[Closed] Now Playing XLIV

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome - Bear McCreary

Beautiful so far but I just started listening.

Edit:
Well, it's not on the level of Season 4 but it's still a good listening experience. Varied and intensive.

As no European release of the DVD seems to be forthcoming I just ordered it on amazon.com. I like what I saw online.

James Horner - The New World

I still haven't seen the movie and while I am very, very negative about the way Horner has discussed this project in the past, I love the music itself, which just joined my film music collection today. Except To the Wonder (which still hasn't opened in Poland), that means I own every score for a Terrence Malick, starting with Days of Heaven and ending with The Tree of Life. Malick's scores have this thing that on album they belong to the personal category for me.

This is a very interesting project. Whatever happened between Malick and Horner (I wonder and I would ask him if I could, if the problem was the constant re-editing or the fact that Malick wanted something else than pure emotion, which Horner always was about), the collaboration provided a largely orchestral score that is as atmospheric as Horner can get. Could I say that it's his most impressionistic work?

I've heard that Horner got almost fired from the project, because Malick hired him on the basis of his piano work on A Beautiful Mind. To stay on the job, I've heard (a second-hand account, I wasn't on the festival where it was discussed), he had to improvise on the piano for a few hours and record it.

Still, the music is beautiful, whatever happened between him and the director.

FACT!

What recording are you listening to? I have in my collection the Marco Polo (Stromberg) one and the Varese (Koijan). I love both.

I have in my possession the ENTIRE Gerhardt series plus his Star Wars recordings plus the recordings he did for Reader's Digest (The Prince and the Pauper, Varese).
I would raise his stature in pure gold!
Here's to Charles "King of Conductors" Gerhardt!

Volker

This, very loud! Fucking incredible! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIk-Kxw_7Kc

The moment at 4:52 never fails to give me goosebumps. The slowdown and then quite possibly the most monumental brass blast in a score not exactly short of monumental brass blasts. Still not a huge fan of the score as a whole but the two cues they played here are fantastic!

I've always liked the extended concert version of "Throne Room and Finale" from Star Wars. I love the addition of the gorgeous oboe solo of the Force theme, which seques into the cue heard as 3PO and R2's escape pod fall towards Tatooine. The piece then picks back up with more of the Throne Room music and concludes with the great end title music. Great arrangement!

-Erik-

The Inception music most definitely serves a purpose and live that suite must have blown the audience away sonically but there's something about its composition that bores me to tears.

And it is super ass annoying how this sort of sound is infiltrating trailer music (BLARGH!) and more modern scores today. And the problem is they aren't really expanding on the sound. It sounds like copy and pasting to me. "Remember how awesome Inception sounded, well I can do that, too... in Garageband."

I read a Tweet the other day from a composer answering a question about how he composes a theme. He answered it by saying "In terms of finding a good motif, I usually just start with an ostinato pattern." It's more about layering and programming now then developing something internally. Loops, samples, pre-existing sounds instead of creating something from within out of nothing.



Sorry...

-Erik-

Minimalism is not the word I would use for TREE OF LIFE. Quite the contrary, it's rather maximalistic at times.

Actually, session players, love playing his music. As his principal bassist said to my friend, who was taking pictures on the session:

"It's always interesting with Hans". She was actually complaining between sessions that she would have nothing to play on the second one and was overjoyed that there indeed was some stuff for her section.

I suppose you're right, strictly speaking. But there's definite Philip Glass influences ("Circles"), and that opening "Childhood" track is certainly very sparse and, ahem, minimal. It's the latter type of thing that I really don't like ("Temptation" is another example).



Kill it! Stop listening to it immediately and kill it with fire!! Trust me on this one.

Well, the played piece (the Shadows suite) was very demanding for the players (very fast-paced triplets) and the recording featured no violas or violins. They were definitely having a lot of fun with it.

That's such a great score.

I just finished playing "Theme from Powder" and "Everywhere" from Goldsmith's POWDER.

Wow. How can you describe that kind of musical beauty and power with words? I can't. I will say that I get chills nearly every time I listen to these tracks. They're two of my favorite compositions by Goldsmith.