this side of Jon Brion’s PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE in depicting the fitful relationship between two even more eccentric characters – courtesy of composer Austin Wintory and the LA indie group The Controversy. Way more French than Russian in nature, Wintory’s music casts its romantic charm with accordion, harp, harmonica and any number of styles that range from Spaghetti western to whimsical waltzes, pirate jigs and tango It’s the score equivalent to opening Felix the Cat’s magic bag and having all sorts of amazingly inventive wackadoo music jump out of it with unexpected grace that’s as absurd as it is lovely.

THE COMPOSERS TO WATCH

GENIUS soundtrack and composer Adam Cork | ©2016 Milan Records

Having helped create an all-singing serial killer tuner for LONDON ROAD, Adam Cork uses his instrumental voice to capture the despair and ebullience of North Carolina author Thomas Wolfe for GENIUS, (Milan Records) his Americana-accented score capturing the unique, orchestral spark of literary inspiration along with the jazz bounce of a copious writer’s enthusiasm on the loose in The Big City.

TOUCHED WITH FIRE soundtrack and composer Paul Dalio | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

Writer-director Paul Dalio devastatingly autobiographical  TOUCHED WITH FIRE (Lakeshore Records) also shows him sparking with musical talent as his score rises with the chiming, child-like wonder of impossible optimism, then plunges to surreal despair in his score’s entrancing mood swings that conveys lives gone askew with mental illness, his haunting, religious-like musical portrait making us understand the price that comes with artistic inspiration born from bipolar enthusiasm.

CONDEMNED soundtrack and composers Daniel Davies and Sebastian Robertson | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

The dregs of society become industrial music zombies running through an NYC tenement, driven to madness by Daniel Davies and Sebastian Robertson in CONDEMNED (Lakeshore Records). Chips off the angered, experimental rock block in their relations to Dave Davies and Robbie Robertson, Davies and Robertson fuse a grungy, 80’s exploitation synth style along with glowhead techno bounce and bebop jazz to create an electrified, eerily pulsating sound right in retro-line with the likes of IT FOLLOWS and STRANGER THINGS, but with a effective, raw murkiness befitting the evil low-rent surroundings that allowed CONDEMNED to carve out its own, effectively evil horror score identity.

THE NINE soundtrack and composer Steven Emerson | ©2016 CD Baby

There’s a true, lived-in lyrical poetry to Steven Emerson’s surreal approach to THE NINE (CD Baby), a dream-like score for a documentary about the down-and-out of Modesto California, their lives embodied with raw guitar chords, industrial samples, lost soul voices and hallucinatory vibes that make for the most interesting and poetic garage rock trip through through the American wasteland since Sonic Youth’s soundtrack for MADE IN USA.

THE HALLOW soundtrack and composer James Gosling | ©2016 Movie Score Media

After hearing England’s knightly magic for the series MERLIN, James Gosling impressively segues to the big screen with far darker, Irish faerie folk that inhabit THE HALLOW (Movie Score Media). Beautifully verdant strings soon give way to the truly frightening string and sampled moss that fuses together with the real science-based reason for the once-human things chasing our frightened scientist family through the woods, terrifically effective horror-action and atmospheric scoring that not only plays eco body horror, but also a beautiful sense of choral tragedy for a clan that really should have listened to locals’ warnings to not go into the Emerald Isle’s forbidden woods.

KINGSGLAIVE soundtrack and composer John R. Graham | ©2016 Square Enix

The FINAL FANTASY movie saga has come a long, technical way from the game-changing, Elliot Goldenthal-scored film of 2001. Now after an even longer musical history of handling action films and trailer soundtracks form FULL CONTACT to DISHONORED 2 composer John R. Graham impressively carries on the saga’s epic musical tradition with KINGSGLAIVE matching its astonishing mo-cap visuals with a score that captures both the characters’ emotional stakes as well as the furiously drumming symphonic fury of its hellzapoppin mash-up of steampunk, sword and sorcery and giant monsters. It’s music that hits every aspect of a video game mythos unlike any other with impressively sweeping, metal-clanging devotion that turns CG into musical flesh and blood with a true sense of choral majesty.

BLEED FOR THIS soundtrack and composer Julian Holter | ©2016 Milan Records

Alt. singer and songwriter Julia Holter turns the introspective sound of such albums as “Tragedy” and “Ekstasis” into the indie-score grit of an upstart fighter refusing to stay down, becoming one of the few female composers to step into the boxing movie ring as she captures a stripped-down and ultimately orchestral inspirational spirit for the terrifically unsung drama  BLEED FOR THIS (Milan Records)

SWISS ARMY MAN soundtrack and composers Andy Hull and Robert McDowell | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

One can easily imagine voices appearing in the head of anyone who’s been marooned on an island for a suicidal amount of time, but Andy Hull and Robert McDowell take that idea to a whole other thematically multi-faceted level with SWISS ARMY MAN (Lakeshore Records) with a score that’s entirely based around vocals, from whimsical humming to joyful, drum-sailing shouts and hilariously profane songs (with even an a cappella JURASSIC PARK theme thrown in) – music that also helps to bring to life a farting corpse for extra, eccentric measure.

9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX soundtrack and composer Patrick Watson | ©2016 Varese Sarabande Records

Patrick Watson gets to the bottom of why a child made a seemingly suicide plunge for the 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX (Varese Sarabande), and in turn opens up a captivating, surreal world of musical possibilities as he enters an enchanted, subconscious realm of eerie voices and hallucinogenic samples, as coming back to reality with suspense-thriller stylism, as well as waltz-like rhythms. They’re two equally effective music realms that together unlock the film’s mystery for an enthralling listen.

THE CAIRO DECLARATION soundtrack and composers Ye Xiaogang and Chad Cannon | ©2016 Movie Score Media

East meets west in the sumptuous teaming of Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang (SHOWER) and the scoring debut American Chad Cannon (an orchestrator for Howard Shore and Alexandre Desplat) with THE CAIRO DECLARATION (Movie Score Media), an gorgeously soaring, red-flag waving WW2 score about the Allies teaming with China to stop the Japanese advance in the South Pacific. From the sweeping, Oriental rhythms of its main theme to the dark brass of enemy invaders, the patriotic march of Chairman Mao’s resistance and the heart-rending melody of love sacrificed to protect the motherland. Above all, it’s an impressively epic score that firmly declares its love for sweeping melodies a la John Barry, let alone any Hollywood film from the WW2 era worthy of its nobly symphonic salt for two composers signaling their thematic talents.

INDIGNATION soundtrack and composer Jay Wadley | ©2016 Nettwerk Records

Composer Jay Wadley creates an elegant sense of anguish for INDIGNATION (Nettwerk), a Philip Roth adaptation, set in the day when heavy petting was an unimaginable college crime. With passion bursting at the seam, and hopelessly hemmed in by not-so book smart intellect, Wadley creates a score of devastating, elegant subtlety, using the naturally sorrowful violin for all of its Ivy League tortured worth, along with a gently regretful piano. It’s a subtle requiem for a young love affair that should have been, if only not for over-intellectualization and the very real, primitive brutality of war.

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