> This is part of a series. The second post for 2011-12 is here -
> https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=113009
> -----------------------
> Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (2011) - ***
> Lorne Balfe; theme by Hans Zimmer; add’l music by Andrew
> Kawczynski & Peter G. Adams; add’l arrangements by Stephen Hilton
> RC discovery #88.
> After years of avoiding video games, Zimmer would follow up overseeing
> 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 with writing the theme for Activision’s
> toy-based platform game Skylanders, with Lorne Balfe and a handful
> of assistants overseeing the full score. “I love doing children’s
> projects. ‘Hey Dad, I heard your music, it wasn’t so bad.’ One of the
> advantages of being a musician is you aren’t supposed to grow up. It’s fun
> to draw on myths / ancient ideas.” The predominantly sampled,
> quasi-medieval music would be an anonymous-but-entertaining romp that was
> the halfway point between the Dreamworks Animation house style and the
> jubilant keyboard tunes of Zimmer’s early Hollywood scores. It narrowly
> avoided tripping into obnoxiously twee territory. You’ll hear it, you’ll
> like it, you’ll forget about it. The franchise would be enormously
> successful, and Balfe would return for several sequel scores.
The first three of these were childhood favourites of mine! Skylanders: Giants’ menu music was probably one of the first video game themes I took note of as a kid.
>
>
> Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2011) - *** (Balfe portion)
> In-game music by Jesper Kyd; main theme, cutscene music &
> multiplayer music by Lorne Balfe;
> add’l music by Andrew Kawczynski & Steve Mazzaro; add’l arrangements
> by Max Aruj, Jasha Klebe
> & Catherine Wilson; digital instrument design by Mark Wherry;
> conducted by Samuli Örnströmer
> RC discovery #89.
> “I think the whole process was around five months. I was brought on far
> later into the game process than usual. Unlike the next game where I am
> right at the beginning and writing whilst they create gameplay and
> cutscenes.”
> Assassin’s Creed would be the next video game franchise to pivot
> towards the Zimmer sound. Game composer Jesper Kyd had provided all the
> music for the games so far, but after the team at Ubisoft liked the music
> Lorne Balfe had written for the trailer for Brotherhood at the 2010
> E3 game convention they offered him the opportunity to score the cutscenes
> for Revelations, give the game a main theme, and even write music
> for the multiplayer mode (Kyd would still provide the in-game music). The
> result was an unsurprising mix of everything we’d heard from the MV/RC
> crew in movie and gaming action in the last ten years, but it was executed
> with panache, definitely wasn’t mixed in a way that the sound was too
> bass-heavy or synthetic, and even had some lovely vocal work too. The
> score would be released as 3 digital albums covering 2 hours and 40
> minutes, half of which was Balfe’s contribution. If you want to chart
> Balfe’s evolution into the guy who wrote the music for His Dark
> Materials, start here.
> This was the first credited RC appearance of Steve Mazzaro, who had been
> creating digital covers of pre-existing scores at London Music Works and
> would go on to play a significant role in many Hans Zimmer scores in the
> next era. “When I was younger I used to play a lot of video games. One
> of my favorites was Final Fantasy - all of them. The thing I loved
> the most was the music. Nobuo Uematsu knew how to take very few sounds and
> create a world with them. When I was 13 my parents got me a computer and I
> was hunting for all these sounds, and just fell in love with writing from
> there. I moved out to Los Angeles when I was 18 right after high school. I
> started getting little games, short films, nothing major.
> Silva Screen found me and [said] why don’t you mock up samples and make it
> sound like a real orchestra? With Hans’ music it’s very fabricated, in
> that there’s a lot of synth in the background fine-tuned to what you’re
> hearing, so I got really good at that. I was still working as a file clerk
> at a law firm [and] L.A. is not cheap, [so] I was going to move back to
> Ohio and work remotely. And then two weeks before I was about to leave I
> got an email from Hans’ assistant. ‘Hi Steve, Hans would like to speak
> with you.’ My immediate thought was, ‘Ok, I’m being sued!’ But I called
> and he said, ‘I heard this thing you did. I think it’s really good. Are
> you in town?’ So I cancelled my ticket!”
> This was also the first credited RC appearance of Max Aruj, who like Jim
> Dooley and Tina Guo had graduated from USC’s Thornton School of Music.
> “I started out by playing piano, jazz and classical, and then hanging
> out with my friends where we made a short film. I was the worst actor
> ever. I was also in rock bands with my buddies, in my mind the way a kid
> should get into music. With each movie and game it’s like writing a
> symphony – it’s not just 12 singles – it’s an hour of music that’s all
> connected and needs to evolve. To do multiple projects a year takes a lot
> of work and focus and with Lorne you learn how to do that.”
This one too. Assassin’s Creed, Sherlock Holmes, and Skylanders were cumulatively my introduction to Lorne Balfe, and a reason why I began my film music fandom as an admirer of his. Grew frustrated with him as I got older and heard more of his ‘10s works, then have been (mostly. *dirty look at 6 Underground*) swayed back again.
>
>
> Gears of War 3 (2011) - **½
> Steve Jablonsky; add’l music by Jacob Shea, Pieter Schlosser &
> Nathan Whitehead; orchestrated by Penka Kouneva & Philip Klein
> RC discovery #90. If you were a huge fan of Jablonsky’s prior Gears of
> War or Transformers scores then you’ll probably like this too.
> But the overall style was becoming a tad stale at this point.
I actually do really like this one too. Leagues ahead of 4, weaker than 5.
>
>
> Immortals (2011) - ***
> Trevor Morris; add’l music by Steve Davis, Todd Haberman & T.J.
> Lindgren; ambient music design
> Diego Stocco; orchestrated by Jeff Atmajian, Andrew Kinney, Jon Kull,
> Patrck Russ & David Slonaker
> RC discovery #91.
> “Melodic assignment to the lead can be a little bit ‘on the nose’ in
> modern film scoring. So rather than give a tune to the hero, I assigned a
> melody to the idea of immortality, because everything Theseus is doing is
> leading him toward being immortal.”
> Director Tarsem Singh would deliver another visually striking but
> narratively questionable film with his Greek gods epic Immortals.
> Composer Trevor Morris ended up on the project after his music from the
> Showtime miniseries The Pillars of the Earth was used in the temp
> track. His score was a mixed bag. It was frustratingly one of the earliest
> post-Inception scores to heavily feature a BRAM as part of its
> soundscape, even if Morris and the director had a decent rationale behind
> doing so. “I love a good ‘bad guy’ theme, but it didn’t work for Mickey
> Rourke. He has a quiet menace the whole time, but you just know at any
> moment’s notice he’ll kill anybody about anything. So I came up with [a]
> growly, low, aleatoric kind of ‘soup’ Tarsem could put under
> anything.” But other moments impressed with their choral grandeur,
> noble stretches, and striking instrumental solos.
> As Remote Control-influenced epic music of this era went, it was probably
> on par with Clash of the Titans, if perhaps a tad superior. Around
> half of the large score (including two tracks which strayed close to
> Bram Stoker’s Dracula territory and several busy vocal stretches
> that recalled 160 BPM from Zimmer’s Angels & Demons)
> would make the album. “If you look at The Tudors or Pillars
> of the Earth, I’m within seconds of the CD maximum. I wish CDs were
> able to hold 100 minutes of music. I would put every cue on there and call
> it a day. (Laughs) Relativity felt very strongly that they didn’t want to
> do that. So we had a bit of a bargaining process.”
I need to get to this one, I’ve only just started listening to Morris.
>
>
> Puss in Boots (2011) - ****½
> Henry Jackman; add’l music by Dominic Lewis & Matthew Margeson;
> orchestrated by Stephen Coleman,
> John Ashton Thomas & Tommy Laurence; score technical engineer Alex
> Belcher; asst. score technical engineer
> Ben Robinson; thank you to Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Gavin Greenaway,
> Germaine Franco & Pedro Eustache
> “If you hit too many things directly and too many per minute, then you
> start falling into the cartoon trap, which undermines the film. If you
> were in the middle of Legends of the Fall, you wouldn’t dream of
> hitting something just because Brad Pitt’s putting his glass on the table.
> If you have an emotional beat—[like when] Humpty has betrayed Puss—you
> treat it like any betrayal scene in an actual movie. You take it
> seriously. You don’t write a cue and go, ‘Well, I’ll water it down a bit,
> it’s only an animated film.’”
> This spin-off of the beloved supporting character from Dreamworks’
> Shrek 2 turned out far better than many expected, especially given
> the decline in the quality of the later Shrek films as well as this
> film’s potentially awkward combination of Zorro pastiche, Jack and the
> Beanstalk lore, and…Humpty Dumpty? It wasn’t perfect (a climactic
> confrontation with a giant rampaging goose was unsatisfying), but it was
> still a critical and commercial success. For Henry Jackman, the film’s
> release came near the end of a busy year, with this, X-Men: First
> Class, and Winnie the Pooh (as well as the next year’s Man
> on a Ledge which was also written in 2011) establishing him as someone
> who could channel his myriad musical influences into a wide variety of
> genres. “It was important to get the marriage between elements right.
> If everything is too orchestral, you’re missing that Spanish beat. If the
> whole score is flamenco guitar, castanets, and shakers, you miss the
> richness of symphonic score. What defines the Iberian quality is the
> harmony and the inflections. You can take the Puss theme off the guitar
> and put it onto an orchestra and still retain that. If you think about
> jazz, there’s what you might call “pure” jazz with Duke Ellington, but
> Gershwin’s An American in Paris can have a jazz influence.”
> The score certainly wasn’t shy about its influences. “Halfway through,
> I was listening to Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein
> Heldenleben. You’d never think I’d be listening to stuff like that for
> a movie like Puss in Boots. But it’s a testament to the variety in
> the film. I’ll be thinking about Sergio Leone films, and then legitimately
> 26 minutes later it might behoove me to have a listen to a Strauss tone
> poem. It’s all in there.” Astute listeners might also pick up on hints
> of James Horner’s Mask of Zorro and the classical music that
> informed it, the animated adventure music of John Powell (his primary
> orchestrator was part of the team), and even an intentional tip of the hat
> to Ennio Morricone with a very Spaghetti Western whistle. But Jackman
> managed to weave all these elements together with flair while still giving
> the score plenty of its own personality, while also making the fairy tale
> and Iberian elements sound cohesive enough that the score didn’t sound
> schizophrenic when it pivoted to different settings.
> Helping were three knockout themes. A spirited, Zorro-like melody for the
> titular character wasn’t the most original theme of the year, but dang if
> it wasn’t also among the catchiest. “I came out of a preview and walked
> up to a piano and the whole theme just happened immediately.” A
> malleable theme for the hero’s relationship with Humpty would entertain in
> both lighthearted and tragic settings. And an ascendant fantasy idea would
> gorgeously unfurl in the middle of the film before its first four notes
> were converted into menacing variations for that giant goose. Spirited
> contributions from the guitar duo Rodrigo Y Gabriela (including two of
> their preexisting recordings) would be the icing on this outrageously
> entertaining musical cake.
> “The grass is always greener. If I spent my career only doing fantasy
> movies, then every time I saw a movie like The Town or The Dark
> Knight I’d be like, ‘Ugh, when am I going to stop with Williams- and
> Silvestri-influenced orchestra and get down to intense contemporary
> music?’ Conversely, if you spent your entire time doing thrillers it’d be
> like, ‘Ugh, when am I going to get to unleash my Harry Potter
> chops?’ If you eat steak all the time, at some point you’re going to
> fantasize about a Caesar salad.”
Listened to this one on vacation in Los Angeles in 2018. Loved it from the get go, though ironically I heard it *before* I did Horner’s Zorros.
>
>
> Arthur Christmas (2011) - ****
> Harry Gregson-Williams; add’l music by Halli Cauthery & Chris
> Bacon; add’l arrangements by Philip Klein & Hybrid;
> orchestrated by Ladd McIntosh & Jennifer Hammond; conducted by
> Gregson-Williams & Nick Ingman
> “If Hans’ is an industry, mine is very much a cottage industry. It’s a
> small place by the beach, and it’s very much a family.”
> Aardman’s second computer animated feature proved much more successful
> than their first one (Flushed Away), charming critics and audiences
> with a tale of Santa Claus’ kids trying to deliver a missed present.
> Composers Michael Giacchino (no stranger to animated films after multiple
> Pixar entries) and Adam Cohen (who’d orchestrated a few Giacchino scores
> and scored the TV series Psych) were originally tagged to film, but
> for whatever reason their score was tossed and Harry Gregson-Williams (no
> stranger to doing music for Aardman) was brought in with about a month
> left to write 75 minutes of music. The result was a serene holiday joy.
> Sure, a few suspense bits suggest Alan Silvestri was in the temp track
> (probably an inevitability since the man had written two animated
> Christmas scores in the past 8 years). But Harry’s themes were charming
> and exultant in equal measure, with several big sweeping moments, and the
> rhythmic “elves on a mission” spy music was a fun diversion. And
> the orchestration often had that delightful “spirit of the season” feel
> without tipping into festive pastiche. “I had this cue when Arthur’s
> trying to deliver this present. I had this banging orchestration and some
> loopy drums. It seemed to drive the scene. And [the] director said,
> ‘Listen, the music, keep it. Everything else, junk it. Can you just check
> a list of Christmassy?’ So a tubular bell, a triangle, a tambourine,
> whatever it was. I ended up with something that sparkles a bit in the
> film.”
>
>
> Happy Feet Two (2011) - ***½
> John Powell; add’l music, arranging, MIDI orchestration and/or
> programming by Paul Mounsey, Hélène Muddiman,
> Victor Chaga, Michael John Mollo & Beth Caucci; orchestrated by John
> Ashton Thomas, Dave Metzger, Jessica Wells,
> James K. Lee, Angus O'Sullivan, Geri Green, Daniel Baker & Germaine
> Franco; conducted by Brett Kelly, Brett Weymark &
> Dan Walker; LA vocals conducted by Edie Lehmann Boddicker; songs produced
> by Powell, Wade Robson, T Bone Burnett,
> Billy Mann & David Hirschfelder; vocal arrangements by Powell,
> Boddicker & Carmen Twillie
> RC discovery #92.
> “Only animation this year. Literally. It’s just come this way -
> sequels, Lorax I’ve been on a couple of years, these long-term
> animated musical numbers where you have to come in and out of songs and
> score.”
> This sequel to the 2006 hit animated film would flop critically and
> commercially, suggesting that a dancing penguin jukebox musical may have
> not been the best foundation to try to build a franchise on. Composer John
> Powell was of course involved in the sequel, as he was a huge part of the
> first entry’s success after working for nearly four years on the songs and
> score, though surprisingly he wouldn’t carry over many of the memorable
> score elements. The emperor penguin theme that opened the first film’s
> first pure score track in haunting choral tones is restricted to a few
> midfilm performances. Nothing approaches the David Arnold-like
> magnificence of the aliens theme from the first film or the rock cool of
> Wives Ho!, the personal themes are gone, and even the slightly
> anachronistic Latin sounds for the Adélie penguins are minimized.
> A new family theme would appear near the end of the initial score track
> and be treated to a marvelous choral performance to close the film. The
> two adventurous krill voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon would be
> supported by an innocent idea often performed on woodwinds and choir which
> at times suggested an embryonic version of ideas and styles that would be
> fully unleashed in the second How To Train Your Dragon score a few
> years later. Some of the new choral music would feel like an oratorio,
> suggesting Powell may have had his future concert work A Prussian
> Requiem on the mind. But most of the score was stylistically quite
> similar to the composer’s many prior works in the genre, and with a
> hit-and -miss collection of songs it wouldn’t be surprising if this is
> lower on most folks’ rankings of Powell’s animated works.
>
>
> Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) - ***
> Hans Zimmer; add’l music by Lorne Balfe; add’l arranging &
> programming by Dominic Lewis;
> orchestrated by B&W Fowler, Liz Finch, Rick Giovinazzo, Kevin Kaska, Carl
> Rydlund & Andrew Kinney;
> conducted by Gavin Greenaway; Schubert’s Die Forelle tortured by Mel
> Wesson; Mozart’s Don Giovanni
> orchestrated by Matthew Margeson; Strauss II works re-orchestrated by
> Lewis & Aleksey Igudesman;
> sequencer programmer Andrew Kawczynski; technical assistants Jonas
> Peterson & Jasha Klebe;
> thank you to Satnam Ramgotra and…Madeline Albright?
> RC discovery #93.
> Two years after the smash success of their gritty, offbeat take on Sir
> Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective, stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law and
> director Guy Ritchie would return with another action-packed sequel that
> brought Holmes face-to-face with his archenemy Professor Moriarty (played
> by Jared Harris, a casting masterstroke and probably the best part of the
> movie). The film would do well at the box office but get a middling
> reception from critics, and a third sequel would remain in development
> hell for the rest of the decade. Composer Hans Zimmer would unsurprisingly
> return and take the same attitude that he’d taken on many sequels in other
> franchises - “forget everything we had done on the first film, because
> I’d done it.” The Sherlock theme and some secondary ideas would recur,
> with one in an amusing Morricone-like funeral arrangement, but the focus
> would be largely on new material, making this sequel score almost the
> polar opposite of the dreadfully derivative On Stranger Tides.
> Gypsy music had somewhat informed the first score’s style. Here, Hans
> would go full gypsy. “On page 5, there is the Gypsy fortune teller. I
> phoned Guy and said, ‘road trip.’ We went to villages in eastern Slovakia.
> We’d hear these incredible musicians, but at the same time, we were
> incredibly moved by and found out more about the lack of opportunities
> that exist for these communities that are really cut off from the world
> and not given a voice in government. That became an important part of it.
> At one point, I had to pick a band. We put them on a train and then a bus,
> and we took them to Vienna to spend a week or so in the studio. Terrible
> air conditioning, but technically it was great.” Many of the gypsy
> ensemble performances would be relegated to source music, although a few
> of the ensemble’s takes on Zimmer’s Holmes themes would make the
> album.
> Moriarty would be backed by a number of ideas including Zimmer’s attempts
> at twisting the character’s Schubert fandom, while Sherlock’s brother
> Mycroft would receive a theme that sounded like a more refined version of
> the main character’s idea (a clever touch on Zimmer’s part). Several
> classical works by Mozart, Schubert, and Johann Strauss II would be
> remixed or rearranged by Zimmer’s team into grimmer, bass-heavy beasts.
> Never mind a litany of ticking sounds, pitch distortions, and BWAMs, as
> well as the feeling that there was a synthetic sheen glossed over the mix.
> Zimmer conceded the work was “lopsided” by design but thought
> having these “worlds collide constantly was a lot of fun.” But
> these elements rarely ever interacted, leaving the listener with a
> disappointingly disparate collection of ideas. It was fine enough, but it
> lacked its predecessor’s charm.
> An added bonus: another album-ending remix.
And here we go, a score that was absolutely foundational for young me getting into the genre. I loved this one as a kid, along with ‘Pirates, it made me a Zimmer fan, and the end credits music got countless hours of airtime on my iTunes/YouTube.
>
>
> Dr. Suess’ The Lorax (2012) - ***
> John Powell; add’l music, arranging, and/or programming by Paul
> Mounsey, Beth Caucci,
> Victor Chaga & Michael John Mollo; orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas,
> Dave Metzger,
> Andrew Kinney, Rick Giovinazzo, Pete Anthony & Germaine Franco;
> orchestra conducted by
> Pete Anthony; choir conducted by Edie Lehmann Boddicker; score production
> coordinator Germaine
> Franco; songs by Powell, Cinco Paul, Kool Kojak, Tricky Stewart, Ester
> Dean, Aaron Pearce & Ed Helms
> RC discovery #94.
> Illumination’s second fully animated feature would adapt Dr. Seuss’ famed
> environmentalist story, complete with seemingly perfect casting of Danny
> DeVito as the titular creature. Audiences would make it a moderate hit in
> spring 2012, though many critics would note that turning the tale into a
> sleek commercial product may have missed the point of the novel. Composer
> John Powell was no stranger to Seuss, having done the music for Blue Sky’s
> Horton Hears A Who! a few years earlier. The score was enjoyable,
> but also generally indistinguishable from other animated works that Powell
> had done over the last decade. It felt a bit like the composer on
> autopilot, suggesting perhaps that there was value in that sabbatical he
> would start later in the year. But that’s not to say there wasn’t any
> creativity exhibited! An unused track did result in one of the funniest
> bits of Powell’s career: fish beatboxing the theme to The Bourne
> Identity with lyrics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s75JGNwf4Ps
>
>
> Safe House (2012) - **
> Ramin Djawadi; orchestrated by Stephen Coleman & Matt Dunkley;
> conducted by Gavin Greenaway;
> technical score advisors Brandon Campbell & Catherine Wilson; thank
> you to Hans Zimmer
> RC discovery #95.
> The makers of this adequately received twisty spy thriller with Denzel
> Washington and Ryan Reynolds seem to have asked composer Ramin Djawadi not
> to stray too far from the modern thriller styles of Harry
> Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and Brian Tyler. The end result was
> functional and rarely obnoxious, but largely gave off a feeling of
> been-there-done-that.
>
>
> Game of Thrones Season 2 (2012) - ***½
> Ramin Djawadi; orchestrated by Stephen Coleman; technical score
> advisors Brandon Campbell & Catherine Wilson
> “In the first season I saw the first two episodes and started working
> based on what I saw there. In season two I had [more] episodes so I could
> see where we’re heading [and] plan very well.”
> Djawadi would maintain the general style and key themes of the first
> season (the title theme and those for House Stark, House Baratheon,
> Danerys, Arya, and the Night’s Watch), so if you weren’t a huge fan of the
> concept then the music for season 2 wouldn’t change your mind. Still,
> Djawadi would follow the show’s significant expansion of characters and
> locations, with the most memorable major new identity being a haunting,
> repeating four note figure and accompanying weird tones for wannabe king
> Stannis Baratheon, the lady Melisandre, and the Lord of Light’s religion.
> “It’s almost like a hybrid of a string instrument with some kind of…not
> really a flute. You can’t put your finger on it and say what that sound
> is.” Astute readers will note that his mentor Hans Zimmer was saying
> something like that decades earlier about Pacific Heights. Djawadi
> would morph the idea into more brutal variants for episode 9’s Battle of
> Blackwater, sometimes in counterpoint with the title theme.
> Others would include an ascendant theme and rolling string figures for
> House Greyjoy, as well as a theme for House Lannister that Djawadi
> intelligently structured to sound like a medieval court song. “One of
> the first things we discussed was how we can make this score cohesive
> without trying to capture every character too on the nose. We have a Stark
> theme, but we did not introduce the Lannister theme until the second
> season with The Rains of Castamere. Theon had no theme in the first
> season, but in the second we decided, ok, now it’s time he gets his own
> theme.”
> Also a nice touch: the twisting of the title theme’s repeated string
> rhythm into a grim march for the final episode reveal of the Army of the
> Dead, with an unsettling off-key piano now part of the show’s soundscape.
This would be a little higher for me, though I’m also getting to retroactively judge it after a further six seasons of thematic and stylistic development.
>
>
> Battleship (2012) - *½
> Steve Jablonsky; add’l music by Jacob Shea; add’l programming by Nathan
> Whitehead; ambient music design Clay Duncan;
> orchestrated by B&W Fowler, Rick Giovinazzo, Kevin Kaska & Jennifer
> Hammmond; conducted by Nick Glennie-Smith;
> ‘Super Battle’ by Tom Morello; thank you to Hans Zimmer, Harry
> Gregson-Williams & Bob Badami
> RC discovery #96.
> “On Gangster Squad I did some strange things to create this
> pulse sound for Mickey Cohen and [the director] really liked the sound. It
> seems like I do something like that on every movie. Filmmakers I work with
> all respond to it because they’ve never heard it, or maybe they come to be
> because they know I do this stuff. You’re going to inevitably borrow from
> something you’ve heard in the past whether you even realize you’re doing
> it or not. The sound design stuff, it’s a cool way to be more specific
> with a movie.”
> Having director Peter Berg turn the board game Battleship into an ersatz
> Michael Bay movie about fighting aliens on water went about well as
> expected; the film bombed commercially and critically and also seemed to
> be the nail in the coffin for film stardom for Taylor Kitsch, singer
> Rihanna, and swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker. But hey, if you’re going to
> make an ersatz-Bayhem picture, why not at least get his composer?
> Jablonsky would indeed provide plenty of music that gave listeners the
> same feel of “Remote Control library music” that Dark of the Moon
> provided the year before, though that would not be the work’s dominant
> trait.
> Instead, Battleship would foreshadow what would be commonplace in
> the second half of the Remote Control era, not just from this musical
> lineage but from Hollywood film scoring more broadly: sound design first,
> music second (the next step in the evolution of the Joker’s razor and the
> Inception BWAM). “One day Peter came to me after getting an MRI
> and said ‘oh man I was thinking about you because it was making these
> crazy noises.’ So we got microphones and recorded the machine. I
> manipulated miles of raw file into the theme for the aliens. When I played
> that for Pete he was so excited because it was an idea that he
> inadvertently came up with but it paid off.” Large portions of the
> work were repeated hits of ear-splitting noise, making for one of the most
> arduous standalone album listens in recent memory (at least if you were a
> more traditionalist score fan, and probably even if you weren’t).
> A 77-minute album at that! Why were Transformers albums so short
> but this sucker almost hitting the maximum amount of space you could put
> on a CD?
> “I was with Marco Beltrami doing a panel for Billboard and he was
> talking about his score for Carrie. He recorded an old radio and
> did some cool things with static and I immediately went ‘oh that’s cool
> that’s exactly what I did for Battleship.’”
I kinda want to hear Battleship, just out of the novelty of how hated it is. Fun fact: my grandparents almost walked out of a theatrical showing of the film (and this wasn’t something they’d ever considered before), before technical difficulties killed the showing dead (the projection outright failed), and they received a pair of complementary admissions as compensation for this “loss”.
> -----------------------
> Next time: “I didn’t want to go down the road of loops. That said,
> authentic 18th Century music would’ve been boring.”
