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EDITOR Recommends June 2000
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Collection: Space 3 – beyond the final frontier
The City of Prague
Philharmonic Orchestra and Crouch End Festival Chorus conducted by Paul Bateman
and Nic Raine
SILVA SCREEN 2CDs (Dolby
Surround) FILMXCD 332 [131:23]
Purchase from:
Crotchet
Disc One: Aliens (James Horner), Ghostbusters (Elmer Bernstein), It Came
From Outer Space (henry Mancini), Strange Invaders (John Addison), Judge
Dredd (Alan Silvestri), Robocop (Basil Poledouris), The Time Machine Russell
Garcia), Back to the Future (Alan Silvestri), The Cape (John Debney), Star
Trek: Menagerie (Alexander Courage), Star Fleet Academy (PC game - Ron Jones),
Insurrection (Jerry Goldsmith).
Disc Two: The Last Starfighter (Craig Safan), Silent Running Peter Schickele),
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (Barry Gray), Lost in Space (Bruce Broughton),
Galaxy Quest (David Newman), Thing's to Come (Sir Arthur Bliss), The Matrix
(Don Davis), Meteor (Lawrence Rosenthal), Deep Impact (James Horner), Armageddon
(Trevor Rabin), Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (John Williams)
Here is the latest Silva Screen double CD release, and the third entry in
what appears (following Space: Above and Beyond and Space II: Alien
Invasion) to have become a whole new science fiction franchise. Perhaps
this is not so surprising, given the especial predilection among SF fans
for collecting anything and everything related to the genre.
The pointless 'biological hazard warning' artwork is merely tacky, not the
best approach to winning the unconverted to either film music or science
fiction, though the superscripted 3 in the title is a nice in-joke:
yet it should have followed that the album opened with music from
Alien3, rather than Aliens. What we get is an
atmospheric prelude complete with 'outer space' ambience, marred by some
unwarranted distortion at 0:55, detonating into a really thrilling version
of 'Ripley's Rescue'. It may not be sophisticated, but the visceral fury
provided by James Horner creates is one reason Aliens remains the
most exciting film ever made.
The second track is a surprise in what is otherwise a solidly science fictional
collection. There is no way that Ghostbusters can be accommodated
in the genre, though Elmer Bernstein's main theme is attractive and certainly
a better way to remember the film than the Ray Parker Jnr. hit that dominated
the pop charts in 1984. Track three takes us back to 1953 and It Came
From Outer Space, with two selections from Henry Mancini's contribution
to what was a collaborative score with Herman Stein and Irving Gertz. Different
parts of this score have been recorded on Monstrous Movie Music (see
the FMOTW reviews by Ian Lace and myself) with a rather more authentic 1950's
sound. I don't believe for a moment a real theremin has been employed in
Silva's recording, but these selections are certainly most enjoyable, offering
a softer, more atmospheric side to the film. Following this John Addison's
quite lengthy suite from Strange Invaders is nicely poetic in a knowing
way, a 90's homage to the paranoid invasion films of the 50's, and thus a
thoughtful piece of album sequencing.
Next-up, a quarter-of-an-hour section headed 'Superheroes', though I'm not
quite sure either Judge Dredd or Robocop fit the bill. Alan
Silvestri's suite from the former evokes a more romantic and rousing film
than the mess which eventually appeared on screen (rumour has it that almost
an hour was cut just days before release, so perhaps the film-makers are
not completely to blame). Judge Dredd's music is polished formula stuff,
lacking the distinction of Basil Poledouris' Robocop, but then
Robocop offers far more character for a composer to get his teeth
into. This is certainly one of the better combinations of orchestral pyrotechnics
and electronics to grace an SF movie and the suite does a good job of capturing
the essence of the score in just under ten minutes. The lush Silva sound
augments the Herrmannseque melancholy romance of 'Home', while the action
music has a vicious edge.
Eras meet again as Silvestri's Back to the Future theme contrasts
with Russell Garcia's lovely pastoral Fibley's Theme from the 1960 production
of The Time Machine. Some of Miklós Rózsa's superb Time
After Time (1979) might have gone down well at this point, but instead,
thrown-in presumably because there was no where else for it to go, and sticking
out like a sore space shuttle, is an extended arrangement of John Debney's
main theme from the TV series The Cape.
There is a level at which film and television science fiction music has become
utterly formulaic and lacking in imagination, a situation which given the
mediocrity of much film and TV SF is neither surprising nor inappropriate.
However, I lose interest in listening to it when to often such music is either
derived from the John Williams Star Wars / Jerry Goldsmith Star
Trek model, or consists of cheap percussive electronics. Or both. As
James Fitzpatrick's notes detail, the theme from The Cape was originally
scored for acoustic and electronic instruments, and is here premiered in
a fully orchestrated version. It is big, bombastic, utterly predictable and
instantly forgettable. It sounds like left over Star Trek. So perhaps
Disc One now has nowhere but to boldly go…
The eight minutes from Alexander Courage's The Menagerie (incorporating
elements of The Cage, the first Star Trek ever) show that there
are other ways of scoring space opera, a very accurate rendition of the famous
original Star Trek theme music coming out the other side of kitsch
to reveal that over-familiarity has hidden the originality of this work for
decades. The entire suite will probably sound familiar because the music
was recycled in various later Trek adventures, and polished up afresh
here reveals the sort of musical imagination so frequently bludgeoned into
submission by the crushing sound effects of more recent productions. Star
Fleet Academy by Ron Jones is an orchestral setting of the introductory
music for a 1997 computer game. It sounds exactly as you imagine,
but then Star Trek fans seem to want exactly the same thing
over and over again. Jerry Goldsmith partly circumvents the problem with
a more pastoral approach to his end titles from Star Trek: Insurrection,
all before the obligatory ending.
Disc Two balances the familiar two selections from Sir Arthur Bliss' Things
to Come (still probably the greatest English film score ever written
and seriously in need of a complete recording) and four of the five movements
of John William's Phantom Menace suite (the main title is omitted
[see below]) with some rarer items
that increase the collectability of the set. Particularly appealing among
these is a suite from Barry (Space 1999) Gray's score to the overlooked
and under-rated 1969 film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
(Doppelgänger), while there is a lot of fun to be had from David
Newman's Galaxy Quest suite, not before time sending-up the entire
Star Trek movie sound.
A section entitled 'Destruction From the Sky' features three rock movies,
Meteor and it's two 1998 remakes Deep Impact and
Armageddon. Lawrence Rosenthal's end titles from the original have
a heroic grounding and musical solidity which make them sound as if they
might come from a good film. Jame's Horner's 'The Wedding' from Deep
Impact is typical romantic modern Horner, somewhere between The
Bicentennial Man and the deep blue sea. There is a Coplandesque Americana
feel to the trumpets, and some imaginative use of piano chords.
Armageddon is one of the most wretched films ever made, and under
the sensory assault I'm almost surprised to discover there was any music
beyond the cod-Titanic Celtic pastiche and ear-splitting screeching
of Aerosmith. In a former life Trevor Rabin was the guitarist who
helped transform Yes from the most musically sophisticated rock band
in the world into another crass bunch of rock 'n' rollers, and his contribution
here is acoustic guitar-led orchestral bombast straight-out of the lowest
common denominator crowd-pleasing Bruckheimer draw. The would be 'uplifting'
choral writing is laughable, film music for people who wave cigarette lighters
during stadium rock gigs, the sum of the parts crass orchestral rock fusion
for a film without a clue for an audience bereft of taste. Fortunately Don
Davis is on hand to show how a special effects dominated SF blockbuster can
be scored with intelligence: 'Anything is Possible' from The Matrix
follows the 2001 / CE3K approach to produce an eight-minute set-piece,
a precisely controlled and thrilling maelstrom which ventures into Altered
States.
The album ends, as perhaps it must with the aforementioned cut-down Phantom
Menace suite. There is not much to chose between this and the version
on the Varese Sarabande collection The Phantom Menace and Other Film
Hits, though Varese just has it for clarity of sound, especially in the
monumental 'Duel of the Fates'. It makes me curious as hear what the Surround
Sound and HDCD encoded versions on this disc sound like.
This is a very mixed bag, an album which doesn’t flow as well, or contain
as interesting a selection as the two previous entries in the series. One
difficulty I have with this collection is it's diverse sameness. Perhaps
I just like things a bit more neat and tidy, but the selections do seem to
dart all over the place with little sense of organisation, while there is
an increasing sameness in much of the pseudo-military Americana.
It is still a worthwhile album, with much to be enjoyed by both the SF fan
and the film music collector, but perhaps if Silva are to continue with these
albums they should look for a more coherent choice of material and longer,
more substantial suites rather than trying to capture every part of a very
broad yet paradoxically similar market. If they would go beyond the bombast
and explore suites from Jerry Goldsmith's Seconds and Planet of
the Apes, Miklós Rózsa's The Power, Leonard Rosenman's
Fantastic Voyage and John Corigliano's Altered States then
volume four might avoid the pitfalls of the ever more predictable sequel.
Probably best to avoid anything from Alien Resurrection.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
[Note from Silva: I would just like
to correct one tiny little thing in Gary's review. While it is true that
we did not record the Main Title from PHANTOM MENACE, it is not quite correct
that we omitted this from the suite, because the "Main Title" isn't actually
in the Official John Williams "Signature" Series published suite from Cherry
Lane Music. So, basically we recorded it as per the composer's wishes.]
Ian Lace is more enthusiastic:-
This is one of Silva Screen’s better collections with the Prague
Philharmonic on great form – they keep getting better and better.
The generous compilation covers a period stretching from 1936 with a sparkling
rendition of Sir Arthur Bliss’s charming ‘The Children’s
Ballet’ and his wonderfully stirring march from Things to Come,
to Don Davis’s score for The Matrix and John Williams’s
music for Star Wars Epiode 1 The Phantom Menace. The excellent Don
Davis score is hypnotic, enigmatic, darkly mysterious, sometimes violent,
sometimes tender. The 14-minute John Williams Phantom Menace suite
is highlighted by that arresting ‘Duel of the Fates’ music.
CD 1 crashes open with James Horner’s gripping, atmospheric music for
Aliens with thrilling percussion music utilising anvil and cow bell. Gary
has analysed the contents in his review above. I would hasten to add that
practically all the tracks on this CD gripped me. I was amused by Elmer
Bernstein’s fun, quirky score for Ghostbusters, intrigued with
Henry Mancini’s spin on the typical Universal International mix and
match score that was It Came form Outer Space; I was thrilled by the
driving rhythms of Alan Silvestri’s Judge Dredd and the sheer
exhilaration of his Back to The Future music. Strange
Invaders by John Addison is a lovely spoof with gentle jibes at the
sort of homely Middle America music and its wild comic glissandos spoofing
the aliens. Nic Raine’s arrangement of the Robocop music for
larger orchestra compels and John Debney’s noble The Cape March
in its larger symphonic dress is very impressive. After all the bombast,
Russell Garcia’s sweetly pastoral music for The Time
Machine’s ‘Dawn of the new century’ sequence is most welcome.
Of the three Star Trek selections, Alexander Courage’s ‘The
Menagerie’ has cute historical interest but it is Jerry Goldsmith’s
music for Star Trek: Insurrection that impresses most with that rousing,
swaggering march counterbalanced by that lovely central section delicately
scored for solo trumpet, harp, woodwind and strings.
CD2 kicks off with grand heroic stuff from Craig Safan – his music for
The Last Starfighter. This second CD had a few longueres for
me but in general was very good. Besides the Star Wars and
Matrix selections already mentioned, I would single out Peter (PDQ
Bach) Schickele’s quirky score for Silent Running, Laurence
Rosenthal’s noble and graceful score for the graceless Meteor;
James Horner’s delicate romantic ‘The Wedding’ music that
is laced with more sombre material to remind one of the rapidy approaching
meteor in Deep Impact and Trevor Rabin’s music (thankfully shorn
of much of its synth component) for the film that bored me, personally, the
most last year, Armageddon.
Great album, strongly recommended
Reviewer
Ian Lace
