Music Reviews

Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends: Original Music From The 1981 TV Series

Did anyone have this release on their 2024 bingo card, 43 years after the show premiered? I’m not saying it’s in any way unwelcome – far from it – just very unexpected. But Marvel is having (or, perhaps, has had, depending on who you ask) its moment, so one cynical view that it’s possible to take is that even the most tenuous connection to the Marvel universe is ripe for some fresh exploitation. But if that takes the form of memories from your Saturday mornings in 1981, can you really remain that cynical?

On the downside, it’s an exceedingly short album, but as was often the case with animated TV of this vintage, a composer was hired to assemble a library of music that could be deployed interchangeably from episode to episode. Even those tracks that seem like they’re tagged for use with specific characters or situations (i.e. “Electro Man Theme”, “The Green Goblin”, “Ms. Lion Theme”) were probably used outside of those contexts, repeatedly and relentlessly. Whatever the show’s editors thought would fit a specific scene, they’d cut it together from the show’s internal music library and make it work. The strange magic of this era of animation (and this is something that’s been covered in past reviews of such soundtracks as Star Trek: The Animated Series and Battle Of The Planets) is that the constant reuse bred a delightful familiarity; if you were watching these shows in real time every Saturday morning, these tunes burrowed into your head as much as anything you heard on the radio.

With its 1981 timestamp, the musical lexicon of Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends includes all-purpose funk (“Bobby The Iceman”), which almost sounds like a lost opus from Buck Rogers’ Space Rockers, and the slightly more sinister, sinewy “Firestar Theme”. If it ever seemed like there was an implied romance between Spidey and Firestar, the track “Spider-Man And Firestar” is probably responsible for planting 90% of that idea. Action tracks like “Three Heroes Prepare To Go” have distinct disco flavorings, just a reminder that disco didn’t just instantly die on New Years’ Eve 1979 – it hung around into the early ’80s and cross-pollinated with new wave and other genres.

It’s all lavished with lush production – honestly, it all sounds better than I remember, and much like the other specimens of vintage animation music cited earlier, there are real players, not a stack of synthesizers. I really was only ever a very casual viewer of Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends at the time, but I always jump at vintage animation soundtrack releases like this because they’re greater than the sum of their parts somehow. The intricate musicianship and production were worthy of something with a bit more staying power than an animated show that were frequently treated as disposable entertainment.

1. Main Title – Spider-man And Friends (00:59)
2. Bobby The Iceman (01:05)
3. Firestar Theme (01:24)
4. Spider-Man And Firestar (00:59)
5. Three Heroes Prepare To Go (02:20)
6. Electro Man Theme (01:21)
7. The Green Goblin (01:21)
8. Suspense Action (01:11)
9. Loki Theme (00:44)
10. Aunt May (00:42)
11. Rock Jazz (00:35)
12. College Theme (00:47)
13. Impending disaster (01:35)
14. Ms Lion Theme (01:32)
15. End Title – Spider-man And Friends (00:30)

Released by: Dulcima Records
Release date: February 24, 2024
Total running time: 17:01

The Changes – music by Paddy Kingsland and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Originally released for Record Store Day 2018 and then given a general release in digital form, this album is the complete soundtrack composed by Paddy Kingsland (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who) of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for the 1975 post-apocalyptic series The Changes. Filmed in 1973 but held for two years, as if the BBC thought that the political and societal troubles that might coincide with the show’s subject matter would fade with time, The Changes is an evergreen. It’s tangibly a product of the early 1970s, and yet it has aged like fine wine. And so has its music.

At least on paper in the BBC Enterprises sales material, The Changes is a children’s adventure series, but hey, you know the drill: much like ’70s contemporaries like Children Of The Stones and Pertwee/Letts/Dicks-era Doctor Who, there’s a lot more to it than that. The story involves a piercing sound that suddenly renders all machinery inert, a “bad sound” that somehow traveled through the electrical wires criss-crossing the U.K. Now everyone – including the show’s lead character, adventurous pre-teen Nicky – has an aversion to “the bad wires” and to anything mechanical, be it a car, a television, a radio, or a toaster oven. The world is plunged back into a dark age of superstition, something that surely could only happen in a speculative fiction piece like this, and yet Nicky knows that the world used to be different – and better – and tries to find out what happened, with the help and protection of a band of traveling Sikhs, who find themselves unwelcome in a world that has suddenly grown paranoid of progress, outsiders, and anything different. Who would do this, what would they stand to gain from it, and can it be reversed? Yes, definitely just fiction.

Kingsland’s later work with the Radiophonic Workshop includes both the radio and television incarnations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and almost ridiculously memorable episode scores for Doctor Who (among them Logopolis, Castrovalva, Full Circle, Mawdryn Undead, and others). One of the things that makes him the most musically distinctive voice in the Workshop is that he never relies entirely on electronic sound. He has a gift for instantly-catchy earworm melodies, almost-funky basslines, and marrying purely electronic sounds with well-judged acoustic elements. That’s his style in a nutshell, and it’s dialed up to 11 for The Changes.

The main theme, a compact morsel of percussion, synths, a succession of dissonant chords, and a funky synth-clavinet line, is practically the least memorable thing on the album. The second track establishes a world-weary theme for Nicky as she sets out on her travels. The series is something of a travelogue, filmed entirely on location (and entirely on film, a rarity for the BBC in the early ’70s), and the music rises to meet that challenge. There’s time for the various themes to breathe and develop, and incidentally, that makes the album a great listen as well. There are some short tracks, sure, but for the most part the music is given ample time to explore themes and their variations. The family of Sikhs who accompany Nicky arrive in “A Special Kind Of People” with added percussion and a lovely persistent sitar presence.

A combination of the Sikh theme and Nicky’s traveling theme becomes the show’s end credit music, which frequently changed throughout the ten episodes as new plot developments arose. Unique to the various formulations of the end credit music is a heraldic, noble brass statement that concludes in a troublingly unresolved chord progression, sort of an unspoken musical “to be continued” – and when I mention these various instruments, they’re the real deal, not synthesized approximations. Kingsland’s use of synths throughout justify the Radiophonic Workshop’s name on the cover, but this album is more Kingsland unleashed than it is purely radiophonic. All of it is anchored by Kingsland’s almost supernatural ability with a bassline, which simultaneously provides some propulsion and rhythm and opens up interesting harmonics with the other instruments.

When I binge-watched The Changes for the first time sometime around 2016, I strongly suspected that I was hearing Paddy Kingsland’s greatest musical achievement with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, even though the rest of the sound mix was competing for prominence at times. Hearing this album without the rest of the show’s sound mix and dialogue strongly confirms that suspicion. Even if you’ve never heard of the show for which this music was made, I give this soundtrack a hearty recommendation. It stands up very well to listening without the context of the TV series, and between this and his handful of other memorable music highlights, I’ll never understand how Paddy Kingsland managed to avoid a huge career and worldwide recognition. Everything he’s done – including The Changes’ fascinating fusion of synths, electric bass, and layers of ethnic instrumentation – has stuck with me for a very long time, and the soundtrack as a standalone experience was long overdue.

By the way, the noise from the “bad wires” – three piercing, discordant minutes’ worth of it! – is included as a bonus track, but in controlled laboratory testing, it failed to incite me to smash up the electronic device from which it emanated. So there’s that, at least.

Episode 1: The Noise
1. The Changes Opening Titles (0:35)
2. Home Alone (Nicky’s Theme) (3:05)
3. Everybody’s Gone (2:07)

   Episode 2: The Bad Wires

4. A Note On The Door (1:14)
5. A Special Kind Of People (3:34)
6. Your Ways Are Not Our Ways (1:08)
7. The Changes Closing Titles (56″ Version) (1:01)

   Episode 3: The Devil’s Children

8. The Bad Wires (0:58)
9. The Barns (1:36)
10. Life On The Farm (1:45)
11. The Devil’s Children (2:17)
12. The Village Court (0:56)

    Episode 4: Hostages!

13. The Forge (1:34)
14. Hostages! (4:48)
15. Rescue (5:43)
16. The Changes Closing Titles (67″ Version) (1:10)

Episode 5: Witchcraft

17. The End Of The Rescue (0:30)
18. A Farewell (0:43)
19. A Journey, And Arrival at Henley Farm (3:21)

    Episode 6: A Pile Of Stones

20. Sentence Of Death (3:07)
21. Leaving Shipton (3:09)

    Episode 7: Heartsease

22. Heartsease (4:09)
23. At Purton Bridge (1:10)
24. The Changes Closing Titles (63″ Version) (1:07)

    Episode 8: Lightning!

25. After The Bridge (1:59)
26. Michael And Mary (2:09)

    Episode 9: The Quarry

27. Necromancer’s Weather (3:19)
28. The Quarry (2:46)
29. Mr Furbelow (0:59)
30. Qui Me Tangit, Turbat Mundum (2:39)
31. The Changes Closing Titles (48″ Version) (0:53)

    Episode 10: The Cavern

32. Into The Rock (2:59)
33. The Cavern (1:53)
34. Merlinus Sum (0:19)
35. It’s All Over (1:40)
36. Everything’s Alright Again (End Titles) (0:49)

    Bonus Tracks

37. Nicky’s Theme (Stereo Demo) (1:35)
38. Theme 2 Demo (1:47)
39. The Noise (3:10)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: April 20, 2018
Total running time: 1:17:47

So Say We All: Battlestar Galactica Live

We’re now 20 years out from the launch of Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, and us old salts are having to remind people that such was the allure of Bear McCreary’s music for this series that he actually took a combined orchestra and band on the road, and played concert dates of nothing but Battlestar Galactica soundtrack music, and people ate that up. McCreary’s genre-bending Celtic-but-also-Middle-Eastern musical melting pot encompassed everything from the straightforward orchestral treatment expected of the genre to heavy metal to multi-ethnic-flavored covers of Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”. It was dizzying, bordering on intoxicating. And the good news is that it’s finally been captured in recorded form.

It’s important to note that this is real deal: many of the performers head in the recordings were the same musicians who played on the original studio recordings, and it’s not a small ensemble, nor is the music scaled down. There’s a lot of thunder and immediacy captured from the stage performances here, with enough electricity in the air to fry the nearest Toaster. Even pieces that I didn’t care much for in the show itself are given new life here. Things are rearranged and moved around, disparate pieces are glued together, but not reduced in power or volume. The only thing better would be to have seen one of the live shows in person, but this is a great consolation prize for those of us who couldn’t make it to those shows, captured in wonderfully crisp recordings best played loud. (Major rock acts could learn a lot from how these recordings were engineered before releasing their own live albums.)

“Something Dark Is Coming” is expanded into a hard rock epic, while “Apocalypse” (a brutally hard-rocking expansion of the series theme tune from the TV movie The Plan) is blown up as big as the ensemble can make it. Quieter pieces such as “Roslin and Adama” and “Wander My Friends” are given no less attention, though, and are played beautifully – it’s not all eardrum-splitting maximum volume. Other pieces, such as “Lords of Kobol” and “Fight Night” (the latter hailing from, admittedly, one of my least favorite hours of the show), strike a good middle ground and made me worry less about the heart rates of the percussionists.

My favorite track, however, may be an obvious case of saving the best for last: the rocked-out rendition of Stu Phillips’ original 1970s that segues into a piece of music that was already a favorite in its studio incarnation. The double-whammy of “Heeding The Call” and “All Along The Watchtower” runs a very close second, almost a tie for my favorite on the album. Your favorites will probably skew heavily in favor of favorite episodes or soundtrack cuts, but it’s lovely to have this little flashback to a time when there were sold-out dates for live concerts of soundtrack music from one series/franchise. It’s wonderful, and in places almost indescribably cathartic, to hear these pieces jammed out properly.

1. A Distant Sadness (3:59)
2. Prelude To War (8:10)
3. Baltar’s Dream (6:02)
4. Roslin And Adama (2:59)
5. Apocalypse (5:34)
6. Fight Night (4:04)
7. Something Dark Is Coming (6:16)
8. Wander My Friends (5:43)
9. Lords Of Kobol (3:55)
10. Storming New Caprica (8:02)
11. Heeding The Call (2:45)
12. All Along The Watchtower (4:22)
13. Colonial Anthem / Black Market (7:30)

Released by: Sparks & Shadows
Release date: June 4, 2021
Total running time: 1:09:16

Nightwatch / Killer By Night

An oddball pairing of two very different scores for two very different TV pilots, by – you guessed it – two very different composers. One of the final titles issued by the much-missed Film Score Monthly label, the obscurity of the scores presented probably kept this release obscure as well, but it’s very much worth a listen.

Still in his “Johnny Williams” days prior to shedding his jazz musician moniker, John Williams turns in a fascinating score to an unsold 1966 series pilot that didn’t get an airing in a TV movie slot until 1968. The main theme from Nightwatch has hallmarks of Williams’ past – there’s a strong rythmic influence from his Lost In Space theme – and his future, namely in an echoing brass motif that would later find use, in a slightly slower form, aboard the Death Star. But put those two elements together and the result is almost, at the risk of committing sacrelige, Goldsmithian. And that’s a description that applies to parts of Williams’ score for the Robert Altman-directed pilot, while just as many parts are unmistakably Williams. It’s a fascinating selection of music from a period when Williams’ playbook wasn’t set firmly in Star Wars/Jaws/Superman/Indiana Jones mode. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those, but the Nightwatch score is a bit more experimental – and the fact that elements of it show up in his later work speaks to the fact that not only did Williams deem his experiments to be of value, but he also probably never expected this material to resurface again.

Aired in 1972 as another unsold pilot, Killer By Night starred Greg Morris, fresh off of Mission: Impossible, in a gritty crime drama about trying to track down a disease carrier trying to remain at large in a heavily populated area. None other than Quincy Jones scored this project, which, like Nightwatch, vanished into obscurity after its premiere. (I don’t know if it’s amusing or sad that it’s now easier to hear the music from either of these shows than it is to see the shows themselves.) Jones’ score fits somewhat into the expected jazz category for an early ’70s crime noir, but the somewhat scientific element of the storyline gives Jones a good excuse to get spooky with it too, adding some weird synthesizer to the lineup and letting the listener know this isn’t just going to be car chases and gunfire. Some tracks do fit right into the early ’70s TV jazz pigeonhole; the end credit theme gets wonderfully funky, and still other tracks pour on the weird. It’s as different as you can get from Nightwatch, but both are equally welcome.

That either of these scores exist, and can be listened to, at all is a real treat. (The Altman pilot scored by John Williams is so obscure it doesn’t even appear in Altman’s IMDb listing.) There was a time when the boutique soundtrack labels could drop real surprises in our laps like this one and curious soundtrack fans were up for the discovery. These days, out-of-left-field releases like this are more rare – the soundtrack labels have to line up titles that they’re certain will sell, not just titles that will spark mere window-shopping curiosity. That’s a loss for us all. Because this kind of music, dusted off after a long rest in the vault, tended to be the most wonderfully surprising stuff.

Nightwatch – music by Johnny Williams
1. Nightwatch Main Title (1:01)
2. Bertil’s Bomb (0:49)
3. Lund’s Problem (2:14)
4. Lund’s Leap (1:59)
5. The Cradle Might Rock (0:46)
6. Granstrom’s Headache (1:01)
7. A Child’s Fear (1:57)
8. Kathryn Flees (0:36)
9. The Run (0:50)
10. By the Fence (1:29)
11. Stumbling Around (1:01)
12. Entering the Hospital (0:32)
13. Inside the Hospital / The Final Dash (3:07)
14. The Waiting Room (1:04)
15. End Title (1:20)
16. Nightwatch End Title (0:51)
17. Chicago Group (source) (3:12)
18. Bumper #1 / Bumper #2 (0:19)
19. Promo (0:40)

    Killer By Night – music by Quincy Jones

20. Main Title / Opening Hold-Up (4:23)
21. Dead Dip Bird (1:44)
22. High Rent District (0:51)
23. Doctor, Come Home / Girl Died (1:44)
24. Point One (0:47)
25. Somethin’ Def (0:43)
26. Oxygen Tent / 22 Possibles / His Room (1:26)
27. Sweaty Meeting (0:36)
28. No Title (2:12)
29. Doctor, Wife & Supermart (0:49)
30. 4th Cut to Hood / Wait (1:06)
31. Microscope / Let’s Get Him (3:11)
32. Cut To Cops (2:25)
33. Police (2:00)
34. Door Up the Ladder (2:01)
35. End Title (3:32)
36. Tracey Source (3:13)

Released by: Film Score Monthly
Release date: November 3, 2011
Total running time: 59:20

The Book Of Boba Fett Volume 2 – music by Joseph Shirley

Hey, remember that crazy turn that The Book Of Boba Fett took when it suddenly went all “we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important message from the Mandalorian”? I’ll forgo my musings on that perhaps being why we’ve never gotten a season two, and just talk about the music.

Since this second volume of score from The Book Of Boba Fett covers the fourth through seventh episodes, the sudden shift from Boba Fett’s narrative to Mando’s is precisely where we pick up. It sounds more like music from The Mandalorian at this point, but the interesting thing happening here is that we’re getting Mando music a la Joseph Shirley. It doesn’t sound terribly different from Ludwig Goransson’s style, but considering that Joseph Shirley graduated from scoring this series to scoring the third season of The Mandalorian, it’s tempting to think of it as an audition piece. A jaunty pace creeps into the proceedings in “Faster Than A Fathier” as Mando tries out his new ship, and that tone becomes triumphant in “Maiden Voyage” as the space pedal is duly applied to the space metal. “It’s A Family Affair” shifts to a more pastoral – and more John-Williams-esque – feel as Mando goes to pay Grogu a visit at Skywalker’s School for Tiny Jedi. The Williams influence becomes overt in “Life Lessons”, complete with quotation of Williams’ themes for Yoda, Luke, and the Force itself. Like Goransson before him, Shirley proves that while he’s comfortable making the sound of Star Wars more percussive and electronic, he’s equally adept at layering in the classics of the Star Wars playbook very authentically.

Shirley also plays nicely with Goransson’s themes, delivering a more playful rendition of the piece last heard when Luke rescued Grogu at the end of The Mandalorian’s second season (a piece that was positively mournful in its original application). The setting returns to Tatooine for “From The Desert Comes A Stranger”, and stays there as much of the rest of the album concentrates on music from the final episode. Fett’s theme proper doesn’t come back with a vengeance until “Battle For Mos Espa”, and it remains at the forefront in “A Town Beiseged” and “Final Showdown”. With “A Town At Peace”, things calm down considerably and bring us to the end of the series.

The four tracks at the end of the album feature music from earlier in the series, with some of the show’s key scenes that mysteriously didn’t make the first album appearing here, including “The Reign of Boba Fett”, the six-plus-minute “Train Heist”, and “The Bonfire”. There’s also a source music track, “Hit It Max”, played by the remarkably bulletproof Max Rebo and his band – did he survive that bombing, or did his luck only get him as far as surviving the battle on Jabba’s sail barge? – which is no “Lapti Nek”, but at the very least I like it better than the number that replaced “Lapti Nek” in the Special Editions.

I really liked The Book Of Boba Fett while it was about, well, Boba Fett. It’s a pity that it didn’t get to even attempt to be its own thing for very long, especially with Temuera Morrison willing to don the armor again. But even if the series and its central character went no further than this, Joseph Shirley proved himself more than capable of providing music for wearers of Mandalorian armor everywhere.

1. The Underworld (3:19)
2. A Cautionary Tale (3:12)
3. Faster Than A Fathier (4:59)
4. Maiden Voyage (1:21)
5. It’s A Family Affair (3:48)
6. Life Lessons (3:56)
7. A Gift (2:46)
8. Teacher’s Pet (6:26)
9. From The Desert Comes A Stranger (2:19)
10. Two Paths Diverged (2:51)
11. In The Name Of Honor (3:24)
12. Battle For Mos Espa (2:30)
13. A Town Besieged (6:46)
14. Final Showdown (4:13)
15. Goodnight (2:32)
16. A Town At Peace (2:22)
17. The Reign Of Boba Fett (1:22)
18. Hit It Max (2:01)
19. Train Heist (6:16)
20. The Bonfire (1:41)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: February 11, 2022
Total running time: 1:07:56

Julianna Hatfield – I’m Alive / When I Was A Boy

So you liked Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO so much that one album wasn’t enough for you? Rest easy – there’s an accompanying single whose two songs were not featured on that album, and they’re very worthy of your attention.

As noted in the earlier review of Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, the song choices on the album span nearly the entire ELO repertoire; with few exceptions, nearly every album is represented. This single expands that further, with one cover song each from the Xanadu soundtrack and from 2015‘s comeback album Alone In The Universe. “I’m Alive”, the first ELO song one hears in 1980‘s movie musical Xanadu, has always been a criminally underrated entry in the band’s history of hit singles, boasting some of ELO’s most soaring harmonies and lyrics that are just relentlessly sunny and positive. Hatfield’s reading of the song takes it into a decidedly acoustic direction, apart from the synth solo being taken over by electric guitar here, but the harmonies are kept delightfully intact. With every listen, the same thought keeps occurring: “this didn’t make the album!?”

“When I Was A Boy”, the lead single from the 2015 album that marked Jeff Lynne staking his legal claim to the ELO legacy, is a more sedate number that started out in more acoustic, less synthetic territory, but Hatfield still does it justice, delivering a very nice interpretation of the song without worrying about gender-bending the lyrics at all. If anything, she layers more harmonies onto each successive verse and chorus than existed in the original song, and the result is a thing of beauty.

If Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO seemed too short, these two songs make up for it, and I have no regrets on the purchase price. A good ELO cover done well is a wonderful thing. Two of them? That’s two wonderful things.

This single is available directly from the artist via Bandcamp

1. I’m Alive (3:33)
2. When I Was A Boy (3:47)

Released by: American Laundromat Records
Release date: November 16, 2023
Total running time: 7:20

The Don Davis Collection, Volume 1

In 2004, the BBC aired an ambitious miniseries combining a little bit of “hard” sci-fi with an attempt to impart information to and educate the audience, framing it as a reality-TV-tinged mockumentary about a fictional crewed mission through the solar system. Keeping in mind that this was a year before the launch of 21st century Doctor Who, the resulting two-night event, Voyage To The Planets, was quite possibly the BBC’s most impressive sci-fi effort to that date (and thanks to a co-production deal with the Discovery Channel in the U.S., it was retitled Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets and shown Stateside as well). The mention of Doctor Who is not accidental; quite a few personnel associated with Voyage To The Planets, up to and including writer/director Joe Ahearne, played major roles early in the revival of Russell T. Davies’ version of Doctor Who.

And somehow – in between sequels to The Matrix, when his visibility was at a career high – Voyage To The Planets landed American composer Don Davis, and gave him enough resources to have at least a few live players, which he used to maximum advantage to keep an otherwise synthesized score from having too much of an icy, electronic sheen. The result is a score – unreleased for 16 years – that does have some hints of Davis’ Matrix stylings, but leans much more heavily on the kind of noble, give-the-French-horns-lots-of-whole-notes-in-major-keys feel that has powered many a space exploration epic. With Davis having to work to disguise just how small his ensemble of live players is, there are few opportunities for Voyage To The Planets to be as “big” as, say, James Horner’s Apollo 13 score, but it still successfully conveys the nobility and sense of wonder that the show’s fictional space mission demands.

The “Walking With Spacemen Theme” that kicks off the album is the backbone of the score, returning as a motif throughout (and giving a nod to the early working title of the project, which was initiated by the producers of Walking With Dinosaurs). Various locales visited by the crew of the Pegasus – Venus, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and beyond – receive their own thematic treatments, tipping their hand as to the relative degrees of how inhospitable they are to human life. These tend to be the passages that get the closest to the dissonance of Davis’ scores for the Matrix trilogy, but the material in between returns to a more heroic default setting. (One of the most spectacular examples of Davis more dissonant “we’re in trouble” music arrives in “Forbidden Rays and Asteroid”, which may also be the peak of his skillful arrangements successfully disguising the live-player-to-synth ratio.)

It’s a wonderful score overall, and an unexpected surprise so many years after the fact. (This is also a testament to the lovely niche material that can be unearthed by niche and boutique labels like Dragon’s Domain, balancing out the much more mainstream selections offered by the larger soundtrack labels.) Voyage To The Planets is seriously obscure stuff by U.S. standards – following its one-and-done airing on Discovery, the premise of a mockumentary-with-flashbacks mission through the solar system was sold to ABC, where it was expanded with more fiction than science and became a bit of a soap opera in the 2009-2010 season, a time when ABC was trying to pattern nearly everything on its schedule after Lost. (For what it’s worth, Dragon’s Domain, Defying Gravity had an interesting score too, even though the show itself was a big letdown.) To get Voyage’s full, wonderful soundtrack after all this time was a true treat – it’s very much worth a listen, whether you’re familiar with the miniseries or not.

1. Walking With Spacemen Theme (2:22)
2. Main Titles and Apollo (2:38)
3. Take Off and Venus (5:25)
4. Hot Planet Venus (4:15)
5. Time and Space (2:04)
6. Mars (3:30)
7. Flare and Storm Patrol (3:43)
8. Forbidden Rays and Asteroid (4:14)
9. Dispatching and Jupiter Turn (2:09)
10. G-Force (2:46)
11. Moons of Jupiter (3:08)
12. Zoe’s Trouble (5:15)
13. Europa (1:52)
14. Pearson’s Peek (3:19)
15. Deep Space Despair (4:26)
16. Burial and Resuming Work (1:40)
17. The Planet of Peace (2:18)
18. Pluto People (5:06)
19. The Comet (2:55)
20. Comet Stroll and Danger (2:55)
21. The Calamity on the Comet (4:06)
22. Happy Homecoming and Finale (3:43)

Released by: Dragon’s Domain Records
Release date: September 17, 2020
Total running time: 1:13:49

Doctor Who: The Invasion – music by Don Harper

The scores for Doctor Who‘s 20th century Cybermen episodes seem to have a habit of taking a torturous route to being released in their original form. A bit of clarification is in order: this release contains the original recordings from 1968 by Don Harper (whose handful of other scoring credits include an episode of the BBC2 sci-fi anthology Out Of The Unknown, and stock music used in George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead), the only music he ever composed for Doctor Who. Better known as a jazz musician, Harper’s services were engaged due to director Douglas Camfield’s curious habit of actively avoiding using Doctor Who’s “house composer” at the time, Dudley Simpson. Though many composers contributed to the 20th century series, there’s not another score quite like this one in the series’ history. Harper’s jazz leanings are on display, along with a very good dramatic instinct for the uniquely eerie music heard throughout The Invasion‘s eight episodes.

Why the clarification? Because Harper also re-recorded this music for the De Wolfe production music library under the title New Decades, which itself was later re-released as Cold Worlds, whereas this release has the original 1968 recordings. (The stories behind Doctor Who’s music can be just as strange-but-true as the rest of its behind-the-scenes lore.) On the one hand, The Invasion’s score sticks out quite noticeably from what came before and after it (the following story, The Krotons, has also been the subject of its own soundtrack release). But Harper has a very good sense of what the show’s “feel” is, and unnervingly dissonant tracks such as “International Electromatics Headquarters”, “The Cyber Director”, “The Cybermen, My Allies”, and “Plans For Invasion”, though brief, make the case that Harper would’ve made a fine addition to the rotation of the series’ musical talent if he had been hired to do so again. A much chirpier tone – almost “smurfy” in a way, and yet very, very 1968 in its feel – takes hold in the track “Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart”, giving the newly-promoted future series regular his own theme music in only his second appearance.

But the story doesn’t end there. Harper recorded a total of barely 20 minutes of music, intended to be used and re-used to track eight 25-minute episodes, and then, somewhat confoundingly, Camfield didn’t even use everything that was recorded. (One almost gets the feeling at times that Camfield would have preferred to skip musical underscores altogether but was coerced into including incidental music by the producers.) Also included are several tracks of effects and sound-design-bordering-on-music by Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, intended to provide additional musical options; tracks 15-34 are Harper’s unused score cues. Also tracked into the episode is a track by John Baker of the Radiophonic Workshop, “Time In Advance” (simply titled “Muzak” here), originally composed for an Out Of The Unknown episode of the same name. Baker’s work – with a lovely jazzy piano overdub sitting on top of an abstract yet tuneful radiophonic backing – sits nicely alongside Harper’s own jazz influences and doesn’t seem out of place. (I’ve never made a secret of the fact that “Time In Advance” is one of my all-time favorite pieces of classic Doctor Who music, so consider this reviewer’s biases fully on display here.)

With the brevity of the tracks presented, and the brevity of the score overall, it’s something of a minor miracle that this album tops out at just over an hour (thanks in large part to some of the lengthy, looped background sound effects tracks), and it’s a bit mind-boggling that a majority of the tracks presented have no story context, as they were left on the cutting room floor. So very much like the later Revenge Of The Cybermen release (perhaps not coincidentally the next TV outing for the Cybermen), a lot of what’s on the disc was never actually heard in the show itself. Harper achieves a great deal with very limited resources (the liner notes indicate that he never had more than five players, six if he too performed, presumably achieving a denser sound with overdubs), so it’s nice to hear his work free of the context of the show itself. It’s a pity so much of it went unused; some of the material that was left out is some of the most distinctive and enjoyable of the lot. Clearly, the Cybermen can’t have nice things.

1. Doctor Who (new opening theme, 1967) (0:52)
2. The Dark Side of the Moon (Music 2 Variation) (0:33)
3. The Company (Music 7) (1:31)
4. Hiding (Music 8) (4:54)
5. International Electromatics Headquarters (Music 3) (0:16)
6. Muzak (2:46)
7. The Cyber Director (Music 5) (0:08)
8. The Cybermen, My Allies (Music 7) (0:27)
9. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Music 12a) (1:22)
10. Plans for Invasion (Music 8) (1:25)
11. Mysteries (Music 12) (1:31)
12. Fire Escape (Music 11) (1:11)
13. The Dark Side of the Moon (Reprise) (Music 2) (0:31)
14. The Cybermen, My Allies (Reprise) (Music 7, looped) (1:07)
15. Music 4 (Trapped in Gas Chamber – v. 1 & 2) (1:29)
16. Music 9 (2:20)
17. Music 10 (2:00)
18. Music 13 (0:05)
19. Music 14 (0:15)
20. Music 15a (0:04)
21. Music 15b (0:20)
22. Music 15c (0:04)
23. Music 15d (0:20)
24. Music 15e (0:16)
25. Music 15f (0:04)
26. Music 15g (0:04)
27. Music 15h (0:23)
28. Music 16a (0:04)
29. Music 16b (0:05)
30. Music 16c (0:06)
31. Music 16d (0:07)
32. Music 16e (0:04)
33. Music 16f (0:08)
34. Music 16g (0:05)
35. Part of TARDIS disappears (0:25)
36. All of TARDIS disappears (0:24)
37. TARDIS take off slow and painful (2:13)
38. International Electromatics Headquarters Exterior (10:33)
39. International Electromatics Headquarters Interior (6:26)
40. Computer Background (0:21)
41. Computer Whirrs (1:01)
42. Electronic Eye (2:37)
43. Cyber Director Appears (2:26)
44. Cyber Director Constant (7:51)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: September 14, 2018
Total running time: 1:01:15

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Cybermen – music by Carey Blyton

There are quite few releases out there now of unused/rejected film scores. But with television? Not so much. The production timetable of TV just can’t handle an unusable score. It’ll either use less/none of what’s produced, but in most cases, there’s no time to hire someone else to come up with a replacement score, assuming that the budget can absorb a replacement. And it’s rarer still for anything left on the cutting room floor to ever be heard again.

All of that is to explain that Revenge Of The Cybermen, the more-than-complete score from Tom Baker’s first season-closing story as the star of Doctor Who in 1975, is a highly improbable release. The powers that be weren’t exactly crazy about the music Carey Blyton turned in, his third and final contribution to the series’ music. (His two prior scores were in Jon Pertwee’s first and final seasons, under a different producer.) With little time for a fix, Blyton’s recordings were handed off to Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to add some analog synths to the existing music…and then the makers of the show didn’t use most of that either. In the end, Revenge Of The Cybermen‘s four 25-minute episodes were sparse on music, and the vast majority of what’s on this CD was never heard in the show. Add to that the fact that it’s a Tom Baker-era score, and the music presented here is all sorts of rare. (The discovery that Blyton had kept tapes of his largely-unheard work for himself makes this release possible; even Revenge‘s DVD release and the 50th anniversary soundtrack collection had very little music from this story.)

The liner notes are particularly fascinating, digging into Blyton’s own correspondence to examine his reliance on non-traditional instruments, something the composer felt was a good fit for the show’s often non-traditional subject matter. But to Blyton’s mind, this meant instruments that had fallen out of common use in orchestral ensembles – some of them decidedly closer to “ancient” than “futuristic”, which may have been meant to signify the Vogans rather than the Cybermen, but may also have explained the synthesizer overdubs ordered by the show’s makers. All of this information helps to explain why so little of Blyton’s distinctive music was used…and, perhaps, why he was never tapped to provide music for Doctor Who again.

The resulting sound is spare (like Doctor Who’s more frequent composer, Dudley Simpson, Blyton simply couldn’t afford to assemble a full orchestra), and in all likelihood, this album will achieve the hat trick of feeling odd both to modern audiences (accustomed to the full force and fury of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales) and to fans of the 20th century series’ frequent scoring with synthesizers and radiophonic sound. There are synths here, but they weren’t intended to be there in the music’s original formulation, and they don’t really “rescue” it in any meaningful way (assuming you listen to the original, non-overdubbed pieces and feel that some kind of triage was needed). It’s an interesting listen that may fall into the category of being only for completists or the very curious. Despite that, it’s still incredible to hear a complete – and almost completely unused – score from a Tom Baker story from the ’70s.

1. Doctor Who – Opening Title Theme (0:45)
2. Return to Nerva Beacon (2:02)
3. Can Anyone Hear Me? (0:36)
4. Cybermat / Unspool / Plague (1:53)
5. Cybership I (0:23)
6. Searching Kellman’s Room (1:05)
7. Sarah vs Cybermat Part 1 (0:31)
8. Sarah vs Cybermat Part 2 (0:18)
9. Sabotage (0:42)
10. It’s Happening All Over Again (0:11)
11. The Skystriker (0:26)
12. On Voga (0:40)
13. Sarah and Harry Captured Part 1 (0:47)
14. Sarah and Harry Captured Part 2 (0:10)
15. Cybership II (0:19)
16. Enter Vorus (0:08)
17. Remote Control Threat (0:33)
18. Tyrum and Vorus (0:37)
19. One More Pull (0:17)
20. Caves Chase (0:50)
21. Caves Chase Continued (0:29)
22. Surrounded (0:35)
23. Boarding Party (0:59)
24. The Beacon is Ours (0:41)
25. Tyrum Fanfare (0:15)
26. Prisoners (0:13)
27. Fresh Orders (0:19)
28. It Cannot Be Stopped (0:21)
29. Loose Thinking / The Bomb (1:27)
30. The Countdown Has Commenced (1:01)
31. Cybermarch (1:27)
32. Radarscope (0:23)
33. Adventures on Voga (1:19)
34. Rockfall (1:15)
35. Surface Party and Detonation (1:47)
36. Nine Minutes (0:26)
37. Cybermat vs Cybermen (0:44)
38. The Biggest Bang in History? (0:45)
39. Waltz – All’s Well That Ends Well (0:17)
40. Doctor Who – Closing Title Theme (53” Version) (0:54)
     
    Alternative and Synthesizer Cues
41. Sarah vs Cybermat (end of part 1 alternative) (0:20)
42. Sarah vs Cybermat (start of part 2) (0:56)
43. It’s Happening All Over Again (random organ) (0:06)
44. Sarah and Harry Captured (alternative) (0:46)
45. Put That Gun Down (synth cue) (0:20)
46. Cybership II (alternative) (0:24)
47. Remote Control Threat (alternative) (0:35)
48. One More Pull (alternative) and Vogan Gunfight (0:58)
49. Cybership III (synth cue) (0:17)
50. Caves Chase (alternative) (1:20)
51. Cybership IV (synth cue) (0:23)
52. Caves Chase Continued (alternative) (0:36)
53. Surrounded (alternative) (0:38)
54. Boarding Party (end of Part 2 alternative) (0:25)
55. Jelly Babies (synth cue) (0:10)
56. Tyrum Fanfare (edited cue as used) (0:10)
57. It Cannot Be Stopped (alternative) (0:37)
58. Loose Thinking (alternative) (0:31)
59. The Bomb (alternative) (0:19)
60. The Countdown Has Commenced (alternative) (0:06)
61. Looped Cybermarch (0:29)
62. Looped Cybermarch with Synth (0:47)
63. Adventures on Voga (synth cues) (1:07)
64. The Red Zone (Random Organ) (0:06)
65. Heartbeat Countdown I (synth cue) (1:25)
66. Heartbeat Countdown II (synth cue) (1:09)
67. Rockfall (alternative) (1:17)
     
    Bonus Tracks
68. Session Tapes – Random Organ, Specimen Gong, Timps (3:08)
69. Session Tapes – m42a & 42b (improvs) (1:58)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 51:54

Alan Parsons Project – The Sicilian Defence

Some albums become legendary because they were never released, and then the fan clamoring begins until someone, sensing a good opportunity to pay the mortgage for a month or two, relents, and puts out some kind of unfinished, compromised, or finished-after-the-fact-many-years-later version of whatever it was going to be (but hey, enough about the various versions of Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse or Brian Wilson’s Smile out there). (Sometimes something remains unreleased permanently, unless someone just straight up raids the vaults.) The fact that it couldn’t be heard, the fact that the fans were being denied their prize, becomes the main vector of attraction.

The Sicilian Defence was never actually intended to be released, though. Recorded in 1979 between Alan Parsons and his songwriting collaborator in the Project, Eric Woolfson, it was always a negotiating tactic between the two principals of the Alan Parsons Project and their label at the time, Arista. In short, Parsons and Woolfson wanted to alter their deal, and delivered the all-instrumental Sicilian Defence to Arista almost simultaneously with the released 1979 album Eve to give them leverage: they’d delivered the last two albums of the Project’s contract. They were either done with Arista and free to go elsewhere, or Arista could give them more time and money to work on the next album. The Sicilian Defence was disposable. It was Alan and Eric screwing around on pianos and synthesizers in studio downtime. It was a ploy designed to freak out their handlers at the label, not the Project’s great unfinished symphony.

The inclusion of a piano instrumental track from the unreleased album on the 2008 remastered reissue of Eve seemed to portend a change of heart, even though Parsons was public in his desire for the entire unreleased album to stay that way permanently. (As Sony/Legacy was now controlling the band’s back catalog, the label insisted.) And then in 2014, it was included as a bonus disc in a pricey, career-spanning box set. But now The Sicilian Defence has finally become available on its own in digital form, and it’s not without its charms. As the album is named after an aggressive set of chess moves, the tracks are named after moves in that sequence. The track from which three minutes were excerpted for the “Elsie’s Theme” track on the Eve remaster is “P-Qb4”, and is twice the length of the previously released excerpt. It’s a lovely solo piano piece, and “P-Q4” and “KtxP” follow in a similar vein (the latter with a very chintzy late ’70s drum machine in the background). “Kt-QB3”, another piano piece, has a more aggressive pace and feels like it’s threatening to develop into a proper song, but as it noodles on for over eight minutes, it lands as a piece that wouldn’t been well off calling it a day at the four-and-a-half-minute mark.

But the really interesting stuff is a handful of lo-fi synthesizer jams. “P-K4”, “Kt-KB3”, and “PxP” have a percolating, vintage synth vibe that I can be describe with the following ludicrous phrase: “early ’80s Weather Channel local forecast”. That may seem like the most obscure possible descriptor, and yet I can’t think of a better one. They’re not light-years away from “Hyper-Gamma-Spaces” or “Mammagamma”, but they are at least 273,600 miles from them – they seem more like demos than anything close to a finished product. “…Kt-QB3” and “Kt-B3”, the two shortest tracks, have strings and choral vocals probably recorded as warm-ups or outtakes from previous albums’ sessions and edited together. “P-Q3” is a synth piece with a pastoral, classical feel. Rather than building to anything significant, the album – such as it is – just…ends.

None of it was ever developed further for use on later releases, and in some cases that’s a pity, because there are some promising starts – but only starts.

The part of me that loves new wave and analog synths doing analog synth things loves those tracks on this album, but let’s face it: this album should probably be recused from getting a rating because we were never meant to hear it, and wouldn’t have, except that the studio-owned master recordings changed hands and the new label decided that it would be heard regardless of Parsons’ wishes (Woolfson died in 2009). As a standalone listening experience, The Sicilian Defence really doesn’t work unless you know its backstory, even though the Project was renowned for its instrumental pieces. But if you’re looking for that circa-1983 local forecast vibe? I can give this a hearty recommendation.

1. P-K4 (5:06)
2. P-Qb4 (6:22)
3. Kt-KB3 (3:07)
4. …Kt-QB3 (1:15)
5. P-Q4 (3:55)
6. PxP (3:28)
7. KtxP (4:01)
8. Kt-B3 (0:53)
9. Kt-QB3 (8:16)
10. P-Q3 (3:29)

Released by: Sony/Legacy/Arista
Release date: March 23, 2014
Total running time: 39:50

A Disturbance In The Force – music by Karl Preusser

I’ve already raved elsewhere about the better-than-anyone-had-any-right-to-expect documentary about the making of the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, A Disturbance In The Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened. In short, it’s a better documentary than you ever expected about such an arcane, niche topic. The documentary actually has wider appeal than the subject it’s covering. That’s a neat trick.

Karl Preusser’s score for A Disturbance In The Force: How The Star Wars Holiday Special Happened is just over half an hour long (the frequent clips and needle drops in the movie don’t leave a lot of room for an original score), but there’s actually a lot to love in that half-hour-and-change. I found myself hoping that the whole thing would be drenched with disco cheese, but Preusser shows admirable restraint by containing that style reference to only three tracks (“So Bad, It’s Not Good”, “A Disturbance In The Force”, and “The Lost Treatment”, the first two of which walk right up to the edge of riffing on Meco’s disco cover of the Star Wars theme). The rest of the score riffs on John Williams’ style of arrangement without ever directly quoting any Williams themes. There are passages that are almost the Jawa theme, or hint at other Williams compositions, and this is an impressively sharp-eared feat made more impressive by the fact that it’s all carried off fairly convincingly with samples.

And now that this score, for a documentary about the Holiday Special, has been released? Go find and release the score from the special itself, you cowards. Seriously. I dare you. It’s got to exist somewhere in the files of the late composer Ian Fraser (who shouldn’t be obscure: he was a frequent music collaborator on Julie Andrews’ prime time variety specials, was the music director for the opening of EPCOT, and arranged the accompaniment for Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s “Little Drummer Boy” duet). Because chances are I’ll buy that too. You can bet your Life Day on it.

1. So Bad, It’s Not Good (1:59)
2. Charley Lippincott (2:24)
3. Boba Fett Genesis (2:16)
4. Fan Outreach (1:01)
5. It All Started In 1978 (1:40)
6. Maintaining Momentum (2:46)
7. The Talent (0:54)
8. Life Day (1:49)
9. The Faithful Wookiee (1:36)
10. The Lost Treatment (1:57)
11. Costume Difficulties (1:31)
12. Sell Toys To Kids (1:10)
13. It Just Was Not Working (1:49)
14. And They Loved It (2:14)
15. Fanbase Grows (3:01)
16. A Disturbance In The Force (3:30)

Released by: Gription Music
Release date: December 4, 2023
Total running time: 31:17

Captain Rimmer’s Mandolin: Red Dwarf VI: The Underscore – music by Howard Goodall

In 2023, Red Dwarf turned 35 years old. That’s the same number as the combined IQ of 35 P.E. teachers. It’s astonishing that there’s not more music officially available; sure, nearly every note recorded for the series is available in the bonus features of the DVDs, but when you’re talking about some of the major landmarks of the show’s history, it’d be nice to have more music, not less. That’s what makes this 2016 release – focusing entirely on Red Dwarf scores from the 1990s – maddening. I can’t dock it a point on account of the music itself; Howard Goodall’s music always manages to rise above its very ’90s synthesized execution, becoming more than the sum of its parts. The problem with this release is that we only get some of its parts – and it’s misidentified in a big way.

The Red Dwarf VI track actually contains music from Red Dwarf VI and Red Dwarf VII. The distinctive western pastiche of the music from the Emmy-winning Gunmen Of The Apocalypse takes pride of place early on, justifiably eating up nearly half of the almost-12-minute track. But much of the rest is taken up by music from the Red Dwarf VII episodes Stoke Me A Clipper and Blue. (The good news is that the latter is represented by the song sung by an entire gallery of Rimmer puppets, with vocals supplied not by Chris Barrie, but by Goodall himself.) It’s a bizarre choice given that Red Dwarf VII also takes up a separate release.

The second track crams highlights from the fourth and fifth seasons into 18 minutes. The Red Dwarf IV music comes mainly from White Hole and Dimension Jump, including the latter’s instrumental spoof of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” accompanying the audience’s first glimpse of “Ace” Rimmer (and the organ rendition of the end credits theme, signaling that we’re very much stuck with “our” Rimmer and not his more heroic duplicate). Another spoof follows, the Casablanca parody for the B&W opening scenes of Back To Reality. But the remainder of the episode’s unique score gets shortchanged, represented by a percussion-heavy action cue (not the highlight of Back To Reality‘s music), leaving the episode’s thundering piano-bass-note motif off the album entirely. White Hole fares better, as we get most of the music from the climactic “playing pool with planets” scene. Some really incomprehensible choices were made here – and that’s where this release loses a point.

It’s still puzzling that a show with a large cult following the size of the Red Dwarf fanbase – which has always been a bit starved for any merch that’s not a T-shirt – is musically represented only by four obscure EP-length digital releases, so these continue to be criminally underexposed treasures. The music from the episode Back To Reality is really deserving of its own track, and the same could be said of Gunmen Of The Apocalypse – they’re among the most popular episodes of the entire series. While I’m glad to have any kind of official soundtrack release from Red Dwarf, burying brief excerpts from these two in suites of other music from the show does them both a disservice.

1. Captain Rimmer’s Mandolin: Red Dwarf VI: The Underscore (11:42)
2. Bach To Reality: Red Dwarf IV & V: The Underscore (18:00)

Released by: Howard Goodall
Release date: November 4, 2016
Total running time: 29:42

Trevor Horn – Echoes: Ancient & Modern

I wasn’t a huge fan of superstar producer Trevor Horn’s previous album along similar lines, Trevor Horn Reimagines The Eighties, but the list of “guest stars” on this album reeled me in anyway – and I discovered I liked this album much, much better.

While there are some ’80s icons participating in this album of covers (is anyone actually capable of not being at least morbidly curious about Rick Astley tackling Yes’ “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”?), including Toyah Wilcox and Soft Cell’s Marc Almond, the guest artists who emerge from further afield really make this album. Sure, hearing familiar ’80s voices cover songs by other associated-with-the-’80s acts is fun, but hearing Seal take Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” and run with it (with Horn coming dangerously close to turning it into a bossa nova groove), or hearing Iggy Pop do his own thing with Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”, really makes this album for me.

The flip-side of Horn’s recurring theme of covering the ’80s, of course, is that he’s dropping an orchestra on top of most of it (particularly here for his debut on Deutsche Grammophon, a label usually identified with classical recordings) and diluting it down to muzak. And, hey, I get it – those of us who were listening to these songs back when they were brand new and perhaps more innovative are now rocketing through middle age at alarming speed. But if dropping pretty orchestral accompaniment on top of new wave gems isn’t bizarre enough, there’s Tori Amos’ cover of Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank)”, which is a walloping dose of cognitive dissonance – a song about a troubling subject is suddenly inordinately ornate.

There’s a lot to like here, but after two albums in a similar vein, Trevor Horn is in danger of becoming his own cover band, and I have mixed feelings about that. Any chance of reconvening The Producers and doing anything new, Trevor?

1. Swimming Pools (Drank) (with Tori Amos)
2. Steppin’ Out (with Seal)
3. Owner Of A Lonely Heart (with Rick Astley)
4. Slave To The Rhythm (with Lady Blackbird)
5. Love Is A Battlefield (with Marc Almond)
6. Personal Jesus (with Iggy Pop & Phoebe Lunny)
7. Drive (with Steve Hogarth)
8. Relax (with Toyah Willcox & Robert Fripp)
9. White Wedding (with Andrea Corr & Jack Lukeman)
10. Smells Like Teen Spirit (with Jack Lukeman)
11. Avalon

Released by: Deutsche Grammophon
Release date: December 1, 2023
Total running time: 44:26

Doctor Who: The Survival Mixes – music by Dominic Glynn

If the Time And The Rani soundtrack was the alpha of the seventh Doctor’s era on Doctor Who, Survival is its omega, and of course already has its own soundtrack release. But its composer, Dominic Glynn, is back among the cat people, and this time he’s here to get them dancing. The Survival Mixes remixes four key cues from the Survival score, and as with Glynn’s past remixes of his Doctor Who music, we start with the track that changes the least about its source material and the mixes after it gradually make more significant changes to the original tracks.

“Catflap” takes an eerie, piano-based cue and gradually builds an insistent, urgent rhythm around that loop, making for a nicely atmospheric track. “Run Doctor, Run!” has a more aggressive, percussion-driven cue from the original soundtrack as its starting point, and adds to that percussion, as well as new bassline layers and samples of dialogue from the show. (While the dialogue is neat, I kind of wish that maybe the tracks with dialogue had been repeated in dialogue-free form as bonus tracks.) “The Dead Valley” takes a quieter piece of the soundtrack and turns it into a mesmerizing, hypnotic loop, again with some show dialogue toward the end. The dialogue starts almost immediately in “Good Hunting, Sister” and quickly becomes the most radically reworked track of the bunch. Those four tracks are followed by “Indefinable Magic: Podcast Theme”, an original commission for a podcast hosted by Toby Hadoke; while not based on anything from Survival, it has a feel that certainly fits in with the other tracks.

If you’re a fan of classic Doctor Who music, and don’t mind mixing things up a bit, this EP is a nice way to spend the better part of a half hour. That it starts out with bits of one of the best scores to grace the Sylvester McCoy era of the show doesn’t hurt (to be fair, McCoy’s entire final season in the role of the Doctor was full of great music).

1. Catflap (5:15)
2. Run Doctor, Run! (4:49)
3. The Dead Valley (5:53)
4. Good Hunting Sister (4:35)
5. Bonus track: Indefinable Magic: Podcast Theme (2:30)

Released by: No Bones Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 23:00

Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO

Not much makes my heart happier than seeing ELO get long-overdue recognition – rather than ridicule – for its contributions to the pop culture pantheon. At this point, I’m just as happy to digest a new reinterpretation of ELO’s classics as I am to contemplate anything new Jeff Lynne cares to throw our way. And if the reinterpretations are crafted with the same kind of love as Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO, all the better. If you follow her work at all, you know she alternates between albums of original material and albums of covers and tributes to a particular artist or band she considers formative to her own musical experience (with past tributes including albums of covers of Olivia Newton-John and the Police).

Here, obviously, she’s concentrating on ELO’s past works, picking something from each album from On The Third Day through Secret Messages. (A two-song single, released separately on Bandcamp, adds the under-appreciated “I’m Alive” from the Xanadu soundtrack and a cover of “When I Was A Boy” from Alone In The Universe for good measure.) Though a few of the covers obligingly roll out some of the big hits in the band’s catalogue – “Showdown”, “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head”, “Strange Magic”, “Telephone Line”, and “Don’t Bring Me Down” – I really appreciate Hatfield’s commitment to shining a fresh light on some underappreciated deep cuts. The songs that were originally piano and/or guitar based translate easily, if slightly stripped-down from the more ornate original versions.

But it’s the songs that didn’t start out piano or guitar based that turn out to be the most fascinating listens. “From The End Of The World”, from 1981’s Time album, is almost the least likely candidate for this treatment, as it was originally a solid wall of synthesizers. Now it’s a straight-ahead rocker. Ordinary Dream, from 2001’s also-underappreciated comeback album Zoom, goes from a wall of strings to a gentle rock number with gorgeous harmonies. My favorite thing on the album may be the cover of 1983’s “Secret Messages”, another song whose original version was awash in synths and keyboards, ably translated with its sinewy vocal harmonies completely intact. “Telephone Line” replaces string arrangements with some interesting layers of guitar work. None of the songs suffer or lose anything in the translation.

Hatfield’s liner notes indicate that she wasn’t looking to reinvent the wheel (if you’re wanting radical reinventions, Parthenon Huxley’s Homemade Spaceship is still out there), making significant changes where necessary: sometimes the string section’s parts were played by other instruments or even sung, as she had neither the interest nor the budget to record an orchestra and basically make an ELO karaoke album. What she did deliver, however, was an interesting mix of songs given new life, ready to be enjoyed in this new form, and maybe good for guiding the curious toward the originals. But on its own, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO is a great listen.

1. Sweet Is The Night (3:30)
2. Can’t Get It Out Of My Head (4:18)
3. Showdown (3:31)
4. Strange Magic (3:56)
5. Don’t Bring Me Down (3:59)
6. Telephone Line (4:44)
7. Secret Messages (3:59)
8. Bluebird Is Dead (4:24)
9. From The End Of The World (3:14)
10. Ordinary Dream (3:25)

Released by: American Laundromat Records
Release date: November 17, 2023
Total running time: 39:00

Babylon 5: The Road Home – music by Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion & Lolita Ritmanis

“Hey, how did everybody like that Babylon 5 animated movie?” Now there’s a question that’s unlikely to bring about a casual discussion. You might as well ask for people’s opinions on the Star Wars sequel trilogy as a chaser. In both cases, you hear – often loudly – from those who hated it, or loved it, but very few saying “well, it was okay.” But for what it’s worth – nice to meet you. I’m the “well, it was okay” guy. I liked the funny bits. (If an entire hollow planet full of multiple instances of Zathras doesn’t make you laugh out loud, you clearly need to be reminded of the time Lennier quizzically repeated “woo…hoo?” to Sheridan, or the time Ivanova did the whole “boom-shaka-laka” dance.)

I think sci-fi fandom, whether it revolves around major franchises, cult classics, or things like Babylon 5 that teeter precariously between those two descriptions, tends to defend a little too vociferously the idea that My Show Means Something, And Don’t You Dare Make Fun Of It. And hey, yeah, I used to be that guy too, when I was younger and had fewer plates to keep spinning and thought that stuff was actually important. Now I can watching something like this, chuckle knowingly at the bits that I know will cause other people’s blood pressure to spike, and say “well, it was okay.” It entertained me. It was like a visit with old friends who brought along some new friends. It proved that – with all due apologies to his voice actor replacement – you can’t just go replacing the majestic, world-weary voice of Andreas Katsulas.

But can you go replacing the often-near-operatic sound of Christopher Franke? Should you even try? That’s the dance that The Road Home‘s score does for a little over an hour, positively drenching a 78-minute movie with 68-odd minutes of music. Sometimes it hits close enough for government work. Sometimes it’s pretty wide of the mark. And a lot of the time…well, it’s okay. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Franke was using a very distinctive, and very customized, set of orchestral samples. The composers here clearly know what they’re doing – we’re talking about the trio responsible for so much of the music of Batman: The Animated Series, the fantastic scores to the two direct-to-video Batman animated movies starring Adam West and Burt Ward, and countless other direct-to-video movies featuring DC Comics characters. I wouldn’t want to bet that the composers didn’t understand the assignment when they have clearly nailed so many other assignments. The folks working on this are some of the best, and most reliable, in the business.

But it puts me in mind of another animated project, Tron Uprising, whose score knocked it out of the park because Joseph Trapanese used the same sample library that Daft Punk developed for Tron Legacy. That makes all the difference. Franke’s samples were very distinctive: you instantly knew his blast of Wagner tubas, his apocalyptic choral samples, and his thundering drums. Melodically, the music fits very nicely within the Babylon 5 universe. But without those very specific samples used in endless combinations in the original live action series, it’s like a SpaceX rocket landing outside the painted circle on the deck of the recovery ship, but it still landed on the ship – the music lands in a bit of an uncanny valley, for lack of a better description. Despite that, it would be nice if fandom would go easier on these composers than the ridiculously xenophobic response that Evan Chen‘s music for Crusade drew.

And yet if you just close your eyes and listen and forget that this was a Babylon 5 project, it’s excellent space opera scoring, and really beautiful in a few places. Some fans will decide this is fitting, because they want to set The Road Home off to one side from what they consider “real Babylon 5“. Me, I’m kind of hoping there’s another animated feature in the works to give the music team a chance to stick the landing. They were so close this time, and it makes for a nice listen.

1. The Road Home Main Title (McCuistion) (01:10)
2. Interstellar Changes (Ritmanis) (02:54)
3. Delenn Love Theme and Tachyon Disturbance (Carter) (01:32)
4. Thank You (McCuistion) (00:31)
5. Good for Humanity (Ritmanis) (02:06)
6. Tachyon Overload (Carter) (02:34)
7. In the Future (Ritmanis) (00:40)
8. Consulting the Doctor (McCuistion) (02:04)
9. Amber Waves of Memories (Carter) (01:31)
10. Love Shows the Way (McCuistion) (02:36)
11. Shadow Lair (Ritmanis) (01:56)
12. Shadows Awaken (Carter) (00:41)
13. B5 Under Attack (Carter) (02:41)
14. Sinclair (Ritmanis) (01:18)
15. This Is a Standoff (McCuistion) (02:09)
16. Things Going Downhill Quickly (Carter) (02:06)
17. There’s Another Way (McCuistion) (04:10)
18. Activate (Ritmanis) (02:53)
19. Funny Chat (Ritmanis) (00:20)
20. Leaving Babylon 5 (Ritmanis) (01:18)
21. Meet the Zathri (Carter) (01:00)
22. The Big Silence (Carter) (00:52)
23. It’s Getting Closer (McCuistion) (01:04)
24. Someone Familiar (Ritmanis) (00:45)
25. The Approaching End (Carter) (02:14)
26. The End Arrives (Carter) (03:13)
27. Time Tunnel Travel (McCuistion) (00:29)
28. Consciousness and Love (Ritmanis) (04:57)
29. Back to the Wormhole (Carter) (01:06)
30. Sheridan Fever Dream (Carter) (00:33)
31. Unexpected Meeting (McCuistion) (00:26)
32. Dark Discovery (Ritmanis) (02:42)
33. Zathras Arrives (McCuistion) (01:49)
34. Love Is All (McCuistion) (01:59)
35. Converging Paths (Carter) (02:08)
36. Here to Stay (McCuistion) (03:12)
37. Babylon 5: the Road Home End Credits (Carter) (03:13)

Released by: Watertower Music
Release date: October 27, 2023
Total running time: 1:08:31

Peter Gabriel – i/o

Peter Gabriel doesn’t do things fast. A decade (or more) can pass between albums. But his fans are legion, and the resulting material is often (if not always) strong enough to justify the wait. But this might just be the best thing he’s done since So. Some of the songs have been evolved over years and decades, some of them originating from the songwriting sessions for 2002’s Up, and some of them older than that, and these are supposedly the strongest contenders to emerge from a pool of over a hundred songs, the rest of which may emerge as post-album singles, or may be thrown back in the water to grow larger and show up on a future album.

While the songs may have evolved from compositions Gabriel has been working on for years, the lyrics feel immediate, very much revealing what’s on Gabriel’s mind as he edges toward elder statesman territory. Songs such as “So Much” and “Playing For Time” address the brevity of life, an increasing awareness of mortality, and both of those things informing what one places the most value on, which is itself a theme that shows up in “Olive Tree” and “This Is Home”. Gabriel’s more global concerns are still here as well, showing up in “Panopticom” and “The Court”, to name just a couple. Whether you’re hear to hear Gabriel’s thoughts on a world in disarray or something more intimate, there’s something for you on i/o.

Interestingly, the entire tracklist is repeated over two discs – the “Bright Side” mixes by Mark “Spike” Stent, which feel a big glossier and more processed, take up one disc, and the other disc is comprised of the “Dark Side” mixes by Tchad Blake, which have bit of punchier, raw immediacy. There’s not much difference in the actual production, but different elements are brought to the forefront in the different mixes. The “Dark Side” mixes feel a bit more like old-school Gabriel, with the rhythm section very much foregrounded, while the “Bright Side” mixes foreground elements like the string sections and synths. Each single was rolled out in both forms, but I didn’t expect the album to include both versions of each song.

As always, Gabriel’s fan base will debate and analyze his work endlessly, but overall, I found i/o to be an enlightening and uplifting listen, awash in the usual layers of detailed production, a hint of funk, and a taste of world music here and there. Not a single song seems out of place – the album is blissfully free of any “Barry Williams Show” missteps – and all of them are thought-provoking. It adds up to his best work in a very long time.

Disc 1: Bright-Side Mixes
1. Panopticom (Bright Side Mix) (5:16)
2. The Court (Bright-Side Mix) (4:21)
3. Playing For Time (Bright-Side Mix) (6:18)
4. i/o (Bright-Side Mix) (3:53)
5. Four Kinds of Horses (Bright-Side Mix) (6:47)
6. Road to Joy (Bright-Side Mix) (5:22)
7. So Much (Bright-Side Mix) (4:52)
8. Olive Tree (Bright-Side Mix) (6:01)
9. Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix) (6:02)
10. This Is Home (Bright-Side Mix) (5:04)
11. And Still (Bright-Side Mix) (7:44)
12. Live and Let Live (Bright-Side Mix) (6:47)
     
    Disc 2: Dark-Side Mixes
     
13. Panopticom (Dark-Side Mix) (5:16)
14. The Court (Dark-Side Mix) (4:20)
15. Playing For Time (Dark-Side Mix) (6:18)
16. i/o (Dark-Side Mix) (3:53)
17. Four Kinds of Horses (Dark-Side Mix) (6:47)
18. Road to Joy (Dark-Side Mix) (5:25)
19. So Much (Dark-Side Mix) (4:51)
20. Olive Tree (Dark-Side Mix) (6:01)
21. Love Can Heal (Dark-Side Mix) (6:03)
22. This Is Home (Dark-Side Mix) (5:04)
23. And Still (Dark-Side Mix) (7:44)
24. Live and Let Live (Dark-Side Mix) (7:11)

Released by: RealWorld
Release date: December 1, 2023
Disc one total running time: 1:08:26
Disc two total running time: 1:08:52

Doctor Who: Time And The Rani – music by Keff McCulloch

So, picture this if you can: it’s the end of 1987, and my local PBS station presents the four-part Doctor Who story Time And The Rani in “movie” format during a pledge drive, talking about how viewer support keeps imported shows like Doctor Who on the schedule. Wow! I’m getting to see Sylvester McCoy’s first episode as the Doctor the same year it premiered! And the following week, Doctor Who was no longer on the schedule, leaving my home-recorded VHS tape of Time And The Rani as my only specimen of the seventh Doctor’s adventures until a tape trade in 1991 or so brought the rest of his televised adventures to me. By the time I saw any more of McCoy’s Doctor Who tenure, I had to experience it via Target novelizations and soundtracks such as the 25th anniversary album and the 1991 release of The Curse Of Fenric soundtrack. I’d go back and rewatch Time And The Rani a lot in that time, too, just trying to envision what the rest of the shows were like. Its soundtrack was burned into my brain.

And now, at least, it’s burned on a CD for everyone to hear independent of the dialogue and sound effects. I’ve always held the view that, for all of the awkwardness of Time And The Rani as a whole (not only is there a new Doctor, but incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel‘s influence was hardly felt on the scripts, which were originally conceived for Colin Baker’s Doctor), it holds a lot of charm as well, and one of my favorite elements was the soundtrack. It was Keff McCulloch’s first score for the show, as well as his first film or TV score of any kind, and it’s both identifiably ’80s and very atmospheric. In the CD liner notes, McCulloch pleads guilty on perhaps overusing the “orchestral stab” sample, and while that may be true, he’s hardly the only composer working during that period whose work over-relied on that sound. (I used to have a Yamaha keyboard with “orchestral stab” on it, and I too used the hell out of both that and the “handclaps” which would feature prominently in later McCulloch scores.)

The most interesting thing about the score for Time And The Rani, in hindsight, is that it brings a pop music sensibility to Doctor Who’s music that hadn’t been heard since, arguably, the last time Paddy Kingsland had scored the show during the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s early ’80s heyday of handling all of the series’ music. The various iterations of “Future Pleasure” have vocal samples that may sound whimsical now, but were still part of the Art of Noise‘s playbook when this music was first heard on TV – pretty cutting-edge stuff for television scoring. But the numerous musical visits to “The Tetrap Eyrie” and especially “Cliffhanger In The Eyrie” have a superbly eerie atmosphere. In an admittedly synthesized way, some of these tracks hint at an orchestral future for Doctor Who’s sound.

Bonus tracks reveal the evolution of McCulloch’s take on the Doctor Who theme from demo to the version used on the show, as well as the evolution of elements of the score. In particular, the gradual cluttering-up of what was a perfectly good piece of music for the new Doctor picking his new wardrobe was eye-opening; I wonder who made the decision that what that scene really needed was the sound of breaking glass as punctuation. (There was no breaking glass as part of the scene itself, where the sound comes across as a comedy affectation that really didn’t boost the scene’s chances of being taken seriously.)

With its mind-bendingly colorful cover artwork and the sounds within, this long overdue release is a reminder that, regardless of what some fans might claim, all was not lost when it came to late ’80s Doctor Who. I still have a lot of love for this score, orchestral stabs and all. It may be a more challenging listen for those who have been raised on 21st century Doctor Who’s less-sampled orchestral sound, but for those of us who watched the show in something not far removed from real time, this was the sound of the Doctor’s travels, and it’s a delightful nostalgia trip.

1. The Rani Takes the TARDIS (Sound Effects) (0:22)
2. Leave the Girl, It’s the Man I Want (0:23)
3. Doctor Who (Opening Theme) (0:54)
4. Einstein (0:21)
5. A Nice Nap (0:34)
6. Urak and Ikona (1:12)
7. The Death of Sarn (1:05)
8. Bull in a Barbershop (0:24)
9. Not Your Enemy (1:52)
10. The Tetrap Eyrie (1) (0:46)
11. Landscape (0:25)
12. New Wardrobe (1:27)
13. Mel and the Bubble Trap (1:04)
14. Mel and the Bubble Trap (continued) (1:33)
15. The Tetrap Eyrie (2) (0:44)
16. Wait Here (0:56)
17. Memory Like An Elephant (1:18)
18. Faroon, Ikona and the Mourning (1:34)
19. Urak Nets The Rani (1:39)
20. Pulses (0:26)
21. The Rani’s TARDIS (1:03)
22. You’re a Time Lord (0:39)
23. She’s Coming (0:29)
24. Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (1:30)
25. Doctor on the Loose (Part 1) (0:55)
26. Doctor on the Loose (Parts 2-4) (1:28)
27. Doctor on the Loose (Part 5 – The Bubble Trap) (0:33)
28. Faroon Forlorn / Doctor on the Loose (Part 6) (0:46)
29. Future Pleasure (4:58)
30. Beez (0:47)
31. Hologram Mel (1:29)
32. Just the Expert (0:24)
33. As Sentimental as He Is (0:17)
34. Fixed Trajectory (0:48)
35. Second Bluff (0:47)
36. All as Planned (0:20)
37. The Brain (2:08)
38. The Brain (reprise) (1:19)
39. Dissidents to Heel (0:40)
40. March of the Tetraps / Anklet Death (1:48)
41. The Rani Explains (1:48)
42. Urak Overhears (0:27)
43. Loyhargil (1) (0:48)
44. As You Snore So Shall You Sleep (0:38)
45. Loyhargil (2) (0:14)
46. Where there’s a Will (0:27)
47. Loyhargil (3) (0:24)
48. The Rani Leaves (0:20)
49. Undoing The Rani (2:08)
50. Fingers Crossed (0:21)
51. Not Forgotten (0:54)
52. Time and Tide Melts the Snowman (0:15)
53. Doctor Who (Closing Theme) (1:13)
     
    Bonus Tracks
54. Doctor Who 1987 (2:40)
55. The Death of Sarn (part, alternative version without rattle) (0:22)
56. Two “stings” (1m10 and 1m12) (0:18)
57. New Wardrobe (original mono mix without overdubs) (0:57)
58. New Wardrobe (overdubs) (0:57)
59. New Wardrobe (original mono TV mix as used) (0:58)
60. She’s Coming (unused version 1) (0:43)
61. Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (unused version 1) (1:30)
62. Cliffhanger in the Eyrie (Part Two Reprise edit) (1:18)
63. Future Pleasure (original master) (4:32)
64. The Brain (25th Anniversary Album edit) (3:03)
65. Doctor Who Theme 1987 (original demo) (2:54)
66. Doctor Who Opening Title 1987 (original demo) (0:43)
67. Doctor Who Closing Title 1987 (original demo) (1:16)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: November 24, 2023
Total running time: 76:05

Gatchaman CROWDS, Volume 1 – music by Taku Iwasaki

When Bob Sakuma was asked about the musical influences that shaped his brass-with-funk-backing music for the original 1970s TV iteration of Gatchaman (an early anime the western world knows better from the savagely-edited-down Battle Of The Planets), his answer was simple: the American band Chicago, which was a hugely influential sound circa 1972. This 21st century reboot of Gatchaman, which dispenses with virtually the entire backstory of the original series and retains only some iconography and the “band of super-powered young people protecting the entire world from an alien force” premise, is graced with a soundtrack that pulls from a wider group of influences. It’s still brassy and orchestral in places, but there’s a vast pool of other influences – dubstep, J-pop, trip-hop, house, opera, chiptune…and it’s honestly almost dizzying how incredibly well all of this hangs together. Not one note or beat feels out of place or surplus to requirements.

Where there are vocals, the vast majority of them are sung in English, which I found somewhat surprising. “Gatchaman – In The Name Of Love”, despite not being the theme song for the series, makes a bold opening statement, putting the listener on notice that every possible boundary between musical styles and genres will be breached in short order. And by the way, the orchestral component of all this? It’s live players, not synthesizers or samples. It’s just a luxurious, well-orchestrated sound, no matter how much is going on with the more modern, dance-inspired elements.

Instrumental highlights include the techno pulse of “Milestone”, the breezy-going-on-goofy J-pop interlude “Tutu”, the slowly-intensifying downtempo cool of “Phenex”, the beautiful, contemplative “The Bird Can’t Fly”, the kind of dreamy chiptune-infused “Unbeatable Network”, and the four minutes of unrelenting urgency that is “Are You Gatchaman?” The unmissable vocal highlights are “Gatchaman – In The Name Of Love”, which isn’t shy about what the name of the show is at all, and possibly the highlight of the whole album, “Music Goes On”, with its luxurious all-heands-on-deck, every-style-in-one-song instrumentation and a soaring (if auto-tuned) vocal. It’s like someone said “You know, they have dance parties at sci-fi and anime conventions, and we’re going to come up with an entire album of absolute bangers that are as perfect for those as they are for the show itself.”

I think I’ve actually watched Gatchaman CROWDS all the way through once. I’ve come back to its soundtrack a lot. It fits the show perfectly, and yet it’s an engrossing listen on its own. There’s a school of thought which I’m sure would remind me that the anime itself is not aimed at someone my age. Okay, it probably isn’t. But if I’d taken a hard pass on it, I wouldn’t have been exposed to its frankly magnificent soundtrack. I’m going to make this a prime example of why I do expose myself to new sounds even if they’re not nominally “for me” – the fact is, they’re for anyone who enjoys them. And there’s a lot to enjoy here.

1. Gatchaman – In the Name of Love performed by Yutaka Shinya (3:52)
2. The Core of Soul (2:52)
3. Milestone (2:56)
4. Firebird (3:10)
5. Tutu (2:18)
6. Pandaman (2:06)
7. The Music Goes On (3:39)
8. Phenex (3:04)
9. Un Beau Leopard Violet (2:31)
10. Gatchadance (3:21)
11. Galax (0:08)
12. The bird Can’t Fly (3:03)
13. Are You Gatchaman? (4:07)
14. Destruction By Rumor (2:54)
15. Why I Kissed Him? (3:14)
16. Fat guitar (3:29)
17. Ziel der Hydra (3:38)
18. Sacrifice (4:57)
19. Crowds (3:20)
20. Unbeatable Network (4:18)
21. Love (3:28)
22. Innocent Note performed by Yutaka Shinya and Maaya Uchida (3:53)
23. Crowds (TV size) performed by White Ash (1:20)
24. Innocent Note (TV size) performed by Yutaka Shinya and Maaya Uchida (1:22)

Released by: Indie Japan
Release date: July 1, 2013
Total running time: 1:13:00

Wizards – music by Andrew Belling

If anyone was going to put the “high” in “high fantasy” in the 1970s, it was going to be Ralph Bakshi, and that’s really seems like the most likely explanation for the 1977 animated cult classic Wizards, which attempted – successfully in places, it has to be said – to inject earthy (and earthly) elements into the fantasy genre. The movie gets a lot of help from its score, which combines ’70s synths, a funk/jazz/rock sensibility very much of its era, and the kind of instrumentation one might expect of this genre. Andrew Belling’s music for Wizard is the same kind of fearless blending of genres that the movie itself is, fittingly.

If you’re in a mood for something not a million miles removed from a funky ’70s jam, you can’t go wrong with tracks like “War Against Peace / Weehawk Disturbs The Peace / The Bubble Bursts” and “Battle & Peewhittle’s Death” – though the track titles read as very soundtrackish, they’re very listenable slices of funk/rock if you’re up for this particular vintage of those particular styles. (One listener’s dated sounds are another’s comfort food. There’s nothing wrong with a good old ’70s jam-out.)

And yet tracks like “Snow Drift / Snow Time / Assassins In The Snow” and “Moving Out” give you the more traditional vibe you’d expect from an adventure film (in synthesized form, mind you, but almost always mixed in with some live players, particularly on woodwinds, timpani, brass, and percussion. Some tracks straddle the fence between the two styles, transitioning from traditional to more funk/rock oriented in the blink of an eye. Much like the movie, the music keeps you on your toes, even if it’s purely a listening experience. Interestingly, Belling allows his small ensemble to sound sparse to great effect in “The Elves Are Coming”.

Occasionally the electronic elements of the music get a bit weird with it, as in the final portion of “Now Begins Our Final Battle / Avatar Equestrian / On The Road To Scortch”; bit of “Fairy Attack” almost sound a bit Radiophonic Workshop-esque. As dated as it may sound now, the Wizards score was actually seriously ahead of its time. The album is opened and closed with two different edits of “Time Will Tell”, both with vocals by Susan Anton, but also stylistically similar to the rest of the score.

The sad news is: Wizards is long out of print. Given a relatively small print run of only 2,000 copies over a decade ago, and La-La Land – which is normally very good about keeping the original pages for its extinct titles archived in an out-of-print section – has scrubbed any mention of it from their site, and there is no digital edition. It’s like the soundtrack is as much of a fever dream as the movie itself was. A pity it’s now hard to get hold of, because it’s a very effective case study in combining traditional and non-traditional instrumentation and styles, from an era where it truly was a revolutionary experiment. This might just be one of those cases where the score outclasses its film.

1. Time Will Tell (Full Version) featuring Susan Anton (2:11)
2. The Story Begins / Scortch 3000 Years Later / Fairy Hookers / Peace Goes Forth / Peace In The Valley Of Montagar (7:03)
3. War Against Peace / Weehawk Disturbs The Peace / The Bubble Bursts (2:45)
4. Jukebox Junky Blues (1:26)
5. Blackwolf Finds The Record / War & Frog / We Can’t Lose (1:37)
6. Moving Out (1:54)
7. Battle & Peewhittle’s Death (2:05)
8. Now Begins Our Final Battle / Avatar Equestrian / On The Road To Scortch (1:27)
9. Fairy Attack (1:43)
10. Fairy Drums / Jungle Drums / Gargoyle Once A Day (1:42)
11. Snow Drift / Snow Time / Assassins In The Snow (2:22)
12. Tanks Again & Betrayal / Peace Isn’t, Elinore Doesn’t (1:20)
13. To All Our Ships / Larry Gets Weehawk (0:52)
14. The Elves Are Coming (1:30)
15. Gathering Of The Heavies / The Charge Of The Heavy Brigade / The Battle Picks Up Tempo / The Punchup / The Elves Lose (6:36)
16. Weehawk Finds Elinore / Elinore’s OK / Blackwolf Bites It / Final History / Bye (3:29)
17. Time Will Tell (Film Version) featuring Susan Anton (2:00)

Released by: La-La Land Records
Release date: October 23, 2012
Total running time: 42:36

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny – music by John Williams

First things first: I’m listening to this soundtrack without having seen the movie; the track list might spoil something for you, but I won’t. John Williams is still one of those “get the soundtrack sight unseen/unheard” composers for me, and to even be listening to this is a surprise. Wasn’t he announcing his retirement from film scoring not that long ago? What happened? Did Mr. Burns (or Steven Spielberg) tap the “don’t forget, you’re here forever” sign on the wall?

But if the result is Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, I can make peace with Williams’ quick punch-of-the-undo-button on his retirement announcement. Like I said, I have no idea what to expect from the movie itself; reviews have been…colorfully mixed…at best. And honestly, I’m not sure how high my personal bar is set after Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. I’m not sure I’ve even set up a bar, I just want a more dignified exit for Indy than what Han Solo got. In some respects, Williams’ music for The Dial Of Destiny does hearken back to The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi – there are major action setpieces that rank among Williams’ Best, but for the most part, we’re getting a somewhat more contemplative take on the ongoing adventures.

The lengthy prologue is a good reminder that Williams’ superpowers extend to building tension and dread, not just big action scenes. It’s followed by “Helena’s Theme”, which is also reprised at the end of the album (and as a standalone single) with solo violin by Anne-Sophie Mutter; this initial appearance is a more widescreen orchestral version highlighting thematic material that turns up later in the score, and it’s a typically gorgeous Williams theme. “Germany 1944” is the first major action piece on the album, and the first time that Indy’s theme shows up on the album as well, and – as intended – it’s a rewind to Indy’s glory days in the ’80s. Never mind the de-aging CGI, Williams is doing the heavy lifting here.

“To Morocco” is a musical travelogue that leans heavily on “Helena’s Theme”, while “Voller Returns” builds more tension. “Auction at Hotel L’Atlantique” has some moments of whimsy leading up to action, providing a good segue into the next big action piece, “Tuk Tuk in Tangiers”. “To Athens” spins the “Helena’s Theme” motif into something more adventurous, and joins it with Indy’s theme. “Perils Of The Deep” is more contemplative and slightly menacing; “Water Ballet” picks up that menace and runs with it, with some intriguing sounds that are clearly the movie’s big “horror” scene. “Polybius Cipher” and “The Grafikos” pour on the mystery and the swashbuckling, both with Indy’s theme and suggestions of Helena’s theme. “Archimedes’ Tomb” continues the mystery, while “The Airport” and “Battle Of Syracuse” are more action oriented.

It all comes together in “Centuries Join Hands” and “New York 1969”, the latter of which closes things out with the fullest statement of Indy’s theme to be found on the album. (It’s a given that there’s probably quite a bit more music in the movie than we’re getting here, a quandary to be solved by an adventurous soundtrack specialty label at some point in the future, hopefully before the day someone decides that CD reissues belong in a museum.)

Even if the movie isn’t the return to form that everyone is, deep down, hoping it is, John Williams’ score is the real marvel of time travel going on with this movie. It’s a period piece within a period piece: a rewind to his 1980s-style musical accompaniment for characters of an even-more-bygone era. Whether or not the movie successfully delivers that, the soundtrack doesn’t let up, and doesn’t let the listener down. Any five-minute stretch of this score does more to proclaim that Indiana Jones is back – and does more to make you believe it – than the best trailer ever could. And that’s probably why no one’s letting John Williams retire.

1. Prologue to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (06:01)
2. Helena’s Theme (03:30)
3. Germany, 1944 (04:43)
4. To Morocco (03:21)
5. Voller Returns (03:06)
6. Auction at Hotel L’Atlantique (02:59)
7. Tuk Tuk in Tangiers (03:36)
8. To Athens (02:18)
9. Perils of the Deep (02:31)
10. Water Ballet (04:53)
11. Polybius Cipher (02:39)
12. The Grafikos (04:40)
13. Archimedes’ Tomb (03:02)
14. The Airport (04:46)
15. Battle of Syracuse (02:51)
16. Centuries Join Hands (03:02)
17. New York, 1969 (04:17)
18. Helena’s Theme (For Violin and Orchestra) (04:59)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: June 28, 2023
Total running time: 1:07:06

Doctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils – music by Segun Akinola

When the modern revival of Doctor Who brought back the Silurians in 2010, their cousins, the raspy-voiced Sea Devils, were nowhere to be found. Like the Silurians, they were creations of the Jon Pertwee era and were last seen in the all-star indigenous-sentient-repitle team-up Warriors Of The Deep in 1984, joining forces against Peter Davison’s Doctor. But while the Silurians got a 21st century makeover, their cousins, the Sea Devils, remained in the show’s past – until they resurfaced, literally, in one of 2022’s run of special episodes. Interestingly, while the Silurians emerged with a very different look from their ’70s/’80s incarnations, the Sea Devils returned looking much the same as before, with obvious improvements in how their aquatic lizard look was achieved.

And they got a marvelous soundtrack too. The story’s setting deals with piracy in Chinese waters in the early 19th century. Segun Akinola, who wowed with his sensitive musical treatment of The Demons Of Punjab in Jodie Whittaker’s first season as the Doctor, deploys a similar musical strategy here: call in real live players for real live ethnic instruments, and save the synths for the purely synthetic elements of the story. The result is, again, a very nice mix with authenticity where it counts the most. The main thematic material for the episode reveals itself fairly quickly, and is repeated and riffed upon throughout, with a percolating synth bassline persisting in many of the tracks, its role in the tension depending on its prominence in the mix rather than in any changes in key or tempo; the pace really doesn’t quicken appreciably until “This Is Gonna Be Tricky”.

Things take a more sensitive turn halfway through “A Good Legend” with the scene that either launched a thousand gleeful fanfics or launched a thousand middle-aged male fan tantrums, as the Doctor and Yaz skip some rocks across the water and discuss whether there’s any “there” there. It’s a nicely understated closer for the show, though I’m still undecided on whether the Doctor somehow being aware of an impending regeneration (something that started with Tom Baker’s exit) becoming a recurring trope of the show (used in the last run of specials for both David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker). Either way, the music for the scene is easily the standout highlight of this soundtrack.

1. You Have No Idea What You’re Doing (02:48)
2. Catching A Whopper (03:56)
3. Pirate Queen (07:33)
4. Who Wants To Be Next (05:07)
5. Celestial Navigation (04:00)
6. Going Up (07:26)
7. Say Hello To My Crew (05:18)
8. This Is Gonna Be Tricky (04:49)
9. A Good Legend (06:07)

Released by: Silva Screen Records
Release date: December 9, 2022
Total running time: 46:50

Tron: Identity – music by Dan le Sac

I’ve never really understood Disney’s attitude toward Tron as a potential franchise. It seemed to loom large in the studio’s future plans until they purchased Lucasfilm, and then it’s like “Tron? What’s a Tron?” Every so often they actually draw some attention to it – hey, one hears there’s a new ride that’s cool – and then something like this pops up. The soundtrack to a new Tron game? What new Tron game? I’m a fan, I’d normally be pre-sold on this. Why didn’t I know about this?

But hey, I get it, Disney’s a huge corporation with a lot of concerns, such as failing themed hotel attractions and fending off the performative harassment of governors who want to be (but under not circumstances should ever be) presidents. They can’t market everything equally. So there’s a new Tron game that almost nobody knew was coming. How’s the music?

Dan le Sac has a background in remixing and hip hop, but has also started to plant his flag in some soundtrack work, including such games as Subsurface Circular and Quarantine Circular, whose developer is also behind Tron: Identity – aha, mystery solved! What’s interesting about this album is that, from the standpoint of 2023, the sound Wendy Carlos established for Tron is over 40 uears behind us in the rear-view mirror, but to help you feel even older, Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack is nearly a decade and a half behind us as well. Is anyone scoring a new Tron project under any obligation to sound like…well…either of them?

It took me a few listens to arrive at an answer, because at first I thought, “well, there’s some vaguely Daft Punk-esque stuff in there, but not even much of that.” The soundtrack from the animated series Tron Uprising noted that its composer (Daft Punk collaborator Joseph Trapanese, who did some significant-but-only-quietly-credited heavy lifting on the Legacy score) was using synth patches designed by Daft Punk. This made sense, since Uprising was telling a story that happens between Tron and Tron Legacy. But where you see credit, you’re probably also seeing someone get paid extra, so that probably answers why nothing since Uprising has gone out of its way to hew to the Daft Punk sound.

And Identity’s score doesn’t do that either. Tracks like “Antiques”, “First Impressions”, and “A Really Big Door” give the strong impression that this game’s music is trying to meet both of the franchise’s films in the middle, where the music inhabits an interesting middle ground with electronics deployed in a manner that reminds you a little of Tron Legacy, but also choral pads that hearken all the way back to the almost-religious sound Wendy Carlos used in key scenes of the original film, when the score was hammering home the “programs regard the users as gods, but they are neither gods nor worthy of that worship” metaphor that the script didn’t dare put into words in 1982. It’s an interesting mix. Tracks such as “Upcycled”, “Last Steps”, “Breakout”, and “Back On The Grid” bring in beats that have more of a connection to the composer’s previous work than they do to anything we’ve heard in a Tron property before. And some tracks – looking at you, “Bloom Effect” – find a mesmerizing middle ground between the two styles.

But when Disney waits so long to do anything with a franchise that clearly has significant fan interest and public recognition, the passage of time makes it a nearly ridiculous exercise for anyone to claim that the “sound of Tron” is thing thing, but definitely isn’t that other thing. The music of each fleeting entry in the franchise has had an outsized influence on defining its universe. Tron can be Carlos, Daft Punk, and trap beats. It doesn’t harm its fictional universe. That makes this soundtrack an interesting listen.

Now to find out what this game’s actually about. Really good job, Disney Marketing Department, really good job. But I know y’all are busy right now.

1. Opening Up (01:41)
2. Antiques (03:43)
3. Upcycled (01:46)
4. First Impression (03:27)
5. Last Steps (02:06)
6. Back On The Grid (02:09)
7. A Really Big Door (04:01)
8. Breakout (02:07)
9. Bloom Effect (03:07)
10. Imposition (04:40)
11. Getting Comfortable (01:52)
12. Consequences (End Credits) (02:16)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: April 11, 2023
Total running time: 32:50

Star Wars: Visions Volume 2: Sith – music by Dan Levy

For the second year running, Disney Plus celebrated Star Wars Day (i.e. May the Fourth be with you) by dropping a new batch of the highly stylized Star Wars: Visions shorts. The Visions mission statement is pretty simple: hand esteemed animators and animation studios a few minutes in the Star Wars universe, with no obligations to be canonical, or even necessarily serious. Their only obligation is to have some fun with the universe and the lore, in their own unique visual style. The inaugural 2022 batch consisted of shorts all done by respected anime studios; the slots in the 2023 batch (I hesitate to call it a season) were given to studios further afield, not just those in the world of anime.

Clocking in at just under 15 minutes, Sith, written and directed by Rodrigo Blaas, who served as the supervising director of Trollhunters: Tales Of Arcadia, was among the most visually arresting of the 2023 shorts. The entire story is animated in a very stylized, painterly style, befitting the main character – a recovering/escaped former Sith apprentice – who has gone into hiding to lose herself in her art. The score by Dan Levy (a French-born composer who seems to like the short-form animation format; he also die an episode of Netflix’s Love Death + Robots) drenches nearly the entire running time of the short, which is not unusual for the Visions shorts. With so little time, many of the animators and filmmakers contributing Visions shorts make the decision to let the score and the sound effects mix do the talking rather than slowing down too much for mere dialogue.

Levy’s score starts strong – its deceptively quiet opening is a bit more interesting than the inevitable busy chase and fight scenes (because you can’t just quit being a Sith apprentice without some blowback from your former boss). The action music has more in common with The Matrix than with anything in the Star Wars universe, while managing to be less interesting than either of the two. It’s in the quieter, more contemplative moments that this score distinguishes itself as a standalone listening experience; the chase music is best when it’s accompanied by the actual chase.

1. Blank Canvas (2:59)
2. Sith Apprentice (2:43)
3. The Chase (1:24)
4. Light And Dark (2:57)
5. Destiny (2:11)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: May 5, 2023
Total running time: 12:14

Let It Smeg: The Music From Red Dwarf X – music by Howard Goodall

Hey, quick question: Red Dwarf’s a science fiction show with a loyal cult following, right?

I ask that because it sure as hell isn’t consistently merchandised like one. Sure, there have been novelizationss and DVDs, and for the blink of an eye around the turn of the century, UK miniature model manufacturer Corgi had a couple of die-cast spaceships in the shops, namely the small rouge one itself and the indestructible Starbug. There have been fleeting sightings of T-shirts whose provenance runs the gamut from “officially licensed” to “ha! what’s a license?” with characters and catchphrases. I think an official magazine and a paper-and-dice role playing game were in print for about five minutes each. Granted, Red Dwarf is not really an all-audiences show; the little die-cast spaceships were probably intended for adult collectors from the start, and unless Super7 or Wandering Planet Toys get the action figure license, that’s a product category that’s unlikely to happen, because again, it’s not being sold to kids.

Second question: grown-ups like soundtracks from their favorite genre franchises, don’t they? Arguably, 25% of this entire web site exists because of that notion. So it’s surprising that it took 28 years for official Red Dwarf soundtrack releases to arrive, and it’s surprising that, seven years later, even as digital releases go, they’re still shockingly obscure. Now, to be sure, Howard Goodall has other projects aplenty on his plate; the man’s a respected music scholar with lectures and serious texts on the subject of music to his name. He’s renowned for also scoring the likes of the Black Adder series (and nearly everything else Rowan Atkinson has done, from Mr. Bean to the Johnny English movies), The Vicar of Dibley, and many other projects. Red Dwarf is but one feature on his career landscape, but like Mr. Bean himself, it’s a persistent one.

And there’s an elephant in the room as well: the DVD releases of the eight original BBC-produced seasons of Red Dwarf had sub-menus you could visit and listen to every tiny music cue Howard ever recorded for the show. And yes, enterprising fans figured out how to extract those from the DVD audio tracks and effectively made their own soundtrack albums for the show…none of which paid the composer (or indeed the owners of Red Dwarf as an IP) a single cent. The score tracks on the DVDs were a neat feature for those of us who had longed to hear the music in isolation, but as well-meaning as their inclusion was, they proved that there’s a problem if demand isn’t met with product.

The neat thing about the quartet of albums Goodall released digitally in 2016 is that they’re not the same as the DVD’s deluge of often-near-identical tracks, and they can be heard at better-than-DVD-bonus-audio-track quality. (One suspects that Goodall may have even remastered them just a little bit to sound better than they originally did.) These releases are curated, edited together with some regard for musical flow, and they’re probably the composer’s personal favorites; he has also included some bits and pieces that never made it to broadcast (and therefore probably aren’t on the DVDs). The neat thing about this particular release is that it’s kind of a musical ouroboros (yes, I went there), containing both the music from the show’s better-than-we-had-any-right-to-expect return to producing full seasons of shows in 2012, and the music from the first three seasons, spanning the late 1980s launch of the show. You can’t do much better than that for an exercise in contrasts. The Red Dwarf X music is created with modern tools and samples, and Goodall is one of those composers who makes a virtue of the fact that he has next to no music budget. You couldn’t tell from listening, because Goodall is also a master of judiciously choosing samples and mixing them as if they’re the real thing.

The late ’80s material, on the other hand, is chintzy, cheesy, and very, very late ’80s – and yet it’s also beloved if you’re a longtime fan of the show. And again, it’s down to Goodall’s vast skill in arranging and putting the music together: the show’s theme tune, at its most basic, is a brilliant musical construction, flexible enough to start out as a foreboding, echoing lone trumpet in the void and end up as a jaunty end credit song with lyrics, with stops at “glam disco-going-on-new-wave groove”, “hard rock guitar jam”, “almost a church mass”, “waltz”, and “electro/synth-pop”, all in the space of twelve minutes without feeling forced at any point along the way.

We finally have official Red Dwarf soundtracks, you smegheads. Yes, they’re a bit late. But they’re eminently listenable, and they’re long-overdue on the “paying the composer what he’s due” side of the equation that any official soundtrack release should live up to. The cover artwork is a bit… Microsoft Word?… but that’s not the part you’re listening to. Long awaited, eagerly anticipated, and highly recommended for any Red Dwarf fans out there.

1. Let It Smeg: Red Dwarf X: The Underscore (14:19)
2. Red Dwarf Antique Extras (12:00)

Released by: Howard Goodall
Release date: November 4, 2016
Total running time: 26:19

The Wonders Of The Universe: Music From The Big Finish Space: 1999 Audio Dramas

I’m going to contend that if you have a soundtrack with a track title that is both a plot point of its story, and the title of an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, you know you’re in for a good time. The great news is that there’s a lot more to The Wonders Of The Universe than “Space Madness”. In 2019, Big Finish Productions – purveyors of many fine audio dramas that have been reviewed extensively in theLogBook episode guides – announced that, as part of their ongoing collaboration with Anderson Productions, they would be rebooting legendary ’70s sci-fi drama Space: 1999 as a series of audio dramas, splitting the difference between adapting original TV episodes and brand new stories. This is top-secret Moonbase Alpha encrypted code for “here’s unfettered access to Earl’s wallet”. Naturally, there have been critics of any project that would dare to recast the roles once played by Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Barry Morse, and company, but overall the Space: 1999 audio dramas have been well-produced and well-written, offering connecting tissue that shows the writers have been paying careful attention to the original TV series’ weak spots and shoring those up narratively. And, of course, being Big Finish Productions, they’ve commissioned original scores for each one.

That’s where Kraemer, a veteran of such movies as Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation and Jack Reacher and countless other scoring assignments, comes in. Not just a talented composer, Joe is, deep down, a fan like the rest of us. That gets laid bare in the liner notes, not just where he talks about being a fan of Barry Gray’s original TV scores, but approaching the audio drama scores as if they’re at the same remove from Gray’s work that 1970s animated Star Trek had to be from the live action Star Trek’s scores. When someone makes a reference like that, it’s safe to start chanting “one of us! one of us!” in the background. Without directly, note-for-note quoting Gray’s season one theme, Kraemer manages to still do a stylistic homage to Gray’s despair-laden season one scores. The distinctive sound of Space: 1999’s first year on TV is echoed especially well in the aforementioned “Space Madness”, the first half of “Intentions Revealed”, and “A Chilling Discovery”. There are also some stylistic homages (some of them pretty in-your-face) to John Williams in tracks like “Time Is Running Out” and especially “Eagle One”. But Gray’s music remains the touchstone for most of what’s on this album. (Derek Wadsworth’s funky, near-disco stylings from Space: 1999’s season TV season are not referenced in the selections heard here, other than an orchestral-style rendition of his season two end credits.)

All of this is accomplished with synths and samples that do a reasonable job of mimicking the sound of a large orchestral ensemble, which is something that simply isn’t within the budgetary reach of Big Finish. In some ways, this means there’s actually a “bigger” sound than even the original TV series could have gone for, though the trade-off is that the orchestra is clearly a synthetic one, especially when you’re hearing it away from the dense mix of sound effects and dialogue that normally competes with the music in the mix. The unique demands of an audio drama mean that this music is seldom foregrounded the way it might be on TV, so if an orchestra of sampled instruments strikes you as a shortcoming, keep in mind that in its original (and, it must be said, intended) context, the music is jostling elbows with a dense, world-building layer of sound design. Kraemer’s original themes start to jump out after just a couple of listens, and that’s indicative of the approach of Space: 1999 a la Big Finish overall: it’s the story we already know, but now with more connecting tissue that reinforces the story as an ongoing saga and something less randomly episodic. I recommend both the soundtrack and the audio productions for which it was created.

1. Theme From Space: 1999 (Season One) (2:30)
2. Stellar Intrigue (2:26)
3. Space Madness (1:56)
4. Mysteries In The Dark (2:21)
5. Escaping Threats (4:09)
6. Scheming and Plotting (2:41)
7. Time Is Running Out (2:31)
8. The Coldness Of Space (2:18)
9. Moonbase Mystery (2:10)
10. Aboard Eagle One (3:30)
11. Koenig Investigates (3:03)
12. Intentions Revealed (4:19)
13. Flight Into Peril (2:13)
14. The Wonders Of The Universe (2:32)
15. A Chilling Discovery (2:49)
16. A Fitting End (0:55)
17. Theme From Space: 1999 (Season Two) (1:32)

Released by: BSX Records
Release date: May 11, 2023
Total running time: 43:54

Obi-Wan Kenobi – music by Natalie Holt, William Ross, and John Williams

Who scored this? The credits on the cover seem to make that an interesting question, as does the timeline of the public reveal that John Williams – who, we had already been told, was retiring from scoring Star Wars and from scoring films altogether – was contributing a new theme for Obi-Wan himself. Most of what is heard in the show and on this release is by Natalie Holt, who had already made a splash on another Disney Plus streaming series, Marvel’s Loki. But top billing goes to John Williams for the Obi-Wan theme, and the cover then tells us that theme has been adapted by William Ross. Anywhere Williams’ wistful new theme for the aging Jedi Knight appears in the show itself, it’s in a cue credited to Ross. One begins to suspect that Williams’ involvement (and therefore Ross’ involvement as well) happened at a very late stage, replacing work that had already been done by Natalie Holt. (A bit of research – and a bit of reading between the lines of all the industry-speak – reveals that this is precisely what happened. It’d be neat to hear Holt’s original theme and the replaced score cues to hear what the show would’ve sounded like before the guys dropped in to do a little of the work and claim a lot of the credit.)

Williams’ theme is nice, I will give it that. It does fit Obi-Wan where we find him in this movie – noble, but subdued. In the end credit rendition, there’s a big orchestral build-up that seems a little out of place, but otherwise a nice theme, and a bit more distinctive than the theme Williams penned for inclusion in John Powell’s Solo score (of which more another time). Its first major appearance as a piece of the score arrives in “Thr Journey Begins”; Ross’ adaptations of the Williams theme takes up five more tracks in the soundtrack outside of the opening titles and end credit theme.

The first score cue, “Order 66”, lurches from pastoral to relentless action on a dime for the prologue in which we see the moment that the Emperor’s order to rid the universe of the Jedi affects a class of young padawans. That same propulsive action then shifts down a gear or two into lurking menace as the show jumps to the present day for “Inquisitors’ Hunt”. Tracks like “Young Leia”, “Days of Alderaan” and “Bail and Leia” have a different feel entirely as, for the first time since a fleeting glimpse in the epilogue of Star Wars Episode III, we get to see Alderaan as a utopian world that somehow hung onto its idealistic identity well into the reign of the Empire. The tone darkens significant;y as Obi-Wan leaves the safe obscurity of Tatooine to begin his mission (“Daiyu”, “Cat And Mouse”). There’s an unexpected bit of electronic instrumentation in “Ready To Go” that almost sounds like something that escaped from the Tron Legacy soundtrack; it’s not unwelcome, but does stick out a bit in a score that’s doing its best to stay in Star Wars‘ traditionally orchestral wheelhouse.

Some more exotic flavors creep in as Obi-Wan’s quest takes him further afield (“Spice Den”, “Mapuzo”, “The Path”), and things again take a dark turn as master and apprentice once again find themselves in the other’s proximity (“Sensing Vader”, “Stormtrooper Patrol”, “Hangar Escape”, “Empire ARrival”), the latter of which introduces a strident march that screams “the Empire is here” without just quoting Williams’ “Imperial March”. Holt even sneaks a quotation of Williams’ series theme into “Dark Side Assault” – see, she didn’t need outside help with that, did she?

After Ross shows up to drench another major Kenobi/Vader confrontation with buckets of synthesized choir in “I Will Do What I Must”, Holt gives us a brief reprieve from the action music with the quieter “Sacrifice”, before resuming the chase and finally getting a hint of “The Imperial March” in (“No Further Use”). As is typical, the major action setpiece (“Overcoming The Past”) is handed off to Ross’ arrangement of Williams’ theme, elevated to a grand level as Obi-Wan finally finds his footing within the Force again, leaving Vader in a weakened state both physically and emotionally. Two more Holt cues (“Tatooine Desert Chase”, “Who You Become”) tie off the story of Reva, an Imperial Inquisitor obsessed with tracking down Obi-Wan, with Ross again getting the last word with “Saying Goodbye”, which quotes both Williams’ newly-minted Obi-Wan theme and the original trilogy’s theme for Leia.

It’s all fine music. Despite the number of cooks in the kitchen, it does all integrate better than one might expect. Some of you reading this are probably shouting at your screens something along the lines of “We’re privileged to be getting even one new piece of Star Wars music from John Williams!” And there may be something to that, but as solid as Holt’s work is throughout, why was it not good enough for nearly a quarter of the score, if the soundtrack’s track listing is any indication? It’s a little unsettling to think that while the casting of the Star Wars steaming shows is growing more diverse (though, as the unfortunate pushback against the amazing Moses Ingram demonstrated, not without difficulty), other elements of production very much present the appearance of keeping the glass ceiling in place with Imperial zeal.

1. Obi-Wan (4:06)
2. Order 66 (1:40)
3. Inquistors’ Hunt (3:09)
4. Young Leia (1:04)
5. Days of Alderaan (1:38)
6. The Journey Begins (2:57)
7. Bail and Leia (2:19)
8. Nari’s Shadow (1:14)
9. Ready to Go (2:26)
10. Daiyu (2:25)
11. Cat and Mouse (3:10)
12. Spice Den (1:10)
13. First Rescue (3:10)
14. Mapuzo (1:17)
15. The Path (1:35)
16. Sensing Vader (2:49)
17. Parallel Lines (2:12)
18. Some Things Can’t Be Forgotten (4:47)
19. Stormtrooper Patrol (2:34)
20. Hangar Escape (2:33)
21. Hold Hands (1:39)
22. Empire Arrival (2:04)
23. Dark Side Assault (2:37)
24. I Will Do What I Must (2:48)
25. Sacrifice (1:41)
26. No Further Use (3:39)
27. Overcoming the Past (4:28)
28. Tatooine Desert Chase (2:19)
29. Who You Become (3:36)
30. Saying Goodbye (5:26)
31. End Credit (4:02)

Released by: Disney Music
Release date: June 27, 2022
Total running time: 82:34

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 1 – music by Nami Melumad

It seems like every new Star Trek series that comes along in the streaming age has its own slightly different sound. All of them stay in the orchestral film music wheelhouse, but do something a little bit different within that wheelhouse: Discovery started out more contemplative and piano-heavy, Lower Decks plays it very straightforward so its music isn’t part of its jokes, Picard eventually settled into Jerry Goldsmith jukebox mode, and Prodigy – probably the best of the bunch and yet simultaneously the most overlooked because it hails from Nickelodeon, which seems to be a signal to some adult viewers to steer clear of it – is big, bombastic, larger than life, and yet fun when it needs to be. Prodigy composer Nami Melumad, a Michael Giacchino protege who had previously scored one of the shorts from the now-apparently-extinct Short Treks series, quickly gained notice for her work on Star Trek’s most recent animated incarnation, and was tapped to provide music for the eagerly awaited Strange New Worlds.

Strange New Worlds is a series that was, for all intents and purposes, created by fan demand to see more of the pre-Kirk-era troika of Captain Pike, Number One, and a younger Spock, established in Star Trek’s original 1964 pilot The Cage and revived (and recast) in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. Set aboard the Enterprise years prior to Kirk’s command, but well after the events of The Cage, the series leans into its retro construction booth figurative (mostly-unconnected adventures to different worlds every week) and literal (its greatest gift to the younger members of the audience may be introducing them to mid-century modern furnishings). It’s a return to Star Trek’s roots – a message-of-the-week space opera, a modern formulation of the original series without the baked-in issues of the original series. It also has a bit of a retro sound, at least in the opening credits – there are hints and near-quotes of the Alexander Courage theme, and when the full quotation of that theme finally happens, it sounds like a theremin – a bit of a stylistic wink to the audience that, if the Star Trek was all started with was from the sixties, this is from even before then. The theme is by Jeff Russo, who previously created the opening themes for Discovery and Picard.

But the scores accounting for most of the album’s (and show’s) runtime are by Nami Melumad, and they boldly get down to business. The pilot episode (which was unafraid to very clearly state the series’ entire mission statement unambiguously) is represented by four tracks, three of which accompany the big setpieces of the episode: “Everyone Wants A Piece Of The Pike” accompanies Captain Pike’s retreat into a wilderness cabin, while “Eyes On The Enterprise” sets the backdrop for Pike’s return to his ship, and “Home Is Where The Helm Is” covers the aftermath of Pike revealing the Federation’s existence to a planet on the all-too-familiar brink of world war. (“Put A T’Pring On It” is the quietest of the four pilot tracks, as Spock has to decide between a call to duty and a call to somewhat more domestic duties.)

Generally speaking, the big musical setpieces of each episode of the season are represented here, with some episodes getting more coverage than others (I was surprised to see only one track for the fanciful late-season episode The Elysian Kingdom.) The album’s musical focus, perhaps quite rightly, is on the music from the cluster of episodes that represented a mid-season series of storytelling slam dunks: three tracks each from Memento Mori and Spock Amok, two from Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, and four from the Orion pirate romp The Serene Squall. Yes, Spock Amok‘s deceptively low-key riff on Gerald Fried’s immortal Amok time fight theme is here (“Are You A Vulcan Or A Vulcan’t?”); somewhat surprisingly, the season finale seems underrepresented by comparison, so we don’t get that episode’s take on Fred Steiner’s “Romulan Theme” from Balance Of Terror, the original series episode whose story A Quality Of Mercy spents much of its runtime riffing and remixing.

As was the case with her work on Prodigy, Melumad’s superpower is in her ability not just to kick butt with major action setpieces, but to make each episode’s more introspective moments memorable as well. Tracks like “Comet Away With Me” let her show off some less-percussive, non-action-oriented fireworks marking inner turmoil for the show’s characters. The solitary track from The Elysian Kingdom, “You’re My Mercury Stone”, is another track like that, and it’s simply gorgeous. Overall, the season one soundtrack hits a nice balance of music from action scenes and music from revelatory character moments as well. I look forward to hearing more of Nami Melumad’s work on both this series and Star Trek: Prodigy in the future. I don’t think it’s much a stretch to say that her work is the current sound of Star Trek at its best.

1. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Main Title Theme) by Jeff Russo (01:52)
2. Everyone Wants a Piece of the Pike (03:51)
3. Put a T’Pring On It (02:56)
4. Eyes on the Enterprise (04:42)
5. Home is Where the Helm Is (04:17)
6. Space Cadet (01:01)
7. Comet Away With Me (02:36)
8. Romancing the Comet (03:23)
9. M’hanit and Greet (07:01)
10. Since I First Saw the Stars (03:55)
11. A Holding Pattern (04:44)
12. Gorn With the Wind (05:29)
13. The Pike Maneuver (02:03)
14. Gorn But Not Forgotten (03:25)
15. Are You a Vulcan or a Vulcan’t? (03:00)
16. Spock Too Soon (02:03)
17. Chris Crossed (03:44)
18. Looking For Ascension in All the Wrong Places (03:04)
19. Ascent-ial Questions (02:01)
20. T’Pring It On (01:43)
21. Pirates in the Sky (02:55)
22. Will You Be My Vulcantine? (02:45)
23. Won’t You Be My Pirate? (03:38)
24. You’re My Mercury Stone (02:05)
25. Don’t Leave in Uhurry (02:55)
26. When the Hemmer Falls (04:09)
27. No One’s Ever Neutral About Spaghetti (02:54)
28. Throw Plasma From the Train (05:29)
29. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (End Credits) by Jeff Russo (00:58)

Released by: Lakeshore Records
Release date: April 28, 2023
Total running time: 94:23

Todd Rundgren – Space Force

A kind of follow-up to 2017’s White Knight album, Space Force is an entire album of collaborations between Todd Rundgren and, one suspects, whoever picked up the phone and said “yes”. This includes some serious talent – The Roots, Adrian Belew, Thomas Dolby, Steve Vai, Neil Finn, to name just a few – and Rundgren’s attention to production detail lives up to its legendary reputation with each track. Musically speaking, this is the best stuff we’ve gotten out of Rundgren in years. Each song is a world unto itself, as the album hits as many genres and styles as possible, from “STFU”‘s in-your-face blues-rock stomp to the highlight of the album, “Espionage”, a delightfully atmospheric rap-pop crossover featuring Narcy. On some songs, Rundgren gracefully shares the limelight – I mean, who doesn’t want to harmonize with Neil Finn? – and on others, he’s very much at the forefront. The music resulting from this wildly diverse series of collaborations is absolutely fantastic.

If there’s a weak point to Space Force, it’s in the lyrics department. Some of them are sublimely heartfelt, such as the lead track. But Rundgren’s got a tendency to embrace satirical material and that side of him is much more hit-or-miss. “Down With The Ship” and “STFU” are just goofy; “Godiva Girl” is well one its way to being a blue-eyed soul number for the ages until, on its way to the exit, lyrics like “you gave me love diabetes” and “I got your sweet caramel stuck up in my grill” start creeping in. Comparing the subject of the song to candy is one thing, but then he’s got to get goofy on the off-ramp to the fade-out. Dude, you had it! You’d nailed it! It was a great song! And then…that. (Then the next track is “Your Fandango”, which goes off the deep end.) The hell of it is, there are some amazing lyrics on here too – I’m looking at you, “Puzzle” and “Someday” – and every once in a while the satirical material manages to stick the landing, such as “I’m Leaving” and its skewering of men who expect women to wait on them hand-and-foot. And then there’s the stuff in the middle, like “I’m Not Your Dog”, that I can’t even decide if it works or not. Rundgren’s always had that side to him; it’s just frustrating to have an album that has a winning slate of songs, some of which have lyrics that don’t seem to do the rest of the song justice.

Not every song has to be a Serious Statement about something in particular, that’s not my beef. It’s just that… you get the Roots and Sparks and Thomas Dolby to come sit in on the sessions for your new record, at least have some meat ready for them to chew on, right? The good news is that, Rundgren being Rundgren, every song is at least performed well and produced gloriously, and you can sense Rundgren jumping gleefully from genre to genre with each song depending on who he’s lined up to guest on that track. Even with its nonsensical lyrics, “I’m Not Your Dog” is delivered with so much funky swagger that maybe the words don’t matter. It’s a fun listen from beginning to end, if just a little bit frustrating. I’m all for artists not taking themselves too seriously; my complaint here is really a matter of balance, and everyone else’s mileage may vary. I give this one four stars for some great music, but some of the lyrics here are…lamentable. An occasional “Lockjaw” or a “Bang The Drum All Day” here and there is a fun diversion, but half an album of that?

1. Puzzle with Adrian Belew (04:48)
2. Down With The Ship with Rivers Cuomo (02:56)
3. Artist In Residence with Neil Finn (03:13)
4. Godiva Girl with The Roots (04:21)
5. Your Fandango with Sparks (04:24)
6. Someday with Davey Lane (03:00)
7. I’m Not Your Dog with Thomas Dolby (05:49)
8. Espionage with Narcy (05:02)
9. STFU with Rick Nielsen (03:17)
10. Head in the Ocean with Alfie Templeman (03:30)
11. I’m Leaving with The Lemon Twigs (02:57)
12. Eco Warrior Goddess with Steve Vai (05:32)

Released by: Cleopatra Records
Release date: October 14, 2022
Total running time: 48:45