The Wonders Of The Universe
Dragon’s Domain Records releases the soundtrack album The Wonders Of The Universe: Music From The Big Finish Space: 1999 Audio Dramas, collecting composer Joe Kraemer’s music created for the Big Finish Productions audio drama reboot of Space: 1999, as both a download and a CD.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 soundtrack
Lakeshore Records digitally releases an album of selections from JNami Melumad‘s soundtrack to the first season of the streaming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 soundtrack
Lakeshore Records digitally releases an album of selections from Stephen Barton and Frederik Weidmann‘s soundtrack to the third and final season of the streaming series Star Trek: Picard.
Tron: Identity soundtrack
Disney Music digitally releases an album of selections from Dan le Sac‘s soundtrack to the computer game Tron: Identity.
Doctor Who: The Power Of The Doctor soundtrack
Silva Screen Records digitally releases an album of music from Segun Akinola‘s soundtrack to The Power Of The Doctor, the third of the 2022 Doctor Who “specials” starring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. The album will get a physical release the following month.
Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils soundtrack
Silva Screen Records digitally releases an album of music from Segun Akinola‘s soundtrack to Legend Of The Sea Devils, the second of the 2022 Doctor Who “specials” starring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. The album will get a physical release the following month.
Doctor Who: Eve Of The Daleks soundtrack
Silva Screen Records digitally releases an album of music from Segun Akinola‘s soundtrack to Eve Of The Daleks, the first of the 2022 Doctor Who “specials” starring Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. The album will get a physical release the following month.
Children Of The Stones soundtrack
Trunk Records digitally releases an album of music from Sidney Sager’s‘s soundtrack to the 1977 British children’s supernatural series Children Of The Stones. A limited vinyl edition is also released and sells out quickly. 
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 soundtrack
Lakeshore Records digitally releases an album of selections from JJeff Russo‘s soundtrack to the second season of the streaming series Star Trek: Picard.
Shades and Echoes
Warner Music New Zealand releases the debut Forenzics album, Shades and Echoes, featuring former members of Split Enz (including lead singer Tim Finn) and other musicians creating new songs often using short sections of older Split Enz songs as springboards.
The Book of Boba Fett, Volume 1 soundtrack
Disney Music releases Joseph Shirley’s soundtrack from the first four episodes of The Book of Boba Fett streaming series, featuring the series theme composed by Ludwig Goransson (The Mandalorian, Black Panther).
Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge soundtrack
Disney Music digitally releases the soundtrack from the VR gam Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge, featuring music by Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead), Joseph Trapanese (Tron Legacy, Tron Uprising), and Danny Piccione.
Louis Clark, musician, dies
Orchestral conductor, arranger and composer Louis Clark, best known for the chart-topping early ’80s mash-up Hooked On Classics, dies at the age of 73 after a period of illness. Aside from the Hooked On Classics single and album, Clark was the architect of the orchestral arrangements for Electric Light Orchestra during that band’s 1970s peak years, working in the albums Eldorado (1974), Face The Music (1975), A New World Record (1976), Out Of The Blue (1977), Discovery (1979), and ELO’s contributions to the Xanadu soundtrack (1980). He went on to become a full-time member of Electric Light Orchestra Part II (later renamed The Orchestra), creating that band’s orchestral arrangements as well as performing on stage, often playing the orchestral parts with synthesizers and samples. He also worked on numerous solo projects by members of ELO, including Kelly Groucutt’s Kelly album (1982), Roy Wood’s Starting Up (1987), and collaborating with Jeff Lynne on Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl (1989). He also did orchestral arrangements for acts such as Asia, Renaissance, America, and Ozzy Osbourne.
The Lickerish Quartet: Threesome, Volume 2
Label Logic releases Threesome, Volume 2 by The Lickerish Quartet, a trio of former members of Jellyfish, continuing the band’s crowd-funded trilogy of power pop EP releases.
Ennio Morricone, composer, dies
Legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone dies at the age of 91. With over 500 film and TV credits to his name, he was one of the most prolific composers by either Hollywood or European standards, and his early partnership with director and college classmate Sergio Leone led to his first international success, the score from the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. That brought Morricone to Hollywood’s attention, and he went on to score such films as Once Upon A Time In The West, Two Mules For Sister Sara, Guns For San Sebastian, Duck You Sucker, Exorcist II, La Cage aux Folles, Orca, The Thing, Once Upon A Time In America, Red Sonja, The Untouchables, Bugsy, In The Line Of Fire, Mission To Mars, The Hateful Eight, and many others.
Neil Innes, songwriter, dies
Songwriter and occasional actor Neil Innes, best known for his association with Monty Python, The Rutles, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, dies unexpectedly at the age of 75. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s hit “I’m The Urban Spaceman” brought him into the orbit of the Beatles, and he contributed a background track to their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour. His participation in a later parody of the Beatles, the Rutles, led to TV specials and well-received albums, which counted among their fans and participants the former members of the Beatles themselves. Innes contributed material to the shortened final season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which made him one of only two members outside of the Python troupe to write material for the show (the other was future Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams); his work with the Pythons continued into their feature films in the 1970s and early ’80s; he was also a cast member in the Pythons’ live performances during this period.
The Orville: Season 1 soundtrack
La-La Land Records releases a 2-CD set of selections from the soundtrack from season 1 of the Fox sci-fi series The Orville, featuring music by Bruce Broughton (Lost In Space), Joel McNeely (The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles), John Debney (seaQuest DSV, Doctor Who), and Andrew Cottee.
Dudley Simpson, composer, dies
Dudley Simpson, the Australian-born veteran BBC composer whose sound defined Doctor Who in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as such series as Blake’s 7, The Tomorrow People, Moonbase 3, and many others, dies at the age of 95. Simpson scored his first Doctor Who serial, the second season opener Planet Of Giants, in 1964 at a time when the series often relied on stock music. He solidified his position as Doctor Who’s house composer during the Troughton era, scoring pivotal stories such as The Evil Of The Daleks, The Ice Warriors and The War Games, and became the dominant musical sound of the series during the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, during which he provided all but a handful of original scores and stock music fell by the wayside. It was only when incoming producer John Nathan-Turner took over as Doctor Who’s showrunner in 1980 that Simpson’s Doctor Who tenure ended. He retired to Australia in the 1990s.
Stranger Than Fiction: The Life And Times Of Split Enz
Story: Original Split Enz bassist Mike Chunn, who played with the New Zealand supergroup in its formative art-rock-turned-theatrical-extravaganza phase (1972-77) charts the formation, the heady rise and eventual success of the group, with comments from all of his bandmates and his own insider perspective.
Review: Can there ever really be enough books about the musical career of the Finn Brothers? (For this reader: no. As it so happens, the first book ever reviewed in this section was a book on this very topic.) And strangely enough, the aforementioned book about Crowded House quoted this book heavily: primary source material if ever there was some. And source material doesn’t get much more primary than the memoir of one of the founding members of Split Enz.
Mars Season 1 soundtrack
Milan Records releases the soundtrack from the 2016 science fiction miniseries Mars by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis.
Star Trek Beyond deluxe soundtrack
Soundtrack specialty label Varese Sarabande releases a 2-CD set featuring Michael Giacchino’s complete score from Star Trek Beyond.
Star Trek: The 50th Anniversary Collection
La-La Land Records releases the four-CD Star Trek: The 50th Anniversary Collection soundtrack box set primarily featuring music from the original series and The Next Generation, along with new works by Ron Jones and the premiere of a reconstructed selection of music from the 1970s Star Trek animated series.
Isao Tomita, synthesizer pioneer, dies
Japanese synthesizer pioneer Isao Tomita dies of heart failure at the age of 84. A classically trained composer, Tomita had composed music for such early anime series as Kimba The White Lion, and such live action series as Mighty Jack, prior to importing (at no small expense) a Moog III synthesizer. He experimented with all-synth interpretations of classical music with albums like Snowflakes Are Dancing and The Planets, which quickly became his primary career track as these albums became successful worldwide. He eventually resumed his film/TV scoring career in the 1990s, contributing music to The Twilight Samurai and Welcome Home, Hayabusa. He was working on a new stage musical at the time of his death.
8-Bit Weapon: Disassembly Language, Vol. 1
Chiptune music duo 8 Bit Weapon releases an all-instrumental album of ambient electronic music, Disassembly Language: Ambient Music for Deprogramming, Vol. 1, created entirely via the SID sound chip on vintage Commodore 64 computers.
The Force Awakens loudly
Disney Music releases John Williams’ soundtrack from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, breaking with tradition by not making the soundtrack available until after the film’s premiere. For the first time in the history of the Star Wars film series, the soundtrack has been recorded with Los Angeles studio musicians rather than the London Symphony Orchestra (partly to accommodate composer Williams, now in his ’80s).
Alan Parsons Project: Friendly Card 35th anniversary
The Alan Parsons Project’s 1980 album, The Turn Of A Friendly Card, is re-released in an expanded form spanning two CDs, including the hit singles “Time” and “Games People Play”, and adding new demo material from the archives of the late Project co-founder and songwriter, Eric Woolfson. This is the album’s second re-release, having already been remastered as a single-disc release in 2009.
Jodorowsky’s Dune soundtrack
Cinewax Records releases, both digitally and on physical media, Kurt Stenzel’s score from the documentary film Jodorowsky’s Dune. Concerning an abortive 1970s attempt to commit Frank Herbert’s seminal SF novel to film, the music is done in an analog, 1970s style.
Chris Hadfield: Space Sessions
Warner Music Canada releases the album Space Sessions: Songs From A Tin Can by former Canadian astronaut and International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield. Hadfield’s guitar parts and vocals were recorded aboard the station itself, in the relatively quiet confines of his sleeping quarters, using his iPad, and were then overdubbed and finished after his return to Earth. All of the songs on the album are written by Hadfield with the exception of his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, which set YouTube viewing records in 2013 when it was released just before Hadfield’s departure from the space station.
The Martian soundtrack
Columbia Records releases the soundtrack from the 2015 science fiction movie The Martian by Harry Gregson-Williams.
The Woman Astronaut
Varese Sarabande releases Penka Kouvena’s soundtrack-style instrumental concept album The Woman Astronaut. A veteran orchestrator for game soundtracks to software titles that have sold a combined billion dollars, Kouvena’s semi-autobiographical concept mirrors her struggles for equality as a soundtrack composer.