HANS ZIMMER

True, true. I can't deny that!
OK, well, I just really dislike the REST of the city then.
...except for the absolutely lovely Art Deco buildings, which I love.

OH, I feel so CONFLICTED!

I hate Brussels for the simple reason that I've worked there for 20 years and it's a nightmare to traverse by car, one minor accident and there's an immediate traffic jam, due to poor infrastructure and way too many cars during the day. The problem has become much worse overtime. Now I work at the edge of Brussels, so I can ignore downtown and unless I really have to I won't ever set foot in Brussels again.

I'll be attending the concert this Friday in Germany, so I was wondering, when Hans gives introductory talks and anecdotes about the music, does he do so in German, or does he respect the fact there're also visitors from other countries and is it all in English? (Not that I don't understand German at all, but English would be so much easier for me).

Ah right, thanks. That's too bad, but I'm Dutch as well, so there's some basic understanding of German in me. But apparently he's been away from Germany so long that he's 'losing' the language a bit? That surprises me, also considering his noticeable German accent when speaking English. Reminds me of Paul Verhoeven with his thick American accent when speaking Dutch, and his heavy Dutch accent when speaking English, niewaar?

Yeah, it's weird how Zimmer has an accent in both languages!

Sabrina and I saw him in Berlin last night and honestly, he did fine in German. Even cracked a few jokes about how his band couldn't understand a word he was saying about them and then proceeded to insult them a few times.

The concert was an extremely entertaining experience. Very Hans. He's a great host, as likeable as you would expect given his interviews. He was wearing a T-shirt that said "Lord forgive me for my synths", for starters. And, of course, everything was mixed in an exceedingly loud drum-heavy wall-of-sound kind of way. That was a little irritating at some points: the drums particularly drowned everything else out in "Why So Serious" and robbed it of a lot of its scrappy anarchic character, and I'm not sure "Journey to the Line" and "No Time for Caution" needed massive rock drum kit at their respective climaxes. "Electro" lost a lot of the layers that make that piece so interesting, too (no bassoon! ). And I was never quite sure how much of what I was hearing was being generated onstage by actual instruments and how much was being piped through (since the choir was only men and the "orchestra" consisted of maybe a dozen people, quite a substantial amount). But on the other hand - all of that just is Hans. I guess.

I thought it was interesting that the concert was, other than the really early stuff sprinkled throughout like Rain Man, True Romance and Driving Miss Daisy, roughly divided up into the "older-school" melodic/thematic/"hook"-y, outwardly emotional, fun Zimmer stuff in the first half (Crimson Tide, Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lion King, Sherlock Holmes, Gladiator etc), and then switched over into the nu-Hans minimalist stuff for the second (The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Inception, The Thin Red Line, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Interstellar etc). The result was a pretty big difference in enjoyment of the two halves; it was all fun, of course, but the Zimmer music I truly love was mostly in the first half. Pirates of the Caribbean made for a far stronger close to the first half, in my opinion, than Inception for the second. The crowd was particularly responsive to Gladiator, Pirates, The Lion King, The Dark Knight and Inception, unsurprisingly - but I think it was Pirates that got the loudest applause and cheers of all.

Most entertaining person to watch onstage was Richard Harvey, who played the clarinet solo from Driving Miss Daisy with tons of personality and even put on a bicorne hat for Pirates. Runner up in that category was drummer Satnam Ramgotra with his epic beard and dazzling white suit.

I was fairly happy with the selection of pieces, too. I mean, realistically speaking they were never going to play Cool Runnings or A League of Their Own. I did hold out slim, sadly-unfulfilled hopes for The Prince of Egypt, King Arthur and/or The Last Samurai, and was actually a little surprised in retrospect that nothing from Backdraft was played. But there's only so much time in an evening, I guess! I personally could have done with a little less Batman or Inception to compensate ("Mombasa", eesh. Hate that track), but people simply expect to hear that stuff.

All in all, we had a great time. Even those flaws I pointed out - of course, if you don't have a pretty significant soft spot for Zimmer in the first place (and I do), it's entirely possible you'll walk away with far more mixed feelings (or even outright annoyance). For my part, they didn't really bother me because they stem in large part from Zimmer's musical personality. For better or for worse, the concert really was a purely Hans experience, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of deal that I think is worth the fairly steep ticket prices.

Ok, I want to know whether the above video makes sense to Captain Future.

ED, man, 'Electro' has a lot of layers and is interesting? hehe boy can't get over the fact how crappy the whole score is, imo

It has layers i'll give you that. But it's too over-the-place and wacky for my tastes. Joker's derangement was portrait so much better, realistic and down-to-earth with 'why so serious?' now that was a fantastic, clever composition. This is too much for my tastes but then again the whole score is not my cup of tea.

Electro is slightly worse than a rotten smelly black onion forgotten somewhere in the kitchen

Wasn't mocking man, in sake of debate. Nothing personal, just to get the ball going hre. Yes it has layers, not the good kind of ones though.

Thanks for the write-up, Bob! I enjoy reading you being in high-octane mode.
It doesn't sound like I would have enjoyed it at all (except maybe as a concert registration on CD), given the volume level and crowded venue. Either of those is enough to get me out of any enjoyment, leave alone the combination of the two


...spoke the man who will attend a Brian Tyler concert.
Oh well. I am an enigma wrapped in a paradox.

Thanks for the review. It is a different view than mine, but be sure, I also had loads of fun. The concert just breathes fun, collaboration and ... is really a Zimmer concert. I just found that some of his music got buried under the heavy finales. But I didn't bring my ear plugs (since this was not prescribed ).

It is correct (unfortunately), and that is indeed music from the new series (semi-unfortunately; it's okay, but it's not exactly Fenton).

The laws of nature do seem to abide to tradition though ...