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What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)


Ollie

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Gerhardt's Empire Strikes Back album is certainly one of the greatest audio recordings in the history of the human race. If our civilization ended and an alien race exploring the ruins of our world had to uncover only one thing to represent our history...I would be okay with it being the Gerhardt Empire Strikes Back album.

Are you talking specifically about the recording quality, or about the entire album as a whole?

Everything. As far as I'm concerned, a perfect Star Wars album.

So a perfect SW album for you is badly performed, has bad orchestral balance and includes badly arranged extras for the already existing material?

I don't believe for a second that Williams had anything to do with the awful inclusion of Leia's theme during Han Solo and the Princess.

I've never understood the love around here for this album, there isn't one thing on it that comes anywhere close to the original :john:

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So a perfect SW album for you is badly performed, has bad orchestral balance and includes badly arranged extras for the already existing material?

I don't believe for a second that Williams had anything to do with the awful inclusion of Leia's theme during Han Solo and the Princess.

He did and it was stated so in the liner notes.

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I heard about 30 minutes of it and thought it was really, really bad. Awful synths, bad sounding hero theme, and the stupid whispering thing just didn't work for me.

I'm sure Koray loves it

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So a perfect SW album for you is badly performed, has bad orchestral balance and includes badly arranged extras for the already existing material?

I don't believe for a second that Williams had anything to do with the awful inclusion of Leia's theme during Han Solo and the Princess.

He did and it was stated so in the liner notes.

No, the liner notes are too vague to know who exactly did what.

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I heard about 30 minutes of it and thought it was really, really bad. Awful synths, bad sounding hero theme, and the stupid whispering thing just didn't work for me.

I'm sure Koray loves it

He's not the only one!

Pharrell's whispering was dumb though.

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They're two very different beasts. Not sure which I prefer yet, but Zimmer's feels more like a comic book score to me, even if the theme doesn't quite fit Spidey.

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Zimmer is incapable of writing a score as good as T.A.S.

just as he proved incapable of writing a score as good as Superman.

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Who?


That's the second time I've seen someone say that Zimmer's sounds more like a comic book score. I have no idea what that means.

What it means is that Horner's score, while very fine, doesn't scream out "comic book fun" to me. It's sort of generic. A great theme, but it could apply to a lot of different things. Zimmer's is a bit more specific. And I'm even growing to like his theme, less as a genuinely heroic tune and more as a brash caricature of one, which is probably more fitting for Spider-Man anyway.

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Three favorite scores of mine today

Brian Tyler - Now You See Me - Great way to start your day with some fun music!

Mark Mancina - Speed 2 - one of the best action scores of the 90s! Listened to the LLL presentation, instead of my personal expanded release.

Michael Giacchino - Star Trek Into Darkness just great from top to bottom

Michael Giacchino - Cloverfield always entertaining!

Then a little hodge-podge playlist of great main title cues - from The Last Starfighter (Craig Safan), Source Code (Chris Bacon), Signs (James Newton Howard), Jack Reacher (Joe Kramer), City Clickers 2 (Marc Shaiman), and The Adventures of Tintin (John Williams)

Tomorrow I plan on listening to a bunch of 2014 scores on Spotify, including Favor by joe Kraemer, and possibly TASM2 by Zimmer!

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Lair.

What I like about it is how incredible thematic it is. It's not JUST loud bombast, like many big budget orchestral scores are today (The Avengers)

There are loads of themes, put though a lot of variations.

It's like Cutthroat Island meets ID4, plus temp tracks!

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What do you think about it?

I'm not sold on the whole package, but I love Electro's theme for the very reason everyone hates it. I feel like it's a perfect embodiment of the character with its use of electronics and Pharrell's vocals. I honestly hear more Elfman in there than dub step. It feels like something out of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Similar to "Mike Teavee" or some of Elfman's other songs for Burton, in how he really exaggerates the vocals. Awesome stuff. I'll be okay with only ever listening to "The Electro Suite," like I am with listening to Hans' sketchbook cue from Man Of Steel.

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War of the Worlds - John Williams

The atonality and fierceness of this is impressive... I used to bitch about this not having a big theme, but the complexity and bombast overcome it. Especially "The Ferry Scene", "The Intersection Scene", "Attack on the Car" and "Escape from the City". But after hearing KOTCS, I notice Spielberg and Williams are succumbing to temp-track syndrome (with the second track).

Still, a nice mid-range Williams score. Not his best, but surely not his worst.

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Noah.

Really enjoying this album. Aside from The Fountain and Black Swan, I haven't been interested in Mansell, but I think this could be his best score.

That said, the sound quality is shit on this album. There is very heavy clipping. I am not in any way an audiophile, and generally use shitty headphones (though I tried it with my high quality pair, and it's still there), so when I notice stuff like this, it must be a pretty big problem. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but it sounds like shit, seriously.

Has anybody else noticed this?

Lair.

Never been a Debney fan. I don't even really like Cutthroat Island. Still, this score is pretty awesome. I hadn't heard it before the new release and have never played the game. "Battle for Asylia" :music:

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I'm glad I never even gave them a listen outside of my one (and final) viewings of those movies. Glad, glad, glad, glad, glad.

The only Giacchino tracks I really enjoy are Space Mountain and The Lost World: Jurassic Park video game.

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The Lost World. Initially the favourite moments for me were the concluding minute of "Rescuing Sarah" and the Jurassic Park theme in "Visitor in San Diego" as Malcolm and Sarah head into the ampitheatre. As is the way of things the soundtrack as a whole has grown on me.

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The Lost World. Initially the favourite moments for me were the concluding minute of "Rescuing Sarah" and the Jurassic Park theme in "Visitor in San Diego" as Malcolm and Sarah head into the ampitheatre. As is the way of things the soundtrack as a whole has grown on me.

Fantastic piece that one. My first soundtrack album. I would really love to have a complete score release of this.

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The Lost World. Initially the favourite moments for me were the concluding minute of "Rescuing Sarah" and the Jurassic Park theme in "Visitor in San Diego" as Malcolm and Sarah head into the ampitheatre. As is the way of things the soundtrack as a whole has grown on me.

Fantastic piece that one. My first soundtrack album. I would really love to have a complete score release of this.

Agreed. I enjoy it more than its predecessor, to be honest. It's a shame that "Rescuing Sarah" is missing that chunk from the film. Honestly, I think it's the best part of the entire score, and some of Williams' best action scoring ever. I'd buy an expanded release of that score, even if it just had that extra minute.

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It's melodic and agreeable though not especially 'deep'...the god music is rather generic in light of what has come beofre and since. But you can have some fun with the more muscular stuff as below and the catchy arabian stylings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ce5QTAdqEk

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Ender's Game - Steve Jablonsky.

I'm not fond of Jablonsky, and even though I didn't like this score, I admit I liked the tonality's changement in the theme.

Shrek - John Powell/Harry Gregson-Williams

Except a couple track, I loved it ! It's simply, beautiful and enjoyable.

However, I think the main theme is too famous for what it is (I talk about Fairytail, the Finale is much better <3 !)

#publicist: Indeed, we can feel an arabic style, and that's rather good (and new for me).

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It's a great score and one of his best. But I'm not that big a fan of the God music (which as publicist said, veers closer to the generic side), in fact I prefer the last 30 seconds of the "Burning Bush" cue that Koray just posted over what precedes it (which isn't bad at all, but it's not the stuff I prefer in the score). I love the score's arabic flavour, which has a great main theme and some fantastic action cues/ethnic coloured material ("Chariot Race" rules!).

Also, the songs are absolutely fantastic.

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Joe Kraemer - Favor

Wow, what a lovely little score! Will be listening to this again real soon

Hans Zimmer - Amazing Spider-man 2

Did not like it at all, The suites at the end were even worse than anything in the main score, and the songs at the end were all terrible except the Czarina Russell one.

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I'm actually surprised you didn't enjoy it at all, Jason. Great art it ain't, but surely the combination of modern genre elements to represents this particular character is not inappropriate at all. I like how different styles represent varied aspects of the story and how they manage to develop 5-6 themes in this "mess", without ever feeling forced. And Fanfare for A Common Spider is a cherry on top (I laughed at this reference and yet it all makes sense).

I'm listening to Clint Mansell's Noah at the moment. Completely forgot I had this album, bought it a few weeks ago, even before seeing the film. It's actually not bad music at all. I can hear certain Mansellisms here and there (remainders of his The Fountain and others things). It's not as instantly memorable, but, somehow, the combination of string quartet, orchestra, synths, guitars works perfectly well for this antediluvian setting. It's film music developed with care and intelligence and even if it appeals to more modern tastes, there is plenty of merit to it. Although, I have to say 78 and a half minutes for such a monochrome sound is slightly too much. Overall, not my type of thing normally, but well done.

Karol

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I was intrigued by the ensemble he used, but never bothered to listen because it seemed a "monochrome" soundscape was inevitable even with those potentially interesting colors.

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Monuments Men by Alexandre Desplat: I really dig this one. Such nice piece of nostalgia combined with Desplat's singular voice is a joy to hear. Highly thematic and emotionally engaging piece of work with nice shades of Hollywood greats from Goldsmith to Williams colouring Desplat's music without it becoming pastiche. Plus it has the asset of having one of the finest memorable main themes in recent memory. Bring on Gojira I say! ;)

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The Terminal by John Williams

This one is really gorgeous. I especially adore the love theme.

:music:Memoirs of a Geisha

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