DICKENSIAN and RIPPER STREET soundtracks – CD Reviews

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/30/2016
RIPPER STREET soundtrack | ©2016 Silva Screen Records

    The music of Victorian-to-Edwardian England has never been more interesting given the likes of Hans Zimmer’s SHERLOCK HOLMES, Charlie Mole’s MR. SELFRIDGE and John Lunn’s DOWNTON ABBEY. When given the spirit of such TV dream-team mash-ups like PENNY DREADFUL, the antiquated approach becomes positively hopping, especially as heard on English label Silva Screen’s releases of the BBC soundtracks to Debbie Wiseman’s DICKENSIAN and Dominik Scherrer’s RIPPER STREET, shows whose desperation-caked cobblestones ring with exciting, unbuttoned vibrancy. DICKENSIAN is turns the Marvel Universe into the Charles Dickens one as literary superheroes from such classic novels as A CHRISTMAS CAROL, GREAT EXPECTATIONS and THE OLD CURIOUSITY SHOP search for the […]Read On »


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CD Review: BEYOND: TWO SOULS SOUNDTRACK

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 04/29/2016
BEYOND: TWO SOULS soundtrack | ©2016 Lakeshore Records

Good, if not excellent things can come to those who wait, which can be especially frustrating when it comes to a world where instant, visual gratification always comes first before music that can be equally as gratifying (if not more so) than the game it’s attached to. Now finally after three years, listeners will finally get to dive into Lorne Balfe’s terrific score for the 2013’s BEYOND: TWO SOULS. Game creator David Cage’s attempt to break down the line between movie and controller by having the player make choices that would creates fateful ripples across the rest of his experience – […]Read On »


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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 Review: GOING APE! soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/16/2015
GOING APE! soundtrack | ©2015 Intrada Records

 Though he’d never stopped scoring dramatic subjects like THE GREAT SANTINI and ZULU DAWN (not to mention SATURN 3‘s  hulking robot), the 1980s proved to be a three ring circus that proclaimed Elmer Bernstein as a king of comedy. He was certainly on a roll after the hijinks of ANIMAL HOUSE, MEATBALLS and AIRPLANE! scores that famously played their screwball humor “straight.” But definitely not so with the monkeyshines of 1981′s GOING APE!, which teamed TV’s TAXI stars Tony Danza and Danny DeVito with three mugging orangutans. While definitely not the most sophisticated comedy that Bernstein would ever score, the […]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: A SOUND OF THUNDER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/13/2015
A SOUND OF THUNDER soundtrack | ©2015 Dragon's Domain

You’d be hard pressed to hear Ray Bradbury when this wannabe epic showed the time-wave shock of what happens when errant dino-hunters from the future happen to step on a hapless butterfly. Certainly filmmaker Peter Hyams was used to bagging bigger cinematic game when he took on the project for cash-strapped Franchise Pictures. But if the company’s fall made the real havoc here into the unrealized ambition of effects that seemed like a chicken in Jurassic Park, that didn’t stop Hyams from delivering an unexpectedly entertaining, and at times quite suspenseful film, the vision of what it’s production should have […]Read On »


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CD Review: CHUCK soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/11/2015
CHUCK soundtrack | ©2015 Varese Sarabande Records

With geeks inheriting the television earth, it was only natural that a computer nerd named CHUCK would get his own cult NBC show, where he proved himself to be a more-than capable super-spy over the course of 91 episodes and five seasons. That’s quite a lot of time to make a musical impression with his ceaseless, CIA-embedded skills. But darn if composer Tim Jones’ brain didn’t stop cooking as he came up with one clever stylistic touch after the other, the best of which have now been collected to create a very strong musical impression on this titular CD. Of […]Read On »


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CD Review: DEBUG soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/10/2015
DEBUG soundtrack | ©2015 Lakeshore Records

While he’s impressed with the jet-fueled thrills of RED SKY and the massively symphonic historical scope of WALKING WITH THE ENEMY, some of Timothy Williams most blazing work has appeared under the company of Tyler Bates’ GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, a score that he also conducted. It’s a sci-fi energy that puts Jones in particularly good solo stead to head into space with a bunch of juvenile delinquent hackers, who discover a particularly devilish mainframe who doesn’t want to be deleted in DEBUG. Though it might not have GUARDIANS‘ budget, filmmaker David Hewlett (most familiar as an actor in the […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE DEVIL’S HAND soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/09/2015
THE DEVIL'S HAND soundtrack | ©2015 Movie Score Media

There’s nothing creepier than black-garbed, bible quoting religious cultists dwelling in the rural hinterlands, as the genre of pseudo-Amish horror has proven with such brethren as DEADLY BLESSING and infinite entries of the CHILDREN OF THE CORN series. But when you’ve got an assortment of string and percussion instruments ripping your spinal chord out with the finesse of a rusty wood chipper, then that congregant’s screaming, shivering voice achieves a whole other level of musical fright. On that note, Anton Sanko’s score for  THE DEVIL’S HAND can be welcomed as the most insidious member of a musical congregation that includes […]Read On »


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