Yavar Moradi

Welp, I’m in! The best part of the best Star Wars show, hands down. Mangold’s a good director and now I know I don’t have to worry about the script. Yavar

Custom cover artist raferjanders at the Film Score Monthly board has provided some amazing custom art for La-La Land's exciting new Oliver Nelson twofer! Oh yes, these will look nice in my iTunes... Yavar

Wouldn’t call that gushing; all I did was a simple direct response to the blanket claim that “the animated shows are better than the live action ones”. Yavar

They might be better than *most* of the live action shows, but none of them is even close to as good as Andor. EDIT after first angry reaction: Hey, if you’ve watched through the prison arc on Andor and think the animated shows are better written, better acted, better told stories… I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Yavar

It's Sony. A CD release is almost certain to happen. Yavar

$3,490 over the $50,000 goal now, from 477 backers total. There’s only an hour left if anyone wants to get in on pre-ordering this 2CD set for $30 though! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nosferatu-music/christopher-youngs-nosferatu-a-symphony-of-horror-cd Yavar

I didn't notice these, and sadly Google Podcasts just cut off my access today even though I had pre-downloaded all six episodes through their app, and had started listening to the first one (had just arrived at the new material!) Frustrating. I guess the files are probably still on my phone somehow, but I can't access them through the app now. Yavar

Custom cover artists raferjanders at the Film Score Monthly board has provided some amazing new custom art for this exciting Oliver Nelson twofer! Oh yes, these will look nice in my iTunes... Yavar

$48,885 from 410 backers now, only $1,115 left to go!!! And still 42 hours left! WOOOOOO! Yavar

Well it’s still 5000 copies at $50 for a single score. Yavar

401 backers and $46,333 (only $3,667 left to go) with almost two whole days still left? Yeah, I'm very optimistic indeed. Usually the last two days see the biggest traffic on a campaign after the first day. Yavar

I'm guessing it's for some kind of legal album reasons. Something similar happened with Mark McKenzie's big climactic action cue "Battle for the Castle" on Intrada's expanded release of Jerry Goldsmith's The Last Castle. Composer not mentioned on the tracklist or outer packaging at all: https://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.12180/.f And yet in Doug's description he's given an explicit shout-out for the cue, so it's not as if Intrada is unawares or doesn't care about properly crediting the additional music composer: "New Intrada 2-CD set presents Goldsmith’s full score with numerous previously unreleased cues, all taken from the original 3-channel digital stereo session mixes, culminating in the lengthy, climactic “Battle For The Castle” (composed by Mark McKenzie), also being released for the first time." Yavar

He also made a significant impact with his arrangements of that score. I know he’s not the composer but I can still hear his “voice” in it. Yavar

You need this great FSM release! Figured you could use a link to check out the sound samples... https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/cds/detail.cfm/CDID/354/Zigzag-The-Super-Cops/ It's OOP but pretty affordable secondhand on Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/release/9303368-Oliver-Nelson-Jerry-Fielding-Zigzag-The-Super-Cops-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack Very cool of FSM to premiere the LP recording on CD along with the film recording which had previously been completely unreleased! Really neat to have them side by side. Yavar

The LLL guys are big fans of Oliver Nelson (again, particularly his music for The Six Million Dollar Man has been expressed as a grail for the label, for some time) so I assure you this isn't a minor title for them, or a placeholder. Yavar

Craig Huxley would have to come back and re-perform his blaster beam role. That might add a bit of expense, and any other unusual instrumentation Goldsmith used would have to be covered too. It couldn't just be easily tacked on, if it doesn't match the orchestra of whatever other score it's being added to. But definitely food for thought! Yavar

Liner notes writer Jeff Bond had some cool stuff to share about these two new releases, on Facebook: ”Okay, this was fun. Several years ago I wrote liner notes for Oliver Nelson’s tremendous score for the oddball missing link movie Skullduggery. This is a real find in great sound from an incredibly underrated and underrepresented composer. Skullduggery sat around for several years until LLL positioned it as the back end of a double album, so now we get another terrific score for a grim little western with Richard Widmark, Death of a Gunfighter. Bonus: Oliver Nelson is best known for working himself to death writing music for The Six Million Dollar Man, and you actually get some Six Million Dollar Man music here as Nelson reused some of his main title music as the opening to one SMDM episode. I also had the pleasure of talking to Sylvester Levay, one of the major 80s synth score composers and the artist behind the 70s hit “Fly, Robin Fly” about his score for the ridiculous but refreshingly analog action thriller Navy Seals—music that made Jim Abrams laugh so much he hired Levay to score his takeoff of military action films Hot Shots! Thanks to Michael V. Gerhard and Mike Matessino for these wonderful gigs.” The Oliver Nelson release is actually HUGE, guys. He's not a minor figure in music; in fact he was very prolific in the world of jazz through the 60s and early 70s until his untimely death at age 42: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Nelson_discography He's only relatively unknown as a film/TV composer because his career was cut very short by his early death, with his highest profile work being the beloved series The Six Million Dollar Man, which a lot of 70s film music fans pine after. He became a favorite of mine as a kid because he wrote my #1 favorite Columbo score, "The Greenhouse Jungle": (I'm far from the only fan of this score; on YouTube I found covers of the theme including one guy in Russia playing it on his Casio!) The only film score of his ever released on album (until tomorrow) was Zigzag, which FSM premiered on CD many years ago, adding the previously-unreleased film recording alongside the unique LP recording. Death of a Gunfighter (I'm a sucker for 60s western scores too) and Skullduggery were his *only* two other scores written for theatrically released feature films! So yeah...despite his discography being mainly non-film music, his film music on album has now just TRIPLED with this amazing premiere twofer. I highly encourage folks to check out the sound samples when released, if you like 70s stuff at all. It's pretty friggin' awesome. This is the release of the YEAR so far, for me. Yavar

I'll have to try out Google Podcasts for my relisten! Maybe it'll save my place, which was one of my pet peeves when listening on Thor's website. Thor, do you still plan to cover Checkmate thoroughly with a final podcast episode? I'm still excited for that... Yavar

It was indeed “Meet V’Ger” — the opening sounds very much like TOS Fred Steiner and it’s fine. But after that it’s like a cross between Bernard Herrmann and Jerry Goldsmith in the best way; I absolutely love the effect of the slowed-down pumping Starfleet motif, making it more ominous and imposing as they, well, meet V’Ger and that sound mixes in. Pretty damn brilliant and I would have believed the cue was Jerry. “A Good Start” is perfectly fine but it feels very much like Steiner simply cut-and-pasting earlier Goldsmith music from the score. Nothing fresh or exciting there for me, just basic reprises. ”System Inoperative” and “Hidden Information” are perfectly effective in the film itself (I like those hits for the destructive balls of energy that go out and surround Earth) but yeah rather a slog on album. I like “Inner Workings” much better but I guess compared to other Goldsmith cues it’s rather understated too. But I adore the way Ilia’s Theme appears 2-3 min in. So subtle and powerful. And the rising piano and wind machine followed by delicate organ in the final minute! Yeah sorry, it’s way better than nine of the Steiner cues IMO. “V’Ger Speaks” is less interesting again but it do love the brief Ilia’s Theme drop-in at 2:46-3:05… just not as much as what Jerry himself does with it in the previous cue. I really really wish Goldsmith had been able to record his fantastic original version of “Body Meld” at the end, where the amazing Ilia’s Theme gets the final flowering/development the whole score frankly feels like it’s building towards… grateful for Joe Kraemer’s professional realization with samples though: Yavar

cfeatures@me.com Yavar

Indiegogo (for example) works differently, but with Kickstarter there’s nothing to refund in that case because they only charge (at the end) IF the funding threshold is met. Yavar

Yeah but she is a recent Best Actress Oscar winner, so... Yavar

Quinto Spock is actually pretty small in this. This is current Discovery/SNW Spock who's as big as Nimoy's. Yavar

I’d be very surprised if it’s that little, but I admit I haven’t noticed any major omissions. Which is good! I just wanted to correct the record since I’ve seen a lot of people refer to these as complete score releases when they are not. Yavar

I guess I'm a rare person who finds it too short and disjointed, with all of those album arrangements of themes mixed in with "real cues", and everything all jumbled up largely out of order and fragmented. I like a few highlights from that highlights album, but overall I far, FAR prefer the episode albums. Huh! I find a ton of his themes quite memorable and distinct. I can easily recall to mind the main love theme from Outlander, a later love theme for different characters, Frank's theme, the Druid theme, etc! It amazes me how many memorable and distinct themes he was able to create for The Rings of Power. This might still be my favorite McCreary theme though: (Or if you want more of it, for the 90 second opening sequence that should've been...) It's really funny that Galadriel's theme makes you think of sci-fi, because...well... I think I might actually prefer this, even though I love both! But my wife and I (we watch and enjoy both series, despite their flaws) have taken to calling it "Gaaladriel's Theme". 8 scores, one for each episode of RoP season 1. Most are under an hour I'm pretty sure. McCreary actually didn't include every cue. The albums are not complete & comprehensive and he still made some omissions for listening experience/flow purposes... but they are a MUCH better representation of the musical journey and development of thematic material. To me most of these are actually pretty distinct from each other. The constant action of the Episode 6 album is almost overwhelming in the best possible way. And the Episode 7 album is kinda the darkest, for the aftermath. Very compelling. Yavar