Buy it... if you seek a decent collection of music and dialogue from the show, for this album is among the better companion products to accompany any sci-fi show of its era.

Avoid it... if you have never seen an episode of "Lexx," in which case this album may seem completely senseless in its tone and presentation.

Lexx: (Marty Simon) Along with "Farscape," one of the Sci-Fi Channel's greatest triumphs in the late 1990's was the explicitly sexual "Lexx," a series of 65 episodes over four years that were dominated by everything and anything perverse. To understand the series at any level, you really must watch an episode or two. It was clearly aimed at an adult audience that sought an imaginatively dark alternative to the feel-good stories that had dominated television science fiction over the previous ten years. The level of sexuality in its writing was so flagrant that the show has been referred to by the upset pious portion of society as softcore porn rather than a sci-fi affair. While that's an oversimplification of the series, such comments aren't entirely baseless. One could easily get the impression that the sci-fi venue for "Lexx" is only a casual backdrop for the constant orgasmic content of the episodic scripts. Not that any of this is wrong; in fact, television could use more such deviant creativity regardless of what George W. Bush and his media overlords have to say about it. The show's extension into its third and fourth seasons owed no small debt of gratitude to the consistently pornographic elements of its premise. Not only was its open sexuality responsible, on the whole, for the success of the show, but ultimately its music as well. For a series that included characters blatantly pulling at each other's loins, debating the intricacies of supreme sexual satisfaction, and arguing about the same old "who gets to mount whom," a new breed of sci-fi score was required. Composer Marty Simon was already a veteran of songwriting and arranging, and remained as the long-standing musical artist for the show. His music for the series, in coordination with the often bizarre and totally unexplainable happenings on screen, jumps around through several kinds of aural genres as needed for the haphazard scripts.

One aspect of the scores for "Lexx" that set them apart from their counterparts on other sci-fi shows is their outward sensuality. Because of the show's adult humor, Simon responded with electronic music that is more lyrical than others that attempted to navigate the same low budgets. He is a one-man crew for most of the endeavor, but a greater number of harmonic rhythms, including a diverse range of pop rhythms, keep the music on a consistently listenable level. There isn't the typical action music that you would hear in other shows of the same genre. Even though the giant insect ship Lexx (which is itself shaped in a dubious, curvaceous mold) blows up planets so that it can consume them, the music is more inclined to dwell upon the plentiful scenes of lust. Perhaps this was a necessary move based on the budgetary restrictions, though that never stopped series like "Babylon 5" and "Farscape" from varying the volume significantly for action scenes. The third season's title theme, leading off the album, begins with the choral "Vaiyo A-O" fight song and the best harmonic realization on the entire product. The better episodic score cues included on the album are lumped in its first half, with quite listenable and lengthy cues of romance leading well into each other. The middle portion of the album features the bulk of unlistenable rock rhythms and samples of synthesized harshness that stray into the realm of straight dissonance at times. The final few selections dive into a euphoric feeling before yielding to a wretched performance of the second season's theme that closes the product. The music is so diverse within the confines of the show that it is difficult to grasp any one part of it before it is over, so in essence, the strength of the music from the show also serves as the main weakness of the album. The changes of tone and style within the lengthier, convoluted cues sometimes cause the music to whip itself into a frenzy that breaks the mood of adjoining cues of mellow intent.

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For the same reason that many collector of "Star Trek" music didn't understand or appreciate the "Lexx" series, traditional film music collectors likely won't understand or appreciate the style of the music for "Lexx" either. Therefore, this isn't the kind of material that could be recommended to the mass of mainstream film score collectors, and in this regard, the album releases for "Lexx" have an audience as targeted as those for "Babylon 5," "Farscape," and other peers. It's hard to recommend such albums to general score collectors, simply because their electronically low-budget atmosphere tends to irritate too many of them (though Christopher Franke arguably remained an exception to the rule). The lyrical and harmonic nature of this music, while placing it above many others, still doesn't establish much of a base motif or theme to work by. Other than the occasional references to the "Vaiyo A-O" song heard at the outset (which are sadly lacking in quantity, given that the song is easily the highlight of the show and a definite improvement over the previous seasons' themes), not much ties it all together. Ultimately, the marketing intent of the album was surely to appeal to the encapsulated fans of the orgasmic concept. The female vocals within the final mixes of the episodes are audible enough to make this album a delightful treat for those devoted fans. The product is otherwise presented in a fashion that would irritate a traditional score collector. The cues from singular episodes are not placed together in sequence, and they are interrupted by dialogue from all the major characters in show (including the typical "who gets to screw poor Zev" debate). This is the kind of thing that might cause fans of the show to go orgasmic themselves, though outsiders will be left scratching their heads. Unquestionably, "Lexx" has a fanbase all unto itself, and this album is a prized bounty for that crowd. Few others would find it comprehensible or even perhaps interesting at any level. A subsequent album release offered extended performances of some of the material heard on this late GNP Crescendo album. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download