: (John Carpenter/Alan
Howarth) John Carpenter's films were a hit and miss affair in the 1970's
and 1980's, and he had suffered several misses by the time his reunion
with Kurt Russell for
punched him
back into the mainstream in 1986. The film was a sloppy but nevertheless
fun action flick featuring the no-nonsense but clumsy and comedic
Russell as an average trucker sucked into the world of Chinese black
magic in the process of helping a friend. Carpenter's enthusiastic love
of the kung fu genre fueled this rather silly but still attractive foray
into the martial arts. Audiences wanted little of it at the time,
causing the studio a fair amount of panic before and after the movie's
box office failure, but
gained quite
the cult following in the years to come. Undoubtedly, it is a film
saturated with the styles and mores of the 1980's, anchoring all aspects
of the production to its original generation, including the music.
Combining the experience of a singer/composer/director and a sound
effects editor, the team of Carpenter and Alan Howarth brought a wealth
of knowledge to the music and other audio details of Carpenter's films.
Their electronic style of film scoring was especially suited for the
snazzy, synthesized style of the 1980s and, consequently, Howarth and
Carpenter's scores for such films as
became their own form of cult classics
with a strong and devoted following. Never mind, of course, the fact
that these men had no real, formal training in writing scores and
therefore flew by the seat of their pants during the entire process,
inspiring, in some ways, the entire Hans Zimmer "guest artist"
phenomenon decades later. With
bordering on the fantasy genre, Carpenter leaves behind his usual, glum
synthetic droning in favor of a hip, straight forward rock score that
emphasizes the film's nearly incessant action more than anything else.
He fondly remembers this score, interestingly, as likely his best and
most technically accomplished, with lines of action more complicated
than in his other efforts.
Even though many traditional score fans remember the
1980's as a time when large orchestral "space opera" scores experienced
a rebirth, electronic alternatives like the one for
Big Trouble in
Little China were just as important. They held their own, despite
the failure by most of those orchestral score fans to understand their
appeal. To such listeners,
Big Trouble in Little China will more
closely resemble a series of moody sound effects than a collection
thematically driven, connected cues. Rock band elements led by keyboards
perform the vast majority of the score, with various electric guitars
and pulsating bass loops usually propelling the action. The composers
typically started by devising the rambling rhythmic thumping of a cue
first and built everything else on top of it, with few changes in
direction to the underlying rhythm attempted. For the mystical side of
the film's story, Carpenter and Howarth employ woodblocks, xylophones,
kotos, and other individual accents for a sense of authenticity that may
sound like a tongue in cheek insertion for some listeners, especially
with the constant use of tacky, faux-oriental progressions). While it's
clear that these men had no substantive idea what they were doing in
terms of infusing actual, real oriental shades into the mix, the best
parts of the score are those that balance the two elements without
losing touch with either influence. Carpenter and Howarth may have never
had a chance to equal the skill with which Lalo Schifrin merged East
Asian and Western rock elements during the same era, but they made a
valiant attempt at it on the fly. One of the best techniques Carpenter
uses is a sliding electronic and choral effect in "Into the Spirit
Path," yielding a very spooky, mystical atmosphere. Highly analytical
listeners will find much to ridicule in the staccato progressions that
the composers employ out of their own notion of what sounded vaguely
Eastern to them while writing. The two "themes" conveyed for Chinese
characters are lame and underdeveloped, failing to have much impact.
Otherwise, though, if you can set aside these missteps,
Big Trouble
in Little China will always remain best defined by its slapping
rhythmic ruckus on drums, cymbals, and keyboards. In other words, the
straight, Russell rock music representation prevails.
Mainstream listeners will most likely identify the
title song of
Big Trouble in Little China, performed by
Carpenter's "The Coupe de Villes," as the main attraction of the
soundtrack. This despite its owing to the Ray Parker Jr.
Ghostbusters song and exhibiting an even more dated, shamelessly
1980's sound while exposing the general lack of vocal abilities by its
performers, including Carpenter. On album, 45 minutes of
Big Trouble
in Little China was offered on LP and CD in 1986 by the Enigma label
and fell completely out of print. In 1999, SuperTracks released a
limited promotional album with even more music from
Big Trouble in
Little China, as well as some token inclusions from Alan Howarth's
Backstabbed (a 1996 Danish thriller) and Carpenter and Howarth's
more famous
Escape from New York. In the
Big Trouble in Little
China portion of the promo, a few minutes were added to "Lo Pan's
Domain" and "Escape from Wing Kong," although it was reportedly
Howarth's decision to still withhold some material from the album,
causing some irritation with die-hard fans. It does include a reprised
version of the catchy title song. The three cues from
Backstabbed
fit seamlessly with the electronic atmosphere of the previous score, but
it's largely unremarkable by comparison. The track from an edited scene
in
Escape from New York is a treat, similar to the action
material in the latter half of that score, though its analog sound
quality is significantly poorer than that of the rest of the album. The
promo features above-average sound quality and flows well between the
three scores represented. In early 2009, La-La Land Records provided the
complete score for
Big Trouble in Little China in equal quality
and its full 80+ minutes of duration over two CDs. The limited pressing
of 3,000 copies seemed like overkill; the additional material consists
of unremarkable extensions of material available on the 1999 promo. The
inclusion of five minutes of stinger recordings definitely defined the
product as a target of only Carpenter's most devoted collectors, but
that didn't stop it from selling out and prompting La-La Land to
re-issue the same contents with new art and liner notes in 2016. For
many, this album remains a daunting proposition given the extremely
specific style of 1980's electronica action that has, more than nearly
every other segment of film music history, become hopelessly dated.
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- Music as Written for the Film: **
- Music as Heard on the Enigma Records Album: **
- Music as Heard on the SuperTracks and La-La Land Records Albums: ***
- Overall: **