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Not getting the love for the reinstated cues - how is the Aquaduct que that much different from The Runway from DH2 as it was in the original? Yes, the ending is different, but is this not the same score otherwise, perhaps with slight orchestrational variations? That is why I never warmed up to DH3 - it just sounded like a very slight expansion of 2. The taxi cue is terrible!

Love some Gia but not sure about this one. Loads of dissonance as fits the subject, but it is just so close to JNH's Alive score for the same topic as to be....redundant? The guitar plucking theme, the uplifting chorales, the dissonance etc. At least, JNH had some balls to the wall early 1990s action scoring for the climbing sequences

Biggest JG fan in the world but weirdly never owned this - might have been the unavailability of the original album, an early dislike for Patton (not into listening to military marches, much since rectified with The German Advance.... but definitely would not want to listen to the main march, brilliant as it is intellectually and compositionally) Unfortunately, not much impressed by the soundclips from Intrada as this seems like the same kind of rough as Inchon - again very much appreciated intellectually and philosophically for the jagged roughness of the Planet of the Apes variety but I listen to JG on the basis of listenability (ie. love his 90s output, Total Recall is the best orchestral fireworks known to man). Do convince me otherwise

A novel score for JH at the time - I think this was the first time he used his Bicentennial/Beautiful/Bobby Fischer theme, ie. the genius theme I think. As with a lot of the other recent JH expansions, not entirely sure this needs it. I watched the film recently and most of the stuff is on the 1992 release - convince me otherwise.

I love my McNeely and Debney but Mark McKenzie if you want to make an impact, go for McKenzie, orchestrated for Jerry at the end and composed the battle scene for Last Castle

Jesus, how did I miss this? I have been at both of Doyle's London sessions (RAH and Barbican). Shameful. Well, at least the playlist is updated and The Creation is there as a show-off instead of an encore. The endless 'melodic' piano and strings stuff that Doyle feels he has to bring in. Patrick - when we come to your concerts, we want the 'drunk, over-the-top Herrmann' as I think you referred to yourself once. This:

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Nah, it's okay. It's got some interesting material, mostly around the piano work and the Fantastic Beasts like stuff but needs a pruning. Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (FYC) Have a tough time listening to Pemberton, to me he sounds like> ChatCPT how to compose funky music His work on The Dark Crystal and the ending of the first Spiderverse film is great. Convince me otherwise. The Marvels Yeah, totally loved Karpman's stuff here. Innovative and fresh, the main thematic stuff is not amazing but I guess that is Feige.

It's a rough one to listen to - I don't agree with Thor's C&C silliness but, man, this could use some pruning. There are some fantastic moments here, especially revolving around Wang's solos and the more FB choir style material and the action is astonishingly fierce - has JNH been this aggressive? But no one can get through this data dump. Please, a nice 70 minutes album.

Yeah, Phipps was not hired to do a Balfe. His score for The Crown sis unusual, especially the Diana music, and I am sure Scott hired him on that basis. Have a go at his War and Peace score for the BBC, totally not what you expect. This actually sounds relatively sensible but still strange, in the way that early Desplat for Hollywood sounded strange. Great to hear different music in a big production - when was the last time you heard something like this? His stuff for War and Peace is....different but also amazing. He uses drones but not in the Bertelmann way of doing away with melody, for Phipps there is a constant melodic core to his work, even in the weirdest stuff he does, and he takes some massive risks in his music which is frankly fucking amazing. Listen to the end: Napoleon seems very much a continuation of this work, and great work it is!

Silvestri's Van Helsing. I think good old Alan decided somewhere in about 1994 to excel in orchestral bombast, seeing newbies like David Arnold explode on the scene with massive orchestral stuff. The 80s Silvestri stuff seems comparatively small, focused, the orchestration is different. His response was to increase the volume (both decibel and players) with Judge Dredd - 1995 was the year of bombast in many ways, coming off from Stargate, heading into Independence Day, with Debney blasting out Cutthroat Island, Jerry doing a full orchestral (if quickie) score for First Knight etc. Silvestri's response to the Zimmerization of music in the early 2000s was probably Van Helsing - using some of the ostinato-based techniques but still keeping that very Silvestrian sense of propulsion and excessive bombast everywhere. It's a great score - a shame about the silly film. There's so much going on here orchestration wise that it's a shame it's been overlooked so much - Silvestri's been on autopilot since Beowulf but here he is present:

A mega flop in the pipes. Is that not the Apple Foundation show that is being brought about by its Apple roots. Jesus, I did not think it was going to be this bad. ...... feel sorry for the crew that made it.

Is Broxton a source, after that Balfe-fest? I don't read his work anymore as it's basically corporate PR excusing violators of creative sanctity like balfe to appear okay? Just to say. I used to love Broxton's work. Am a bit sceptical nowadays.

Listening to David Arnold's Stargate after all these years - what a brilliant, brilliant score. So epic, I was priviledged to see Arnold do ID4 at RHA (give me a two metre wood mallet to perform that score) and then to hug the man at one of the great meet the composer events at the London fan sessions, one of the true legends!

Been listening to this more. Fuck, have to back up on all my words. This is frigging genius, Goldenthal level genius.

If you don't like The Boys, you don't like this. If you like Karl Urban as the nastiest cunt in the world, you will like this. If you don't like explicit scenes of exploding penis you don't like this. If you like satirical political commentary, you will like your GEN V as much as your Boys

Yeah JHN is definitely kicking it up this year. Never been much of a fan of the Hunger Games scores - they came at that deep dark RCP time for JNH but maybe I need to recheck. Do tell me what I should listen to outside of Rue's Farewell. I did not hear much of value in the films outside of the action music for the sewer scene

Yes, there is some good stuff here but is this not just endlessly repetitive material on the same endlessly repetitive material? Balfe does a variation on Jones' Last of the Mohicans theme, twists it back to Schifrin's MI, and round and round we go, no variation of instrumentation or melodic intent. Then annoying/anxious violins repeating the same pattern with minor modulations in brass with sketches of Lalo. Wow.

Yes, this was disappointing, but like some have pointed out above, some gems here. The Burden track is a beauty with its interplay of violin and orchestra. Very similar to Williams and Schindler's List with not allowing one to overwhelm the other. But yeah, it is a score to a Shawn Levy WWII Netflix series. It will sound and look right but it is a Shawn Levy WWII Netflix series.

So not getting the love for this score. I get the minimalism and the building anxiety which works well in a certain kind of Polish composer/Goldenthal grandeur but the tonal palette here is so banal as it is composed effectively of drones and of repetitive synth patterns with very obvious orchestral and choral interludes. It might be amazing on film but this is no Goldenthal score at all.

The Karpman score - yeah, theme whatever, but the orchestrations and arrangements are fantastic. The interplay between percussion and brass is wonderful. Great to hear that type of dynamism in a contemporary score that transcends the banal - last time I was enthused about a Marvel theme was with Djawadi's Eternals but that was more about the melodic content (as the presentation was way too RCP). Hope this is as good as that.

Listening to Hans Zimbo's The Last Samurai in its supposedly complete form after all the fawning it gets in fan circles. I never did warm to this back in 2003 (in comparison to Gladiator, POTC or King Arthur), just felt it was perfunctory Black Rain and Beyond Rangoon idioms recycled through a post-Gladiator, Thin Red Line Zimmo-baby. It's still a nice score but so obvious and predictable, sticking to the same palette with no variation. You can say whatever you want to say about Gladiator but at least it's balls-to-the-wall in its stylistic mish-mash. This just takes the ethnic stylings of all those previously mentioned scores but here, it's all part of that gloomy grandeur that goes nowhere Much prefer his Pacific Heights which I listened to in full earlier today on Spotify. Now, there is innovation in all the tracks (perhaps way too much of it considering how it jumps from Black Rain banging to Noir saxophone, Green Card romance, to Backdraft heroics, to Point of No Return melodramatics) - such a wonderful example of his creativity.

Doyle's bombastic Indochine - have a go at this if you only know Doyle from Potter:

Someone mentioned Balfe's rhythms and textures - does he have some original ones and could you bring them up? I mean everything he has done is based on something else.

Listened to a lot of this as am impressed by Sener's work with Powell. Here - not sure. It is standard bio music, some interesting progressions and colours, but really, it's not anything to write home about. Sener did the job - the score functions - a release came out - okay.

The After Earth suite is especially awesome, especially as it comes with this brilliant bit of JNH 2010s when he navigated the landscape of simplistic HZ knock-offs and came up with this, somehow, and weirdly none of this theme appears in the NonN album>