CD review: YELLOW ROCK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/09/2013
YELLOW ROCK soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

As every western from ULANZA’S GOLD to JEREMIAH JOHNSON has proven, two big no-no’s for the white man is to go crazy for precious minerals, let alone violate a sacred Indian burial ground. Both are done in spades for the indie oater YELLOW ROCK, as a well-intentioned search party spins out of control with greed to the accompaniment of a vengeful, straight-arrow score by Randy Miller. An underrated, orchestral composer for such films as HELLRAISER III, WITHOUT LIMITS and TV movie spins on DARKMAN and FIRESTARTER,  Miller has always put impressive thematic muscle into his work. His talent is especially […]Read On »


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CD review: WHAT MAISIE KNEW soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/08/2013
WHAT MAISE KNEW soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

As a composer with a sensibility as rhythmic as it is eccentrically loopy, Devotchka’s Nick Urata has captured the ups and downs of adult relationships with such charming scores as CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, RUBY SPARKS and ARTHUR NEWMAN. What makes WHAT MAISIE KNEW particularly striking is how gentle Urata is in his approach, but no less ironic as he evokes a children’s sensibility to depict a little girl who’s caught in a tug of war between her divorced parents and their new amours. It’s an “Alice in Wonderland” approach where a fantasia of bells, gentle pianos, halting strings and a […]Read On »


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CD review: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/07/2013
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Horner fans will have a field day with this complete presentation for the composer’s second stab at Jack Ryan, Intrada’s two-CD set offering a virtual checklist of everything that’s great about the composer’s unabashed symphonic sensibilities. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER offers the heroic outrage in full swing, from a valorous main theme to another mournful take on a classical piece (here reprising Aram Khachaturian’s “Gayane Ballet Suite” after ALIENS) and a organic-electronic mastery of world music – here tuned to the South American drug war. CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was a welcome change of pace after Horner accompanied America’s favorite […]Read On »


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CD review: STUCK IN LOVE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/06/2013
STUCK IN LOVE soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Nate Walcott (of the group Bright Eyes) and Mike Mogis go from the elderly, ironically enchanted vibe of the excellent Alzheimer’s film LOVELY, STILL to STUCK IN LOVE, a far younger-skewing picture about a romantic roundelay of a writer’s family, producing LOVE‘s score as well as its indie-centric songs. “At Your Door” (featuring Big Harp) has an fun, determined bounce, while teaming with Friends of Gemini for the similarly upbeat “Somersaults in Spring.” Other tunes range from the meh strumming of Conor Oberst’s “You Are Your Mother’s Child” to the likewise indistinct rock of Polkadot’s “Like Pioneers” to pretty good […]Read On »


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CD review: NO PLACE ON EARTH soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/04/2013
NO PLACE ON EARTH soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

It’s almost disarming how pleasant John Piscitello’s documentary score is when you think that it’s for a Holocaust movie about Ukrainian Jews who find shelter, and safety from the Holocaust in the bowels of a giant, utterly dark cave. While Piscitello evokes the string-shivering danger of the depths these survivors are reduced to, the main feeling that NO PLACE ON EARTH evokes is a hauntingly beautiful nostalgia for a past, an innocence that can’t be reclaimed. Think of this gently melodic score as the visions that these people see in the dark, tonal visualizations light and love of homes and […]Read On »


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CD review: BENEATH and WE STEAL SECRETS

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
BENEATH soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

Spinning out a groovily weird indie score beat with the likes of ANOTHER EARTH, 28 HOTEL ROOMS and NOBODY WALKS, the collective called Fall On Your Sword (otherwise known as Will Bates, doing that Daft Punk mask think on his company’s website) has managed to sound different with each soundtrack, especially when dealing with the dual horrors of killer fish and our government’s clandestine activities. Probably the wackiest, and perhaps creepiest musical-design treatment that a mega-piranha has yet gotten, BENEATH uses teeth-scraping metallic effects and berserk buzzing, so much so that the score’s subject feels like it’s about a swarm […]Read On »


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CD Review: FROZEN PLANET soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/23/2013
FROZEN PLANET soundtrack | ©2013 Silva Screen Records

Englishman George Fenton seems to have conquered the market on scoring every nook and cranny of the globe with a series of sweeping nature documentaries that have included EARTH, LIFE, PLANET EARTH and THE BLUE PLANET. And while the genre has technically evolved in light years from the dinosaur-age days of MUTUAL OF OMAHA’S WILD KINGDOM, the basic spectacle of watching animals being cute, or killing each other certainly hasn’t. That age-old struggle for survival is often mirrored in the artist’s challenge of going for the uncondescending beauty of God’s ice-covered earth, or choosing to play it with the family-friendly […]Read On »


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CD Review: SHE DEMONS / THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER soundtrack | ©2013 Monstrous Movie Music

When you want the best in shrieking, old-school genre music, then Monstrous Movie Music has been the place for any Famous Monsters fan to geek out to, as the label has gone from sumptuous re-recordings of the likes of GORGO, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THIS ISLAND EARTH to releasing the original recordings of fairly prestigious genre fare like ROCKETSHIP X-M and KRONOS. They’ve even dared to branch out with such distinctly non-monstrous Ernest Gold releases as SHIP OF FOOLS and THE McCULLOCHS. Now MMM goes digging into the vault of 1 AM Chiller Theater fare, not to mention whatever […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE CARPETBAGGERS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/22/2013
THE CARPETBAGGERS soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Elmer Bernstein was a composer who could wear many stylistic hats to fit his often over-sized characters, whether it was conjuring a biblical symphony for Moses or gun-blazing western music for John Wayne. But if I have a personal favorite approach, then it’s the Bernstein of the late 50s and early 60s, a time when jazz stood for bad behavior. Bernstein mainlined that hep, untamed sound with the more mainstream sound of an orchestra to create the defining sound of “movie jazz.” It was a deliciously swaggering approach that captured the morally bankrupt doings of heroin addicts (MAN WITH THE […]Read On »


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CD Review: PATRICK DOYLE: IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 05/21/2013
PATRICK DOYLE: IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

After sojourning in Hollywood for a blockbuster career renaissance that’s included BRAVE, THOR and RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the sprightly Scotsman musically visits the real America to satisfy his own inner muse in this expansively impressive concept album PATRICK DOYLE: IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. Paying tribute to his ancestors who immigrated to Alabama, Doyle captures their destination with equal parts rousing beauty and wide-eyed affection. Of course he opens with “Washington DC’s” noble horns and symphonic sweep that also effortlessly conveys an Aaron Copland’s sense of Americana. Yet the nation that Doyle surveys is mostly on a smaller […]Read On »


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