 |
|
 |
|
 | |||||||||
| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
| . |
1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
 | ||||||||
|
|
|
Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you are a John Debney completist, for his mainstream debut in the horror genre is as pedestrian and underachieving as the film itself. Avoid it... if you expect Debney to offer something beyond the usual, stock horror slashes and ensemble hits that define the genre's most tiresome cliches. Original Review, by Christian Clemmensen
There are a handful of motifs that Debney utilizes throughout The Relic, but none of them is given enough development or full repetition to be considered as the overarching identity of the work. The final track on the album, "Theme from The Relic," motions through these ideas with monotonous pacing. The actual title theme is a very slight, four-note theme quoted by the lowest registers of the ensemble that also seems to follow the beast, and its most interesting incarnation exists on bass woodwind at 2:10 into "Theme from The Relic." A motif for the sake of mystery is used in nearly every major cue in the film. This two-note descending alternation is only barely effective as a tool for continuity. Additionally, Debney relies on a tingling and plucking string effect to represent the awful monster itself, and while the use of this technique is put to adequate use here, it's somewhat of a cliche in and of itself. A free-floating idea based on a mundane three-note sequence is integrated throughout the score, but its only major performances by the full ensemble are heard on strings late in "The Relic" and "Theme from The Relic." None of these elements really leaves an impression as strong as the simplistic bashing of the ensemble for the actual attack sequences. Debney relies heavily on standard orchestral slashes and hits, the kind of pedestrian, B-rate technique that synthesizers have imitated for years. He also liberally quotes the bold and frenetic strokes of strings that Bernard Herrmann utilized in Psycho, but without the intelligent introduction or conveyance of those ideas. Everything in The Relic is provided at the wholesale level, whether you're forced to tolerate generic horror surprises or two or three cues of lengthy, minimalistic voids. The score understandably never received a commercial release, though it was the sixth of John Debney's original series of official promotional albums. Within just two years of the 42-minute promo's distribution through soundtrack specialty outlets, it became a hot collectible, and, like the promo of I Know What You Did Last Summer, fetched over $100 per copy. To think that fans actually paid such sums for this mediocre horror venture is far more genuinely terrifying that anything the music itself has to offer. **
Review #2, by Cap Stewart
The Relic: (John Debney) Because scores are created to accompany films, they sometimes end up not providing for a pleasurable listening experience on their own. This seems especially true for modern horror film scores, which revolve around the bloody and brutal images that comprise such movies. Because of their less-than-melodious nature, the only place they really function is alongside the on-screen violence. At first, I considered The Relic such a score. After several more listens, however, I have come to appreciate it for what it is: a fairly enjoyable listen that also happens to be a moderately good piece of work. By "moderately good," I mean that, despite this score's genre, it has several lengthy periods of coherent music. There are, of course, horror elements included --i.e., instances of pure orchestral noise. Nonetheless, this is a surprisingly structured score, albeit a horror score. Track 1 starts out strong with a fairly memorable, and appropriately ominous, theme. It consists of some alternating two-note repetitions, accompanied by slow-moving strings. Percussive action music fills in the middle of the track, as does a periodic screeching string motif that may very well have been inspired by Herrmann's famous violin motif in Psycho. The theme comes back to end the track. The second track begins right on the heels of the first with some more strings that aptly create a sense of mystery. (Actually, strings dominate the entire score.) Near the end of this track, we are introduced to the portamento noise that is liberally dispersed throughout the rest of the score. This is the kind of noise that, apart from any visuals, conjures up images of scarab beetles crawling all over the place (wrong movie, I know). From this point on, the score alternates between bursts of orchestral noise, low underscore, and action/adventure cues. The theme is repeated several more times as well. Actually, some might even consider the theme to be a little overused. By the time the final track plays, the theme almost becomes annoying. While they are few and far between, there are also some quiet moments - not necessarily tranquil, mind you, but quiet. Ironically enough, one of the quietest tracks on the CD is entitled "Hormones." (I'd expect such a track to contain something with a little more pizzazz -- but that's just me.) Throughout the score --primarily in the action sequences-- Debney utilizes a moderate amount of electronics which add an extra touch of urgency, boosting the adrenaline-inducing level of the music. And fortunately, not all of these portions are of the pure horror variety --the kind of stuff that makes one's hair stand on end (if not because of its creepy effect, then because of its brutal assault on the ears). Debney's overall style in scoring this film, as well as a few of the less chaotic cues, somewhat reminds me of Frizzell's score to Dante's Peak. And if you listen closely, the beginning of track 6 sounds like it was lifted from Schindler's List. Of course, any in-depth comparisons to these scores would be crude at best. This score is for a completely different genre than the above-mentioned ones, a genre in which it fits rather well. Even though much of the movie consists of people being slaughtered in gory fashion, Debney is able to provide music that, while conveying elements of horror, refuses to degenerate into utter chaos. Not to say that there aren't any moments of chaos and incoherence --there are-- but such moments are less numerous than might be expected for a film like this. As such, Debney manages to remain true to the horror genre without stooping to the mindlessness of the movie. ***
The insert contains musings about childhood nightmares, a synopsis of the movie, a brief overview of the career of director Peter Hyams, and a list of some of Debney's other scores. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
