New stuff:
Just uploaded an interview [M] with Andrew Lockington, were he discusses travelling to Papua, New Guinea, for research prior to writing the full score for Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, the sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. Both were filmed in 3D, and feature standout, full-blooded orchestral scores by Lockington.
Most unexpected surprise: Lockington used a trio Zoom H4n digital recorders to capture ancient percussion sounds, which performed well under jungle duress. I bought a unit a year ago for voice work & sound effects recording, and it frankly rocks.
The album’s available from Amazon.com as a downloadable digital and reportedly CDR (which I’d go for, given the score exceptionally engineered).
Most unnecessary fact that is still impressive: The Rock can indeed sing!
Latest CD reviews:
Andrew Lockington’s Journey 2: The Mysterious Island [M] (Water Tower / Warner); John Williams’ The Adventures of Tintin [M] (Sony Classical); Alberto Iglesias’s mysteriously soothing Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy [M] (Silva Screen); Jerry Goldsmith’s Tora! Tora! Tora! [M] (La-La Land remaster); and Shirley Walker’s Space: Above and Beyond [M] (La-La Land set, packing about 4 hours of music onto 3 CDs).
Lastest Soundtrack News:
FSM just announced their latest release: a 5-CD set featuring Miklos Rozsa’s Ben-Hur. The set includes the film soundtrack, alternates & unused cues, and the re-recorded cues conducted by Carlo Savina. Yes, forget about paying off the Xmas VISA bill. You’re screwed again. Read the liner notes here.
Intrada’s new 2 releases are Robert Folk’s Troll in Central Park, and Gil Melle’s Borderline – making the latter the third Melle CD the label’s released, after Andromeda Strain and The Organization [M]. For fans of this underrated, under-represented composer, this is awesome news!
Collectors note: Bruce Broughton’s The First Olympics Athens 1896 and John Barry’s The Last Valley will no longer be available from Intrada after Feb. 27.
Spain’s Quartet Records will release James William Guercio’s Electra Glide in Blue (original LP configuration) with new liner notes by Randall D. Larson.
Perseverance will release Jerry Fielding’s The Gauntlet (original LP configuration).
La-La Land’s latest mega-restoration is a 3-CD set of Danny Elfman’s Planet of the Apes. Tim Burton’s movie? A mess, and a stupid twist finale that makes zero sense. The music? Wonderful, specifically the Main Title that ranks as one of Elfman’s best.
Lastly, it’s worth checking out Message Boards because there are often nuggets of info people post that I’d never have known existed. The proof? Jim Doherty’s link to a plethora of music by Ronald Stein on Amazon.com.
Stein composed fun music for many Roger Corman films – his best may be The Last Woman on Earth – as well as the cult classic Dinosaurus! which I happily reviewed – the film, and the soundtrack album from now-dead Percepto Records. That label featured several hours of Stein’s music in a 5-CD set back in 2007, and some of the scores have been expanded for digital albums, like A Man Called Dagger.
For fans of B-movie music, this is amazing, and for fans of Stein’s similarly skilled colleagues, there’s hope maybe their music from assorted major, middle, and minor films will get some commercial time online.
Also available from Amazon – Quincy Jones LPs from Mercury and long-dead Bell Records, like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and For Love of Ivy.
Next: Italy’s Cometa has the second edition of its’ Virtual Vinyl series on DVD, which bears some explanation. In a nutshell, it’s film music remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 on DVD, with video of (presumably) a turntable playing a record and / or glimpses of the notation from written staphs. The sales pitch is a bit fuzzy, but Vol. 1, Opposte Esperienze, featured library music by Ennio Morricone, and Vol. 2 (available for pre-order) offers Morricone’s Who Saw Her Die? with 6 previously unreleased alternates.
If you click on each link, a looped Italian video plays (with English subtitles) explaining to some degree what it all about. One point of objection: the statement “vinyl LP’s almost don’t exist any longer” is incorrect; if that were the case, Matt Rowe wouldn’t have so much material to report & cover at Musictap.net.
Speaking of which: label Real Gone Records will release a Frankie Avalon set, Muscle Beach Party: The United Artists Sessions, and Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. From a quick track glimpse, it seems the former doesn’t offer Avalon’s Beach Party songs La-La Land weren’t able to include on the CD of Beach Blanket Bingo, due to high license feels.
Lastly, Austin Wintory [M], composer of Grace [M, appears in Us and the Game Industry, a video “about the new thinkers at the new frontier of experimental computer game development.,” of which the trailer is archived at Vimeo.
That is all.
Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )
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