Thanks to a Black Friday sale at Varèse, my film score CDs have been given a little boost in the last few days:
I already own the original 1992 CD of Silvestri's
Death Becomes Here score, but felt it easily warranted double-dipping to upgrade to The Deluxe Edition. It turns out I'll have to keep the original for completion, since the DE includes some extended tracks (including Streep's rendition of
Me) without throwing in the original album versions.
A little curiosity here: I've only watched two of the five films featured here (and I didn't think
Hangman was particularly good, even though I liked the score).
Dracula 2000 and
Mimic are films that I was aware of back in the day but simply didn't appeal. They still don't, but I knew I'd get some enjoyment from the albums since it's
Scream-era Marco Beltrami. Hearing some of the albums has actually made me curious about the films themselves.
D2K in particular is very nicely done, with a recurring haunting motif of a female voice (Mamak Khadem) doing that exotic ethereal yodelly thing (like Márta Sebestyén in Yared's
The English Patient, Fairuz in the background to Madonna's
Erotica, or the theme to
Central Park West).
The soundtrack to
Mimic has been on my radar for a long time partly because it's very
Scream-esque, but mostly due to parts of it being (controversially) used in
Halloween H20. A bit of digging round revealed the track in question was
Race to The Subway and, upon a listen, yes - it does conjure up
H20 images:
Along Came A Spider has a very intriguing sound to it (it's also a film I'd actually very much like to watch. I don't know how I haven't manage to see it yet). I find Jerry Goldsmith to be a very unpredictable composer due to his versatility and willingness to experiment and take risks, so one never quite knows what to expect. But a Deluxe Goldsmith score at an excellent price is always going to be worth a shot. From the parts I've heard, it strikes a great balance between traditional orchestral and electronic, and I'm sure many tracks will be getting plenty of plays.
At the end of
Spider is a short outtake reel (barely 2 minutes), including a couple of short tracks played in full (I've separated them out). In between, it includes some repartee from Jerry himself, which suggests a warm, fun atmosphere during recording. To give an idea, the track opens with Jerry making a little comment that would probably get him cancelled today:
Women can never make up their minds.