Best cues of 2010

If it wasn't so financially challenging to obtain all those non-Hollywood scores I would probably spend about exactly 80% of my time listening to them instead of the Hollywood stuff...

True

There is so much great music outside Hollywood from composers like Michiru Oshima, Taro Iwashiro, Toshihiko Sahashi, Joe Hisaishi, Philippe Rombi, Armand Amar, Fernando Velázquez just to name a few.

In my top ten favorite composers I have 3 composers from Japan: Joe Hisaishi, Taro Iwashiro, Michiru Oshima; 4 from Europe: Armand Amar, Zbigniew Preisner, Philippe Rombi, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek and 3 from Hollywood: James Newton Howard, James Horner, Thomas Newman.

I find myself listening more and more non-Hollywood music.

Omg, it is! The comments on that video are hilarious.


Oh yes, that one is awesome.


Cool! Pop-rock-orchestra feel good music.

My favourite cue of the year though is "Coming back around" from "How to train your dragon" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5KOERF_akc
I'm not as big as a fan as some other here, and the score is certainly very good. But it's not a fact that it is the best score of the year. However, some cues are indeed wonderful and energetic!

That is true. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Joep is just the king of obscure scores.




Hehe, indeed! Btw, had you heard this track before or did I just introduce you to its awesomeness?

Peter

I went to review my "best tracks of 2010" and noted that I have 950 tracks from 2010 included in my "favourites" playlist.

Looking through them all there seems to be a very high number of game scores featured in this year.

People who liked "Flow Like Water" obviously missed the superb end credits suite for The Last Airbender. It boggles the mind why that wasn't included on the CD release.

Cool stuff. I think "No Sacrifice, No Victory" from the first Transformers score (between 0:25 - 0:53) was a source of inspiration for the composers of that piece.

I like the end credit suite from The Happening.

Alan, would you please describe the following:

Derelict – Moritz Schmittat
Hidalgo - La Historia Jamás Contada - Alejandro Giacomán
Marks no Yama – Hiroyuki Sawano

As i haven't listened to them?

I agree with many of your choices and glad to see you loved EARTH MADE OF GLASS, great album (you can listen to a lot from that at his official website).

Derelict (Moritz Schmittat) is quite an aggressive (and short) score that's very reliant on driving rhythms and wordless chorus throughout. It only occasionally relents to quieter passages. Nothing fancy though I am a sucker for those driving percussive pieces.

Hidalgo - La Historia Jamás Contada (Alejandro Giacomán) is one that I fell in love with as soon as I heard it, though a lot of this is centred around the wondrous vocal track that bookends the score - "Que Sople el Viento" - and could be my favourite track of the year. Small-scale in proportions, the orchestrations are sound quite old to me and that may be down to the use of the recorder(?) An eclectic mix of almost Elizabethan music, Mexican/Spanish, court music and more contemporary orchestral fayre.

Marks no Yama (Hiroyuki Sawano) is a bit of a weird one and an album that has a few highlights in amongst less memorable tracks. It starts out all epic with a grand propulsive cue with massed choir and operatic male soloist. There's a lot of soundscape tracks with throbbing low end electronics and wailing vocals and some typically effective piano led cues that are done well in scores from the east.

It would've been nice if Lakeshore had incorporated the end credits suite for the OST release, even though it was culled from several different cues. Same thing with The Wolfman, which was a key reason I bought the CD.

*sigh*

Couldn't find them my friend i am afraid.

Thanks for suggesting these pieces. I was not familiar with these composers. Armand Amar has quite a talent. I explored some more of his work too and his piece Cum Dederit from Home (2009) is just beautiful.

That I need to do.