Cutting Edge Group buys Varèse

It's sad that most people jizz their pants for club releases rather than actually new musical creation. Their most dreaded fear is that somehow the collector craze will somehow stop

Says the man who jizzes his pants and gets inspired by so many new scores (thank God)

Tell us though, have you heard any scores that 'heartbreaking, passionate and inspired' lately?

Varese was up to the very recent past, the prime carrier for major new film score releases; if their output of new releases gets reduced, we will be getting significantly less new scores in the genre overall. I find it very ironic that when something like this might be a possibility, the major worry of many people is their club releases' future quantities.

There are plenty of labels releasing new music. Watertower, Lakeshore, Sony, etc. And the article states that Varese will be putting out 60 new albums this year... up from the 40 they did last year.

-Erik-

Uh oh - he didn't spot the joke!

Not you!

Cutting Edge has been a client of mine for some time now. I have produced about a dozen soundtrack albums for them release under their label Pale Blue.

Any fan of film music should hold Cutting Edge in high regard is they run a fund that actually finances the recording of film scores.

Their acquisition of Varese Sarabande is perhaps the biggest soundtrack biz news in a decade (even the fact that they made the NY Times is proof enough). I don't know yet what it will actually result in, but this development is - to say the least - very interesting.

mc

I understand your sentiment but you're possibly aiming at the wrong target. As well as being the prime carrier for major new film score releases, they've also historically been the prime carrier for releases of genuine classic film music (though FSM and Intrada have also carried that torch). In recent years, it would take a brave man to argue that the brand new film music they've released has been of greater value than the classic film music. Their most recent two regular releases were by Ramin Djawadi and Steve Jablonsky. Their most recent Club batch included music by Jerry Goldsmith, Bruce Broughton, John Scott, Michael Kamen and Maurice Jarre. I remember not that many years ago, a click on the "Upcoming Releases" section of Varese's website would almost invariably show at least one new score by Jerry Goldsmith or Elmer Bernstein or Michael Kamen or Basil Poledouris would be coming out within the next 3-4 weks; but of course those days are gone and I can't say many of the new scores they've released over the last five years have been all that good (which isn't their fault, of course - they don't know what the music's going to be like when they sign the deal to release it).

It is a change. People are afraid of what will happen.

Well it's natural that every big change causes some stir; nothing serious or unexpected anyway. Time will tell.

If the film music album industry is interested in growing its customer base, then yes, those could easily be considered to be of greater value in a financial sense. Those are the gateway drugs. I may be more interested in Desplat and Velazquez now, but my first two film score purchases were scores by Trevor Rabin and Klaus Badelt.

It'll all be retro with people going back to Korngold etc because ALL film music really will be done by RC

The bad that it's all being done by the future generations of RZA's and BT's