thestat

I really hate Barry's modernisation attempts in A View to A Kill etc, but fuck, The Living Daylights is a massive beauty in terms of the Old Man Disco he brought along with him, and totally convinced everyone he is the coolest guy in all:

Compared to what Erik is saying, I would wage that Dar the Hero is one of the greatest hero themes of all time (5:14 onwards, NOW that is a theme!)

This is horrible - it is like the worst of Kamen brought to table, cheesy-arse light entertainment music (in this case what sounds like an approximation of British propreity with a dangling piano) and those optimistic melodies. Still, great orchestration.

Edmilson, totally agree with you on Barry's DWW. I loved it when it came out, got annoyed by Barry's style in the 1990s, dismissed DWW. Recently, watched the 4k version of the film and wow. The music is literally a character in the film, especially in the early parts of the film with Dunbar's journey. Accompanied by the cinematography, it is just astonishing work from Barry. I lamented Poledouris missing out on this project due to his very ethical commitment to Milius and what impact this choice had on Basil's career at this crucial moment on him breaking out. At the same time, I am not convinced that even a master composer like Poledouris could have captured Barry's majestic simplicity in such an overt, massively emotional way. It is one of the greatest of scores no doubt. A gift for Barry fans, and indeed, for anyone with a heartbeat, one of Barry's best on an endless loop, so fucking cool:

What about Don Davis on The Pagemaster - Davis included several cues from this on his promo CD If you have access to the archives, can you check what they have for Kamen's Die Hard 2 and Robin Hood - they are both very Kamenesque but it would be interesting to hear if there was any help here, considering the nutty deadlines he was under

Going through this. Yes, it does sound like a massive improvement over the disappointing original album which I can totally frisbee now (much as I would have liked to do when I bought in 2003, terrible, terrible CD, probably listened to it once back then). Not sure if I want to hear this expanded again though despite appreciating JH's work here. The main theme is the umpteenth version of that same old theme, the action stuff is good but in that post-90s style with soft orchestrations (and recording in particular), the dissonance is not sufficiently crazy, but still annoyingly prevalent, just not picking any highlights from this. Yes, it is louder and yes, there is more drumming. Still, it sounds like outtakes from every other 2000s score he did. Not sure why JH did not pick up on that riff from Courage Under Fire (used for Titanic a lot) and deploy that in films like this where he just was not massively inspired.

Yes, glad to see the ID4 comparisons. While Debney's came first, Cutthroat Island is part of that massive orchestral turn in the mid-90s that I credit to Stargate. Best example - Silvestri going from often quite lean orchestrations in his pre-1995 work to the massive Symphony of London sound that Stargate brought in (including hiring the orchestra for Judge Dredd, a Danny Cannon film, by no obvious chance at all). It is clear to me that Arnold breaking out like he did in 1994 generated a level of industry apprehension that resulted in some reshifting of orchestra sizes and types that led to some of the greatest music known to humanity.

I obediently followed Michael Kamen through the 90s, literally getting everyone of his albums, eventually coming to a realisation that his style was either too 'corny' (ie. all the saxophone concertos etc) or messy (his orchestral actiony stuff which is all rough edges and weird dissonance amongst the celebrated Escapes to Sherwood). Very much disliked him throughout the 2000s and 2010s (ie, post-RIP) Have since done a major pivot back to about 1991. Not sure what did it but listening to the expansion of Die Hard 2 played a major role here, and rewatching films like Event Horizon made me appreciate the gothic massive work he did there (if only we could get the full score). Now I am back in the camp of Joel Silver and listen to his 90s work with astonishment for their creativity and often sheer balls. Slight caveat on Die Hard 2 - upon watching it in 4k with Dolby Atmos, the clanging and banging in some of the action on the original album is clearly by, you guessed it, Don Davis. Still - if any of those expansions of some of the pivotal scores come through, I can't wait.

Oh, just that Debney got a spotlight on The Orville alongside McNeely, whereas Folk never had that sort of resurgence. And Gibbo nuttery - Mel Gibson.

Still have to agree - this is one of the GREATEST of all scores. Back in the good old 90s I used to rank this as the greatest orchestral score, and Hans and co's The Rock as the greatest more synth-based one, happy days. Debney just went all out on this one. Harlin is also a great musician's director and I would not be surprised if he had a lot to say in how massive the final product is. He had a tendency to hire the latest wavemaker (ie. Jones on Cliffhanger after Last of the Mohicans; Rabin on Deep Blue Sea after Armageddon, Silvestri on The Long Kiss Goodnight after Judge Dredd) - for Debney it must have been Hocus Pocus. And all that stuff about how it builds or copies existing work is total nonsense. Like someone pointed out, what are the direct references? It is very much a homage to a sound, much like JW's Star Wars was, but it is purely and perfectly original in its astonishing mayhem.

Yeah, Djawadi will come up with a theme that will sound okay, the rest will be utter, utter nonsense.

Yeah, started out with The Fury totally. But that is not a bad theme and could be so much worse, like a Balfe click track. I mean, the Kamen was more or less a total reworking of Robin Hood (perhaps not the theme but most of the other interesting stuff). And the Zanelli/Neely stuff for The Pacific is very dour, post-Thin Red Line stuff. So the fact that this one goes for orchestral mayhem is encouraging!

Amazing that this is coming out. Robert Folk is THE most underrated composer since he never had the resurgence that McNeely had with Orville or Debney had with Gibbo's nuttery. He is in the same league of composers who can do absolutely everything and do it brilliantly. Man, if silly production allocations had not taken place he would have scored Goldeneye instead of Serra - he was hired for it. Imagine this instead of the grinding synth pop that Serra produced (and nothing against old Eric, his work on Joan of Arc is amazing):

A top ten would consist of LOTR stuff for very obvious reasons, but this one from Seven both predates LOTR and acts as a great encapsulation of how Shore captures horror and madness, it is just so beautiful as a composition: And whatever you say about anything related to Shore, it will come down to this nightmare - still the greatest use of large orchestra as a narrative device - the uncompromising score is everything:

JNH's After Earth is such a wonder:

Jesus fucking c - it is out, the Demolition Man score: Someone Rip it now, please, before it gets taken down

I don't give a shit if you don't want me to flag up complete scores - but hey- Wyatt Earp by JNH is one of those scores. Massive, impactful and so beautif ul:

Yes, dear La-La- Land, I know the Balfe does not sell. But why would it? Not a great score is it? Some good parts, perhaps, yes? But overall, somewhat repetitive, no? Not finding a dynamic range, perhaps? Well, why not? Was it not recorded properly? Why release it then? Lorne Balfe?

Loved the Watcher - very 1990s, weird post-Soviet block horror. The Halpern score is great. Monroe is fantastic, Burn Gorman is astonishing. He needs to get an oscar for best twitching. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=watcher+2023+score

Love this stuff from the Kamen estate - bring out more of this. What are the piano cues by the way if I may ask? Surely not Kamen's original compositions? Harlin would have bristled with this type of solo piano in his film so what was the idea? I love it, whatever.

Heavy metal music video......JFC. Not at all. Have you seen one, ever? The JXL stuff works well with the fury theme which continues to be impressive, but the rest - Brothers in Arms - yeah, not bad as a post-RCP cue, but pretty bad as any other cue by most standards I do love JXL's Alita and Mortal Engines but I suspect some of the exciting orchestral stuff is by De Lillo who will be co-composing on Kong. Junk's got some real talent - I love The Dark Tower theme, Tomb Raider has good stuff, the Cameron/Rodriguez combination clearly did not let him do 'techno'. Who knows. His studio had that controversy about overworking which is funny for a composer who's work is not that complicated. Anyhoos. Jesus - relistening to Brothers in Arms, despite its dodgy production values, totally get it now - the duality with barbarity of the world and the expansive heroism.....or do I?

Mink's previous post with Gruber's death is so fascinating. I, in my earlier alter ego as thestat, suggested that Kamen's original was somehow more intriguing. Not sure about that - the re=edited version with the anvils totally plays up the momentum. Kamen underplays it like he does in a lot of his work if he is not encouraged to go big

Serra's version of Carmina Burana (I mean, why not)> still good stuff: Love that he put his little synth pads in the background (but this is seriously good shit - Serra has some massive capacity but gets lost in that experimental nonsense):

The bagpipes?! No......does anyone in this world, if not a misguided besmitten Braveheart fan, actually bear the sound of those monsters? Also not massively convinced by this Doyle piece - it is part of his later years, the type of stuff that made Brave somewhat anonymous and that made me completely turn off Artemis Fowl after a few tracks - I mean, I frigging love Doyle and go see him if possible at concerts, but he can be his worst enemy with banal nonsense like this, go back to the 90s Patrick and let that drunk Herrmann loose.

The newly revamped Kamen website contains some real gems - I can see that members have been spreading them into different threads but as these are more or less focused on unreleased or rejected Kamen, at least the new findings, a good idea to have a whole new thread: Event Horizon - 2 hours of recorded material. The sound clips are amazing. Some real expansions of the patented Kamen thriller sound. I generally tend to dislike Kamen on thrillers as it got a bit old in the 80s and 90s and he did not have much time to innovate (and as most of this was for Joel Silver, he probablhy had to stick to the temp as much as possible). But this does seem like he was let loose, perhaps much more so than on the Lifeforce goody bag we got. Fair Game - awesome to hear Kamen try to respond to the impending Mancina takeover. He really did go for the same percussion and string rhythms as Speed etc - but the frigging Sanborn sax! All corny, mega sleaze dripping out of Mickey Rourke's eyepatch from the late 1980s. Not surprising they had to let him go on this. Die Hard 3 - still not sure what is new here or what is not. Frankly I continue to be puzzled about what was new with the La-La release. Unfortunately, sounded like the same old, same old (but still good) Wilder Napalm - still the crown of unreleased Kamen. Totally needs to be done.