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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you are an Irwin Allen fan and own several of Goldsmith's strong action scores of the 1970's and 1980's. Avoid it... if you prefer digitally crisp recording quality and are more satisfied by Goldsmith's 1990's style of synthesizers and orchestra together. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The score is a large-scale thematic and creative endeavor for the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra, with all the bells and whistles required for an Allen film, but curiously minus a trademark pop song. A well-rounded score, Goldsmith's effort includes a major disaster theme, a love sub-theme, and a motif with the high strings and brass that imitates the buzzing noise required to foreshadow and announce the killer African bees that have decided to invade Texas. The theme, ironically, begins with nearly the identical three notes of fanfare of that from The Poseidon Adventure, but branches into its own. The love theme is sufficient, but not as compelling, perhaps, as what John Williams presented in the other scores. The key to Goldsmith's success here is this brilliant method of wavering the brass and strings in a bee-like buzz. So precise is the sound that the waffling of those instruments creates that it causes the listener to hear bees in the room. Goldsmith also varies the intensity of this orchestral sound effect in order to elevate or slip into the subconscious the danger posed by the oncoming swarm. The only downside to the effect is the dry sound that the lack of resonance causes, which diminishes the sonic size of the swarm to an extent. That, however, is a recording quality issue (the sound quality is on par with other scores of the time). At the time of the film's release, the score was released on a 40-minute LP record and was received cooly by the public. Just like the film, the music for the film was soon forgotten, and this was partly the reason why the score never experienced a commercial release on CD. Two bootlegged versions of the score existed for many years on the secondary market, but neither was attractive enough to warrant serious attention. With the other major Irwin Allen films' scores released by Film Score Monthly, the new release of The Swarm on a legitimate album by Prometheus (which is experienced in releasing several other Goldsmith scores of that era) completes the availability of these strong scores on CD. This, like the two FSM ones mentioned above, is a limited album (3,000 copies), and given the fact that the other two have largely sold out at FSM, Goldsmith fans should not waste much time investing in the Prometheus release of The Swarm if interested. Technically, it is a step beyond The Poseidon Adventure, but thematically and dynamically, it is a step behind The Towering Inferno. In any case, however, The Swarm is a worthy entry by Goldsmith in the genre. ****
The insert includes extensive information (written by Gary Kester) about the film and score, as well as a list of performers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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