MOTM

Yeah, that's me. I'm really into soundtracks, especially sci-fi (and I'm
proud of it!).

Forbidden Planet is excellent. I plan on trying to rediscover some of the
cybernetic techniques used by the Barrons using my modular when I get enough
modules built up. Like maybe 2 or 3 hundred. Goin' for the big scary sound.
This is why I'm researching chaos, turbulence, neural networks, and so on as
modifiers to the standard modules, to create an organic cross-modulating
effect.

Anything by Penderecki is great (pronounced "pen-der-ETT-ski" by the way). I
also love Gyorgy Ligeti's 'cloud works' that were featured in 2001 when the
monolith appears, for example. I had the good fortune to hear the maestro
speak at Yale a few years ago with live chamber performances of those works.
Real nice guy.

If you can find a copy these days, the only true 'Space Opera' that I know
of, "Aniara" by Karl Birger-Blohmdhal, is a real masterpiece of 20th century
orchestral atonal weirdness. Just recently, the first English translation of
the epic poem upon which the libretto was based was released; I reviewed it
on Amazon if anyone's interested. An opera director at the Sydney opera
house actually read it and emailed me for my opinion of the opera! I wonder
if they'll be putting it on over there.

I can't recommend "Planet of the Apes" too highly, either. This score more
than any other got me into 20th century orchestral music. The only
electronics in it is the use of tape echo for accents, but the orchestral
sounds he got with that soundtrack are weird, eerie, and organic. He told
the brass section in spots to remove their horns and play only the
mouthpieces. He has a section of percussionists playing steel mixing bowls
from his kitchen slightly filled with water for a very cool sound, and so
on. Top notch. It's actually fairly melodic, strangely enough, but
off-kilter and atonal, and there's only one major chord in the entire work,
reserved for the "da-dah!" when Charleton Heston regains his speech. It's
fortunate that this CD has been re-released many times, each pressing with
added tracks and better fidelity. Get the one with the orange cover and
black & red tray card.

The Irwin Allen set is good stuff, but for the more avant garde, I recommend
the 4-CD set of the Twilight Zone music that's been released. It has works
by Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, and other greats.

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, I wish I could find out more info on
this because the liner notes were not helpful, written by some drooling
toady who had his facts all screwed up. But Melle used musique concrete
techniques mixed with electronic instruments that he designed and played
himself (such as the Percussotron III, which he designed for the film). The
album was pressed on hexagonal vinyl (!) and came in a chrome sleeve that
had 6 petals that folded closed over the album like a flower. I took some
photos of it before I returned it. A real collector's item, except as I say,
this copy looked like it had been dragged behind a car for a few miles. I'm
keeping an ear to the ground for a better one. A real important early
electronic work for film.

The Blade Runner soundtrack is excellent and has some gutsy analog sounds.
Unfortunately, Vangelis is a real... he's a complete... well, he has an
'attitude' about this work and keeps releasing debased copies of this music,
teasing us with it. There are bootlegs out there that are 500% better and
more complete than Vangelis' "official" version, even if the fidelity
suffers a little bit.

There's some great music on lesser SF movies, too. I'm working on pulling
what I can of the incidental music to "Colossus: The Forbin Project" off of
the laserdisc's digital tracks, but it'll be a hack job pulling the dialogue
out of there. The soundtrack from "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" by
Leonard Rosenman was very different from the first movie, but excellent.
Another short, rare soundtrack and it's a bit ruined by dialog from the
movie.

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

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	jwbarlow@... [mailto:jwbarlow@...] 
Sent:	Monday, 27 March, 2000 10:03 PM
To:	motm@onelist.com
Subject:	Re: [motm] Modular Zen..  long and pointless



I also wouldn't mind some discussion (offlist if that's better for the other

MOTM people) about sci-fi soundtracks -- I remember someone (Ken?) was
REALLY 
into them and had the Irwin Allen boxed set for example.

>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.

____________________________________________
Dave Trenkel : improv@...
Minus Web Site: http://listen.to/minusmusic
Minus MP3's: http://www.mp3.com/-minus-
____________________________________________

In a message dated 00-03-28 09:33:25 EST, you write:

<< If you can find a copy these days, the only true 'Space Opera' that I know
 of, "Aniara" by Karl Birger-Blohmdhal, >>


ken,
you`re right, this is a fine piece of music !
in the "space opera" vein, chris franke recently released a cd based on the 
theme of "perry rhodan". i believe it is available in the u.s. and i keep 
meaning to look for a copy as i`m an old time "rho-fan", even if not a fan of 
the tang`s.
the earliest "dr. who" series from the bbc also contains some particularily 
good stuff by tristam cary. the stuff from "the web planet" is really 
outstanding. watch out for the sometimes cheesy synth stuff from the third 
"dr`s" run, some of it is okay but other parts are not - sort of like 
listening to "synth 101" class on the first day.
best,
dave v.

Some of the best stuff I've ever heard comes from the BGM (background
music) of various Japanese animated TV shows, video releases and movies.
I'll have to excerpt a few examples.

Crow

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