Tydirium

I agree completely, Miguel. I wish this album were done by a different orchestra, with a better track arrangement. When it comes to "mainstream" (Sony is a big label) re-recordings of JW's film music within these past few years alone, this one severely pales in comparison to the recent offerings by Recording Arts Orchestra of LA (Williams), Boston Pops (Lockhart), LSO (Greenaway), and LA Phil (Dudamel). Why couldn't this album have been recorded by one of those orchestras, or perhaps any number of great orchestras including but certainly not limited to: London Phil, NY Phil, Berlin Phil, Czech Phil, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Philharmonia Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, Chicago Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, etc.? There are so many better options out there. My guess is its a money issue, but still, it's sad when a recording is wasted on a group that is not up to par.

And? There are plenty of "well known" orchestras that have released bad recordings over the decades. Slovak simply sounds bad here. The trumpet-playing, especially, sounds shoddy and lazy. Not City of Prague levels bad, but bad nonetheless. But the overarching issue is that the orchestra as a whole doesn't feel balanced here; check out for instance the bit at 1:27 of "Battle of the Heroes"; you should be hearing a strong trombone echo of the rhythm the trumpets just played... But what you end up with is muddied and practically nonexistent, volume-wise. Basically, the orchestra sections are not playing like they have a clue what's going on musically.

"Speederbikes" seems to be this week's highlight, imo. What a great little cue—if only it were longer! EDIT: "Warm or Cold" is great too. It's just too bad that most of the track isn't even heard in the ep.

It's too bad this wasn't done with a better orchestra. These performances leave a lot to be desired.

Close enough for me! Can't believe I had forgotten about the first one you listed! That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Good point! @Falstaft, as our music theorist in residence do you have any thoughts on this topic?

I thought of that one too; it's close but not quite, as there is no weird French horn line that joins the trumpet note. I'm curious to see if this sort of thing is a more recent development in his scoring style, in which case ROTJ might be too early; would be interesting to try and pick out the first usage of this technique in his scores.

Not sure how many others here have picked up on this, but it recently occurred to me that one of Williams' go-tos when it comes to scoring a character who is dying or falling, appears to be a sustained trumpet note, followed by some sort of trombone interjection/hit and then finally joined by French horns noodling around relatively atonally. Here are three examples from STAR WARS to help show what I'm talking about: Are there other examples of this that you can think of? Would be cool to collect all the instances for which he does this.

Could be, but I for one am quite content with what we're getting as it stands now!

Still not on Apple Music/iTunes... I wonder what the deal is.

This first track is already one of my favorites yet. Love the tranquil, acoustic-guitar-infused take on the Razor Crest fanfare motif, but the real highlight for me is the new theme that is first introduced at 1:57.

How is it a really important moment?

Not for me. Having the same line said 3 times in a row? Marvel-tier humor. In SW 1-6, such a line would be quipped by C-3PO once, and that would be it...

I'm in the US. Hopefully that time was just a weird fluke.

OK. I only ask because back when I pre-ordered the TLJ soundtrack (albeit not the day the pre-order was announced—but still a week or two before the release date, and I had Prime), Amazon later revised the delivery date to be later and later until eventually it said that it wouldn't be coming till a week or two after release date... I contacted Amazon and canceled the order due to that ridiculousness; took a trip to Barnes & Noble on release day and picked up a copy in person, IIRC. I am flying out of the country for two weeks on the 21st, so I would really like Amazon to deliver on-time, this time around...