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•	2022 Album

•	2014 Album

•	2010 Album

•	2025 Album

•	2022 Album

•	2014 Album

•	2010 Album

In the mid-1980's, Williams discovered his highly patriotic style of concert writing that eventually led to specialty themes such as "Liberty Fanfare," "Celebrate Discovery," "Jubilee 350," his Olympics work, and even the "Mission" theme for NBC News on television. His music for Steven Spielberg's popular "Amazing Stories" television episode, "The Mission," was also saturated with this sound as well. In his film scores, this uniquely American style of writing for Williams debuted in SpaceCamp and is encapsulated by that score. Between the concert track and score's finale, Williams' patriotic writing is in top form. The grandeur and exuberance of these fully orchestral statements of broad, hopeful themes are what define his career, and these two similarly-minded performances save the entire soundtrack from its otherwise average underscore. Despite Williams' seeming best intentions, much of this score dwells in non-descript regions of the composer's writing that takes a considerable number of pages from his disaster scores of the early 1970's as well as some of the less interesting underscore from Star Wars: A New Hope. The suspense presented in the latter half of the score fails to state itself with effectiveness (though "White Sands" is similar in style to Jurassic Park), with flat performances and surprisingly poor sound quality hindering significant portions. Once you are spoiled by the solid brass fanfares of the main theme, the training cues do their best to mute their heroism with restrained but still hopeful brass solos, and such material cannot compete. The identity of the kids isn't addressed by Williams in the themes of SpaceCamp, even in the woodwind and string interludes over flowing harp. The composer seems to have his sights set on the expanse of space and little else, his bubbly, ascending main theme and its accompanying fanfare littered throughout the work. The performance inflection of this theme is emotionally varied, but the most memorable passages are all rooted in the original Americana spirit of the idea. The only exception is the outrageously dated "Training Montage" cue, in which Williams poorly merges a modern light rock rhythm with a drum machine. Some of the mechanized elements in the film are handled with subtle motifs as well, including a descending tune on seemingly synthetic celeste for the robot and associated computers. A cute, rising and falling string figure introduced in "In Orbit" cleverly represents weightlessness and offers itself as the bridge in the summary suite as well.

Aside from Williams' dedicated themes, the remainder of his score for SpaceCamp is moderately pleasing despite the fact that listeners have heard every element of the music rendered with better results in other works, on screen or in concert. There are several noteworthy moments in the fuller passages for the entire ensemble, but several slow cues in the space portions of the story, a relatively flat recording, and a lack of stylish performance aspects are the ultimate downfall for the entirety. A CD was not released for SpaceCamp until 1992, when a limited, 1,000-copy run was produced in Japan to match original LP contents arranged by Williams in his customary fashion. This BMG/RCA "club" album escalated rapidly in value and sold for over $200 at its prime. In 2010, Intrada Records was able to license and reprint an identical presentation for a 3,000-copy run that sold out within a single day. Unfortunately, the label's efforts to improve the sound quality are only moderately successful and cues from the score remained missing from the jumbled selection limited by the licensing arrangement. Intrada returned to SpaceCamp in 2014 and made the same presentation one of its regular commercial offerings, so its status as a storied rarity was put to rest for the time being. Note that the sound quality issues with the score remained on this 2014 re-issue; the source and mastering were carbon copies of the 2010 predecessor. In 2022, the label finally provided a more complete presentation of SpaceCamp as another limited product. Spread over two CDs, the album adds a minimal amount of new material in a proper film ordering and then a recreation of Williams' original arrangements. The use of new sources does assist in sound quality a bit, though the additional cues range from extensions of the computer motif to a pair of nondescript suspense moments, with the more impressive and expressive "Arriving at Daedalus and Morse Code" in between. The quantity of music on the 2-CD set may be overkill for this score, as the work does lend itself better to a shorter representation via suite, especially with the suspense material in the latter half really dragging on all presentations. A massive 2025 Williams anthology from Sony Classical re-issued the second CD of the 2022 set. Ultimately, the score has never really justified collector's prices given its somewhat archival sound and a lack of distinct ideas that reduce its attractiveness. It's an admirable effort from Williams, and its highlights are worthy of inclusion in any collection of the composer's work, but you'll hear everything in SpaceCamp to a much finer degree in other places.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68 (in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.53 (in 366,445 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.