CD Review: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/06/2013
LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN soundtrack | ©2013 Kritzerland Records

Kritzerland has become the most passionate soundtrack label when it comes to releasing soundtracks from Hollywood’s golden age – the kind of symphonically lush studio system scoring arguably best personified by Alfred Newman. While their magnificent re-mastering of Newman’s HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY will play to more sentimental tastes, fans who appreciate Newman’s less-utilized, if just as formidable talent for film noir will get their Technicolor kicks out of 1947s LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, in which Gene Tierney, the object of a detective’s obsession in LAURA (whose iconic David Raksin score was just an instant Kritzerland sell-out) gets to […]Read On »


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CD Review: SPARTACUS WAR OF THE DAMNED soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/05/2013
SPARTACUS WAR OF THE DAMNED soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

After scoring Starz’s SPARTACUS series and its spin-offs, Joseph LoDuca reaches the saga’s climax with a masterful, musical blow for freedom that does the saga, and the spirit of its late star Andy Whitfield worthy with WAR OF THE DAMNED. While the composer’s had plenty of experience in the sword-and-sandle arena from his days spent with Hercules and Xena (not to mention a Dark Ages Ash), the amped up violence and sex of this Starz spin has required even more musical muscle, and daring from the composer. Lo Duca’s final battle is impressively epic, pouring on gigantic orchestral themes that […]Read On »


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CD Review: FIRE AND ICE soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/04/2013
FIRE AND ICE soundtrack | ©2013 Buysoundtrax Records

Buysoundtrax has been in the habit of refurbishing many beloved genre scores from the 80s, most recently among them Tangerine Dream’s NEAR DARK, Richard Stone’s SUNDOWN and David Whitaker’s THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER. But amidst the decade’s particularly beloved sword and sorcery genre, perhaps no score is as savagely majestic, or unsung as William Kraft’s rippingly symphonic work for 1983s FIRE AND ICE. Ralph Bakshi took his passion for live action-to-animation rotoscoping that he’d begun on WIZARDS to its most wonderfully sexist extremes for this collaboration with Frank Frazetta, a he-man artist who’d turned his visions of barely-clad barbarians […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE LAST OF US soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/02/2013
THE LAST OF US soundtrack | ©2013 Sony Music

When it comes to video game scoring, it’s often the bigger, the better. And there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when the composer is mostly trying to make an impression amidst shattering spaceships, cannon-blasting world wars, dragon-slaying sword battles and zombie holocausts. Though THE LAST OF US deals with the latter, it’s on a far more human scale that’s ennobled a strikingly stripped-down score from Gustavo Santaolalla that just might be the least amount of “music” ever done for the genre. But then, having Naughty Dog hire the Oscar winning composer of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and BABEL to do to a […]Read On »


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CD Review: THE WARRIORS soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/01/2013
THE WARRIORS soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Walter Hill’s 1979 gang fantasia was far more an exercise in style than exploitation, even high-minded enough to base its noble punks’ journey back to their home turf on Xenophon’s Spartan adventure “Anabasis.” Not that THE WARRIORS‘ ancient source material mattered to legions of fans still enthralled by the movie’s eye-catching vision of such thematically costumed bad-asses like The Baseball Furies. If anything, Hill’s odyssey from Central Park to Coney Island played more like some futuristic urban action movie, its surreal atmosphere propelled by the rocking synth rhythms of Barry DeVorzon in a score that defined the era’s invasion of […]Read On »


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CD Review: COMPANY OF HEROES 2 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/29/2013
COMPANY OF HEROES 2 soundtrack | ©2013 Sumthing Else Music Works

Imagine if RED DAWN‘s score was on the side of the Russkies, and you’ll get an idea of the powerful Mother Russia patriotism that fill’s Cris Velasco’s exceptional real time strategy game score campaign against the Nazi bastards on the Eastern front in COMPANY OF HEROES 2. You’d be hard pressed to think that Stalin himself didn’t commission this score from the prolific videogame composer whose excelled in the battles of GOD OF WAR 3, DARKSIDERS and WARHAMMER. Velasco’s march-or-die orders inspire a dynamite symphonic performance that salutes the valor of the snow-swept homeland, unleashing powerhouse broadsides of heroic, militaristic […]Read On »


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CD Review: HAMMERSMITH IS OUT and WOMAN TIMES SEVEN soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/28/2013
HAMMERSMITH IS OUT soundtrack | ©2013 Quartet Records

Quartet Records continues their mission of putting out swinging comedy scores from the 60s and 70s from Burt Bacharach’s CASINO ROYALE to John Addison’s THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF MOLL FLANDERS. These entries don’t get more deliciously hep than when they’re playing the devil, or the devil as a woman. 1972s HAMMERSMITH IS OUT is a full-on Faustian lark as Richard Burton’s satanic asylum inmate gains egress via Beau Bridges’ country bumpkin orderly – a pairing of ancient evil and American hayseed that allows Dominic Frontiere to go for a swinging combo of Baroque stylings with country twang. Having played the […]Read On »


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CD Review: FANDANGO soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
FANDANGO soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

Though it barely got a release, 1985s 1971 road trip movie would go down as one of the latter decade’s most-loved cult movies, inspiring the admiration of “groovers” the world over. And while much of Alan Silvestri’s exceptional score would get left on the way to Mexico in favor of exceptionally used Pat Metheny tunes, FANDANGO stands as a landmark in the composer’s career as his first major venture into orchestral scoring. Thankfully Intrada knows where Silvesti’s symphonic champagne bottle is buried with this effervescent release. Joining Kevin Costner’s draft-dodging road trip after the electronic percussion heavy scores of CHiPS […]Read On »


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CD Review: INTO THE WEST soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/26/2013
INTO THE WEST soundtrack | ©2013 La La Land Records

Taking the idea of a family’s American expansion with all the Cinemascope passion afforded to HOW THE WEST WAS WON (but shrinking the screen just a bit for TNT), executive producer Steven Spielberg’s 2005 Emmy-lauded miniseries INTO THE WEST took home a music award for composer Geoff Zanelli. Yet in a slap to the creative face that would make an Indian shed a tear, the only album to get a release was one of those “inspired by” song jobs. Now, justice has finally come to the frontier with La La Land’s two-CD release of Zanelli’s beautifully evocative score. What makes […]Read On »


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CD Review: THEN CAME BRONSON soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
THEN CAME BRONSON soundtrack | ©2013 Intrada Records

NBC’s 1969 one-season series THEN CAME BRONSON had Michael Parks as a freewheelin’ journalist who goes on the road down Route 66, and a whole lot of other byways, as mostly driven by the liltingly romantic music of George Dunning – whose soft, string musings comprise the first CD of this unexpected, but very welcome Intrada release. No dirty, rock and rolling Easy Riders here for the primetime sensibility, just a nice guy cyclist finding kindred spirits on the road. One can certainly see album producer Lukas Kendall’s affinity for Dunning’s sweetly gentle approach, as his scoring here could easily […]Read On »


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