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CD Review: ONLY GOD FORGIVES soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/03/2013
ONLY GOD FORGIVES soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

Most times, a composer’s job is to support the emotions of an actor’s performance, not become the performance. But where any other musician might be condemned for overstepping the boundaries of good taste, Cliff Martinez deserves a medal for brilliantly providing just about the only humanity for Nicolas Winding Refn’s lavish exercise in artsy sadism with ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Far more in the realm of the filmmaker’s FEAR X  than his infinitely more accessible DRIVE, Refn’s bitch slap of unending, beyond-explicit revenge is actually more of a fight club for staring. Given endless stretches of unblinking silence in between its […]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: THE GAMBLER and BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/30/2013
THE GAMBLER soundtrack | ©2013 Quartet Records

Jerry Fielding was a composer who set a new high bar for tough guy expressionism in film music, taking an uncompromising, and often primally dissonant approach for such seething orchestral blood rites as THE WILD BUNCH, THE OUTFIT and LAWMAN. Now the new releases of THE GAMBLER and BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE offer a rich contrast in Fielding intensity, subduing his voice for a modern classicist, and then pouring on the danger for the Master of Disaster. If Gustav Mahler had become a film composer, it’s arguable that his often brooding, string-heavy style might have sounded something like Jerry Fielding’s […]Read On »


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CD Review: DESPICABLE ME 2 and THE SMURFS 2 soundtracks

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/29/2013
DESPICABLE ME 2 soundtrack | ©2013 Universal Records

Perhaps there’s just a natural, festive spirit of his country’s carnival celebrations that’s in the musical genes of Brazilian composer Heitor Pereira. Rapidly making a name for himself in family-friendly scoring, Pereira’s work for the likes of CURIOUS GEORGE, BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA and THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD comes across as being just plain “nice” in the most fun, melodic description of that word as possible – especially when dealing with a cartoon supervillain on the mend, or munchkins with playfully bad attitudes for two sequel scores that actually improve on Pereira’s original, bouncy work. Having shown sympathy for Mr. […]Read On »


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CD Review: COMPANY OF HEROES 2 soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER
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: THE IDOLMAKER soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/27/2013
THE IDOLMAKER soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Taylor Hackford’s 1980 feature debut THE IDOLMAKER was an auspicious start for this musically inclined filmmaker and producer, whose love for old fashioned r & b rock shone through WHITE NIGHTS, LA BAMBA, RAY and CHUCK BERRY HAIL! HAIL! ROCK ‘N ROLL. Based on the starmaking life of Bob Marcucci that saw the discovery of Frankie Avalon and Fabian, THE IDOLMAKER attempted the difficult task of creating “new” versions of classic jukebox tunes that would be just as rocking to then-contemporary youth tastes. It says something about how well Hackford succeeded in that we’re now seeing Varese do a rare […]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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