The Score Report, 6/22
A roundup of film and television scores announced this week
MAN, it’s a big week. We’ve got a lot of sci-fi, and a lot of stuff coming out Friday. Take a look below.
La-La Land Records just released Reinhold Heil’s soundtrack to Helix. The 2-disc set covers music from both seasons of the show.
The sci-fi thriller boasted creative input from Ronald D. Moore and Javier Grillo-Marxauch, whose respectively brilliant Battlestar Galactica and Middleman are both pillars of Western civilization. The show followed a pair of CDC researchers investigating outbreaks of viruses capable of transforming human beings into something else. The show was cancelled back in April, but it’s giving us one last gift in the form of Reinhold’s moody, textural score.
We also have the Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell score, which was released last Friday digitally and comes out this Friday on CD. The score was composed by Benoit Charest and Benoit Groulx. Charest has scored numerous films, including the beloved Triplets of Belleville, while Groulx, in addition to his scoring work, writes a lot of music for Cirque du Soleil. The two Bens, who’ve been friends since meting at the University of Montreal Faculty of Music, have an interesting collaborative process:
“The process was fluid and open and as themes and sound flavours came to life, Ben Charest found affinity with the Gent and Lady Pole while Ben Groulx took care of Strange and Arabella. The two sides of Norrell’s character, dark and funny, was put in music by both of us. Later in the process, we used each another’s musical ideas to blend the score as one and discussed harmonic colors and orchestration to give the overall score a unique sound.”
Reception of the BBC miniseries has generally held that they’ve succeeded in filming an unfilmable novel. Owing to the time period, the score is dripping with late Romantic sounds, which is perfect, because that’s the greatest period in music history.
The soundtrack to Wild Horses is out digitally this Friday, July 24th and physically October 16th. The film is a bit of a family affair. Luciana Duvall plays Samantha Payne, a Texas Ranger who reopens a 15-year-old murder case that involves wealthy family man Scott Briggs (Robert Duvall). The soundtrack leans heavily on country music, and notably includes a rendition of Cheyenne by Robert Duvall, who doesn’t sing often. (Though he did sing a fair bit in 1983’s Tender Mercies.)
Also out digitally this Friday (August 28th on CD) is the soundtrack album for The End of the Tour. The album features Danny Elfman’s score for the film, alongside songs by R.E.M. and Brian Eno. The film is inspired by David Lipsky’s memoir about the five days he spent interviewing David Foster Wallace in the wake of Infinite Jest’s release. Jesse Eisenberg plays Lipsky, and Jason Segel plays Wallace.
The film’s director said that he asked Elfman for an “ultra minimalist” score, and since Elfman tends to be extremely melodic and richly orchestrated, I’m extremely curious to hear what comes out of it.
Henry Jackman’s score for the Adam Sandler film Pixels is due out on Friday, as well. Jackman is responsible for Big Hero 6 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which had that beautifully jarring theme for Bucky that I still can’t believe he got away with. He describes scoring the film straight, instead of comedically, working with a percussion quintet, a 40-voice choir, and a 75-piece orchestra to create a score that sounds like it could have come from the 80’s. I haven’t seen Pixels and can’t speak to the film, but the score sounds awesome, and Jackman’s work is great. His score for Cap 2 may be my favorite of all the MCU music.
Now this is a treat – That same Friday sees the release of The Music of Patrick Doyle: Solo Piano, performed by the composer himself. Doyle is the composer behind Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V, Disney’s Brave, and the Sense & Sensibility score, which has some incredible piano music. He also picked John Williams’s themes, ran with them, and added music of his own for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This album’s definitely worth checking out. I’ve bought scores for films I hadn’t even seen because Patrick Doyle’s name was on them.
In addition, we get the score for Advantageous, a near-future dystopia starring Jacquelin Kim as a woman who has to decide whether or not to undergo an experimental medical procedure for her employer, in order to keep her job and pay for her little girl’s private school, an “advantage” that in reality means the difference between a better life or one like her mother’s.Ken Jeong also puts in an appearance, and if Visioneers taught us anything, it’s that nobody does bleak dystopias as well as comedians.
The score is by Timo Chen, whose penchant for unusual instruments led him to employee the five-string electric violin, as well as invent the “Jimbow,” a modified-voltage rotary tool he uses to play string instruments to harsh, otherworldly effect.If you’re into new music and extended technique, this certainly sounds like it’s got some sounds for you.
Looking to the future a little, July 31st gets us the score for the 12 Monkeys TV series, co-composed by Trevor Rabin and Paul Linford. The two have worked together on a number of films, from Con Air to Get Smart. 12 Monkeys has been deeply divisive among critics, but seems to have gained a pretty devoted cult, and has been part of a well-received sea change out at SyFy, the same sea change that gave us Helix, Ascension, Dominion, and Dark Matter. (I’m a crotchety old man who misses the old Stargate SG-1/Farscape/Lexx/The Chronicle lineup, and seeing the channel move back towards things that aren’t wrestling and realty shows brings a smile to my ancient, weathered face.)
La-La Land Records is releasing the Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation score by Joe Kraemer on July 28th, exclusively through their website, with a wider release to follow on August 4th. The Mission: Impossible films are widely regarded as the one reason you can’t just completely let yourself hate Tom Cruise at this point, because they keep being more fun than they have any right to be.
Kraemer scored this one completely with instruments that were available to Lalo Schifrin as he wrote the music to the original M:I series, which means you won’t be hearing the pounding techno riffs that’ve become associated with action flicks. Just good, old-fashioned orchestral fun.
