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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you enjoyed either of the scores for The Bone Collector or Moulin Rouge and want to hear something even better. Avoid it... if ethnic vocals and percussion aren't the kind of flavor that you like to hear with your typical Western, melodic, orchestral score. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Armstrong took the assignment with vigor, studying over one hundred hours of traditional, native Vietnamese music in order to gain knowledge about the authenticity that would be needed to score The Quiet American. The final sound of the score is a combination of several native specialty instruments, a light background choir, and the two primary elements: The full orchestra and the haunting performances of a single Vietnamese female voice. The orchestra and solo female voice provide nearly all of the majesty to the score. It is a thematically rich and rhythmically smooth composition, with a compelling love theme worthy of the best cultural dramas in modern cinema. The rhythms and themes are simple, but they are performed with strong harmony by a bass-heavy string section, contributing to a fullness of sound for the recording. The female voice is recorded with a slightly distant resonance, with a wet sound that assists her blend into the orchestra with both her wordless and seemingly lyrical performances. If she is performing lyrics, they are in a non-English language, adding even more depth to the romanticism of the music for western ears. The mixing of the orchestra and vocals produces that vibrant sound at a slight distance that helps indicate the time period of the action on the screen. Listeners will recognize the consistent use of the piano from Armstrong's other scores, and especially in unison with a light choir as heard in The Bone Collector. New to the ears are Amstrong's sparingly applied, but necessary use of the Sao flutes, Nhi fiddles, and other native instruments. They sometimes blend in with his electronic rhythms that propel the action (or other busy) scenes in the film. These are similar in style to those heard in The Bone Collector as well, and if there is any criticism of the score for The Quiet American, then it is the use of those modern rhythms in a film set in 1952. Even at their strongest, however, those rhythms sound surprisingly similar to those used in the middle portions of David Arnold's Tomorrow Never Dies, and Armstrong never loses the orchestral and vocal dominance over those rhythms. On cues such as "Death in the Square," Armstrong turns to native drums to carry the rhythm, and this cue is superb. The film ends with a more modern song variation of the Vietnamese female vocal (written by Armstrong too), and fits well with the attitude of the score. The score was supposed to be released on commercial album by Varèse Sarabande on December 24, 2002, but the album was cancelled. Armstrong had it released as an Academy Awards "for your consideration" promo, however, and Varèse eventually rescheduled the commercial album for March, 2003. The albums feature identical contents... all of the best, uninterrupted beauty of Armstrong's strong score for The Quiet American. ****
Promotional insert is blank on the inside with no credits information. The commerical album contains credits information. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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