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| CD Reviews: The Life Aquatic and Alexander |
| Posted By: David Coscina, Steven A. Kennedy on March 20, 2005 - 10:00 PM |
CD Reviews: The Life Aquatic and Alexander
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou *
1/2
MARK MOTHERSBAUGH
Hollywood 2061-62494-2
25 tracks - 60:09
After thoroughly enjoying Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998), and especially
Bill Murray's superb performance in it, I was mildly looking forward to
this awkwardly named film. The Life
Aquatic with Steve Zissou features a list of famous comedy stars
and familiar faces. That alone often spells disaster, and if the music
on this disc is any indication, the film may very well sink. At the
very least, we can expect something that's not like most Hollywood
fare.
The soundtrack opens with a brief theme written by Norwegian composer
Sven Libaek for a nature film called Inner
Space. It's a quasi-jazz piece with a saxophone that harkens
back to those Stan Getz albums in the 1960s. A second theme from Inner Space is also included on
this disc. And these turn out to be far more impressive than anything
else here. The CD prominently features a number of David Bowie songs
performed by Seu Jorge in Portuguese. Bowie's versions of "Life on
Mars?" and "Queen Bitch" bookend the film's underscore and additional
song material. A recording of Devo's "Gut Feeling" and songs performed
by Joan Baez, Iggy and the Stooges, Paco de Lucia, Scott Walker, and
The Zombies round out the rest of the disc.
Mak Mothersbaugh's underscore (5 tracks - 17:21) generally has a '60s
retro feel that's not all bad, but it sounds cheap to the point of
distraction. Could this really be what Anderson wanted? It would seem
so, given his little note in the accompanying booklet that has nothing
at all to say about Mothersbaugh's score.
Mothersbaugh uses a semi-baroque sound for "Loquasto International Film
Festival," which features a well-reproduced baroque string orchestra
mixed in with a few key solo instruments and prominent guitar. The solo
piano work here and in several other tracks is reminiscent of David
Benoit and Vince Guaraldi.
In the split track, "Zissou Society Blue Star Cadets/Ned's Theme Take
1" the second half sounds like it was produced on a high end Casio
keyboard. Perhaps this can be considered cute or even quaint, but the
music sounds like nothing more than a child noodling at a keyboard in a
music store. "We Call Them Pirates Out Here" and "Ping Island/Lightning
Strike Rescue Op" provide action music that at least livens up the
proceedings. But the former ends up being repetitive and over long by
the time it reaches the two-minute mark. --
Steven A. Kennedy
Alexander *
VANGELIS
Sony Classical ASK 92942
18 tracks - 56:23
I grew up listening to and loving Vangelis' music. Something in his
choice of synthesizer textures, combined with lush harmonic
progressions, separated him from the fraternity of electronic musicians
such as Tomita, Kitaro, Klaus Shultz, Tangerine Dream, to name a few.
It was his application of a romantic styled ideology toward the new
(for the time) music medium. That's partly why his score to Oliver
Stone's epic film Alexander
is so disappointing. Gone are those full and expansive harmonies. One
has but to listen to "Titans" to understand what I mean; it is
ostensibly the main theme from the film and the main harmonic body of
this piece is a simple IV-I progression with little to no deviation in
its melodic content from the basic triadic chords.
To make up for this musical shortcoming, Vangelis chooses to load up
the music with his trademark synth sound, the Yamaha CS80. And therein
lies the other major problem with not only Vangelis' score to this
film, but the problem in general with an over reliance on synthesizers.
Unlike instruments of the orchestra which reached the summit of their
evolution over a hundred years ago thereby making their sound timeless
(at least to us late 20th century folk), synthesizers are quickly
evolving electronic instruments with specific sounds that are linked to
a specific time period. Take the DX7 or LinnDrum drum machine. If you
are hear them on a Goldsmith disc, you immediately know that it's got
to be one of his '80's scores. Vangelis' palette of sounds has only
marginally changed over the past 20 years, so when one hears a track
such as "Titans" even the most casual listener will be able to make the
association in the timbre of the ubiquitous CS80 string or brass sound
and that of Vangelis' most popular score to Blade Runner. This of course
creates a huge problem in that one is thrust out of the film with
visions of a movie made 20 years ago about the future, not the past.
What new sounds Vangelis has acquired don't fair much better. Sampled
horns on "Introduction" sound so obviously fake that they ruin whatever
atmosphere the music tries to achieve. When there isn't some obvious
sampled instrument playing a lead line, Vangelis reaches for
Acid-styled audio loops with ethnic women's choirs as found on "The
Drums of Gaugamela" or one of the worst tabla loops I've ever heard,
featured on "Roxane's Dance." There is no variation of this rhythmic
figure during the three-minute running time and after the first 30
seconds, it gets monotonous to the point where I found myself wishing I
was listening to "Hispanol" from his superior 1492 score. At least with that
track, the main rhythmic line was comprised of an odd meter giving that
piece an unstable feeling, assisted by an ominous melody and real male
chorus. Such is not the case with Alexander.
Things get a little more interesting on "Garden of Delight" where
Vangelis incorporates a duduk. Problem is, like his choice of
synthesizer patches, he's behind the times. This particular instrument
was interesting when Peter Gabriel used it in The Last Temptation of Christ or
when Mychael Danna employed it in his scores. But now it's
common-place. It doesn't help that this track so closely resembles
Gabriel's "The Feeling Begins" cue from the aforementioned score. Yep,
Vangelis just cannot seem to get a break. There's even that whispy ol'
Fairlight flute sound backing up a modern styled drum beat and solo
violin on "Roxane's Veil".
Listening to this soundtrack, I cannot fathom what Oliver Stone was
thinking when he went this route. Was it because Hans Zimmer's Gladiator set the trend for an
ethnic synth-based scoring approach to epic films? Even if that is the
case, Zimmer's music still had some contextual legitimacy in that his
choice of electronics were mostly subtle, way-in-the-background pads or
else doubling a conventional orchestra. It's been said that the score
for Alexander is also
fortified with a large orchestra. Unless this refers to the size of the
groups used on the sample libraries, I cannot hear any evidence of
this. And that can't be it either as the samples used on this score are
so cheesy that a garden variety Yamaha Portatone that anyone can pick
up at their local Best Buy would provide more accurate acoustic
representations of the instruments featured on this disc.
As a longtime fan of Vangelis' music, I find Alexander bereft of anything
worthwhile to recommend, something that is disheartening to me to say
the least. But alas, there is not a single moment on this disc that is
appealing. Vangelis' harmonic idiom has been stripped down to its
barest. If there were some interesting textures that compensate for
this shortcoming, then I could find some merit in his music. But the
antiquated synthesizer sounds only make the listening experience all
the worse. And if he had stuck with completely electronic tones, that
too would have been somewhat visionary. But the bi-polarity of using
old sounds with newer (where's Gigastudio when you need it?) result in
a score that doesn't satisfy on any level. Ironically, Vangelis
achieved a dated sound for his score to Alexander -- problem is that it
missed the mark by about a thousand years. Can anyone say Ladyhawk?
-- David Coscina
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
April 25 |
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| Alec Puro born (1975) |
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| Brian May died (1997) |
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| David A. Hughes born (1960) |
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| Franz Waxman records his score for Stalag 17 (1952) |
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| Gary Hughes died (1978) |
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| Georges Delerue records his score for L’Homme Qui Revient De Loin (1972) |
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| Heinz Roemheld's score for Union Station is recorded (1950) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score for How to Steal a Million (1966) |
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