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


Ollie

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Spotlight (Shore) - What a huge disappointment. It's not that it's a bad score, in fact I'll probably find it quite effective in context when I get around to seeing it, just so far from what I'd hoped Shore had written for this that the end product is a letdown for me. Shore tackling a very heavy subject with religious connections screams for his trademark gorgeous choral writing, or at least something tragic and intimate like Philadelphia, but there's not a singer to be found, and the ensemble is too small and synth-driven (à la Rosewater) to carry the same beauty as Philadelphia. The score has its moments (14-16 are quite good), but there's not much going on here.

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My meaning is that people complaining about having too much music on a release is ridiculous. If it's too much for someone to handle in one go then listen to some of it now and then come back and listen to the rest later. Then listen to the tracks you liked the most more often. An OST being cut down is rather purposeless to me.

That's pure customer's perspective. From any artistic standpoint, releasing serviceable background material or, often worse, endless repetitions of the same basic material means denigrating their work.

God knows customer has won this battle, but often to the detriment of the music presented.

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Artists like Williams, Goldsmith etc knew the difference between a film score on album, as a listening experience and its requirements in the film.

These days composers just release everything they have verbatim without giving thought about the presentation

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A release like CHAIN REACTION is ample proof that Goldsmith sometimes had strange ideas of what's best, often favouring non-descript thriller material over the musical highlights just because.

But since Spotify i often have to wade through unwieldy 125-presentations of material that, at best, holds 30 to 40 minutes of interest. With all this babycrying over oh so important missing material i counter that it is as unacceptable to steal people's time by putting stuff on records that never was meant to be heard stand-alone. It makes you avoiding albums for fear of getting brain damage trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

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A release like CHAIN REACTION is ample proof that Goldsmith sometimes had strange ideas of what's best, often favouring non-descript thriller material over the musical highlights just because.

Supergirl is also a weird OST that favours the ominous magic material that meandered quite a bit. He sacrificed a lot of soaring highlights in favour of wallpaper underscore. Maybe he was just really proud of those parts of the score?

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More a case of thinking the presentation must be well-balanced, meaning that whereas the typical fan would shove action cue after action cue Goldsmith just said 'the score's 50% suspense 50% action and so is the album'.

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The Spielberg/Williams Collaboration

Jaws (Joel McNeely recording)

The Accidental Tourist

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (expanded edit because the OST is horribly assembled)

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It's one of a few Varese re-recordings I've held on to from that era, the others being the wonderful McNeely Amazing Stories: The Mission and Rick Wentworth Midway due to the horrible sound quality on the actual score release, which I never listen to anyway. The McNeely Jaws is a good interpretation of the score.

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Assassin's Creed Syndicate (Original Game Soundtrack): Austin Wintory

I'm having fun with this. Having it whittled down to a brisk 38 minute program it probably is the best new score i got in the last months. Imagine macabre waltzes (shades of Saint-Saens and MEPHISTO WALTZ), scherzos on frenetic violins and dancing woodwinds, wafting mood pieces with a slight ecclesiastical air, gypsy dances, it's all here.

And while it is all in a (for film music, anyway) classicist style - to my undending delight there is even fugal writing - that not too many neoromantics might dig, it's sheer musicality is a big selling point. This is far away from Hollywood composers desperately trying to come up with new riffs on the same hoary old clichés but more in common with what british composers like Gunning or even Frankel might have written for one f those bloody 70's JACK THE RIPPER movies. I don't know about the game but with cu titles like 'Waltzing on Rooftops and Cobblestones' it must be in the late 19th century London ballpark.

I now follow Wintory on Spotify - a honor that isn't shared by many of is contemporary movie colleagues.

Spot on. The game even has Jack the Ripper in it.

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Listening to Christopher Young's rejected cues from Spider-Man 3. You can tell that Young did his homework on Elfman's previous two scores, and his rejected themes are inspired by Elfman's work but don't quote the themes wholesale. Beautiful.

Great stuff. I actually like Young's score way more than the Elfman ones.

I am hoping Intrada or LLL does a proper CD release someday. It's a shame Sony doesn't want to pay to use the Elfman material, because Young incorporates it so well in his own cues.

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Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace OST

It wasn't horribly botched like Revenge of the Sith or hindered by uninteresting material and a program that too closely followed the film's narrative like Attack of the Clones. Both of those albums feel rushed, not very well thought out. But Phantom really works for me. You can at least say this for it: it's a totally different experience than listening to the complete/chronological score. It flows really well. I get swept up in this one. Maybe it's the quality of the music or Williams actually did assemble a pretty great album. Or both.

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Yeah, but that is not what they are talking about.

The album came out in May and I had to wait till September to see the film. And I loved every second of it.

Karol

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(I kinda wanted to listen to Heartbeeps, but I had to immediately cease playback when I remembered that score never had an OST album and it's an hour or so of really short tracks in chronological order. Ugh, what a damn shame!)

Home Alone OST

The Haunting

Congo OST

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Home Alone by John Williams: We got our first snow here yesterday so I thought to kick off the musical holiday season and pull out this JWs classic. The LLL set is the definitive presentation for me and the 60+ minute score flies past so fast. I really love how the music is a mix of the cheerful holiday sleigh bells and sweet carols and more contemplative dare I say spiritual hymn-like writing embodied by the Star of Bethlehem. Mickey mousing aside the score has damn fine Christmassy melodies and atmosphere to it and the orchestrations are just terrific.

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Memoirs of a Geisha OST

Far too long. This should have been a 35-40 minute album at most. That's what Goldsmith would have done. The suite for cello and orchestra is much closer to what an album presentation for this score should have been. The OST starts to really drag within the first 30 minutes. Not good.

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Far too long. This should have been a 35-40 minute album at most. That's what Goldsmith would have done.

Often to our unending horrors, cf. THE SHADOW, FIRST KNIGHT, GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, AFO, SMALL SOLDIERS and and and.

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Memoirs of a Geisha OST

Far too long. This should have been a 35-40 minute album at most. That's what Goldsmith would have done. The suite for cello and orchestra is much closer to what an album presentation for this score should have been. The OST starts to really drag within the first 30 minutes. Not good.

My 3 favorite tracks are actually more towards the end of the album, namely "Destiny's Path", "As the Water" and "A Drean Discarded"

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"When You're Alone" is one of the most dreadful and irritating songs ever.

Otherwise, Hook is a solid OST. I thought it could use a little more fuckery in the order of the tracks, which follow the film's narrative for the most part. But I suppose that works best for this one.

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