[Closed] Now Playing XLVII

Just been trying to get through a few titles - 9.April (Jonas Struck), Backcountry (Frères Lumières) and Battlefield Hardline (Paul Leonard-Morgan) - and I am losing the will to live.

All are mostly noise and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. Except that, if you like your noise loud then I recommend Battlefield Hardline.

NP: Star Wars The Clone Wars - Kevin Kiner

I am watching the show and I have to give Kiner his credit for firmly sticking to the leitmotif concept. I may not like some of the simplistic orchestrations and the underwhelming recording, but he just quoted Qui-Gon's theme. QUI-GON'S THEME. One of the most obscure themes in the entire sextet of films, entirely missing from the original soundtrack album if I remember correctly. And he actually used it in an appropriate spot, too. The man clearly did his research and has respect for Williams' work!

I like his music for the later seasons a lot. The pilot score CD not so much.

Volker

NP: Cinderella - Patrick Doyle

Breezy, classy and elegant. Gorgeous music!

-Erik-

Under Fire - J Goldsmith

.

Yes! I hope Alexandre Desplat and Thomas Newman score half of the remake each, incorporating Danny Elfman's theme from the unaired pilot episode of the spinoff tv show.

Compared to the Hooper scores it's positively miraculous. So much melodic beauty. And that's not a knock on Hooper, he simply wasn't prepared for work of that scope and he himself admitted as much.

NP: Lair - John Debney & Kevin Kaska

The La-la-Land Records edition whose existence I somehow missed until recently. It's really incredible that a score like this was ever written for a video game. Unfortunate that the game sold poorly and did not a start a new trend of video game music in this vein.

With so many themes / motifs, such a huge ensemble, such riveting recording quality? Such classical film-music-like structure? I thought I was fairly clued in to what is going on in the game scoring world, and Lair is still a step above most of the rest to me. I didn't mean there are no such scores of the same style, I just meant Lair is better than most of them. IMO of course.

And my original point was to say that if Lair had been a hit as a video game, more games might be hiring A (or B+?) list composers and giving them big budgets to do symphonic film scores, which isn't really happening very often. When film composers cross over it's usually those of the Zimmer line of sound.I wouldn't mind seeing Debney, Silvestri, Horner, Howard etc getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to make game scores because execs believed the score was that important. Especially since game composing provides additional creative freedom.

Ok... a few examples over the past few years.

REMEMBER ME
WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WARLORDS OF DRAENOR
REVELATION

Of course, there's MANY others... Medal of Honor, Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Mercenaries, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Primal, Fracture, Afrika, Journey, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, etc.

BTW, I'm NOT disagree with you guys. Lair is phenomenal and is one of my all time favourites as well. But that style of composing in game has been going on for years!

-Erik-

Hehehe...

NP: 1941 (1979) - John Williams
Score-CD

This is one of my less often played scores by the maestro. For that reason I passed on the archival release by LLL originaly. When they reissued it recently I could not resist any longer. Great music.

Volker

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Alexandre Desplat

A wonderful score. I remember when this and Birth came out, how wonderful it was to have a composer emerge like Desplat in an era when film music seemed to be being run into the ground by Remote Control. I'd never have believed then that he'd end up on Harry Potter and Star Wars.

AGREE!

Have heard most of those, and I will check out the others. But I still think Lair is a step above the rest. For sheer scale. The number and quality of themes. The...*babbles on for another few minutes pretending to know how to talk about music but actually only saying "dude, it's better!"*

But what's especially impressive about the existence of Lair as a game score is that it was created for a brand new franchise, whereas most projects of that magnitude are reserved for sequels of already successful franchises. I don't know how much money they spent on the score but to get Debney and the LSO they must have spent a pretty penny more than is usually spent on game scoring. And they got every penny of their money's worth. Too bad they didn't in other aspects of the game. I haven't played it but I heard it was miserably unfun.