Music

Interview: SNOWPIERCER composer MARCO BELTRAMI is on the right sound-track

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/14/2014
SNOWPIERCER | ©2014 The Weinstein Company

Among the genre-centric composers who’ve carried on the torch from Jerry Goldsmith, few stand out for blazingly inventive sci-fi and horror scores like the maestro’s USC protégé Marco Beltrami. Just as his mentor used his memorable thematic talents for orchestrally, and electronically conveying psychopaths, aliens and futuristic adventure, Beltrami has jumped on a similarly imaginative and prolific bandwagon. Since the psychopathic score for the smash 1996 hit SCREAM stabbed Beltrami into the Hollywood map, the composer has used every trick from chilling melodies to thunderous percussion and angelic choruses to embody the fantastical and fearful, music capable of rapturously symphonic […]Read On »


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Interview: EARTH TO ECHO composer Joseph Trapanese phones home

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 07/13/2014
EARTH TO ECHO soundtrack | ©2014 Relativity Music Group

Listen to such pulsing wavelengths as Fall on Your Sword’s ANOTHER EARTH, Nathan Johnson’s LOOPER Nima Fakhara’s THE SIGNAL or Steven Price’s Oscar-winning GRAVITY, and you’ll pick up loud and clear on the burgeoning film scoring genre I prefer to call “alt. sci-fi.” It’s a plane of electro-orchestral existence where traditional symphonic melody (or at least the spirit of it) gets fused with an acoustical rock and roll vibe that can veer from psychedelia to grunge. Organic samples of everything from scraped metal to car engines are warped into new, unearthly entities, joining with electronic percussion and atmospheres that can […]Read On »


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CD Review: UNDER THE SKIN soundtrack

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 06/09/2014
UNDER THE SKIN soundtrack | ©2014 Milan Records

There are WTF scores. And then there are WTF scores, soundtracks that take an approach so utterly bizarre and unique that their composers don’t seem to have originated from this planet. On that note, someone had better do a major physical examination of Mica Levi, a seemingly come-from-nowhere musician – at least if you aren’t aware of her alternative career in Micachu and The Shapes. But given this young, classically trained artist’s stunning, and startling scoring debut, you just might assume her place of origin is another star system. For how else to describe the sound mass that’s likely what […]Read On »


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Interview: SAVING MR. BANKS composer Thomas Newman scores a spoonful of bittersweet sugar

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 01/02/2014
SAVING MR. BANKS soundtrack | ©2013 Walt Disney Soundtrack

Tuxedoed penguins, dancing chimney sweeps, a housekeeper floating in on an umbrella to tame a household of errant children – all accompanied by some of the most memorable songs to grace a Disney movie, let alone any family film in Hollywood via England history. These confections make for the enduring magic that is MARY POPPINS, a movie that’s melodiously synonymous with family warmth. However, the real story behind this heartwarming classic was anything but harmonious, especially when POPPINS decidedly Scrooge-like creator arrived in LA’s magic kingdom like a serving of castor oil – haunted by a childhood that was anything […]Read On »


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Interview: NEBRASKA composer Mark Orton takes a road trip

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/31/2013
NEBRASKA soundtrack | ©2013 Milan Records

From ABOUT SCHMIDT‘s gruff retiree venturing about the Midwest in his Winnebago to the two malcontents who take their beat up car for soul-searching and wine-tasting in SIDEWAYS‘ Santa Ynez Valley, filmmaker Alexander Payne has proven that he’s got an eccentric taste for movies involving road trips with bastards – especially when it comes to the eccentric scores playing on his car radio called a soundtrack. But of all the hopefully redemptive voyages for these lovable losers that Payne has staged to critical acclaim, perhaps none has the desolate whimsy we hear on our way to NEBRASKA. The state might […]Read On »


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Interview: 47 RONIN composer Ilan Eshkeri scores the samurai way

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/28/2013
RONIN soundtrack | ©2013 Varese Sarabande Records

Ilan Eshkeri is a composer who knows his way around costumes, be it past or present. Starting his scoring career in England swinging a gladiator’s sword for two TV movies about the Coliseum, Eshkeri has fitted on the blood-stained mob business suits of LAYER CAKE, provided a rousing fantasy score for the eccentric wizards and air pirates of STARDUST, elegantly showed that YOUNG VICTORIA had sex appeal, helped apply the battered spandex of KICK-ASS and returned to the valiant last legion of the Roman Empire’s CENTURION. But whether the era demands a score that’s humorously enervating or bold and bloody, […]Read On »


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CD Review: The Best Scores of 2013 – The Runners-Up

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 12/27/2013
Brian Tyler / NOW YOU SEE ME soundtrack | ©2013 Glassnote

BEYOND TWO SOULS (Lorne Balfe / Sony Entertainment) Though it’s far more of an interactive movie than it is a video game, the negligible level of first-person shooter ability here doesn’t prevent BEYOND TWO SOULS from being a complete immersive experience, especially with the eerie, and rapturous quality of Lorne Balfe’s score, leveled up with the ace technical and musical production oversight of Hans Zimmer. For a heroine seemingly cursed by her lifelong bond to an invisible entity, Balfe conjures a truly beautiful theme, topped with a female voice that resonates with a wounded emotion that binds this powerfully symphonic […]Read On »


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Interview: Composer Steven Price makes GRAVITY soar

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 10/23/2013
GRAVITY soundtrack | ©2013 WaterTower Music

It’s been said that in space that no one can hear you scream. Yet for all of its astonishing visual, and technical accuracy, I can be fairly certain that the audience will be thankful that GRAVITY has thrown a bone to allow one glaring stylistic inaccuracy to survive in the void. Namely, it’s the emotionally identifiable companion of music that accompanies the lonely roller coaster ride of female astronaut Ryan Stone. For hearing nothingness would be cold comfort indeed, as it’s the innovative scoring of Steven Price that gives GRAVITY‘s black oblivion a feeling, beating heart. Of course, that isn’t […]Read On »


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Interview: Rob Simonsen on scoring THE SPECTACULAR NOW and THE WAY WAY BACK

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 09/01/2013
Rob Simonsen | ©2013 Rob Simonsen

Just as guitars and soulful rock-pop melody signaled the youthquake revolution in film scoring with Simon and Garfunkel’s score to THE GRADUATE in 1967, today’s movies about troubled teens on the cusp of a far larger adult world are sounding out with a similar spirit that reflects what the “kids” are listening to, as opposed to their grandparents’ old-school symphonic scores. However, pop-rock is an ever-growing animal as well, having ventured well off the top 40 mainstream since the days when a strumming approach was all that you needed to signal a post-adolescent breaking away from conformity. Now teen dramedies […]Read On »


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Interview: BYZANTIUM composer Javier Navarrete hears vampire grrll power

By DANIEL SCHWEIGER 08/06/2013
BYZANTIUM | ©2013 IFC Entertainment

America might have its upstart, sparkly rock-and-roll vampires. However in Europe the cinematic myths surrounding these creatures tend to be somewhat more romantically sophisticated, encouraging their scores to be similarly cloaked in poetic refinement. It’s a crimson wellspring where Intimately Baroque instrumentations conjure images of corseted eroticism and raging orchestras relish in unholy evil, all while a chorus simultaneously evokes the undead’s transgression against God, and their impossible dream of returning to his good graces. With his music’s striking mix of tenderness and savagery, Javier Navarrete takes on feminine, melodic shape to tap into the jugular of time-honored vampire music […]Read On »


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