Logan's Run: Short Run Good Music

THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS

A perhaps forgotten short-lived TV series from 1977 has been mined as this month's Silver Age Classic from FSM. A thoroughly satisfying compilation of all the original music written for the 14-episode TV series, LOGAN'S RUN (FSM Vol 7 No 4), based on Michael Anderson's big screen adaptation of the classic William Nolan/George Clayton Johnson novel that came out the previous year. The series, through the association of former STAR TREK writer Dorothy Fontana (who became LOGAN's script editor), attracted and benefited from stories and scripts from notable science fiction writers including William F. Nolan (pilot), Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, and John Meredyth Lucas.

The feature film had been scored by Jerry Goldsmith in one of the composer's first dabblings with an almost purely electronic score (FSM released the full score on CD in 2002). Goldsmith's tactic had been to use atonal synthesizer music to represent the cold, regulated life within the domed cities of the future, while more symphonic music was used to add humanistic warmth to the scenes when Logan escapes outside the dome.

For the TV series, primary composer Laurence Rosenthal has followed suit. Rosenthal's main theme soars beautifully, a captivating melodic rhythm for brasses over strings that rises out of the repetitive, blurry siren of the Yamaha E5 organ that opens the show. The organ motif immediately suggests "science fiction" and "future" which also tying-in with Goldsmith's use of an onrushing synthesizer reverberation to open his feature score. Rosenthal quickly segues into a romantic orchestral melody, written and performed in more of a modern pop idiom, to represent the show's characters and ongoing quest. "The melody itself is a rather soaring romantic tune with a kind of quick, syncopated, pulsating beat under it," Rosenthal told me years later when I had a chance to interview him. "Over the top was a series of downward slides from a high note, which were made by simply setting the synthesizer in such a way so that all you had to do was strike the note and each one would descend from there. It just kept whipping up the excitement."

Rosenthal (CLASH OF THE TITANS, METEOR, ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES) scored the first two episodes (including pilot) and two additional episodes. Other episode scores were composed by Bruce Broughton (SILVERADO, LOST IN SPACE, YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES), Jerrold Immel (DALLAS), and Jeff Alexander (WILD WILD WEST REVISITED). Five additional episodes were scored with library music culled from the previous episodes. The CD contains suites from each of the nine episodes that features original scores, mixed from the original ½" three-track masters. Sound quality is quite good, and the music, performed mostly by an orchestra of 26 players, sounds quite fine.

The music runs the gamut from Rosenthal's sweeping orchestral crescendos that intermingle among the pilot (which is represented by three suites, totaling almost 23 mins). Rosenthal's music tends to be very romantic (his third episode, "Man Out of Time," opens with a busy, workaday world music and then sets it adrift upon a sea of time, where it lingers and floats, suggestive of the optimistic possibilities of a better world while maintaining a realistic dirge-like tonality of melancholy resolution. Jeff Alexander's sole episode score, "Capture," tends to gravitate more towards the dramatic, atonal, with a brooding chase motif playing against a slinky, jazz riff. Immel's score for "Half Life" starts breezy and bucolic but soon resonated heavily with dissonance and danger; he also utilizes an organ to achieve some theremin-like sci-fi sounds. Immel's mixture of rapidly pulsating piano notes over long violin chords in "The Innocent" creates a fascinating and compelling musical sound design that culminates in a pleasingly exotic and warm resolution for wind and synth. Broughton's scores for tended to be more aggressive in their action music, reminiscent of the Goldsmith original, while also being dabbled brightly with shimmering pastoral woodwinds, keyboard, and percussion. "Night Visitors" is a compellingly attractive haunted house score for low cellos over harps and strings. Broughton also wrote a notable arrangement of Rosenthal's main theme for solo trumpet for "Fear Factor."

The package includes a 20-page booklet with well-illustrated and very thorough notes on the history of the series and a cue-by-cue analysis of the CD's music, ably provided by FSM publisher Lukas Kendall. The track listings in the booklet also indicate which specific cues are represented in the suites, which is a nice detail. The CD also includes two "bumpers" that Rosenthal composed to bring the show into or out of commercials, which are very effective little five-second cues based on the main title melody.

Television remains a vast, often untapped repository of outstanding film music, especially the early work of composers who have gone on to achieve very notable feature film scoring careers. This is an excellent restoration of important television science fiction film music.

www.filmscoremonthly.com

Varese Sarabande has issued John Powell's score for [IMG2R]John Woo's futuristic action thriller, PAYCHECK (302 066 535 2), which is a powerful and often poignant action score. The film, based on a Philip K. Dick story, is scored by Powell (CHICKEN RUN, SHREK, EVOLUTION, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE ITALIAN JOB) with a taut, strident orchestral/synth approach that reverberates well on CD. It's far more than the rapidly tapped out synth score you might think a "race against time" film score might have. Powell has shown himself to be a versatile composer, capturing both the ferocity and passion of fantasy, the easy-going bravado of European thievery, and the intensity of heavy action material, and he demonstrates much of it here in a score that demands not only a consistency of rhythm but within that rhythm a depth of emotive characterization (the brief but perceptive piano notes that articulate depths of emotional back story within "Mirror Message," for example; the compellingly dramatic piano and orchestra interplay of "Imposter;" the poignant piano, strings, and voice of "I Don't Remember."). Powell's cues pulsate with a vigorous forward motion, providing a rhythmic beat that keeps the visual action going but suggests a humanity beneath their rapidity. "Hog Chase, Part 1 and Part 2" is a terrifically exciting action cue that wouldn't be out of place in a Lalo Schifrin score, very percussive and brassy, slightly jazzy, very full-blooded, and wonderfully pugnacious.

PAYCHECK is not a heavily thematic or melodic score, but it is highly sophisticated it its riffs, its rhythms, its patterns, and its persuasiveness, and it is definitely a superior action score.

www.varesesarabande.com

Mark Isham's music for Philip Kaufman's TWISTED, a more contemporary thriller, [IMG3L]also released on CD by Varese Sarabande (302 066 543 2), reverberated with brooding tenaciousness, an inescapable sense of resolute danger.

The score returns Isham to his favorite roots that of the jazz trumpet, which he performs with exquisite passion on the soundtrack. TWISTED is an urban jazz-based score, and it rings with contemporary noir. The opening track, "The City," emanates with Isham's plaintive, evocative, and mournful crying trumpet, intonating pain and misgiving across benighted urban sprawl. Action motifs like "I'm My Own Best Suspect" (the idea is a crux of the story) are compellingly rhythmic and driven. "An Old Flame" morphs from a brooding collection of furtive piano notes and chords, and steel drum percussion into a clashing, crashing, shambling array of synthesizer shards and undulatingly progressive orchestral tonalities. "A Toast to Your Partner" is an eloquently evocative mysterioso, brimming with enigmatic textures and apprehensive tonalities. The score concludes with "You Are The One," in which Isham's plaintive trumpet cry resounds above the ruggedly percussive riffs of his action music, the two musical elements colliding in one collective, melancholy resolution.

www.varesesarabande.com

As reported by Film Score Monthly online, two notable composers have died within the last month. On February 17th, Samuel Matlovsky died of natural causes at the age of 82 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Matlovsky, who wrote music for theater during the 1950s, scored such films as Curtis Harrington's twisty thriller GAMES and the family film GENTLE GIANT, which spawned the TV series GENTLE BEN. He also scored the STAR TREK episode "I Mudd" and conducted Jerry Goldsmith's score for THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. Matlovsky is survived by two children and two siblings.

Arthur Kempel died in Los Angeles on March 3 of stomach cancer, at the age of 58. He studied at the Berklee School of Music and worked as an arranger for such performers as Bette Midler and Cher. His feature scores included the Jean-Claude Damme thriller DOUBLE IMPACT and David Twohy's sci-fi thriller THE ARRIVAL (both available on CD by Silva Screen), and he worked extensively in television, scoring episodes of FALCON CREST, REMINGTON STEELE and DIAGNOSIS MURDER, among others. He scored the TV movie version of RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE (starring Ed Harris), and was Emmy nominated for his score to A FIRE IN THE DARK. He is survived by his wife, Deborah.

Zack Snyder's remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, which opened last weekend, was scored by Tyler Bates (GET CARTER [2000], Roger Corman's ALIEN AVENGERS). Dave Lombardo, drummer for the rock group Slayer, performs on Bates' soundtrack. The "mall music" is credited to Tree Adams. There is no word yet on a soundtrack CD release of the score.

So far, Austrian composer Harald Kloser is best known for his music for sci-fi thriller THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR, but this year he will get his big break with the score for THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, Roland Emmerich's upcoming sci-fi epic that premieres on May 28, and ALIEN VS PREDATOR, the much anticipated sci-fi/horror/action spectacle involving these two contemporary classic alien adversaries. In an interview with IGN Filmforce, ALIEN VS PREDATOR director Paul Anderson reveals his choice of composer, saying that THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW "has a phenomenal score; big, epic, as you'd expect from one of Roland's pictures." ALIEN VS PREDATOR opens in theatres on August 13 and stars Sanaa Lathan, Raoul Bova and Lance Henrikson. musicfromthemovies.com