Richard Penna

Today's score is finally on Prime, and before now the 'latest release' thing for Bear's page was showing episode 5's album, so Amazon did fuck up dropping this. I only highlight it because I genuinely thought all day that they were putting the last 3 albums behind an extra paywall in the hopes of at least some people taking out their 'Unlimited' trial. I'm 2/3 through the episode and actually this one's rather good, and the score is amazing, although it generally seems to be much more in sequence than earlier episodes were and there's at least one short unreleased cue so far - not just microedits.

Oh, way better. Something about series 6 didn't inspire music on the same level. I have yet to listen, but I tend to enjoy Akinola's synth noodling more than Gold's more recent orchestral noodling. It's easier to get away with electronic 'filler' material, and being realistic a 2 1/2 hour release will have filler. Having said that, I wasn't very taken by most of that NY Daleks episode, so who knows

Unless Amazon's fucked up again, the episode 6 album is behind the Amazon Unlimited subscription wall...

Three and four are absolutely peak Gold - I vividly remember the albums coming out when I was just starting work and listening during commutes in the dark. Both are such wonderfully constructed albums, an art I think Gold lost a bit from the specials album onwards. Without a doubt, the absolute highlight across both albums for me is The Runaway Bride, a cue which entered public consciousness when it was performed at the musical celebration concert with Tennant. I don't think he wrote cues like that in later seasons - maybe the show's stories didn't allow for it. Also that Voyage of the Damned suite... couldn't possibly pack more cinema, action and Christmas into 10 mins.

I'm not familiar enough with Bear to identify his style properly but I hear a lot of Outlander in this, which is natural as I've heard seven albums of the latter. I'm not sure he's got one of those instantly recognisable styles.

Oh cool, I forgot it was on digital this week! Who and RoP albums on the same day I was hoping for a sooner release of Flux but I suppose he waited until the material from all of Whittaker's final episodes was done to put it all together.

According to Torn Music, the director and studio didn't agree on the tone the music should have (so Young was trying to straddle between two styles) and then as you suggest, the film was shelved, and when unshelved, they decided to change the score to try to improve the movie. Aparently Young offered to do it but they went with Lurie. Hence it sounds like a case where it wasn't changed for any specific stylistic reason - they just realised the movie had problems and oen way to handle that is just to change something about the music.

To the original question, depends somewhat on whether you consider the rejected score purely as a concept, or related at all to the film. The only 'rejected' scores that I can immediately recall that I have are Breakdown and An Unfinished Life. The former is a bit wrong for the specific tone Mostow went for ultimately in the film but musically it's a fine score. The latter... I have no idea because I've never seen the film, but it's a beautiful concept album.

I'm veering more towards this view - it's a nice idea to cover the film in music and remove cues where not needed, but logistically, recording and composer time is expensive and labour intensive. I'm not a fan of the idea of a composer writing all that music with the anticipation that you'll just remove lots of it and their work goes unheard. Plus on a more minor note, I don't like score albums containing an unused cue but missing some other major cue.

It feels like a delicate balance between going hard on himself mentally and physically, but maintaining that creative control and having the pride of an entire show under his belt. At least you'd assume he's now got time to recharge for the next season. I wouldn't have been against additional composers being involved at all for a score of this scale, but it's pretty cool knowing that every note of what we're hearing is him.

So he did compose all 9 hours himself, and it took him 9 months, including supervising recording and choir sessions over zoom from different countries. Wow!

The sign for me that the FB franchise is in trouble is the embarassingly tiny FANTASTIC BEASTS in the SoD logo. What WB actually wants is more Potter movies. I've never seen any of the FBs as they never appeared on Netflix (at least while I was with them) so I have no opinion as to whether the movies suck or not. Although I just saw Prime has a free '10 minute preview'... just make the damn movie Prime, it's been out long enough.

I love music too but it's almost a pet peeve of mine when a see a scene where the music is so far back or quiet that it just didn't need to be there. In a sense, I love a big, bold fanfare as much as anyone else, but when it comes to more emotional stuff, I'm definitely more of a fan of subtle scoring, i.e. some tender piano rather than loud, sad strings. You could see some (particularlty Williams) scores where the composition itself is beautiful and works great on his album, but when married to the visuals as part of the whole, feels a tad overwhelming. But hey, I'm a fan of textural, ambient, atonal (some of the time) music so I generally don't go for big orchestral statements as much as some here would. In fact, most 'happy' Christmas-style orchestral scores drive my nut - I need a bit of variation.

More music from any composer is not necessarily better if some of it goes into filler territory.

If I were directing a composer, my gut tells me I'd go in the opposite direction becuase I think basically everything is overscored. I'd start with a movie having no music at all, then deciding on places where the lack of music was harming it. I definitely believe in the power of music transforming a scene but that doesn't apply to every scene.