CD Review: LE WEEK-END soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/30/2014
LE WEEK-END soundtrack | ©2014 Milan Records

It seems to have been a while since we’ve had a really wonderful “pure jazz” soundtrack since Mark Isham’s bluesy work on such Alan Rudolph relationship films as AFTERGLOW and THE MODERNS. LE WEEK-END nicely brings back those fond memories for a wonderfully brief spell that takes listeners back to the latter score’s City of Lights, as a burned-out British couple tries to rekindle their spark on a second honeymoon. Yet given that these aren’t young lovers swinging about artist circles during the 1930s, composer Jeremy Sams takes an entrancingly cool jazz combo approach a la Chet Baker, with a […]Read On »


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CD Review: WAVELENGTH soundtrack (1,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/29/2014
WAVELENGTH soundtrack | ©2014 La La Land Records

The same year that E.T. crash-landed on earth to gigantic global success, three boyish aliens were marooned in L.A. to a near-invisible ripple of recognition (unless you count how STARMAN copied their silver sphere mothership). Perhaps the most notable memento of this unassuming little sci-fi movie (which was actually made in 1981) would be its neo-futuristic score by Tangerine Dream, the German progressive group then truly taking off in Hollywood with their far more notorious 1982 soundtrack to RISKY BUSINESS. Yet that film’s alternatively meditative and rhythmic sound is also very much an identifying factor to “Wavelength,” its alien vibrations […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE BEAUTIFUL SPY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/27/2014
THE BEAUTIFUL SPY soundtrack | ©2014 Movie Score Media

Besides his yeoman work conducting new versions of classic soundtracks (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE ALAMO) and orchestrating (ALEXANDER, CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT), Nic Raine is a more-than-accomplished composer in his own right, a talent last heard on Tadlow’s release to SHORES OF HOPE. Now the English musician gives another German production a remarkable score with THE BEAUTIFUL SPY, where a looker for sale during the Nazi’s rise gets bounced between the Axis and Allies for her espionage favors. Raine’s music is a suspenseful valentine to John Barry, a composer whose suspenseful stylings he certainly knows his way around after de-coding […]Read On »


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CD Review: JOSEPH ANDREWS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/26/2014
JOSEPH ANDREWS soundtrack | ©2014 Kritzerland Records

Director Tony Richardson ushered in a new era for bawdy costume comedies with his 1963 Best Picture winner TOM JONES, which also nabbed its composer John Addison a Best Score Oscar for his “substantially original” music. A rollicking pastiche of 17th century stylings that treated pompous classical music clichés with all the delightful disrespect of Mozart on a drunken night out, TOM JONES re-invigorated the costume drama soundtrack with bawdy delight. Having released Addison’s clowning masterwork several years back to a sold-out reception, Kritzerland has now put out the director-composer’s 1977 follow-up with their adaptation of “Tom” author Henry Fielding’s […]Read On »


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CD Review: AFRIKA’AIOLI soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
AFRIKA’AIOLI soundtrack | ©2014 Music Box Records

Outside of John Powell’s RIO scores, you’re not likely to hear a more delightful jungle of tropical instruments than the ethnic winds and percussion spread out through these three scores on Music Box’s assemblage of the music of Michel Korb – perhaps France’s most interesting proponent of ethnomusicology outside of Maurice Jarre. But where that composer used African and Asian rhythms to dramatic effect, Korb’s work is comedic in nature, if not outrightly joyous. With AFRIKA’AIOLI dealing with two layabouts who become fish out of water on the dark continent, Korb’s whistling, drum beats, antique-sounding piano and squeeze box percussion conveys […]Read On »


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CD Review: ATLANTIS: THE LAST DAYS OF KAPTARA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/25/2014
ATLANTIS: THE LAST DAYS OF KAPTARA soundtrack | ©2014 Movie Score Media

If its YouTube trailer is anything to judge by, the animation for this update on the Minotaur fable is more cow than bull. But when listening to its pretty stupendous score by Peter Bateman, you’d think that Dreamworks animation was taking a stab at 300. For if the CGI toon budget in fact went to Bateman’s score, then it’s money well spent for the unabashed, heroic splendor that resonates like an infinitely bigger production. No doubt the magic of working as an orchestrator on such lavish genre scores as PRIEST, AFTER EARTH and the upcoming MALEFICENT rubbed off in a […]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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CD Review: SECRET SHARER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/23/2014
SECRET SHARER soundtrack | ©2014 2M1 Records

A Polish sea captain finds himself way underwater in desire, and danger when he takes on an adrift woman in the South China Sea for this modernization of Joseph Conrad’s short 1910 story. But perhaps the classiest passenger on board this otherwise rusting ship is English composer Guy Farley (MODIGLIANI), who gives beautiful, moody elegance to this unlikely, and potentially lethal romance between burned-out hero and his potentially lethal catch. A musician definitely worthy of discovery on this end of the pond, Farley has impressed in both thrillers (THE FLOCK) and romance (CASHBACK). Now SECRET SHARER showcases both styles with […]Read On »


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CD Review: POMPEII soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/22/2014
POMPEII soundtrack | ©2014 Milan Records

Paul W.S. Anderson is popcorn personified when it comes to such muscular entertainments as EVENT HORIZON, SOLDIER, RESIDENT EVIL and DEATH RACE getting powerful scores by the likes of Michael Kamen, Joel McNeely and Paul Haslinger that have ranged from heroic strings to terrifying electronica and twisted metal. But while his latest work might have turned to ash at the box office, POMPEII stands for me as Anderson’s most ambitious, and purely enjoyable old-school film, a blazing mash up of GLADIATOR and WHEN TIME RAN OUT that sought to achieve an epic dramatic quality amidst its historical disaster film arena. […]Read On »


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CD Review: ELMER BERNSTEIN: THE AVA COLLECTION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
ELMER BERNSTEIN: THE AVA COLLECTION soundtrack | ©2014 Intrada Records

Though taken for granted by today’s collectors, being able to get the actual, original tracks for a film score has only been a relatively recent development. What most fans received for decades were performances done after the fact by the likes of Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams, who took the most melodically accessible tracks from a given film, then lushly arranged them for albums that barely topped the half hour mark. Before Elmer Bernstein specifically marketed these types of re-performances specifically for the soundtrack appreciator market with his “Film Music Collection” label (whose Film Score Monthly box set […]Read On »


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