YOUR ALL TIME FAVOURITE FILM SCORE ALBUMS!!!

You're coming around!

I never expected you to like anything about this score.

I don't own the score but remember liking it. I haven't seen the film for decades and it is most memorable to me for the scene with Richard Harris being hoisted/hung off the ground with spikes through his pectorals during a ritualistic initiation. One of filmdoms most eyewateringly wincing moments surely?

can't agree with that choice at all. I didn't like it.
Tom

I owned that too once upon a time, but never connected to it, for some reason. But it seems to be a fan favourite.

My pick:

38. TWIN PEAKS (Angelo Badalamenti)

To be honest, there was another title in this spot, but when we did the 'track' thread, I just realized that I had forgotten to include what is probably my first and most influential soundtrack of all time in this list! Geez. So it should obviously be much, much higher up, but there you go. Now it's here, at least. There are bound to be more screw-ups like that in the time to come, I'm sure.

Anyways, I've probably told you this personal story before, but here it is again:

I was a huge fan of the show in its original run, and copied a TWIN PEAKS CD that I had borrowed on to a cassette, ca. 1991. This was -- as far as I remember -- my first-ever soundtrack, but I treated it like any other concept album in my collection and drew my own cover. I hadn't really become fully interested in film music at this point. So I made my own images inspired by the series and music, with drizzly weather, foggy mountains and looming forests in which mysterious things happened. In fact, it inspired me so much that I spent a summer writing a whole novel (hand-written) of some 150 pages and illustrated my own cover! The title of the "book" was a rather generic The Man from the Woods, but it's very dear to my heart and I've often told myself that the core of the story is good (even if a crucial element of it was "used" in Shyamalan's THE SIXTH SENSE some 7-8 years later). So if I ever get the inspiration, I would like to rewrite it, using my adult language rather than the somewhat floral teenage language.

In 2010, I met Badalamenti in Ghent and went up to him in the lobby after the concert. I VERY rarely behave like a fanboy and prefer to keep a professional distance, no matter how big a fan I am, but I just had to communicate to him that the TWIN PEAKS album inspired me to write that novel. He thanked me for the comment and said -- perhaps more courteously than sincerely -- "that if I ever make a film out of it, give me a call!". That made my day!

Oh, well. I'm rambling on. But it's such an important milestone in my soundtrack history that I needed to spend a few words on it.

This is an opinion that seems to be shared amongst so many people who lived throughout that decade.
I spanned between the ages of 13 and 22 during the 1980s, but I never cared much for '80s films either then or now. What I liked best about about the 1980s were reruns of 1960s television shows on UHF channels and homevideo on VHS tapes.
I'm OK with a number of 1980s soundtracks, but the '80s is definitely not my favorite decade.
But more importantly to the soundtrack business than my personal opinion, the viewpoint that the 1980s was "the best" appears to greatly hinder the sales of Golden Age albums.
Soundtracks to black-and-white films and/or monaural sound are very hard sell in the current market.

Lovely Story, Thor and an of course a great choice. Timmer: Another one I have to check out.

No. 38:

AKIRA (1988) - Yamashiro Shoji (Or the other way around.)

This film is one of the greatest animated science fiction films I have ever seen. I did see it late, years after it was released, on DVD. I instantly began searching for the score. I new I has seen it in stores back in the day, but now I discovered it was long out of print and offered for rediculous money.
Finally a German conpatriot would offer a used copy in mint condition for 50€. It is the only time I payed that much money for a used CD.
I love this music. I have very few scores from the Land of Smiles, but this one is my favourite. The 14 minutes suite "Requiem" moves me deeply. So much power, deeply emotional.


So, Timmer, it was not PRINCESS MONONOKE after all.

Volker

Swipe Thor, not sweep.

Yes, you did!

Another Mario Bava-directed flick has its soundtrack enter into my Top 50. This time it is ...

... #38: ERCOLE AL CENTRO DELLA TERRA (1961, AKA - Hercules In The Haunted World) by Armando Trovajoli, on Digitmovies CD (2006).

This Hercules movie is a rather atypical blend of horror and sword & sandal genres, but one which could appeal to genre buffs on different levels. Because of the diverse elements, Armando Trovajoli's task on this assignment was to write music which within a single score communicates both the supernatural along with the natural.
There are some obligatory Peplum conventions herein, such as fanfares and a brassy theme for the protagonist, but the majority of Trovajoli's soundtrack is phantasmagorical.

A few collectors of Peplum consider this Trovajoli opus to be too heavy on the organ chords and unsatisfying with respect to militant derring-do which they've come to expect from this niche.
On the other side of the coin, some younger film music fans may find Trojavoli's ambient approach a refreshing and forward-looking soundsculpture in contrast with the sturm und drang of, say, a James Bernard horror which was typical within this era of cinema.

For folks who can listen to and like both aspects, Trovajoli's ERCOLE is an ideal musical combination.

The Digitmovies CD has been sold out for a while, but, apparently, C.A.M. liscensed in 2012 the contents of this soundtrack as files for downloading/streaming. https://itunes.apple.com/mu/album/ercol … d624262394
ERCOLE is available in iTunes and, I think, AllMusic plus other sites, and the movie itself has been uploaded into YouTube for anyone wishing to sample/explore its aural territories.

Rather than write about Trovajoli's ERCOLE on a track-by-track basis, I prefer to describe the entire listening experience as hypnotic. Armando achieves psychedlic sounds from acoustic instruments and does so about a half-dozen years prior to late-'60s psychedlia.

As there was never any of this music on vinyl (LP, EP nor 45 rp.m.) at that time, afficionados waited 45 years for this soundtrack to materialize.

No - I didn't know Ahnold had/has an idol.

Thanks, Thor.

I like Robert Altman films such as THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK and THREE WOMEN, but there's more Altman films that I haven't seen.

I remember that. I'm not sure if he even has a speaking part in that scene, it's been too long since I saw it.

That's right. Thanks for reminding me.

Indeed. A few months back, I actually sat down with its cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, for a conversation about this and others. Great man, great film, great music.