CD Review: THE FOG: EXPANDED EDITION soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/29/2012
THE FOG: EXPANDED EDITION soundtrack | ©2012 Silva Screen Records

It was 133 years ago that a ship full of lepers went down off of Spivey point near Antonio Bay, and a seemingly impossible 33 years last when John Houseman told the tale to open what’s arguably John Carpenter’s most atmospheric chiller. Only a few piano chords and a barely perceptible synths accompanied the old salt’s ghost story. But in that simplicity lay a world of fear, even if the re-performed FOG soundtrack that came out in 2000 was perhaps a bit too sonically souped up for its own good. Now at long last, Silva Screen has released the original […]Read On »


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Interview: TAKEN 2 composer Nathaniel Menchaly gets into the action of scoring

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/28/2012
Nathaniel Menchaly ©2012 Nathaniel Menchaly

When it comes to international action scoring, there’s one composer with a very particular set of skills, skills that he’s acquired as a kick-ass house musician in Luc Besson’s factory of fury. For a producer who pumps out a seemingly unending stream of pictures wherein company men, crooks and assassins of all stripes and colors outrace, outwit and outshoot their way from seemingly impossible predicaments, Nathaniel Méchaly is the guy with the backbeat to get the job done. But when the percussive scoring style that infuses nearly all movies of this type are getting more than winded (especially in America), […]Read On »


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CD Review: ARBITRAGE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
ARBITRAGE soundtrack | ©2012 Milan Records

His characters are often under intense pressure, with no easy way out in sight. Not that most of Cliff Martinez’s scores sweat their predicaments out in the traditional sense, preferring to speak volumes for the agitated states of bank robbers (THE UNDERNEATH), drug dealers (TRAFFIC) and the fate-cursed (FIRST SNOW) through the tides and ebbs of pulsing, rock-inspired rhythms and suspenseful, dream like sustains. Now the former Chili Pepper has segued from from the monosyllabic getaway man of DRIVE to the far more talkative, and rich antihero of ARBITRAGE the kind of mogul who prefers to put others in the […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHANE soundtrack (2,000 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
SHANE soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

After releasing Jerry Goldsmith’s entertaining scores to STAGECOACH and RIO BRAVO, La La Land Records’ wagon train hits a bona fide western classic with “Shane.” Perhaps no film, or score better personified the lone gunfighter in white than this legendary collaboration between filmmaker George Stevens (GIANT) and composer Victor Young (THE QUIET MAN). The musician had plenty of experience on the range with scores like STREET OF LAREDO and RIO GRANDE. And while Stevens had served as he’d ridden it as a director since his time spent in 1935 with ANNIE OAKLEY. Stevens couldn’t have hoped for a more iconic […]Read On »


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CD Review: NORTH BY NORTHWEST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/27/2012
NORTH BY NORTHWEST soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

Not only would Bernard Herrmann’s rush hour “wild fandango” usher in one of the greatest opening title sequences in movie history, but it would also serve as the gunshot that signaled the far more frantically suspenseful scores, and pictures to come to feature movie stars outracing fireballs. Yet through the years, the innovative impact and black-humored fun of NORTH BY NORTHWEST remains undiminished, always kept alive through the numerous soundtrack releases and re-recordings that have paid tribute to the most entertaining chase in the Herrmann / Hitchcock innoncents-on-the-run cannon. Now Intrada releases what will likely be the last CD word […]Read On »


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CD Review: BODY HEAT soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/14/2012
BODY HEAT soundtrack | ©2012 Film Score Monthly

Few composers personify all things sex like John Barry. Not just the carnal act, but the romance and burning desire. It’s scoring as skin on skin, pure pleasure made through the jazzily lush fusion of brass and strings. When listening to this composer’s classic Kama Sutra, there’s no chapter that captures this mix of eroticism, emotion and danger with the sensuality of 1981’s BODY HEAT. Lawrence Kasdan made a surprising move from penning the PG likes of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to writing and directing this then temperature-raising R update of classic 40s-style film […]Read On »


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CD Review: RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION and THE APPARITION soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
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: 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: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/30/2012
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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