Soundtracks

CD Review: RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION and THE APPARITION soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/14/2012
RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION soundtrack | ©2012 Milan Records

Horror scoring seems to be rapidly transforming into some ungodly beast, composed of mutated sound effects, shrieking percussion and shards of what stands for melody. Not that this raging sonic flesh is such a bad thing, especially when in the hands of Tomandandy. Known to their relatives as Tom Hajdu and Andy Milburn, this duo has been responsible for any number of innovative works for the genre, including THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR and THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Now after accompanying Alice against the Umbrella corporation for RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE, the composers make that adventure seem positively sedate […]Read On »


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CD Review: SAMSARA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/03/2012
SAMSARA soundtrack | ©2012 Varese Sarabande Records

Where filmmaker Godfrey Reggio’s magical mystery tours through global cultures employ an all-encompassing, “scored” approach by Phillip Glass for any number of pictures ending in QATSI, his image-reliant counterpart (and former cinematographer) Ron Fricke instead had a lighter, and equally transfixing musical vision for his first film BARAKA, a similarly-themed metaphysical travelogue that used indigenous tunes and a meditative score by Michael Stearns to convey a world out of balance. Stearns is back for Fricke’s second feature after twelve years, with Marcello De Francisci and Lisa Gerrard added to the transfixing world music mix tape called SAMSARA, one way smarter […]Read On »


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CD Review: BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES: VOLUME 2 (3,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/02/2012
BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES: VOLUME 2 soundtrack | ©2012 Nathan Furst

Shirley Walker was a woman who shattered the stereotype that no female composer could assume the musical costume of a male superhero, let alone a major Hollywood action score. Walker’s dynamic orchestral sound proved them wrong from THE FLASH to TURBULENCE. But if there’s one identity that she’ll likely be remembered for assuming, then it’s the darkly heroic music of the animated Batman, a lavish, film noir sound that embodied the WB network’s retro vision of the Caped Crusader, one that many fans still view as the finest representation of their DC icon. Walker’s work wasn’t simply “cartoon” music that […]Read On »


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CD Review: MIEL DE NARANJAS (ORANGE HONEY) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/01/2012
ORANGE HONEY soundtrack | ©2012 Quartet Records

Portuguese composer Nuno Malo powerfully takes on the post Spanish Civil War, with its battle between freedom and fascist oppression continuing to take place in the region of Andalusia. It’s there in the 50s that a green recruit to Franco’s army thinks he’s set to do easy time, before finding himself in a crisis of conscience that’s both political and romantic- twin emotional poles that Malo evocatively conveys. His beautifully performed score is full of delicate foreboding, with lush strings and piano textures bringing to ear such dark Thomas Newman period scores as ROAD TO PERDITION and CINDERELLA MAN. It’s […]Read On »


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CD Review: DARKSIDERS II soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/30/2012
DARKSIDERS II soundtrack | ©2012 Thq Records

Having made a musical killing for such button-mashing slay-a-thons as ASSASSIN’S CREED, BORDERLANDS and HITMAN, Jesper Kyd gets one of his most intriguingly violent soundscapes for his first entry into DARKSIDERS, a game which now marks its second venture into post-apocalyptic territory. It’s a world wiped of humanity, where a horseman named Death battles a horde of angels and demons to bring back mortals to reap. It’s a clever conceit that straddles sci-fi, fantasy and horror, and Kyd pretty much hits every note, all while remaining remarkably light on his feet. Not nearly as cruel in its approach as the […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES soundtrack | ©2012 Watertower Music

The swelling, patriotic heroism that John Williams gave to SUPERMAN could just as well be a burst of crucifix-shaped sunlight in contrast to the thrumming, uber-dark approach that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard gave to what’s arguably the most downbeat, if not utterly grim comic book saga in movie history. And now that Howard has left the bat cave with his more emotionally conventional orchestral touch, Zimmer’s wall of beat-sound is now truly ruling the belfry, taking the musical saga to new depths of intoxicating grimness for  THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Fans of old school superhero scoring might be […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/26/2012
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

Perhaps the finest purveyor of sci-fi and fantasy entertainment during the genre’s boomtown days of the 50’s and 60’s, George Pal’s films were just as distinguished for their epic visuals of proto-Bay destruction as they were for their musical grandeur, none more so than his apocalyptic classics THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE. So it’s fitting that these two scores lead off a terrific Intrada compilation of early Pal-produced soundtracks, making for one of the most old school geek-tastic releases to be mined from the opening of the Paramount mountain. Where many of the era’s sci-fi scores […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE SHADOW soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/13/2012
THE SHADOW soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

First heard on the radio in 1930, The Shadow set the tone for the archetypical playboy-cum-superhero, a man of leisure whose real nighttime activity was trading in his tuxedo for an ominous crime-fighting outfit, one that struck fear into the hearts of common thugs and super villains alike. Though The Shadow found popularity every medium from to the airwaves and comic books, it somehow took about sixty-three years for handsome Lamont Cranston and his ugly alter ego to make their big screen debuts. And like such wonderfully entertaining retro box office busts of the time as THE ROCKETEER and THE […]Read On »


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CD Review: TED soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/02/2012
TED soundtrack | ©2012 Universal Pictures

Nothing represents cuddly innocence like a child’s teddy bear, an image that brings to ear the honeyed sounds of orchestral happiness. And playing just that is the key to what might be the most brilliantly subversive talking “animal” score of all time, given the beautifully lush stylings of Seth MacFarlane’s pet composer Walter Murphy. In TED, he makes his master’s crude humor all the more hilarious, and emotionally affecting, as if this music was actually accompanying the real, non pot-smoking, slut-screwing deal. As a vet TV composer with such credits as WISEGUY, BUFFY and PROFIT, Murphy’s most prolific, and popular […]Read On »


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CD Review: USED CARS (2,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
USED CARS soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

It’s a movie that’s anything but a lemon, even if the picture got treated like an Edsel upon its initial release. But with the director-writer team of Robert Zemeckis and Ed Gale (I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND) in the drivers’ seats, USED CARS has endured as a cult comedy classic, one whose case of musical buyers’ remorse is now revealed in a limo-quality La La Land release that not only offers Patrick Williams’ funkily energetic score, but its first, puttering (if well-intended) ignition by Ernest Gold.  The idea of getting the composer behind the greatest cinematic demolition derby of all […]Read On »


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