Buy it... if you have an open mind about hearing techno and electronic music rip relentlessly over the recording of a moderately sized orchestra that is itself exploring avant garde avenues.

Avoid it... if you prefer your horror scores to follow classic, orchestral lines or, more importantly, if you expect to hear a coherent album presentation of the music.

Kamen

Event Horizon: (Michael Kamen/Orbital) One of the scarier, somewhat trashy horror and science fiction flicks of the late 1990's, Event Horizon is a loose adaptation of William Castle's 1960 film Thirteen Ghosts (which was badly remade for the screen in 2001). The concept of inheriting a house with several brutal ghosts and a machine meant to open the gates of Hell is translated into the script for Event Horizon, in which a starship of that name is built to fold space (and, as in Dune, travel great distances instantly) but instead opens the gates to Hell and kills its own crew. When a rescue ship, "Lewis and Clark," goes to investigate the adrift "Event Horizon" in normal space, the vessel and its crew is attacked by both the ghosts of the previous crew and the ship itself, which is slowly pulling itself back through the gates of Hell now that it has new human souls on board. Thus, the storyline is nothing new, although the execution of the film is beautifully rendered, with the ring-spinning mechanism at the heart of the ship offering extremely disturbing visuals and joined by considerable images of explosions in space and lightning storms and such. The music for the film would take the haunted house horror formula and give it an Aliens personality for the outer space setting. Die Hard composer Michael Kamen was better known for his Earth-bound drama and action scores at the time, however he was also revered as one of the few composers who made a successful transition from pop music into classical, orchestral film scores. Kamen did not journey into the Event Horizon project alone; the techno-electronica group Orbital would provide a modern edge for the more explosive terror sequences in the film. Together, between Kamen's traditional orchestral score for the scope of the setting and Orbital's uneasy, slashing electronica for the warped twists of the script, the Event Horizon recording was an interesting idea. Unfortunately, while it services the film with marginal effectiveness, it doesn't work to any extent on album. It seems as though the Orbital enhancements to the recording are more pronounced on album, forcing the presentation of the music on that product into a losing battle between the two disparate styles of music.

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Separately, Kamen's orchestral music isn't spectacular, but the London Metropolitan Orchestra does offer a basic and somewhat predictable backdrop for a film of this genre that aspires for front-line attention. The only thematically developed cue is the remarkable "Turbulence" piece in the second suite on the album. An impressive orchestral rhythm maintains considerable, brassy excitement during that cue (and a chorus joins in harmony this one time), but the rest of the orchestra's recordings are held to a minimum of volume and exhibit practically no coherent organization. The players do handle all of the short bursts of brass necessary for moments of shock in the story. At times, Kamen seems to be inspired by Elliot Goldenthal's avant garde tendencies, even utilizing a similar brass-slurring effect at times. On the other hand, the drum and dance-like loops conjured by Orbital explode with in-four-face attitude that rocks the score at maximum volume for minutes at a time. These techno rhythms continue without interruption for lengthy sequences, setting a distinct mood but often ignoring the necessary synchronization points for the film. They begin with extreme brute force in the first half of the score, relentlessly shouting their arrival and drowning out the orchestral accompaniment. At times, electronic whisperings and other vocal distortions are heard during these rhythms, which is effective for the genre (though not aiding in the listening experience at all). At the end of the third suite, one of these rhythms has a seemingly lost, longing theme faintly heard in the background. The problem with all of this work is that a terrible job was done to combine the techno with the orchestral. Orbital's music is mixed too loudly to coincide with Kamen's conducted music, and Kamen's bland work is conversely written and recorded without enough power to sustain itself next to the techno elements. The distortion in both the two styles sets a proper mood, but it causes the score on album to lose cohesion to an even greater degree. Thus, the score is an overall failure of mixing and integration. The album presentation creates another major problem. With several cues mixed into four lengthy suites, it's difficult to hear any particular part of the score with ease. Most parts you remember from the film will not exist at all. Thus, the music for Event Horizon was a good idea in the conceptualization phase, but it was muddled in the process of combining the differing styles of music into one cohesive product. *   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Michael Kamen reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 14 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.22 (in 32,684 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.