Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you consistently enjoy James Newton Howard's diverse percussion work and more muscular action material. Avoid it... if you are purchasing the album based solely on the score as heard in the film, for some of the memorable action material is missing on the short commercial release. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Outbreak: (James Newton Howard) Tales about the ultimate plague have bounced around in science fiction novels for decades, for mysterious, deadly diseases remain a dark territory in which the average person can easily be scared in a story. In Wolfgang Petersen's Outbreak, an all-star cast is assembled to combat the spread of a plague that is initially seen in Africa some 40 years ago. By the 1990's, the plague manifests itself in an African monkey that is being smuggled into the United States for sale as a pet, but before its inevitable escape, it manages to infect a human carrier and the disease spreads across the nation at an alarming rate. This plague in particular is a nasty one, liquifying internal organs and killing a person in a day, and the government is inclined to destroy the outbreak areas with massive bombs. The film was a serviceable thriller, gaining respectable reviews and returns at the box office, and for composer James Newton Howard, it would follow one of his more diverse action scores of his career, Waterworld, a year prior. While Howard has never really been associated first and foremost with massive action scores, the roots of his scores such as King Kong later in his career were already well developed by the time Outbreak rolled along. And Howard holds nothing back in Outbreak, with the recording including impressive symphonic sequences merged with performances by African vocalist Lebo M., synthesizer expert Steve Porcaro, and the L.A. Master Chorale. Howard's instrumental creativity is often marked by his inflated team of orchestrators, and for this project, he extended his reputation of combining disparate sounds into a product that is interesting at the very least, and enjoyable in many parts. While he stopped a step short of providing the plague with a theme or motif of its own, Howard does substitute strong ambient effects. The one major detractor of the Outbreak score is that is has no thematic progression, no development of a motif that grows more ominous as the plague spreads. More than most other composers, however, Howard achieves effective scores without the need of a strong thematic presence, and Outbreak is one of those occasions where the lack of a clearly defined theme or growing sense of doom is slightly disappointing, but not restrictive. Howard scores the moment in each case, opening with a modern synthetic rhythm over the weak theme that does exist in the score, with choral backing and a series of rhythmically falling strings that set the mood of peril well. A highlight of this score, "Main Titles" is remarkably similar to suspense cues that would later define the composer's career. The only notable performance by Lebo M. on the album follows, and muscular brass overlay a bed of African percussion that we hear before a small village infected with the plague is firebombed off the map. Among other highlights are "Casey Rips His Suit," in which a frantic blast of dissonance is replaced by a choral anthem of terror. Also of interest is "Jimbo Gets Sick," in which another dissonant crescendo is contributed to by metallic scraping and string whining that are mutilated so that they resemble the distant crying of monkeys. Most of the film score collectors who will wish to seek out Outbreak on album, however, will be targeting the large-scale action cues, which exist in often a perfect marriage between the electronic rhythms and orchestral performances. While these cues seem numerous in the film, one strange and disappointing aspect of the Outbreak album is the lack of some of the great action cues heard in the film. In "Casey Goes Down" and "A Little Resistance," we hear the meat of Howard's action scoring for the film, but it seems that in an effort to parse through the material to produce a 30-minute album for Varèse Sarabande, a significant portion of the heightened action was dropped in favor of the more suspenseful or downright positive reinforcement material (such as the quietly beautiful "Robbie's Bedside"). Overall, a strong score hindered by a short album. *** Track Listings:
Total Time: 30:42
All artwork and sound clips from Outbreak are Copyright © 1995, Varèse Sarabande. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/25/98, updated 3/12/06. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 1998-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
