CD Review: THE LORAX soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/04/2012
THE LORAX soundtrack | ©2012 Varese Sarabande Records

He had to jump from classical tunes to pop standards and his own manic melodies within the space a half second while playing the likes of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Yet somehow, composer Carl Stalling’s job of melodically tying his toon music together looks positively relaxed when compared to the frantically ironic humor of today’s ADD animated pictures. But if there’s one of today’s composing generation who’s inherited the Stalling crown with a modicum of style and invention, let alone sanity, then it would be John Powell. With thrillingly manic scores for the likes of ROBOTS and two HAPPY […]Read On »


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CD Review: PLANET OF THE APES soundtrack (3,500 edition)

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/01/2012
PLANET OF THE APES soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

Danny Elfman has often played primal aggressiveness for director Tim Burton in such rampaging scores as SLEEPY HOLLOW and MARS ATTACKS. But none of their collaborations would grab the composer’s furious instincts like Burton’s redo for PLANET OF THE APES. Sure Jerry Goldsmith had the percussive idea first when he accompanied Charlton Heston into The Forbidden Zone, but leave it to Danny Elfman to run rampant with those animalistic beats and ethnic wind instruments. While the orchestra is ever present here, it’s a swirling, unbound beast, with anything resembling pleasant melody hosed down in a cage until the climax. Grinding, […]Read On »


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CD Review: HAYWIRE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/30/2012
HAYWIRE soundtrack | ©2012 Silva Screen Records

When Steven Soderbergh wants minimally surreal rhythms, he usually phones such eccentric operatives as Cliff Martinez (TRAFFIC) and Thomas Newman (ERIN BROKOVICH). Yet there’s only one musical agent he calls upon for his truly funky, mass audience-intended movies, and that’s British rocker David Holmes, the 007 with a license to kill it with his retro vibes for OUT OF SIGHT and three OCEANS pictures. While Holmes channeled 60’s r & b and 70’s Euro-sploitation vibes for those hustlers and con artists, the hit girl of HAYWIRE gets a groove that’s suitably more Roy Budd, channeling the lounge pop meditations of […]Read On »


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CD Review: STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (2CD) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/29/2012
STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (2CD) soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

After TREK V‘s search for God received a heretical box office response, WRATH OF KHAN director Nicolas Meyer was brought back into the captain’s chair to give the old cast a more fitting departure. Yet while it celebrated classic Trek to just about everyone’s content, THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY would also chance upon major new scoring talent in 27 year-old Cliff Eidelman, a composer who’d more than shown promise with the epic orchestral scores of MAGDALENE and TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT, as well as his character-oriented comedic work with CRAZY PEOPLE and DELIRIOUS. Given the chance of a scoring lifetime here, […]Read On »


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CD Review: SPEED (3,000 edition) soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/28/2012
SPEED soundtrack | ©2012 La La Land Records

Few soundtrack labels have rejoiced in putting out the rhythmically trend-setting scores of the 80’s and 90’s like La La Land Records, their explosive beats including the killer calypso groove of James Horner’s COMMANDO, Hans Zimmer’s twangily propulsive BROKEN ARROW, Mark Mancina’s Afro-grooves in BAD BOYS and Michael Kamen’s orchestrally operatic ho ho ho’s for DIE HARD. If that soundtrack stands as the seminal action score of the 80’s, then it’s fitting that La La has marked their 200th release with the next decade’s landmark work of popcorn aggressiveness for a full-on edition of Mancina’s SPEED. Why should you buy […]Read On »


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CD Review: BACK TO GAYA soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/31/2012
BACK TO GAYA soundtrack | ©2012 Movie Score Media

As with the final works of such ailing composers as Jerry Goldsmith, Michael Kamen didn’t let sickness diminish the talents that first landed him on the Hollywood map, namely a flair for orchestral writing. And like the equally missed Goldsmith, Kamen’s memorable swan song would be for an animated film. BACK TO GAYA (otherwise known by its equally confounding titles of  THE SNURKS  or BOO, ZINO & THE SNURKS) is no LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION or the Kamen-scored IRON GIANT for that matter. And that’s one big reason why this otherwise terrific soundtrack has languished in obscurity until Movie […]Read On »


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CD Review: WINSTON CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/29/2012
WINSTON CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY soundtrack | ©2012 Intrada Records

When so many documentaries are hampered by the budget to truly give them a rousing sense of history, Lee Holdridge has often been lucky to bring the battle-filled past alive with the army of a full orchestra, giving his music the stuff of legend for such Intrada-released soundtracks as THE EXPLORERS and IN SEARCH OF PEACE, Holdridge’s rousingly dramatic, and deeply emotional approach is no better suited than for one of WW2’s most tenacious figures in WINSTON CHURCHILL: WALKING WITH DESTINY. Never before had Britain seemed on the verge of annihilation than during the Nazi blitzkrieg, if not for the […]Read On »


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CD Review: NORWEGIAN WOOD soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/28/2012
NORWEGIAN WOOD soundtrack | ©2012 Nonesuch Records

While it’s the famed Beatles tune that spurs a Japanese man down a 1960’s-set relationship memory lane, what you’ll get here is a far more demanding type of musically pleasing love, courtesy of THERE WILL BE BLOOD‘s Jonny Greenwood. And while his latest score might not spill over with quite as much milkshake-worthy insanity, there’s again no denying that Greenwood is right at the top of the Avant-garde scoring movement between dissonance and melody. However, the trick of the Radiohead member-turned-composer is turning what could be as unlistenable as a lot of today’s “modern” classical music is into something truly […]Read On »


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CD Review: SAFE HOUSE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 03/27/2012
SAFE HOUSE soundtrack | ©2012 Varese Sarabande Records

SAFE HOUSE is risk-free in more ways than one as it follows most of the same story beats of a CIA dude movie on the run, a genre that was made so popular by the BOURNE IDENTITY franchise. Yet that doesn’t mean this espionage suspenser is lacking for propulsive danger, especially given a tensely effective score by Ramin Djawadi. Though set in South Africa, the German / Iranian composer avoids an ethnic sound and gets straight to the heart of the rhtymic action, with a driving, rock-accented talent he’s already impressively displayed in two MEDAL OF HONOR videogames. Here Djawadi […]Read On »


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CD Review: MASSACRE AT MARBLE CITY

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
MASSACRE AT MARBLE CITY soundtrack | ©2012 Beat Records

 When Americans hear “Spaghetti Western,” Ennio Morricone stands as the lone gunslinger. But thanks to Italy’s Beat Records label, other practitioners of this mythic, self-referential craft are getting their time in the sagebrush spotlight, especially Francesco De Masi. While his one English-language modern martial arts oater would be LONE WOLF McQUAID, De Masi was as prolific as Morricone on their home turf with the likes of ARIZONA COLT, ANY GUN CAN PLAY and RINGO, THE LONE RIDER. Beat now unleashes a De Masi fusillade in the genre (far from the only one practiced), two bullets of which include MASSACRE AT […]Read On »


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