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Review of James Horner: Suites and Themes (Compilation)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are a die-hard James Horner collector and seek a
surprisingly competent bootlegged compilation of the composer's mostly
non-released works.
Avoid it... if you expect to use the album for anything other than an educational experience, for many of the cues are intolerable and there is no flow the wildly varying selections.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
James Horner: Suites and Themes: (compilation)
While a significant number of scores have been bootlegged through the
years since the invention of household CDr technology, there remain
surprisingly few professional quality bootleg compilations of a single
composer's work. Even fewer of these were so impressive in their
production quality that official soundtrack specialty outlets sold them
specifically as a top-notch bootleg. Such was the case with a 1998
compilation of unreleased music from the first dozen years of James
Horner's career called "James Horner: Suites and Themes." This album
featured a more professional pressing than most bootlegs, with a full
color insert accompanying a well-burned CD. Sound quality of the product
is generally acceptable, with only a couple of exceptions. There's
nothing as atrocious as the muffled sound of the Project X
bootleg that had been pressed just prior. The selection of original
recordings is a treat for any Horner collector, even the veteran one,
for the compilation offers pieces that would rarely see subsequent
official or bootleg expansion in the following decade. As you might
expect, the album serves as more of a curiosity than a consistent
stand-alone listening experience. Many of the scores featured on the
bootleg are from the first three years of Horner's active career, and
along with the synthetic side of his writing in the 80's, there will be
selections unrecognizable when compared to the rest of his music. Very
few of the cues provided will actually give listeners the itchy feeling
that Horner's self-rip-off techniques can cause. The one cue that
actually pulls more inspiration from another composer rather than
himself is the title music from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, a
showtune extravaganza that owes significantly to Nino Rota and Danny
Elfman. Bordering on the insane, this cue fortunately offers the album's
best sound quality.
The seventeen minute suite from 48 Hours is by far the weakest link, with Horner's intolerable synthetic jazz from 1982 sharing the more unfortunate traits of his later Red Heat score. Poor sound quality in these five cues further irritates the ears. 1981's The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper is pure silliness for banjos, fiddles, mouth organs, and slide guitars in a ridiculously paced country dance rhythm... definitely a cue to pull out on your roommates after midnight. Horner's version of The Journey of Natty Gann features a beautiful orchestral title theme with pieces to be developed later in The Land Before Time, and its short duration on this compilation is a highlight. One of the more recent selections without a commercial release is 1993's House of Cards, written along the same lines as Horner's plethora of children's scores. Its soft string theme shares similarities with The Man Without a Face. The 1983 replacement score for Something Wicked this Way Comes is as whimsically close to Harry Potter music that Horner has perhaps ever come, and the opening title cue is a strong alternative to the score's full bootleg. The Tales from the Crypt cue is a cute piece for plucked strings and synth along the lines of some of Mark Snow's more humorous music for the X-Files series. The entirely synthetic music for My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys in 1991 is surprisingly similar to the pop ventures by Hans Zimmer at roughly the same time. Akin in parts to the best cues in Field of Dreams, the light keyboarding, synth chimes, and a romantic theme make for easy listening in both cues. Horner's music for the Italian, 1990 Lawrence Kasdan film I Love You to Death again has a touch of Nino Rota, but with a few of the expansive chord progressions of Legends of the Fall. Its delightfully Mediterranean-flavored theme is betrayed by both muffled sound quality in this pressing and, strangely, the calypso rhythm at its conclusion, which leads steel drums, saxophone, and accordion on a wild ride that doesn't seem to belong in any single world culture. The rather mundane 1993 score for Jack the Bear is charming in its sensitive theme, but non-descript when compared to Horner's other ideas for similar films at the time. This cues suffers from sound effects over its length, though Jack the Bear would eventually receive an official Intrada release many years later. Horner composed the impressive Uncommon Valor in between his two Star Trek scores, and the influence can easily be heard. Pieces of Krull and Aliens are also evident in its stylistically characteristic military rhythms. At some point, you've heard so many variations on Horner's rising four-note motif from his early 80's scores that it's a wonder he managed to squeeze its usage all the way through The Rocketeer in 1991. When you put all these tracks together, you obviously have a CD that doesn't have any consistent flow whatsoever. It's the kind of product with which you can pull your favorite cues onto another compilation and simply retain this CD as source. It's easy to see how the album was created, especially with most of the "End Title" cues likely pulled directly from VHS tapes. But at a time when Horner compilations were flooding the market right after the success of Titanic, this one is by far the most relevant to the composer's most die-hard collectors. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 71:23
NOTES & QUOTES:
Non-existent insert information.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from James Horner: Suites and Themes are Copyright © 1998, Bootleg and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 6/19/98 and last updated 8/9/07. |
