Now Playing XLI

It is indeed perfection, for a perfection of a film.

THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM - JEREMY SOULE

If there was an award for 'Most beautiful music you've heard all year', this score would get my vote. Jeremy Soule tops his previous efforts for the epic fantasy role playing game series by providing the listener / player with soothing, hypnotic and stupefyingly lovely melodies. The harmonic structures remind me of Michael Land's 'The Dig', in the way that you become completely entranced by the haunting and ethereal-like melodies, and almost every cue has something memorable going on in it.

The emphasis in this 3-disc score is the calmer, softer underscore-like music, but there are some pretty bombastic choral cues as well, and they don't sound unlike what Howard Shore wrote for a little fantasy tale about Hobbits. The vocals are always exceptional in the entirety of this score, whether it is in the more epic cues, or in the soft material. Many of the tracks have a calm and soothing effect, while also maintaining a wonderfully beautiful melodic line that will captivate many people, I'm sure of that.

Listen to this cue, if you think I'm lying.

Soule really hit a homerun with Skyrim, and this sounds as close to a real orchestral recording as is technically possible.

Guild Wars has a ton of memorable stuff as well, I agree with you there, but it's the ethereal quality of Skyrim that is so up my alley. The Dig has this effect, Skyrim does it in ever greater numbers. I can already imagine playing a section of the game when a glorious track like 'From Past to Present' plays and just stop where I'm going to and feel the majesty and beauty of the world around me come alive. From the perspective of a gamer who loves immersion (me), this is perfect underscore for a game of this kind.

Totally agree! Skyrim = magnificent!

NP: War Horse - John Williams

Pastoral, sonorous, beautiful and rather melancholic in overall tone (not too odd considering the subject matter).

Even though once more there is not so much a "hummable theme" in evidence, there is a strong thematic "propulsion", if you will (mood and harmony clearly make certain characters or situations recognisable....at least in the music! It all makes almost for a standalone symphony type of work!)

I could easily revisit this many times. A wonderful work to close out the year, to be sure.

Super Atragon Masamichi Amano

As the analogy of food and music always seems to work so well, this could easily be described as a hearty feast. There's a lot going on in the score, with plenty of excellent themes and dense orchestrations to chew on. Just listen to the love theme.

I'm very grateful to Atham and Erik for bringing it to my attention!

Glad you like it. Now pass the word arround that it's awesome!

I like it too, instead of releasing the umpteenth Goldsmith expanded treatment, why not start with this and Flatliners immediately after.

I don't remember the Flatliners score at all ( saw the movie once on it's VHS rental release ) which doesn't bode well for me as I always remember a feeling of 'this music is good, I must make a note of getting it/hope it's released', it seems to have been a "grail" for JNH fans for as long as I can remember.

Fair nuff! I must have been wearing ear plugs that day Very good stuff, so much better than what he underwhelms me with these days.

NP: HOME ALONE (John Williams)

First Christmas music of the year for me....I usually wait to mid December every year.

Flatliners is defintely not among the greats of JNH, but it does have VERY memorable cues and I've always liked their function in the film. There is something in the 90s Newton Howard that is so lacking in his scores these days.

It's not really like the first one relative to Giacchino's music, but it is balls-to-the-wall action music.

Arthur Christmas - HGW

A rival to Puss in Boots for most entertainingly derivative film score of the year (but not quite so blatant in its temp-track love).