Soundtrax '99, Part Two

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, January 06, 2000

[NOTE: Part One of this column looked at soundtrack albums for films and TV shows from 1999. Part Two looks at compilations, anthologies, promotional recordings, and restorations of classic films scores.]

PROMOS
While primarily intended as promotional recordings for their composer's use, promo CD's continue to proliferate the marketplace through specialty retailers, and offer a valuable if elusive source for film scores not issued commercially. This handful of notable genre scored given the promo CD treatment in 1999 are well worth seeking out.
John Beal's miasmic horror score for Tobe Hooper's festive grand guignol, THE FUNHOUSE (JNBL 4001), was a likable and often remarkable excursion into musical mayhem. Beautifully spooky, Beal carried the listener from the penny arcade to the murky, malevolent darkness of the not-so Funhouse. A carnival motif recurred from time to time, but the majority of the score comprises a variety effectively of spooky and horrific tonalities and atmospheres. Beal's darkmusic evoked images of shadow tents with untied, wind-whipped doorflaps, malevolent clowns whose eyes glimmer with dagger points, and the rustling growls of some frightful beast obscured by the darkness.
Another notable promo release was Christopher Young's full score of 1998's URBAN LEGEND. Only three score cues were on the movie's 'soundtrack' CD, which was really just a collection of songs, so the availability of Young's complete score was more than welcome. Young presents a frightening score mixing in a lullaby motif, scattered voices and whispers, scary melodies, and Young's characteristic brand of cleverly orchestrated action music.

Don Davis' wonderful monster movie score for the 1997 TV miniseries, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, was issued on a promo CD put together for the composer by Prometheus. Emphasizing large orchestra and choir, Davis creates a hugely intense wall of sound that creates a powerful, larger-than-life dynamic, including a somewhat Carl Orff/CONAN rhythmic choral sensibility that creates an appropriately mythological legendry surrounding the characters. Davis's score was modernistically dissonant while remaining tonal, his choral motif keeps the action cues on track, and the music was inventively orchestrated and developed throughout.
Be thankful that John Debney's wild and frenetic score for INSPECTOR GADGET was preserved on a promo CD, if you can find it. Taking on an Elfmanlike frenzy, Debney coated this near wall-to-wall score with an amazing variety of themes, motifs, and quotations that would make Carl Stalling's head spin. Wild and witty orchestrations, including samples of just about anything and everything, lent the score a delightful freshness and fun-to-listenness. Earlier in the year Debney released a promo of his MY FAVORITE MARTIAN score which met equal listening success. Along with Don Davis, Debney was by far one of the most up and coming composers of the 90s, and his miasmic musicologies for both of these films are terrific and fun scores to listen to.
Ernest Troost's frightfully fun score for TREMORS was released on a promo CD by Intrada (ETCD 1003). The film was a kind of tongue-in-cheek homage to the science fiction horror films of the '50s. The score's dichotomy revolved around neat Texas country music for the locale and protagonists, and plenty of old-fashioned horror scoring for the monster scenes. Troost used a fairly good-sized orchestra and his music was solid monster movie music. The CD also includes four cues from another horror film, BLOODRUSH, mostly string-dominated ambient/chordal horror motifs.
Elia Cmiral's spooky score for STIGMATA, issued as a promo CD by his agency, was heavily percussive synth and sound design. The ambient texture was given a relentless rhythm and a pulsing dynamic through pounding drums and chillingly upturned swirls of violins. Cmiral proved to be a capable performer in the Christopher Young school of sound mass/sound design. STIGMATA was instrumentally interesting, thickly orchestrated with an effective and intriguing if often disturbing mixture of synths and symphs. Cmiral develops the score purposefully from its disturbing dissonance to a spiritual assurance, and in so doing creates a tone poem for religious mysticism and uncertain faith resolved.
Lee Holdridge's gorgeous music for SPLASH, issued in a re-recording on LP back in '84, made its original soundtrack debut on a promo CD from SuperTracks with plenty of alternate takes and extras. Holdridge's music was every bit the equal to the long-finned blonde damsel from the sea - romantic and breezy, full of acoustic guitars and pleasant orchestral melodies, the main theme one of love and regret, bittersweetly toned for what seems to be a hopeless romance between man and mermaid, blissfully resolved in the end. Holdridge was one of those composers with a rare gift for effortless melodies, and he nails the emotional tonality of films like this with sweet, honest lyricism and poignant orchestration. This was one of his best scores, long awaited on CD.
A 2-CD set promo made by SuperTracks for composer Richard Band, whose career scoring low-budget films has failed to give him the recognition his talent deserves, but has achieved a large body of amazing and effective scores, many of which are displayed on this sampler. The promo includes a number of excellent tracks from sf&f films like ROBO-WARRIORS, METALSTORM, CASTLE FREAK, DRAGONWORLD, and episodes of TV's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, 7TH HEAVEN, and STARGATE SG-1. Band's unique synth and orchestral writing was clever and very effective, and this set (bound in a DVD case) was a great gallery of his unreleased work.

RESTORATIONS
1999 also offered up a number of notable re-recordings, restorations, and revisitations of classic, not-so-classic, and hitherto unavailable older scores.
The best vintage soundtrack release of the year has to be Intrada's long-awaited full score release of Bernard Herrmann's long lost JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS(MAF 7083), with Bruce Broughton helming the Sinfonia of London. Herrmann's score - hitherto available only via excerpts on collections - was brought to vivid life in its complete form, from the rhythmic chords of its opening prelude, drawn from the drumming of the ship's oar-master through the clackity violence of its mass skeleton attack. Listening to the JASON score in its full glory offers another reason why Bernard Herrmann understood the relationship between film and music better than anybody, and why he remains unequaled in music for cinema.
With two excellent versions of Max Steiner's seminal KING KONG score already available, the validity of yet another version (Rhino R2 75597) may be questioned until you realize that this was the first CD release of the original soundtrack and that Rhino has done such a good job at presenting the material that it makes an important companion to the other two. The presentation was two-fold, the first half a condensation of the entire film with all music cues, including source cues, heard among dialog and sound effects; the second half presents all of the unreleased isolated music from the film that survives, restored from various sources into a 24-minute suite. A well-illustrated 32-page companion booklet includes valuable data on the film and its score.
Varese Sarabande served up a vibrant re-recording of John William's sterling brassy score for SUPERMAN (VSD2-5981), performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by John Debney, including about 20 minutes of music not hitherto included on the original soundtrack CD. The 2-disk set sparkles with vivid orchestration and heroic power, and was a fine supplement to the original soundtrack CD (also 2 discs).
Along with Alex North's unused score for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Lalo Schifrin's music for THE EXORCIST was one of film music's long lost treasures. Partially recorded and discarded by director William Friedkin, the music has never been heard - until Warner Bros released it as a limited CD included in the 25th Anniversary VHS release of the movie (16177-00-CD). While the CD included most of the avant-garde classical recordings that Friedkin compiled to create a his score (less the Mike Oldfield 'Tubular Bells' music), it's the 11 existing minutes of Schifrin's score that were the most interesting. The music, written primarily for strings and percussion, was full of haunting and otherworldly textures and tones, and it was fascinating to hear Schifrin's take on the music and imagine how the film might have sounded with his music instead of Friedkin's patchwork assembly.
From England came the first true soundtrack release of Roy Budd's delightful score for SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (Cinephile CIN CD 005). As a successor to Bernard Herrmann's 7TH VOYAGE and Miklos Rozsa's GOLDEN VOYAGE, Budd played David against two of film music's most stalwart Goliaths. His score was effective when at its best his main theme was a soaring lyric for violin and much of his action scoring was adroit and potent even though it wasn't used quite often enough in the score. While the music lost its forward motion and rhythmic design in some cues, there were enough tremendous moments, such as the giant walrus attack and the music for the Sabre Tooth. The small size of the orchestra lessened the affect of the music's dynamic range; the 8-minute suite Budd conducted with the London Symphony for his Final Frontier double CD some years ago had a much grander sound, but the original cues presented in their entirely was a most welcome and belated release.
Marco Polo continues to be the most important label in restoring and releasing golden age film scores, powerfully yet faithfully reconstructed by John Morgan and recorded by the Moscow Symphony under the baton of William T. Stromberg . The label's laudable release of Murder and Mayhem: Great Horror Scores from Hollywood's Golden Age (8.225132) proffered three lengthy suites from classic horror/suspense films of the 1940s. Max Steiner's THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, his only true horror score, juxtaposed a concert piano chaconne as both a set-piece for the pianist character in the film and as a horror motif for his disembodied hand when it returns for vengeance on his murderers. This motif was surrounded by one of Steiner's loveliest romantic themes and plenty of out right orchestral chills. Hugo Friedhofer's music for John Brahm's 1944 remake of THE LODGER was muted and moody, dark and shadowy textures with occasional percussively peaks denoting Jack the Ripper or his handiwork. The tuneful Victor Young proved to be an effective author of spooky textures and atmospheres when he composed THE UNINVITED; while the film's major melody went on to outlive its film incarnation to become one of Young's most enduring standards, 'Stella by Starlight,' there was an impressive variety of supernatural apprehension and delicate orchestral ambience left in the score, culminating in a powerful and stimulating climax. Hearing these extended suites so well recorded illustrates how well they hold up against modern day scoring sensibilities. Kudos to Morgan, Stromberg, and Marco Polo for rescuing these important film music works from oblivion.
Likewise to Chandos for The Film Music of Georges Auric (CHAN 9774), which included the premiere recordings of short suites from DEAD OF NIGHT and THE INNOCENTS. The former was a frenetic composition for full orchestra, horrifically descending chordal surges for brass and percussion contrasted against very quiet, woodwind and string passages. Auric's final nightmare montage was a raging cacophony of orchestral power, very well performed by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Ruman Gamba. In contrast with NIGHT's huge orchestral strokes, THE INNOCENTS contained a very subdued and more cerebral spooky score built around an innocuous folksong which Auric masterly transformed into a disturbing ostinato for psychological terror.

COLLECTIONS & ANTHOLOGIES
The closest we've gotten to a real soundtrack to THE X-FILES TV music was the excellent 31-minute concert suite, recorded and performed, with Snow's input, by John Beal, on The Snow Files, a collection of Mark Snow's film music (Sonic Images SID-8902). The rendition was very faithful and captures the essence of Snow's eerie musical ambiences for the show and its conspiratorial mythologies. The collection also includes original soundtrack material from DISTURBING BEHAVIOR and, what was perhaps most interesting on the CD, cues from a number of moody mysteries Snow scored for television, such as CONUNDRUM and SEDUCED AND BETRAYED. Snow's gloomy melodies are lyrically pretty but main a dark edge, relaying the dark motives of sinister characters.
Aficionados of Hammer horror film music found much to be thankful for in the first fistful of releases from a new British label, GDI, presenting for the first time anywhere the original soundtrack music to many of Hammer's ferociously scored horrors. It was Hammer who shredded the sedate restraint of much British film music and replaced it with an orchestral dynamic that has rarely been matched. From James Bernard's ferociously relentless ostinatos to Harry Robertson's exquisitely romantic melodies and all the ornate interludes in between, this was music that has begged for release for more than three decades. GDI came to the rescue with three anthologies - two volumes of The Hammer Film Music Collection , The Hammer Quatermass Film Music Collection, and a complete soundtrack CD to Franz Reizenstein's thunderous music for THE MUMMY (1959). There have been a few re-recorded anthologies of Hammer music from Silva Screen within the last half dozen years, but GDI's new series of original soundtracks harkens to begin to do some real justice to the wealth of tremendous horror music served up from the studio.
Latest in the glut of 007 filmmusic was Silva Screen's digitally-recorded Bond: Back In Action (FILMCD-317), notable mostly for eschewing the obvious recapitulation of the same old themes and presenting instead more than 20 minutes of previously unreleased music, including much of Monty Norman's original DR NO score. Norman's contribution to the film has been mostly obscured by the controversy surrounding authorship of the 'James Bond Theme' which has been contractually attributed to Norman but which was certainly heavily adapted if not completely rewritten by Barry, and by the fact that little of Norman's true scoring other than calypso arrangements were present on the original 1962 soundtrack LP. Recorded by the City of Prague Philharmonic, Nic Raine conducting, additional unreleased cues from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, ON HER MAJESTIES SECRET SERVICE, and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER are integrated with not-entirely-familiar cues from films to come off with a fairly fresh collection that avoids the overly familiar repetition of most other collections.
Among miscellaneous film music collections, Sonic Images' Watch The Skies (SID-8901) was a superior collection of cues from 16 science fiction films, from familiar motives like Bernard Herrmann's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL to more recent popular offerings including John Williams' E.T., David Arnold's INDEPENDENCE DAY, Danny Elfman's MEN IN BLACK, and Alan Silvestri's CONTACT. Of particular interest are a handful of exceedingly good original soundtrack excerpts from films that have not previously been preserved on disc Elliot Goldenthal's spooky synthmusic from the TV-movie ROSWELL, Michael Hoenig's introspective music for the TV series DARK SKIES, and Christopher Franke's eerie music for the Stephen King miniseries, THE TOMMYKNOCKERS.