JOHN POWELL

Then you're weird.

Well I just listened to United 93 again, and I like the release exactly how it is. The majority of the music is a build up to the last 10 minutes. It makes a decent background experience if you are multitasking, but I understand how it could be boring if you devoted all of your energy to listening to the music.

I'd rather have a large amount of score from which I can make my picks and make a custom playlist rather than 4 minutes of score which is all that's available. But then again, just my opinion

As for the OH-SO-TIRED theme of the complete vs chronological vs whatever:

Just a friendly advice to the people beating it too much with the scores that have TOO MUCH music on their CD releases:

1) Get the much-loaded-with-music CD
2) open winamp
3) import the cd as a whole
4) press "delete" as much as you like

Make your lives easier.

Cheers, mate!

2) Not at all like that Thor. You know that. 1) is 10 seconds in total. Not a lot stamina required for this i think

So actually, Thors problem isn't badly produced albums, but laziness.

Picky.

I know what you mean. I'm not as fussed as you are as it gives me something to do. For example - Christmas day is probably going to be spent re-arranging the Indy box set and sorting out the weird edits.

Well, good that you keep yourself occupied, Anthony, but I don't have the amount of time that you do, nor would I want to spend it on such things when there are so many other things to do. I'm one of those weirdos who really just LISTEN to my soundtrack albums and that's it.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Show us the OTHER pics now, my friend.

Are you sure?

I know others have already said it, and this argument is one which has gone on for many years and I'm sure will continue to do so, but it's obviously not as simple as that. The whole point of being a professional record producer is that you do that. How am I supposed to know when I put in an 80-minute album for the first time, how it's supposed to be arranged? If it has 30 minutes of great music and 50 minutes of dull music then the chances are, I'll rarely if ever listen to it again, and certainly won't be in a position to know definitively what the best album presentation is. But album producers are in exactly that position.

I don't suppose many films would be very good if they consisted of every second of footage which had been shot, joined together, and yet that's how I'm meant to enjoy film scores? Why? How could that definitively be the best way of presenting every film score? In some cases it certainly is, but in most it isn't. Whatever happened to album producers who were actually able to produce albums properly? Is it simply a case that in the old days, when finances dictated that albums in general used to be no more than 40 minutes long, the producer would say "we can afford 40 minutes, so let's find the best 40 minutes we can" whereas now they say "we can afford 80 minutes, so let's stick all of it on there!"? I suspect it is as simple as that; hopefully something will come along and tell them all how wrong they are. There can be no definitive guide as to the best way of presenting a film score - sometimes it is indeed presenting the entire score in chronological order, but that's when there's something extra special being presented, and certainly not the general rule it's now treated as. Album producers need to treat each score on its own merits. Modern film music would seem so much better if the default option for composers and album producers was something other than padding out their 30 minutes of good music with 50 minutes of repetitive or dull stuff.

I think the majority of people prefer to have somewhat lengthier releases. I'd be happy if 50-70 minutes could become the industry standard.