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LINK and POWDER soundtracks – CD Reviews

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/28/2016
LINK soundtrack | ©2016 La La Land Records

here Jerry Goldsmith was lionized for any number of inventive, mainstream scores like BASIC INSTINCT, TOTAL RECALL and THE WIND AND THE LION, the composer had an equal knack for embodying idiosyncratic characters for movies well below the widely accepted radar like UNDER FIRE, THE SALAMANDER and THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER. Goldsmith’s creativity flowed with noticeable enthusiasm for these soundtracks where he could show off his devilishly clever humor and emotional resonance, whether accompanying an orangutan manservant or a mystical albino. In his follow up to PSCYHO II for director Richard Franklin, Jerry Goldsmith was given the opportunity to play a not-so obviously lethal killer. Instead, […]Read On »


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CD Reviews: 3:10 TO YUMA and THE GUNMAN soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/17/2015
3:10 TO YUMA soundtrack | ©2015 La La Land Records

With the NRA-approved likes of TERMINATOR 3, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and MESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY #1, Marco Beltrami has shown his certain set of skills when it comes to using firearms, at least musically when it comes to a soft-spoken composer whose scores often make particularly loud bangs – no more so then with a fully loaded re-issue of his ode to spaghetti westerns, or his recent score that effectively turns the similarly circumspect Sean Penn into a weapon-blazing action hero. When hearing how Beltrami created a unique, and gnarly sound for James Mangold’s mighty good 2007 reboot of […]Read On »


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CD Reviews: GRABBERS and ROBOT OVERLORDS soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/15/2015
GRABBERS soundtrack | ©2015 Movie Score Media

Since throwing an executive team-building trip into a bunch of merc serial killers in SEVERANCE, Christian Henson has proven to be one of the more notably rising British composers with his particular talent for the genre, exploring an eerily time-trapping Bermuda TRIANGLE, then adding to the Sean Bean body count in the lethally atmospheric BLACK DEATH before playing one of history’s monsters for Saddam Hussein’s THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE. Movie Score Media has been a big proponent of this gifted and prolific composer, recently with MALICE IN WONDERLAND, THE SECRET OF MOONACRE, STORAGE 24 and his music for a new TV […]Read On »


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CD Review: 1864 and ALLIES soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/14/2015
ALLIES soundtrack | ©2015 Movie Score Media

Movie Score Media’s quality releases continue to be not only a major source for discovering new composers whose attendant projects barely hit U.S. shores, but also a great way to hear relatively obscure foreign soundtracks done by sometimes eminent American musicians – in both notable cases here performed in the key of war. Early on in Marco Beltrami’s career, the composer wrote one of his most interesting psycho-killer scores for a deranged female cellist, albeit in the guise of a period costume drama for Norwegian director Ole Bornedal’s 2002 thriller I AM DINA. Now Beltrami reteams with him for a […]Read On »


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CD Review: BATES MOTEL and PENNY DREADFUL soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/02/2015
PENNY DREADFUL soundtrack | ©2014 Varese Sarabande Records

Two cable hits have been busy re-inventing everyone’s favorite Mama’s boy and band of Edwardian monster hunters. But leave it to Chris Bacon and Abel Korzeniowski to make these often horrific exploits go down with orchestral elegance. For Bacon, it’s realizing that melodic empathy is the room key to loving Norman Bates as much as his mom, tenderness that suffuses his often beautiful, lush score to BATES MOTEL. Yet the spirit of Bernard Herrmann certainly inhabits this abode, not in stormily gothic (or stabbing) violins, but in BATES‘ long, drifting string lines and sympathetic piano. While there’s effectively uptempo percussion, […]Read On »


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CD Review: HANNIBAL Seasons 1 and 2 soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/26/2014
HANNIBALS Seasons 1 and 2 soundtracks | ©2014 Lakeshore Records

To label the sonic nightmare that Brian Reitzell has cooked up for television’s most lethally elegant doctor-gourmand as “music” is way to simple a way of defining the wildly experimental stew of sound design and occasional shards of melody that infuse a show that by rights shouldn’t be anywhere near network television, especially scoring that could lead to seizures in more tender viewers foolish enough to tune in. But the psychological incisiveness with which Reitzell conveys the sound of insanity is like nothing else that’s ever been done within the psycho-killer genre, be it on the big or small screens. […]Read On »


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CD Review: DEAD RINGERS, NAKED LUNCH and CRASH soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/15/2014
DEAD RINGERS soundtrack | ©2014 HOWE Records

Howard Shore made his musical bones on the body horror of director David Cronenberg, a match particularly made in visceral-intellectual heaven with DEAD RINGERS, NAKED LUNCH and CRASH, three scores that show the chilling diversity in what’s arguably the most rewardingly unhinged (and ongoing) collaboration between two creepily-minded auteurs of this dark side of Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock. Now Shore gives this twisted trio a collector’s edition re-mastering, made complete with additional music that truly brings out his music’s mesmerizing power. 1988s DEAD RINGERS marked Shore’s fourth collaboration with Cronenberg for the most realistically disturbing movie the director had […]Read On »


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CD Review: OUIJA and JESSABELLE soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/02/2014
OUIJA soundtrack | ©2014 Back Lot Music

Anton Sanko has certainly come a long way in scoring horror films since the days of “Strangeland,” employing the off-kilter vibe of such dramatic indie scores as SCOTLAND, PA., LIFE IN FLIGHT and RABBIT HOLE to the far weirder likes of LAST WINTER and an episode a piece for FEAR ITSELF and MASTERS OF HORROR. In the process, Sanko has impressed by evolving from cool, sampled quirk to fully commanding darkly emotional orchestral forces for THE POSSESSION and THE DEVIL’S HAND, a talent that only becomes more uncannily formidable with the ghostly assaults of OUIJA and JESSABELLE. While the first […]Read On »


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CD Reviews: THE HILLS HAVE EYES and KNIGHT RIDER soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/19/2014
KNIGHT RIDER soundtrack | ©2014 Perseverance Records

Don Peake is one of the musicians who’ve jumped on board of Perseverance’s new “composer distribution series,” which allows artists to use the label as a proxy for titles they’ve always wanted to release. Among the titles to spring from the former Everly Brothers guitarist are FRANKIE AND JOHNNY ARE MARRIED and two volumes of KNIGHT RIDER. But horror cultists will most certainly get their primitive fill for Peake’s run through the cannibal-infested desert of Wes Craven during the director’s way grittier days, a grindhouse talent that had memorable brute force in 1977s THE HILLS HAVE EYES. This since way […]Read On »


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CD Reviews: THE BLUE MAX: THE LIMITED EDITION and THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/24/2014
THE BLUE MAX: THE LIMITED EDITION soundtrack | ©2014 La La Land Records

Jerry Goldsmith came roaring out of the gate in the mid-60s to impress Hollywood with his seemingly boundless talent to play any number of genres. And two of his best scores from this furiously creative period couldn’t be more apart, or more in demand from Goldsmith collectors than 1966s THE BLUE MAX and 1963s THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER, one a soaringly romantic exercise in the nobility of battle, and the other a playfully insane game of all-star masquerading murder suspects that at last get the releases they’ve long-deserved on special editions from La La Land and Varese Sarabande Records. […]Read On »


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