MOTM

>From: "Tkacs, Ken" <ken.tkacs@...>
>
>
>Yeah, that's me. I'm really into soundtracks, especially sci-fi (and I'm
>proud of it!).

Cool, another soundtrack junky on the list! Ken, ist sounds like you have
an even more serious affliction than me!
>
>Forbidden Planet is excellent.

The FP score is excetional! There are sounds on this that still leave me
scratching my head over how they were produced. The Barrons were amazingly
ahead of their time.

Bernard Hermann's score to "Day the Earth Stood Still" is a total classic
as well. It unortunately defined a lot of the cliches of later cheesier
scifi scores (theremin, marimbas and low brass anyone?), but it still holds
up for me. Danny Elfman's score to "Mars Attacks" pays a lot of tribute to
DTESS.

>I can't recommend "Planet of the Apes" too highly, either.

Ditto. Normally, I don't like Goldsmith, but he really shines here. I
suspect he was listening to a lot of Harry Partch at the time, parts of
this score really sound like Partch in conventional tuning.

>I recently borrowed a very, very rare copy of the soundtrack to "The
>Andromeda Strain" from a local radio station, but their copy is pretty much
>destroyed. I committed it to digital and some day I'll try to clean it up.
>Really interesting work by Gil Melle,

This is one I've been searching for for years, just to see if I still like
the score as much as when I first saw the film in the '70's.

Herbie Hancock's score to the original "Death Wish" has a few moments of
what must be his Sextant-era sextet, with Pat Gleeson on synths, augmented
by orchestra. The CD I have is of pretty terrible fidelity, and there are
some pretty weak pieces on it, but it's worth it for the good parts.

>
>Elliot Goldenthal's "Alien III" soundtrack is also excellent. Forget the
>movie---the music mix in that film was awful and didn't do it justice. For
>the CD, he mixed it into a wonderful, powerful 'space mass' in a way,
>starting off with ethereal sounds and a child soloist singing the "Agnus
>Dei..." Real moving moments in that work.
>
I'll have to check this out, I don't remember being that impressed with the
score when I saw the film, but this sounds quite cool.

Mark Snow's score for the "X-Files" movie is pretty effective too, mixing
his excellent synclavier work with orchestra. I pretty much like anything
by Snow, his scores for the "Millenium" TV series were really great.

>I could go on for hours---sorry; I'll stop now

Yeah, me too, sorry if this is too boring. I'd like to just make one more
rant, if I may. Why is it that Hans Zimmer, with his famed "Wall of Moogs",
does such garbage? I've never heard a score of his that I liked, or even
had a particularly strong use of electronics.

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Dave Trenkel : improv@...
Minus Web Site: http://listen.to/minusmusic
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