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Armageddon
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Composed, Co-Orchestrated, and Co-Produced by:
Additional Music by:
Harry Gregson-Williams
Orchestrated by:
Bruce Fowler Gordon Goodwin
Conducted by:
Gordon Goodwin
Co-Produced by:
Paul Linford Steve Kempster
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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Promotional
(June, 1998)
Columbia/Sony(November 10th, 1998)Bootleg (2000)
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The original Rabin promo remains a rare collectible. The 1998 commercial album
was a regular U.S. release, following a song compilation album that contained only one score track.
The 2-CD bootleg has been readily altered, expanded, and traded on the secondary market since it
debut in 2000. Several variants of that bootleg exist, often with different fan-created artwork.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... only if you want the ultimate anthem representing of the
Media Ventures glory days, with simplistic pounding and extremely basic
harmonic themes in their fullest synthetic and organic blend.
Avoid it... if you've never cared for Hans Zimmer's trademark,
synth-dominated action music or any of its variants.
BUY IT
 | Rabin |
 | Gregson- Williams |
Armageddon: (Trevor Rabin and Harry
Gregson-Williams) If there ever was a score that single-handedly defined
the simultaneous arrival of (and backlash against) the concept of a
"Media Ventures" score, it would be Armageddon. The 1998 Jerry
Bruckheimer blockbuster was ridiculed at press screenings, blasted by
the more intellectual half of society, and eventually fell, several
years later, to its more appropriate B-film status. But that didn't stop
the poorly conceived and written film from earning far too much money,
for the late 1990's were time when CGI effects had made it both possible
and popular to show the worst disasters of biblical proportions on
screen. So proposterous is the plotline of Armageddon that the
special effects were really the only reason to go see the film. Terrible
acting by pop-culture stars and an equally weak score from amateur
composer Trevor Rabin were also to blame for the film's laughable
outcome. While Rabin had been involved for several years with Hans
Zimmer's Media Ventures clone factory, Armageddon would represent
the former Yes guitarist's fourth score over a span of two years, making
him frightfully inexperienced to handle a project of this magnitude. And
it shows. The Armageddon score is a haphazard combination of
Rabin's own guitar-driven sensibilities and Zimmer's stereotypical
keyboarded rhythms and samples faux-orchestral sounds. It's one of those
kinds of scores where you can't tell if the music you're hearing is
performed by a keyboard or an orchestra, a real choir or a synthetic
sampling... and it doesn't really matter. What Rabin accomplishes,
ironically, is really all the film needed: a brainless series of
testosterone-driven militaristic sounds mingling, occasionally, with
basic romantic thematic wanderings meant to represent the ridiculous
love story element in the film. In its overall sound, Armageddon
is cheaply rendered, with its instrumentation (or better yet, sampling)
extremely basic and existing without a hint of the finer points of
counterpoint or other compositional complexity. Ironically, that
simplistic nature makes parts of Armageddon a rather easily
listening experience, and is no doubt why Media Ventures fans dearly
love this score.
There are essentially four parts to the
Armageddon score, ranging from the rather pleasant to the
completely intolerable. The title anthem, the wild guitar rhythms, the
keyboarded action cues, and the romantic, Celtic-laced romance variants
on the title anthem and love theme are these four parts. The anthem in
and of itself is listenable if only because of its own dumbed-down chord
progressions. Written for real or fake strings, the anthem is among the
more readily memorable themes to come out of Media Ventures during its
height, and it flourishes in the launch and landing sequences in
Armageddon. When Rabin reverts to his unrestrained guitar
wailings, the score ultimately fails; from "Oil Rig" to "Armadillo,"
these passages are so abrasive that they're hardly listenable (and they
also break up the otherwise decent "Finding Grace"). The typical
Zimmer-ized keyboarded action for the major effects scenes in the film
are filled with samples familiar to those who collect Zimmer's work;
it's all terribly derivative, and the method of providing a heightened
sense of excitement through the short, staccato blasting of the
keyboards isn't going to win any awards. The final, most digestible
aspect of the score is, not surprisingly, the work of Harry
Gregson-Williams, who was also just getting his feet wet at the time,
but who would also eventually prove himself to be one of the top two
Media Ventures artists in the 2000's. When Rabin's score was deemed
lacking enough romantic appeal, Gregson-Williams was brought in to add
the Celtic flavor you hear in the cello and flute performances of the
anthem and sub-theme for the love story. The film didn't necessarily
call for that ethnic sound, but given the record sales of James Horner's
Titanic score at the time, it's no surprise that the sound was
considered a potential selling point. The exact extent of
Gregson-Williams' contribution to Armageddon (overall) is still
not entirely clear, and the history of the work on album hasn't made the
situation much clearer.
After Rabin released 30 minutes of his own score on a
promo to coincide with the release of the film (only a song album was
initially available), a commercial release with 50 minutes (and some of
Gregson-Williams' uncredited work) was offered late in the year. It's a
rare day when the lack of a song on a score album is considered an
unfortunate event, but the presence of Aerosmith's song "I Don't Want To
Miss a Thing" would have been welcomed on the score album given its
prominent placement in the film. A 2-CD bootleg with over two hours of
music from the film, including alternate takes and a snippet of
Aerosmith, eventually hit the secondary market a few years later. It is,
despite the hype, not complete. The additional 80+ minutes of music on
this bootleg is pretty much more of the same, so if you enjoyed what you
heard on the commercial album, then the bootleg just gives you
significantly more of it. Of particular note is the inclusion of
additional Gregson-Williams music, including significantly more
representations of the love theme for cello and flute. The flute solo
hidden in the middle of "Bad News" among the reasons why people flocked
to buy this score in the first place. That particular cue is perhaps
representative of the overall score more than any other...
Gregson-Williams' beauty is tragically interrupted by more Rabin
pounding just as you're getting used to the gorgeous, softer themes. The
sound quality on the bootleg is equal to that of the commercial album,
with the exception of the finale cue alternately named "Returning Home"
and "Armageddon Trailer," which in either case sounds muffled. Rabin's
mutilation of "America the Beautiful" is atrocious, though people with a
sense of humor may interpret it as a rendition of what the song would
have become had the Nazis won the war. Given how worshipped
Armageddon is by Media Ventures collectors, perhaps the appeal of
the bootleg (and its countless variants and revisions) comes as no
surprise, but the score on the whole is so amateurish and underachieving
that two hours of it is a mind-numbing experience. Still, it was the
right score for the right film at the right time, and you can't help but
shake your head and laugh at its predictable success.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.5
(in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.62
(in 13,343 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Gregon-Williamson Expand >> Sebastian Ullrich - April 1, 2004, at 12:44 p.m. |
2 comments (4424 views) Newest: February 26, 2005, at 10:14 p.m. by Manuel |
Audio Samples
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1998 Sony Album:
2000 Bootleg:
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1998 Promo Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 30:10 |
1. The Launch (7:55)
2. The Oil Well (3:01)
3. A.J's Return (3:56)
4. Underwater Simulation (2:10)
5. Short Straw (3:43)
6. Demands (1:40)
7. Long Distance Goodbye (2:30)
8. A Wing and a Prayer (5:15)
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1998 Sony Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 50:13 |
1. Armageddon Suite (not used in film) (5:20)
2. Harry & Grace Make Peace (1:43)
3. A.J.'s Return (4:27)
4. Oil Rig (1:59)
5. Leaving (2:30)
6. Evacuation (3:43)
7. Harry Arrives at NASA (1:00)
8. Back in Business (1:37)
9. Launch (7:54)
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10. 5 Words (1:37)
11. Underwater Simulation (2:10)
12. Finding Grace (1:06)
13. Armadillo (1:15)
14. Short Straw (3:46)
15. Demands (1:26)
16. Death of MIR (1:32)
17. Armageddon Piano (0:33)
18. Long Distance Goodbye (6:33)
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2000 2-CD Bootleg Set Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 132:29 |
CD1: (67:24)
1. Prologue/65 Million Years Later (4:49)
2. Defcon 3 (0:23)
3. Meteor Shower (2:16)
4. The Hubble (0:42)
5. 'Global Killer' (0:40)
6. Finding Grace (1:06)
7. Meet Harry Stamper/Oil Rig (2:00)
8. 'We Drill' (1:36)
9. Call to Duty (1:14)
10. Harry Arrives at NASA (1:01)
11. Zero Barrier (2:25)
12. Freedom Crew (0:46)
13. 5 Words (1:37)
14. Demands (1:40)
15. X-71 (1:33)
16. Weightless Simulation/Dottie (0:39)
17. Flight Plan (0:38)
18. Love Theme (1:03)
19. Armadillo (1:15)
20. Underwater Simulation (2:13)
21. Leaving (2:31)
22. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing (2:35)
23. Destruction of Shanghai (2:54)
24. Harry and Grace Make Peace (1:45)
25. Astronauts (0:52)
26. The Launch (7:52)
27. Rendezvous Mir (1:43)
28. Death of Mir (1:52)
29. Fuel Pod (1:51)
30. Radio Silence (1:16)
31. Asteroid Chase/The Shuttle Crashes (6:53)
32. Goodbye Independence (1:25)
33. Survivors (2:56)
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CD2: (65:05)
1. The Drilling Commences (3:02)
2. Status Report (1:42)
3. Secondary Protocol (8:32)
4. Back in Business (1:41)
5. Armadillo Jump (3:43)
6. Russian Hero (0:27)
7. Bad News (4:20)
8. A.J.'s Return (4:32)
9. Rockstorm (3:41)
10. Short Straw (3:48)
11. Sacrifice/Goodbye Gracie (2:35)
12. Evacuation (3:46)
13. Remote Detonation (1:53)
14. A Wing and a Prayer (5:20)
15. Returning Home/Armageddon Trailer (3:19)
16. America the Beautiful (0:49)
Bonus Tracks:
17. Meteor Shower (Short Version) (2:09)
18. Russian Hero (Alternate) (0:25)
19. Astronauts (Alternate) (1:04)
20. The Drilling Commences (Alternate) (2:49)
21. Freedom Crew (Alternate) (2:54)
22. Long Distance Goodbye (2:29)
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(Several variants of this bootleg exist, some of which containing more music) |
The insert in Sony's commercial album contain a note about Rabin and extensive credits.
(it gives no credit to Harry-Gregson Williams). The other albums contain no consistent artwork or
booklet information.
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