TUBULAR BELLS 2003 is a marvelous re-recording of Mike Oldfield's original 1973 classic using current recording technologies.
© 2003 Wea

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T3 and TB3

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Marco Beltrami's venture into cyberwars in TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES has been released by Varese Sarabande (302 066 481 2) and the result is a pleasing mix of the mechanistic synth rhythms composed by Brad Fiedel that defined The Terminator in the first two films with a slightly warmer sensibility that humanizes the feeling of the music just a little bit (see Soundtrax from July 3, 2003 for Beltrami's remarks on the score).

The core of the music remains the mechanical dissonance that represents the machines the cyborgs and their ilk that own the future and battle against the renegade humans who try to regain their foothold on the world. That said, however, the emotional core of the music shifts to Beltrami's quiet, somber, and noble theme for John Connor ("JC Theme," track 3 and the very poignant reprise in "Flying Lessons," track 14), which humanizes the mechanistic rumble and grounds it solidly in human hope and human heroism. The Connor theme will be offset against the Terminator music frequently ("Terminator Tangle," track 16, comes to mind), musically representing the struggle between the two, including the "good" cyborg played again by Arnold Schwarzenegger who tries to keep Connor alive. "Radio," track 17, is a sweet soliloquy that provides a tender denouement before merging into a more assertive version of the Connor theme ("T3," track 18), playing off of the Terminatrix motif, which wraps up the score with an effective summary resolution.

Beltrami's take

TUBULAR BELLS 2003 is a marvelous re-recording of Mike Oldfield's original 1973 classic using current recording technologies.

© 2003 Wea

It's an intriguing and effective score, but its relentless percussiveness and all-too-brief thematic melodies may render it less accessible for many listeners, who may tire of its pervading dissonances. It's a score, however, that won't work as background music it's insistent music that carries its weight with an arrogant, rhythmic swagger. Given an attentive listen, the more intricate complexities and instrumental textures of Beltrami's approach can be better appreciated. Both composer and director opted not to include the original Fiedel theme in the score not that they didn't respect it (they did) but that they wanted this film to have a very different feel but it was given an intriguing orchestral arrangement which is heard over the end titles. This concludes the score (and is followed by a pair of unnecessary songs that figure in the film).

TUBULAR BELLS 2003

In celebration of its 30^th anniversary this year, British composer/musician Mike Oldfield has revitalized his original 1973 magnum opus Tubular Bells with a sparkling new recording that invigorates the much-admired classic in a very faithful manner. Tubular Bells 2003 will be released by Warner Bros on August 5^th, which will include a DVD featuring three passes of the music mixed in Dolby 5.1, as well as a video clip of "Introduction." Like the original, Oldfield plays all of the instruments and produces the album just as he did in the original version. Sister Sally Oldfield contributes vocals and British actor and former Monty Python comedian John Cleese acts as a very effective master of ceremonies, in the role taken by Viv Stanshall on the original.

Oldfield has revisited Tubular Bells previously, in terms of composing innovative new variations and extensions of the music. Tubular Bells II, released in 1992, was a thorough reworking of the original album, taking it into new directions much of it science fictionesque in tonality. An Oldfield website (www.amarok.f9.co.uk) notes that many believe the album's opening track takes its name from Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," which was the basis of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. (Oldfield's succeeding album was based on one of Clarke's early novels, The Songs of a Distant Earth). In addition, the TBII track, "Dark Star," is suggestive of the John Carpenter movie of the same name, which was released in 1973, the same year as TB.

In 1993 came Tubular Bells III, a far different variation that went into entirely new directions, creating a new theme modified slightly from the original TB motif that opened into an amazing soundscape and didn't desist until the album's final track. TB found a kind of culmination in Oldfield's 1999 Millennium Bell, which was premiered live in Berlin just as the calendar marched from 1999 into the new millennium (that spectacular concert is now available on DVD from Warner Music).

While his efforts over the last 30 years have shown a wide diversity in style, the sensibility originally heard in that 1973 Tubular Bells recording has proven to be characteristic of Oldfield's oeuvre. He has gone more often into vocal songs in the ensuing years, but the symphonic sensibility of Tubular Bells the theme-and-variation that defines progressive music of any idiom, and the inclusion of a wide variety of ethnic musical forms, instruments, and voicings has distinguished Mike Oldfield among modern rock composers. Tubular Bells 2003 is a most welcome recapitulation of this inaugural effort.

According to [IMG3L]interviews, Oldfield wanted to revisit his early effort and view it through modern recording techniques kind of his version of George Lucas revising STAR WARS with modern CGI. Until recently, a 25-year old contract prevented him from revisiting the record. "I knew that Tubular Bells was a record perfectly suited to the breathtaking capabilities of today's studio technology," Oldfield says. Despite the success of the original album, "To my ears... I was always aware of its imperfections. Notes out of tune, out of time, rushed playing, mistakes in performance, electronic noise, etc... The re-recording has been a great pleasure and it is so nice to hear my first piece of music realized to its full potential." Redeveloping the original material to suit modern technology gave new life to the thirty-year-old music, says Oldfield. "The more I worked on it, the more it took on a life of its own. It's almost like it's completely brand new now."

Despite the detailed complexity of its melodies and progressive changes, Tubular Bells was far more than a musical experiment for Oldfield. "It was a matter of life and death to make the album," Oldfield says. It meant escape from a dysfunctional family. "I was in an awful psychological state then. If I wasn't making music I was terribly paranoid. So music was the only place I was occupied enough to feel comfortable and secure."

Born the son of a doctor on May 15, 1953, in Reading, Berkshire, Oldfield began his music career at 14 when he formed a folk duo with his sister Sally, whose boyfriend had interested Mike in folk guitar. "It was amazing what he could do," says Mike, "playing the bassline and the melody, finger-picking style." Their debut album, Sallyangie, was released in 1967. Within another year Oldfield was playing bass for Kevin Ayers, a founding member of the groundbreaking psychedelic band The Soft Machine. While with Ayers, Oldfield had recorded demos for what would become Tubular Bells but was then rejected by every major record label. It took a young entrepreneur named Richard Branson to support Oldfield's effort with a week's free studio time.

The 1973 recording launched Oldfield's career (not to mention that of Branson's new label, Virgin Records, whose very first release was Tubular Bells), which has gone through two dozen succeeding albums, including a major Hollywood soundtrack (Roland Joffe's THE KILLING FIELDS, 1984). But its association with the 1973 horror film THE EXORCIST perhaps gave it its largest audience to date. Shortly after the album hit stores, director William Friedkin had dispensed with the original score composed by Lalo Schifrin for his new movie and instead set about to create his own score from record albums. Leading the mish-mosh was Oldfield's opening theme from Tubular Bells, which for a time became known as the "EXORCIST Theme" (completed portions of the Schifrin score, by the way, were finally resurrected and issued on a limited edition CD from Warner Bros, released in 1998 with a deluxe edition of the EXORCIST on video). The style of that simple piano-based "Introduction" influenced John Carpenter's score for HALLOWEEN and dozens of other horror film scores since.

While THE KILLING FIELDS [IMG5R]remains Mike's only original score to date, his music has found its way into several other film scores - Oldfield's musical sensibility has proven quite effective for cinematic drama. Excerpts from various recordings appeared in numerous films throughout the '70s and '80s, including Roger Vadim's 1974 French thriller, LA JEUNE FILLE ASSASSINÉE (Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge), THE SPACE MOVIE (1979; Incantations, The Orchestral Tubular Bells, The Orchestral Hergest Ridge), WEIRD SCIENCE (1985, Tubular Bells), THE EXORCIST III (1990, reprising the Tubular Bells introduction from the first film), and SCARY MOVIE 2 (Tubular Bells, naturally, over an EXORCIST parody scene). In 1998 Oldfield was asked to provide an arrangement of Mark Snow's popular X-FILES Theme to be used on the X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE soundtrack song album; Oldfield's resultant "Tubular X," which combined Snow's familiar TV theme with elements of Tubular Bells, was never used. For a complete run-down of Oldfield's film appearances, see www.amarok.f9.co.uk/mike/discog/extras/films.htm.

While its association with THE EXORCIST has probably served more to trivialize Tubular Bells than to popularize it, Mike Oldfield's virgin effort has been a groundbreaker in many, many ways. It continues to inspire and impress those who discover it fresh even 30 years after the 19-year old British musician first contrived it in an Oxfordshire studio and changed pop music forever. New musical genres like progressive rock, techno, new age, and chill out owe much of their existence to elements of Tubular Bells, which stands alone in pop music history for its complex, pastoral arrangements, its symphonic framework, and its progression through a variety of styles and textures from lilting upbeat moods to dark, threatening passages, and jaunty, infectious melodies. Released alongside a thematic compatriot, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Tubular Bells erupted as an oddity in pop music an instrumental album that was as infectious as it was impossible to succinctly categorize. "It was always in a genre of its own," Oldfield says.

Tubular Bells 2003 is not an adaptation of the original work but a straightforward and very faithful re-recording of the original material with current state-of-the-art recording techniques. The soundscape it creates is even more mesmerizing, and each instrument in its textural depth sounds clear. The piano part on "Blues," for example, simply glistens with fine toned resonance but even that pales beside the crystal clarity of the Tubular Bells when they are struck, heralded by Cleese's wonderfully-adept vocality.

Cleese introduces each instrument as if he were the headmaster of an eccentric school reading the register, bringing his own sense of comedy to famous phrases like "grrrrrrrand piano," an almost offhandedly thrown-away "mandolin...," and the classic "two slightly distorted guitars!" "It's appropriate that John Cleese is on it because it's a little bit Python-esque in the way it changes," says Oldfield. "You have this beautiful pastoral bit, then this crazy, crazy bit, then it will go to the pub piano. It chops and changes: now for something completely different!"

This time around, the CD also identifies and chapter-encodes the various movements of the piece, which in a very simple way help to emphasize just how diverse and remarkable this work is. Just by reading the titles alone, one can recognize how Oldfield was encompassing elements of rock, blues, jazz, folk, ambience, harmonics, and various ethnicities hitherto uncommon bedfellows in popular recording.

SOUNDTRACK & FILM MUSIC NEWS

In an [IMG4L]audacious move that has dismayed many baffled film music fans, Trevor Jones' score to the new fantasy adventure THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN is being released only in the US as a paid download from Apple's iTunes Music Service. The CD will be available overseas from the German label Colosseum (www.colosseum.de), and Varese Sarabande (www.varesesarabande.com) will release the CD in the US on July 29th, but only as a website mail order it will not appear in US stores due to the arrangement with Apple.

Also on July 29th, Varese will release a second four-disc 25^th Anniversary compilation, but, like LXG, it will only be available through the website, and only through the end of 2003. Along with more widely available cues, it will contain a couple of cues from long out-of-print CDs (TAI-PAN, MAN ON FIRE), a few from unavailable CD Club releases (THE 'BURBS, WE'RE NO ANGELS, BLOODLINE), and a couple from LPs that Varese never released on CD (SKY BANDITS, CAREFUL HE MIGHT HEAR YOU).

All Score Media will be releasing their Ennio Morricone pop/lounge compilations MONDO MORRICONE and MORE MONDO MORRICONE on LP. See: www.allscore.de.

The soundtrack [IMG6R]to the first installment of the hit anime series, HELLSING, has been released by Pioneer in the USA (5198-2). The score merges rock-oriented songs and instrumentals with electronic ambiences to create an eclectic score that works fairly well in creating a claustrophobically oppressive ambience not to mention a poorly disguised OMEN rip-off in "Original Sin." But skip the first four cues and start listening at track 5 for the most cinematic music, in my opinion! A soundtrack CD to the second film, HELLSING 2: RUINS, will be released on September 2, 2003.

Filmscoremonthly.com reports, via correspondent Preston Neal Jones, that on August 2nd at 8:30 p.m., Los Angeles' Ford Amphitheatre will be presenting a concert entitled "Movie Music Madness," performed by the sixty-piece West Hollywood Orchestra under the baton of Nan Washburn and featuring Broadway's Jason Graae.

Soundtrax is our weekly Movie Soundtrack column.