PR: The Thing-Music from the Motion Picture

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BUYSOUNDTRAX RECORDS RE-VISITS ENNIO MORRICONE’S THE THING
Longtime John Carpenter Collaborator Alan Howarth Re-Creates Music For
The Thing—Music From The Motion Picture

(October 5, 2011) – BuySoundtrax Records is proud to announce the release of The Thing-Music From The Motion Picture a recreation of the Ennio Morricone-penned score as heard on the original out-of-print soundtrack album. Alan Howarth, John Carpenter’s longtime collaborator, provides a faithful restoration of the music as it was originally heard on the out-of-print soundtrack. The Thing-Music From The Motion Picture, featuring extensive liner notes by Randall D. Larson, will be released digitally with a limited edition CD (1500 units) be available from www.buysoundtrax.com on Wednesday, October 5, 2011.

The Thing marks the first time that John Carpenter hired an outside composer to score one of his films. He chose Ennio Morricone, the legendary Italian composer known for his scores for Westerns to write the music. “We couldn’t speak the same language, but he saw a cut of the film and he got some ideas from that, and then I told him about keeping the score to a minimum in terms of the amount of notes and very few key changes,” said Carpenter in a 2000 interview.

Randall Larson describes:
Morricone actually wrote a great deal of music for The Thing, but only a portion of it was used in the film. “I gave John much more music than he actually needed, and we then came to an agreement to choose one piece in particular to put in the film,” he said. Carpenter focused on placing Morricone’s throbbing Thing motif and the sustained string pattern of isolation throughout the film as the primary motives.

“There are two different music styles in Morricone’s score,” Alan Howarth explained. “The first is the more traditional orchestral material that Morricone did on his first pass. After hearing that score, Carpenter actually played the Escape From New York music for Morricone and asked ‘can you give me anything like this?’ So he went back in the studio without the orchestra and created this synthesizer music. That’s when Morricone came up with this very memorable theme with that electronic pulse. It’s almost like Morricone doing John Carpenter.”

From scores to special sound effects, from Halloween stalkers to Star Trek, Alan Howarth’s electric imagination has contributed to some of the biggest genre films of the ‘80s. Alternately wearing the hats of both composer and sound effectsman, Howarth has collaborated with John Carpenter on the music for some of his most significant films from Escape from New York through They Live; he’s provided sound design and effects for Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, all the Star Trek movies, The Hunt for Red October, Coppola’s Dracula, Total Recall, and Stargate, among others. As a composer, he’s scored all or part of all the Halloween sequels, composed music for Retribution, The Dentist, and others.

Because of Howarth’s close working relationship with John Carpenter, it seems natural that he should be involved with the re-recording of the classic soundtrack. Though technology has advanced significantly in 30 years, Howarth tried to recreate the sounds of the original recording. The tracks have also been re-sequenced to match the order of the film.

“I’ve switched it around and put the music in order from the opening title and the spaceship fly-by, going into the main Thing Theme and the desolation motif, and I’ve lined them up to the best of my ability in the way they were in the movie,” said Howarth. “The orchestral cues I’ve done with Larry Hopkins using Digital Orchestra Tools to recreate them, and in some ways the performances are better in our version than they were in the original. It’s like an upgrade.”

The Thing-Music From the Motion Picture will be available digitally, in stores, and directly from Buy Soundtrax on October 5, 2011. The first 100 people to order the set at www.buysoundtrax.com will receive a copy autographed by Alan Howarth.

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