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Does Thor have a point?


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Interesting thread.

Thor what do you think about the OST of Aliens?

That's an excellent case which actually caused me some dilemma at first.

I love the OST....it's my first Horner soundtrack and one I've kept all these years. When the C&C came out, I wanted to give it a chance, so I bought it. One of the few times in history that I've bought a soundtrack because I loved the film so much. Well, after a few listenthroughs, I realized it didn't do much for me after all (too much horror, militaristic percussion and sneaking-around stuff inbetween the highlights) -- which I should have expected, I guess -- and ultimately sold it. It didn't really do the music justice as a musical journey. Now I'm very comfortable having the ol' OST as my end-all, be-all ALIENS listening experience. If I want to experience more of how the score works in the film, I'll put on the film again -- for the 30-something time! :)

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A bit muddy, but the main question with ALIENS is why so many people are so attached to it, as it is far from either the greatest Horner score or even the best ALIEN score. I tried time and time again and all i could hear was a lot of functional suspense and action music - the only really interesting stuff was - as we all know at this point - not by Horner.

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A bit muddy, but the main question with ALIENS is why so many people are so attached to it, as it is far from either the greatest Horner score or even the best ALIEN score. I tried time and time again and all i could hear was a lot of functional suspense and action music - the only really interesting stuff was - as we all know at this point - not by Horner.

Tracks like "Futile Escape", "Bishop's Countdown" and "Resolution & Hyperspace" are, IMO, some of the best music I've ever heard in terms of creating suspense and drive with an armada of clanging percussion, jagged brass and soaring strings. As for the more suspense-oriented tracks, they contain some of the most haunting textures I know -- even though I generally dislike horror film music. I think it's one of the best in-context scores Horner ever did, even though in later years, Horner's AVATAR has become my favourite soundtrack album by him. I don't mind the Gayanneh thing in the opening either. It works like gangbusters, and sets the tone wonderfully for the musical journey.

But I would agree that Goldsmith's ALIEN and Goldenthal's ALIEN 3 are superior scores, overall. The first in the film and the second on album.

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One area that I concede Thor does have a point, is knowing when the extra material from sessions is really, truly necessary.

Yesterday I decided to revert back to the OST for two JNH scores - I Am Legend and King Kong. Both emerged this year in expanded form, and initially I found all those little bits I remembered from the film and made expanded versions.

Since doing that, I never listened to those expanded sets once. I realised that although the additional music (or film version) was good, my emotional attachment had come from JNH's original arrangement - he really had picked the most memorable cues.

For each, I've kept a couple of cues from the sessions, but only where the lack of their presence on the album, disappointed me. In the case of I Am Legend, I was disappointed that the OST had an alternate My Name is Robert Neville, so I kept the film version. I also found the opening 'stringer' quite memorable.

With King Kong, I always liked the film version of Central Park which stripped away all the strings.

This applies to varying degrees, but the key difference is that Thor completely divorces the music from the source material, and therefore closes off opportunities for spotting film versions, and odd cues here and there. Whereas I love finding a session, and spending some time finding those couple of cues that weren't included.

I would definitely agree that 90% of complete scores need some work, unless you're close to the film.

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I get bent out of shape when I consider something a score like "The Empire Strikes Back." Now I'm not old enough to have grown up with the original LP or the Gerhardt re-recording, so my first introduction was the Anthology. Of course, we all know that the 1993 Star Wars Anthology is neither entirely C&C nor A&A. It adds new material not present on the OSTs and LPs, making the first three discs more complete than earlier presentations, but even more unreleased material exists on a fourth bonus disc arranged in a way that attempts to create a pleasant listening experience. There is a main title at the beginning and end credits at the end, and the tracks from the three movies flowing throughout, and the three source tracks placed in the middle as if they indicated the boundary between Sides 1 and 2. A strictly C&C archival perspective would put all the SW tracks together, followed by the TESB tracks, finished with the ROTJ tracks, or disperse disc 4 to the three movies -- that presentation came with 1997's flawed SE albums. The avid collector and fan of John Williams' music would have all three presentations -- LP/OST, Anthology, and SE -- and find the best of each version, while fans of distilling each film to only 30 or 40 minutes would keep their OSTs or LPs, or use Disc 4 of the Anthology as a coaster.

The track that I have come to enjoy the most from the whole TESB score is not present on "disc 2," it's on the bonus disc -- "Carbon Freeze/Luke Pursues the Captives/Departure of Boba Fett." That musical track never existed at all in a form isolated from the movie until the 1993 Anthology. When such bonus material is dismissed at being more C&C than A&A, it's as if saying that music never deserved to be heard outside of the film by anyone. That is a very cold and callous thing to say, especially since this track is more complete than what is presented in the film, which dials music out in places where Vader and Luke's dialogue and clashes were deemed more important.

This track wasn't released in 1980 because it was so long, it would dominate one entire side of an LP or force the track to be cut into smaller sections to fit better, which would take away album space from shorter, more thematic, almost "radio or singles friendly" tracks, like "The Asteroid Belt" and the "[]'s Theme" tracks. It's nearly 2013. I don't want technological limitations from 1980 to limit how music is presented and enjoyed 32 years later. If you had an OST or LP back in the day and that's all you want, fine, enjoy it. If that's your main course, fine, but for the rest of us, it's only an appetizer. If any complete score exists or can be re-recorded and is in listenable quality, it deserves to be presented to those willing and eager to buy it and willing and eager to listen to it and willing and eager to enjoy it.

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Honestly, reducing TESB to 30 or 40 minutes is a musical carnage. :folder: The classical music fan in me weeps at such godawful ideas.

I don't want technological limitations from 1980 to limit how music is presented and enjoyed 32 years later. If you had an OST or LP back in the day and that's all you want, fine, enjoy it. If that's your main course, fine, but for the rest of us, it's only an appetizer. If any complete score exists or can be re-recorded and is in listenable quality, it deserves to be presented to those willing and eager to buy it and willing and eager to listen to it and willing and eager to enjoy it.

Let the casual fans enjoy their short commercial collection of singles and what not. I want the actual thing.

John Williams or death.

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I get bent out of shape when I consider something a score like "The Empire Strikes Back." Now I'm not old enough to have grown up with the original LP or the Gerhardt re-recording, so my first introduction was the Anthology. Of course, we all know that the 1993 Star Wars Anthology is neither entirely C&C nor A&A. It adds new material not present on the OSTs and LPs, making the first three discs more complete than earlier presentations,.

The Arista box set CD's are the ultimate presentations of the SW music to me -- expanded from the Gerhardt stuff, but not going overboard like the RCA 2CD sets (which I sold about two years ago). That's not to say that the old LP presentations aren't absolutely beautiful in their own right, but here's a case where the music is so grand and mythological and extensive and thematically rich that a representation beyond 40 minutes is warranted. However, I never play the 4th disc of the Arista set.

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The Arista box set CD's are the ultimate presentations of the SW music to me -- expanded from the Gerhardt stuff, but not going overboard like the RCA 2CD sets (which I sold about two years ago). That's not to say that the old LP presentations aren't absolutely beautiful in their own right, but here's a case where the music is so grand and mythological and extensive and thematically rich that a representation beyond 40 minutes is warranted.

Ding ding ding! At last, we have a moment where you declare that the absolute earliest A&A OST presentation is rendered obsolete by an expanded presentation that arrived ten years after the last movie. Granted, none of the discs in the Arista box set is a "complete" representation of the film score, but at least each disc is (reasonably) "chronological." Tracks like "Heroic Ewok/The Fleet Goes into Hyperspace" are backwards with respect to their usage in the movie (and subsequent RCA 2CD set), but this flip-flop works wonderfully in the Arista box set for a listening experience (I grew up with the Anthology so it's nostalgic bliss). But since it's on disc 4, the coaster, it's dead to you and doesn't exist.

However, I never play the 4th disc of the Arista set.

That's a shame, a real big shame. That's why I think your opinions aren't worth their weight in oatmeal, and why nobody worth reading respects your opinion, Thor. Because if it wasn't good enough to make the "original" album presentation, it's not good enough to listen to on CD. That attitude just doesn't cut it in today's world of complete album releases and mulit-gigabyte storage capacity and highspeed data transmissions. Concepts like LPs and CDs and cassettes and eight-tracks with their finite storage and length limitations are obsolete concepts, yet you embrace them as the pinnacle of the form.

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Ding ding ding! At last, we have a moment where you declare that the absolute earliest A&A OST presentation is rendered obsolete by an expanded presentation that arrived ten years after the last movie.

No, not obsolete. The original LP programs are SUPERB programs in their own right, and I do play them every now and then. However, my preference lies even more with the Arista CD's -- one of the few times in history that I actually prefer an expansion over the original A&A. It's one of the few examples I use whenever someone says I'm 100% against expansions. It's more like 99%. :)

That's a shame, a real big shame. That's why I think your opinions aren't worth their weight in oatmeal, and why nobody worth reading respects your opinion, Thor. Because if it wasn't good enough to make the "original" album presentation, it's not good enough to listen to on CD. That attitude just doesn't cut it in today's world of complete album releases and mulit-gigabyte storage capacity and highspeed data transmissions. Concepts like LPs and CDs and cassettes and eight-tracks with their finite storage and length limitations are obsolete concepts, yet you embrace them as the pinnacle of the form.

Oh, stop being so dramatic. I never play the fourth disc because as I've said earlier -- I don't listen to soundtracks in a cue-based, meal-piece fashion. It's only about the whole concept idea. So there isn't really anything on that disc that adds to the already wonderful listening experience on the 3 discs before it. It's basically leftovers and curiosities. True, a couple of them are nice enough (it's the only place you'll find the "Cantina Band", for example), but no essentials for the overal musical journey of the preceding discs.

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One man's jewel is another man's....well, 'not jewel' etc. That's how the world goes, Chaac. We all have different taste.

For the record, I think the tracks on that disc are fine. But the big question for me is not only "is it good music?", but rather "is it good music, and does it add anything to the designed listening experience?".

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"is it good music, and does it add anything to the designed listening experience?".

Only a deaf man would answer "no" to both questions. For the record, I think you're crazier than Breivik.

WTF?

Are you even aware of how offensive that is? (for those who don't know, Breivik was the man who shot and killed 77 people in Norway last year, among them kids and teenagers).

Untill you apologize for that, I will have nothing to do with you from this point on.

I'm also asking the moderators to kindly remove the comment. Maybe even lock the thread as well. That was it for me.

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Personal attacks is the one thing I said would get this thread shut down. 6 pages it took this time, that's two whole more pages than last time!

:lock2:

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