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


Ollie

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Checkmate/Rhythm in Motion by John Williams: Nice collection of cool and snazzy crime jazz from the 1960's and wonderfully orchestrated standard big band tunes in one package. A swinging experience.

Rosewood (Expanded Score (LLL)) by John Williams: A very interesting expansion of a score that I have begun to appreciate more only recently and this set has helped in it even more. Williams' more mature writing is combined with his Americana in orchestral and soloist guise as he uses the bluegrass, blues and folksy elements to a great effect in this score set in deep South. The way he conjures time and place is exemplary but he always retains a dramatic element in his music, the score never becoming entirely source music, rather an evocation of the story's many facets and subtexts. Guitar, harmonica and solo gospel voice are highlighted as central sounds of the soundtrack. The trio of original gospel songs complement this experience well, featuring in the major setpieces of the work and forming in part the thematic groundwork of Rosewood. Jeff Bond's essay in the liner notes is yet again an entertaining storehouse of background information and a great track-by-track analysis, which refamiliarizes a person like me who hasn't seen the film in ages, with the plot and Williams' musical narrative. This score fuses together Williams previous efforts in rural Americana, which featured similar ingredients, small scale orchestra and solo instruments, and his 1990's mature writing into an impressive package.

The Fury (Expanded Score (LLL)) by John Williams: What can I say that hasn't been said already about this wonderful and powerful work. It is a more complete and sonically upgraded version of the Varese complete release of 2002. The score is a primal classic and will remain even more so after listening to this set. Bonus music is welcome if not incredibly essential for the listening experience. The calliope source for the Death on a Carousel is a wacky and eerie addition (5 somewhat different incarnations of the music for this scene can be heard on this double CD set) along with the 4 pieces of period source music (2 songs courtesy of the then only 18 year old Joseph Williams), making The Fury musical presentation finally just about as complete as possible. Julie Kirgo's liner notes feature a lively essay on the film and the score, eschewing track-by-track analysis but providing insights into individual setpieces and notable cues of the score. Another impeccable release from LLL.

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The problem I have with LLL's Rosewood has nothing to do with the quality of the production or, in fact, the quality of music itself. It's just that, while an interesting effort, I cannot say it exactly translates into a smoooth 80 minute listen. It's an album to respect - not so much to enjoy.

:music: Superman: The Movie (the first full listen to the FSM presentation)

Karol

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I for one enjoy the whole Rosewood score. It may not be a huge symphonic rush but rather a smaller scale work, but it holds my attention from start to finish. I did however programme the 3 gospel songs into the main body of the score on my mp3player and they add suitable dramatic finale to the work. Similarly I included the two track featuring Shirley Caesar in this presentation.

This required some editing to be entirely succesful (I joined both orchestral and soloist passages of the two Caesar tracks so that they include orchestra only and vocal performances) but I think I ended up with a pretty good complete score presentation.

That said the original album is a fine listening experience.

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First we need to establish what is actually in the box. ;)

Anyway, Incanus would you be so kind and share your playlist? Pretty please.

I myself couldn't stop listening to Courage's Superman IV in the past two days (and that is exactly what I'm doing right now). Some things he does with Williams' material is quite bold and surprising (Down In Flu is an excellent example). Not necessarily what Williams would do, but that's exactly what makes this work so wonderful - it actually feels fresh and inspired and at the same time belongs to the series. Lex's is much more menacing in this one (probably because it is literally allied with Nuclear Man's theme). I counted 14 themes in there score (so far). It's so much fun.

Forgot to say I love his own coda to the end credits.

Karol

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TV Show: DaVinci's Demons. I'm an enormous Bear McCreary fan and tend to play games/watch shows solely because he's doing the music (much like Williams). The main character theme is a musical palindrome! :D Also there's a lot of period instrumentation and such. Pretty neat.

Movie: The Avengers (yes, I know I'm a little behind on my new movie quota :P). Really love how a couple of the themes from Captain America: The First Avenger managed to spill over into the score, though I am surprised and a bit disappointed that The Hulk didn't get one. Fun score, but nothing earth-shattering.

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First we need to establish what is actually in the box. ;)

Anyway, Incanus would you be so kind and share your playlist? Pretty please.

Karol

Here is my playlist. I had to do so some music editing but now it includes both of Shirley Caesar's solos and the 3 gospel songs. It basically contains the disc 1 of LLL set plus that aforementioned extra material from disc 2. I do not know if this is a 100% chronological but I found it a pretty good listening experience.

1.Rosewood

2.The Town of Sumner

3.The Arrival of Mann

4.Mann Goes Shopping/Mann Meets Scrappie

5.Prayers at Dinner/The Wrights/War Drums

6.Scrappie and Mann Bond/The Beating

7.False Accusation

8.The Lie/Arresting Aaron

9.Roughing up Aaron/Aaron in Jail

10.Sam's Murder

11. Discovering Sam's Body/Mann's First Exit

12. Exchanging Gifts/Cracker Mob

13. Sarah is Shot/Attack on the House (I used the film version with the vocal solo as the opening and edited it to the purely orchestral alternate found on disc 1. It works surprisingly well.)

14.Kids to the Woods/The House Burns

15.Look Down, Lord

16.The Fire/Fanny's Guilt

17.The Klan Gathers/Wright's Decision/The Crackers Gather

18.Mann Rescues the Kids

19.Hide the Man, John/Wright's Dilemma/We Mee at Eight

20.Mann Leads the Group

21.Crossing the Road

22. The Capture of Mann/Mann's Great Escape

23. The Burning Town (Alternate & Film Version) (Here I open with the orchestral drums and edit the soloist film version found on disc 2 into the material. As no clean ending for Shirley Caesar's performance is available I let the lamenting strings that follow the vocal solo continue until I found a suitable place where I could fade out the piece satisfyingly.)

24. Light My way

25. The Freedom Train

Playing these two pieces back to back creates an uplifting choral finale to the whole dramatic arc before the subsequent tracks wind the musical drama to a finish. I think Jeff Bond speculated that Freedom Train might have been meant to play during the second half of the train sequence.

26. Sylvester Joins the Group (I cut the Burning Town section out, the music opening with the solo horn but I believe this whole track can be found on disc 2 track 14 Mann at Rosewood so you don't actually have to do any editing)

27. After the Fire

28. End Titles

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I was into it last October when it first came out, but I've been getting into Cloud Atlas as a film and score again lately.

Tom Tykwer, Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek delivered a really original and engaging score for what I thought was an astronomically underappreciated film. Some beautiful themes, and really crafty developments of them. And a really delightful range of style, from the sensual Cloud Atlas Sextet, quasi-film noir music, some electronic stuff, with a more contemporary idiom that ties it together. The recording is also really satisfying too; being able to hear breathing and page turns in a modern score is a great thing.

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:lol:

I finished listening

Casino Royale by David Arnold

Had to rinse the Zimmer out with a good orchestral score. Well actually I forgot how much electronics this score had, but man are they much better than MOS's synth sound!

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Salute to Hollywood by John Williams and Boston Pops: A very enjoyable collection of memorable Hollywood songs and themes, focusing more on the latter though, interpreted deftly by the Boston Pops. This album contains the only Williams conducted recording of his delightful romantically breezy Balloon Sequence and the wickedly entertaining Devil's Dance from The Witches of Eastwick, which is an obvious highlight to a JW fan. Song medleys featuring orchestral versions of classic Hollywood standards like When You Wish Upon a Star, Moonriver and Over the Rainbow offer more breezy experience, the whole album forming a nice facsimile of a Boston Pops concert. Even Horner's Somewhere Out There from Fievel has strayed in here but fits right in with the rest of the programme. Arrangements vary from traditional to inventive and curious but overall it is a great 60+ plunge into heart on your sleeve emotions and melodies only Hollywood could provide.

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Also Man Of Steel, but I refuse to say the same things I already did in the other thread.

After several weeks of pause, and constant looping of Star Trek Into Darkness, I'm listening to An Unexpected Journey again. I think there has never been another example of these proportions where a certain subject, in this case Middle Earth, has sparked such virtuosity in a composer.

The music of The Hobbit comes from the heart and is simply magic.

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I remember, being tired of all the 2013 scores, I played The Hobbit once. It was riveting and immensely gratifying! Even with some of my quips, I miss film music like that already...feels like its been an age.

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I also find myself returning to the music of The Hobbit more and more these days. It gives some kind of solace from the likes of Man of Steel and every other RCP influenced score out there.

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Nothing luminous and salvatory comes to mind at this very moment. Perhaps Star Trek Into Darkness. I have to admit that I have been enjoying a lot of older scores released by the specialty labels so much that those almost eclipse the new music for me. And the amount of new (and old) music that comes our way in a constant stream makes the exploration of all of it a full time job. And of course not everything that has come out since the beginning of the year is awful, far from it.

Could you give some recommendations among the newer scores Karol?

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What about Epic, Oz, Evil Dead, A Good Day to Die Hard, Jack the Giant Slayer, Frozen Planet, Escape from Tomorrow, Jack Reacher (technically speaking it is this year's release as the CD started shipping in January), Impressions of America? They're all really solid (at the very least). I've not seen a masterpiece in quite a while, if at all in the past decade or so. Originality is something we're not going to get anymore - our ears are too accustomed to so many musical tricks by now. However, there is plenty of stuff still enjoy out there.

I need to check out Stoker and Disconnect then. Thanks, publicist.

Karol

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Good recommendations and reminders! Thanks guys! :)

I'll get right on those as soon as I can clear the JW backlog I accumulated in two months by getting half of his swinging 60's output and TV-scores in one go plus other JW releases. There are Penelope, Not With My Wife You Don't Vol 1 and Vol. 2, Ghostbreaker and Diamond Head sitting on my desk at this very moment. :P

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Yes, I know. bought so much stuff in the past few months I now feel completely exhausted! I don't know if I can swallow anything with an S symbol on the cover!

Oh and check out Elfman's Promised Land. It's a 2012 score but came out in Europe just last month or so. It's his Big Fish and Standard Operating Procedure making sweet love. ;)

Karol

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All good scores Karol, but I'm just tired of them, and I wasn't impressed at all by STID.

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Tora! Tora! Tora! by Jerry Goldsmith

Unlikely to be become a fan favorite on the scale of Star Trek or Alien, but probably one of his very best works. It's creative and intelligent, sparse and tense. Somewhat of a distant cousin to Planet of the Apes, but one that has aged much better. If there's one thing I regret is that this film wasn't made a decade later - the Bruce Botnick recording would have been brilliant. All I also need to point out La-La Land re-issue has one of the most gorgeously designed booklets in their whole catalogue.

:music:Twilight Zone - The Movie (FSM) - another one from his top list

Karol

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Man of Steel by Hans Zimmer

I'm not going to bother with comparisons to past Superman scores - no point of doing that. I'd rather focus on what Zimmer did (was trying to do?), as opposed to what he didn't (which seems to be basis for most criticism, I noticed). The fact is, the score is nowhere near as bad as people say. The ultimate pop icon gets the ultimate pop treatment... literally. The main thematic idea actually gets a bit more development than the ones in Batman films. Or, in fact, in most scores written by the infamous individual. Zimmer seems to alter it to suit both the Super and the Man aspects of the character. The New Age-like impressionistic synth music serves the topic well (the Krypton material), I think, and that also includes the use of voices. I'm less excited about the execution of action scenes, though. Still, I'm willing to accept it for what it is given that Zimmer was aiming for a more pop, almost Vangelis-like, sound. Not something to be treasured or re-listened on a regular basis, but at least I get the intent. A good pop album, as I said. Heard much, much worse things.

Karol

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So there was nothing this year you guys actually liked?

Karol

STID and Iron Man 3. The modern influences in IM3 are obvious but it doesn't sound as generic as the RCP. Of course I love Michael Giacchino's music so Trek has been getting a lot of playing time. I have OZ on order so I'll be hearing it in a few days.

But outside of MG and JW, 90% of my purchases are from the specialty labels.

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Seasons of the Vine - Bruce Broughton

Lost in Space - Bruce Broughton

The Rescuers Down Under - Bruce Broughton

I hope to God Spielberg will choose Broughton as his next go-to composer if something happens to JW. "knock on wood"

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For me, the landing cue from Goldsmith's score might be one of the very best things he's ever written. It's as good as s-f music gets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM0koGWbx6Q

Karol

The Landing from Alien is one of the greatest accomplishments by humans.

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probably not the best thing to do, because I really want to give HZ a fair shake in MOS but I listened to Superman last night and it's been awhile and even without the visuals the music accompaning the death of Jonathan is absolute incredible. It's also like getting punched in the gut. It hurts.

.

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Wow it seems even with threads having nothing to do with MOS whatsoever somebody's giving away spoilers. Sheesh. Could've at least used spoiler tags Joey.

Anyways just got done listening to

ghostprotocolsoundtrack.jpg

Very fun and at times exciting MI score from Giacchino. Seems like he was able to do more compared to his last MI score, which I also enjoyed.

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Wow it seems even with threads having nothing to do with MOS whatsoever somebody's giving away spoilers. Sheesh. Could've at least used spoiler tags Joey.

Anyways just got done listening to

very fun and at times exciting MI score from Giacchino. Seems like he was able to do more compared to his last MI score, which I also enjoyed. But if you close yoru eyes you'd swear it was his Star Trek score.

Are you serious? Are you?

Even a blind man can see I was talking about Superman. You know the Superman the movie. A 35 year old score.

No where do I indicate that I was talking about Man of Steel, no where. JFC.

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Oh and btw in Titanic the ship sinks at the end of the film.

Either lonzoe's answer was an attempt in dry humour or he has been living in a cave and doesn't know anything about Superman.

Not with My Wife You Don't by John Williams

Not with My Wife You Don't Vol. 2 by John Williams

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Wow it seems even with threads having nothing to do with MOS whatsoever somebody's giving away spoilers. Sheesh. Could've at least used spoiler tags Joey.

Anyways just got done listening to

very fun and at times exciting MI score from Giacchino. Seems like he was able to do more compared to his last MI score, which I also enjoyed. But if you close yoru eyes you'd swear it was his Star Trek score.

Are you serious? Are you?

Even a blind man can see I was talking about Superman. You know the Superman the movie. A 35 year old score.

No where do I indicate that I was talking about Man of Steel, no where. JFC.

I apologize. I misread your comment.

Oh and btw in Titanic the ship sinks at the end of the film.

Either lonzoe's answer was an attempt in dry humour or he has been living in a cave and doesn't know anything about Superman.

Not with My Wife You Don't by John Williams

Not with My Wife You Don't Vol. 2 by John Williams

There have been some versions where Jonathan Kent lived long after Clark became Superman. I overreacted and didn't want to know the character's fate until I've seen MOS.

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Oh and btw in Titanic the ship sinks at the end of the film.

Either lonzoe's answer was an attempt in dry humour or he has been living in a cave and doesn't know anything about Superman.

Not with My Wife You Don't by John Williams

Not with My Wife You Don't Vol. 2 by John Williams

There have been some versions where Jonathan Kent lived long after Clark became Superman. I overreacted and didn't want to know the character's fate until I've seen MOS.

Ah ok. A misinterpretation then. Carry on.

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I am pretty sure it will bash you into submission much like the Dark Knight Rises did. My ears nearly bled after I saw that film from the merciless sonic barrage and publicist confirmed that this will be more of the same syndrome.

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