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John Debney's Lair - new 2CD set La-La Land Records


Jay

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Listened to this further, and I'm noticing that a lot of the action material, while very complex in orchestration, lacks focus - it doesn't draw me in with a memorable rhythm.

Probably a case where I'll select the best 45mins to 1 hour.

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maybe it's the out of order re-sequencing...

But yes, even with sensical chronological recording, as a videogame, 'level music' is usually action, and since you can make many things in the level the composer cannot score wall to wall.. (as a film or cutscene). But i think some sound great as standalone pieces.

Though Giacchino did great in Secret weapons.

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At first pass:

Tracks with unreleased bits:

The Last Straw

Preparing for battle

Missing tracks (except the intro to "Mokai camp attack", nothing important as they only are mising overdubs or vocals, the intended final version is presented on the LLL): Probably there are more, but its difficult to notice since the re-arrangement is all over the place.

Rohn's theme (no vocal)
Return to mokai city without ethnic instrument overlay

Strange track:

Darkness theme is not the itunes version! (its the take used in the game, it does not have the synth rythm beats at the end) So, we dont have this itunes track in lossless.

Awful edit: Search for water/deadman's basin. It's painful to listen to.

Specially when they included the 100% thematically related intro to Deadman's Basin, Mokai camp attack (in the game known as unlikely truce) in other track with another awful edit. Mokai camp attack intro as mentioned earlier is missing.

This should have meant to be mixed together, think of 'hangar management' and 'enterprising young men' being mixed sepparated with other parts of the score.

It sounds great compared to the game rips, but it would have been perfect had they not mixed unrelated cues to make lenghtier tracks. The track order could have been the same if that's what debney liked, and if they had not mixxed them together it would have been an easy fix on itunes.... now its difficult to sepparate, as they overlap.

Final review: Great value for lossless sound and quality, but the oficial CD will remain a 'dust collector' once i make a complete edit...if I find the time...if not i'm 100% satisfied with my edit of the gamerip.

If this had been released years before and / or no gamerip could have been recorded, (so i wouldnt know all the music, just the OST) this release would have been a blessing. (but i still think i would have noticed 'Mokay camp' was meant to segue into 'Deadman's basin' ;) )

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I have yet to receive my set but your assesment of the album sounds just about what I expected it to be Mañuel. Are those combined tracks easy to separate or are there "inventive" combinations of cues with nasty fades?

Interesting observations on the Darkness theme and other cues. They could have included those alternates to humour us foam mouthed completists. ;)

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I have yet to receive my set but your assesment of the album sounds just about what I expected it to be Mañuel. Are those combined tracks easy to separate or are there "inventive" combinations of cues with nasty fades?

Interesting observations on the Darkness theme and other cues. They could have included those alternates to humour us foam mouthed completists. ;)

These are inventive combinations... :(

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I'd have liked to have the vocal-free Rohn's Theme.

The 'bridge' cue I mentioned is here after all. It's the different cue names that's confusing.

The one thing that winds me up about most LLL releases is crossfading cues. There are a couple of awkward ones on Wyatt Earp which aren't bad enough to make me use the sessions, but aren't ideal.

Pity that LLL doesn't have a forum (right?...) because I'd love to raise it with their producers as a discussion point.

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LLL used to have a forum on their website but no one used it so they shut it down. Now they communicate daily with fans via their Facebook page and FSM forums.

This particular title, Lair, was produced and sequenced by Dan Goldwasser, so you'd be better off taking up your issues with him rather than the label heads, who didn't mandate how Dan sequenced it or anything. He got more input from Debney about how the CD should be sequenced than he did from MV or MV.

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What makes you say that? The impression I got from the underscores.fr interview was that Sony was more concerned about the track TITLES, then the presentation of the music?

http://www.underscores.fr/index.php/2014/04/news-lair-john-debney-chevauche-le-dragon/

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Well reading that article, in particular Dan's notes, it seems he made most of the decisions about the programming and sequence of this release himself, following the original album order John Debney wanted (which was different from the iTunes release order).

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I'm not disagreeing with you, Jason. But the fact they were bothered with track titles means they had some input as to how the music is presented, that's all I'm saying.

Karol

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Ah Blood river is missing a percussion insert. I think it may be synth, but it mixxes perfectly with the orchestral cue, and could have been added in the end of the cd all the same... (in fact i think there are some other of these percussion inserts* for different action cues that were not recorded by the game ripper becasue they played only in-game, not the 'concert hall feature)

*These inserts play when you get in a fight with another dragon, so as the dragons are locked, the two riders fight each other in a 10-20 seconds fight or quick time event. I think all mayor 'action level setpieces music' had them.

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The opening 30 seconds or so of the full game version of the Epilogue seem to be missing from the new release. It features the last statement of the Diviner's Theme, a rather excellent statement in fact.

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Splendid album.

Is the concert suite featured the one recorded in Ubeda? The notes do not specify it (even though Debney mentions one of the two performances was in Spain).

Many times I thought it sounded like part of Williams' music for Star Wars, episodes 1-3.

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And Poledouris, and Zimmer, too. And even some bits sound like they could have come from Ben-Hur or something like that. This score has it all!

It's a really great set, by the way. It overindulges me with its obnoxous bombast, so if there's anything missing... well... I wouldn't be able to tell.

Karol

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And Poledouris, and Zimmer, too. And even some bits sound like they could have come from Ben-Hur or something like that. This score has it all!

It's a really great set, by the way. It overindulges me with its obnoxous bombast, so if there's anything missing... well... I wouldn't be able to tell.

Karol

Debney readily and openly admits those influences in the liner notes citing Poledouris, Goldsmith and Williams as inspiration for this work among other things. Kevin Kaska does a fine stylistic homage to JW in many places.

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Is the concert suite featured the one recorded in Ubeda? The notes do not specify it (even though Debney mentions one of the two performances was in Spain).

Yes, that's right.

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A terrific set but needs some rearranging as I am not too fond of the programme they cooked up for this album. The liner notes were interesting and nicely informative with Debney's enthusiasm shining through in the interview. The music is a succesful throwback to the epics of the last decades with just enough modernity to keep it distinct from them while using techniques of some of my favourite composers to give it a familiar feel. :)

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For starters it's about one hour too long.

Well, of course I do know you're suffering from severe thoritis, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Upon revisiting the score a few months ago I thought to myself it would be nice to have it on CD. And the original programme would suffice, of course. There is very little additional material that absolutely NEEDS to be there. Having said that, the overall impression of the album is really strong, works much better than the 2007 version in terms of balancing things out.

So I was wondering what is exactly the problem for other people. Is it just because things are "out of order"?

Karol

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For starters it's about one hour too long.

Well, of course I do know you're suffering from severe thoritis, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Upon revisiting the score a few months ago I thought to myself it would be nice to have it on CD. And the original programme would suffice, of course. There is very little additional material that absolutely NEEDS to be there. Having said that, the overall impression of the album is really strong, works much better than the 2007 version in terms of balancing things out.

So I was wondering what is exactly the problem for other people. Is it just because things are "out of order"?

Karol

Perhaps it is a bit about the things being out of order but also there are some choices I didn't like so much in terms of dramatic pacing. I'll extrapolate on this once I get back home from work.

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Of course these are matters of taste but there are a some points where I didn't think the new arrangement of the music was advantageous to the listening experience but it might be that I have been so used to hearing the music in story order that new arrangement just takes a while to get used to. For example Breaking the Ice doesn't to my mind work so well positioned as the second track and the Prologue and Diviner Battle that follow each other in the game would have provided a stronger opening after Main Title. You might argue that I am complaining for chronology's sake but inserting that 1:30 of action music after the already big opening track just doesn't work for me dramatically as it doesn't build from anything.

Another section is the final third of the 2nd disc where there is the long Search for Water - Deadman's Basin from the middle portion of the story's narrative that just halts the build-up of the finale in my opinion. Music for Loden (strangely dubbed Lodan on this release) for the penultimate battle is shuffled into the middle of disc 1, whereas it would have been perfect build-up in the escalating series of action set piece that lead to the Battle for Asylia.

The score in game order actually provides a very good listening experience from dramatic standpoint but also when you consider pacing, dynamics and variety between loud and soft, slow and quick pieces as there are quite natural breathing spaces in the score between the major action setpieces. Despite game scoring being far from linear compared to films this score at least has a pretty well conceived architecture, by chance or by deliberate design.

But I guess if you haven't heard this music in the "correct" order it might not bother you half as much (or at all).

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yeah, that's the problem, if you dont know the music or game, it's a fine set (some strange edits still) but if you know this score in chronological order for about 7 years, it's difficult to like the new arrangement.

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Not just Star Wars. Many other influences. A really blatant Total Recall rip off there too.

Yes, but I could not tell in which track exactly (towards the end).

Great music, though.

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Especially the action music, technically well-done as it may be, is rather by-the-numbers in a David-Arnold-ID4-kind of way. The outright rips in between are actually the best part about a lot of the cues.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes, Sony owns both games. I just thought it was hilarious.


To give you all some context, in Second Son you are fighting a generic boss inside a computer game, so the fact that Sucker Punch used this music instead of their original score is a nice wink.

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  • 2 years later...

The track order on this set is really very different to the "complete game rip" that has been floating around.

Does anyone have any clue if the La La Land set more accurately reflects the game storyline? Or is it more a composer choice?

I've got to admit I've gotten quite used to the complete edition....

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Yes, when the game follows up a story with cut scenes, there is a chronological order.

 

In this case almost each level has it's own track so the chronological order of the music can be done with knowing the level order.

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