Music

CD Review: HAREM soundtrack

HAREM soundtrack | ©2013 Quartet Records

For a bright, shining English language decade in the 1980s, French composer Philippe Sarde stood out as the beacon in the next wave of the romantic French invasion, a worthy successor to the likes of Georges Delerue and Maurice Jarre with his lush, thematic sound that graced such memorably diverse scores as GHOST STORY, QUEST FOR FIRE, LOVESICK, PIRATES  and THE MUSIC BOX. And while Sarde certainly hasn’t stopped working in the years since, there’s quality that stands out, and remains unequaled from his work during that period. It’s true from major Hollywood pictures to even lesser known Cannon productions […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE HOLE Soundtrack (3000 limited edition)

THE HOLE soundtrack | ©2013 Quartet Records

Kids and the monstrosities often mixed in Joe Dante’s legendary collaboration with Jerry Goldsmith, from mischievous GREMLINS and SMALL SOLDIERS to the atom bomb in MATINEE. One might imagine what Jerry would have done had he been around to peer into THE HOLE for Dante, only to find far more of an ephemeral and psychological threat than he’d been given to handle before with the filmmaker. Yet Dante’s still in very capable musical hands for a low key entry into teen horror, especially with the heavy lifting being done by Javier Navarette, a composer who teamed with Guillermo Del Toro […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHOCK TREATMENT soundtrack

SHOCK TREATMENT soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Jerry Goldsmith had a particular talent for playing characters in the process of losing their minds, drawing on the dark, string musings of such avant garde composers as Bela Bartok to pioneer his own Hollywood sound for psychosis. Using a chamber approach of devilish fiddles and strings for the TWILIGHT ZONE episode “The Invaders,” the composer further plumbed a snapping mind with the waltzing sexual symbolism that haunted his Oscar-nominated FREUD to the eerie, conspiratorial tones of assuming a new identity in SECONDS. But when it comes to the pure, batshit enjoyment of a breakdown, then 1966s SHOCK TREATMENT gets […]Read On »


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CD Review: OBLIVION soundtrack

OBLIVION soundtrack | ©2013 +180 Records

Architect-turned-director Joseph Kosinski is promising to become the multiplex answer to Stanley Kubrick after the almost shocking, mind-blowing intelligence he’s brought to TRON LEGACY and his latest, terrific trip into sci-fi dystopia OBLIVION. If there’s a style of music that complements his icily beautiful visual sensibility, then it’s a fusion of strings and electronics, all the better to convey high technology dining on ashes. Kosinki’s cutting edge made him seek out the French band Daft Punk to capture the neon-black groove of TRON. Now he’s brought in that country’s similarly evolutionary (and temporarily one-man band) M83 for OBLIVION to play […]Read On »


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CD Review: G.I. JOE RETALIATION soundtrack

GI JOE RETALIATION soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

You can only expect so much when it comes to an toy-based movie, which made this new action figure model so pleasantly surprising, especially with far more of a “believable” approach as opposed to the far more juvenile escapades of the last “Joe.” Where that film got a form-fittingly bombastic orchestral treatment from Alan Silvestri, Henry Jackman’s music here is out to fit “the real world” approach to G.I. JOE RETALIATION – or at least as real world as you can get with flesh and blood action cartoons wielding futuristic weaponry. Having shown his super heroic chops on X-MEN FIRST […]Read On »


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Interview: EVIL DEAD composer ROQUE BANOS scares up a score

Roque Banos | ©2013 Roque Banos

There are over the top gore films. There are over the top horror scores. And then there is the redo of EVIL DEAD, which does its best to live up to its claim of being “the most terrifying film you will ever experience.” While that debate will be left up to those who survive its blood-splattered roller coaster ride with enough severed limbs to make RE-ANIMATOR  look like REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM, there will be little argument that Roque Banos’ score is the aural equivalent of a raging exclamation mark, it’s bottom colon fashioned into a knife that repeatedly stabs […]Read On »


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CD Review: SIDE EFFECTS soundtrack

SIDE EFFECTS soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Though he’s Oscar-nominated for the fun, and very busy score to SKYFALL, Thomas Newman’s most interesting work has always lay in the minimal, electronically ethereal, world-rock sound that announced a truly unique musical voice in the 80s with the likes of THE LOST BOYS, LIGHT OF DAY and THOSE SECRETS – a TV soundtrack that also marked one of Varese Sarabande’s earliest specialty releases. So it’s fitting that the label would provide a welcome return to Newman’s beautifully chilly sound for SIDE EFFECTS, a score that brings him back to musical basics with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh after funk of ERIN […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE TOUCH soundtrack

THE TOUCH soundtrack | ©2013 Buysoundtrax Records

Once the composer of full-blooded orchestral epics like RED DAWN, STARSHIP TROOPERS and LONESOME DOVE, Basil Poledouris would be among a number of similarly talented, and unabashedly melodic orchestra-heavy composers whose careers went south for no other good reason other than the vagaries of Hollywood demand. It took a Chinese co-production to give Poledouris his last major work with this Michelle Yeoh martial arts adventure. But with this 20 million dollar, 2002 movie still unreleased on video in the United States (at least until the advent of YouTube), and its score album only available on a hard-to-find and exorbitantly priced […]Read On »


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CD Review: SNITCH soundtrack

SNITCH soundtrack | ©2013 Lakeshore Records

When many busy, burly action stars are content to make the same mediocre film over and over again, props should go to The Rock for doing something different with his action vehicles, interesting choices that have resulted in such atypical genre scores with a range that’s gone from Harry Gregson-Williams’ wacky Rain Forest score for THE RUNDOWN to Clint Mansell’s angered rock in FASTER. But what makes SNITCH‘s score so interesting is that it doesn’t feel like an “action” score at all, but rather an anguished drama, with an electric violin becoming a tortuously drawn lament. That’s particularly appropriate for […]Read On »


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CD Review: RIDDLE soundtrack (1000 edition)

RIDDLE soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Having gone from the anime world of ROBOTECH to consistently produce impressive orchestral scores for such smaller genre films as HACK! THE GENE GENERATION and LO, Scott Glasgow goes down a Herrmann-esque road to solve the RIDDLE of a Pennsylvania town, wherein a woman’s search for her missing brother will of course unlock dark secrets that once A-list actors would rather stay buried. But if it’s a job for any indie-centric composer to make their projects seem bigger, Glasgow again shows that he’s capable of taking on far bigger thrillers with his talent for intriguing melody. With the Bratislava players […]Read On »


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