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Now this is a score I have not payed all that much attention to, even though I knew it from the 1980s. I've seen the movie and heard the score a couple of times, but that's it.
Yesterday, I listened to two albums in a row, both with the volume up quite a bit.
First one was Richard Strauss' Alpensinfonie (Giuseppe Sinopoli: Staatskapelle Dresden). Terrific super orchestral piece, starts and end hushed and quiet, but has orchestral might including a church organ blasting through the speakers in some sections.
Second was Jerry Goldsmith's Runaway (yes, what a contrast), and wow, I was just blown away, everything came together. It's not as if I didn't like the score before, but I don't know what it was, perhaps I never paid all that much attention to the music, or I played it at a too low volume, yet it was never up there with many other Goldsmith scores for me. But as these grating electronics pulsated through our living room, the score all of a sudden made a lot more fun than ever. I even enjoyed Erik Labson's mastering here (from the Varèse Deluxe Edition), there are lots of details in the music but it's an aggressive mix that fits the score well.
Nothing here sounds remotely like an acoustic instrument, it's the musical equivalent of high voltage straight from the socket. Great score.
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Ive always been on the fence for his one! So I just may seek this out. Its funny how you mention that now suddenly you liked it. There are some Goldsmith scores which never tickled my fancy initialy but years later suddenly its like something new and exciting at the same time. You suddenly notice the subtleties and the context and then realise it works!!!
Yes, exactly. I knew this score since the movie came out back in the 1980s... and it's not that I "disliked" it, but it just wasn't a score I went out of my way to listen to. It got played not and then but not like yesterday evening, relaxing on the couch, enjoying some fine red wine while actively listening to two albums... we do this now and then, but RUNAWAY would normally not be an album that I select for such an evening listening session. Something made me do it yesterday, perhaps I was just in the mood for it.
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I'm not sure why you mentioned listening to the Strauss work immediately before the Goldsmith.
You seem to suggest Runaway sounded better to you after listening to the Strauss.
I would have thought the opposite – that listening to the magnificent Alpensinfonie immediately before Runaway would make the latter sound like atrocious noise.
That was just written to give the setting, I don't think the Strauss makes the Goldsmith sound better. Indeed, what can you listen to after the Alpensinfonie? There's just nothing that can really compare, it's an enormous orchestral soundscape. So we had a break and listened to nothing for a while, and then I put on RUNAWAY, which I thought has nothing to lose. I mean, it can't compare to the Strauss piece, and I didn't expect it to. The listening was moving on to, as Monty Python would say, something completely different. So it struck me as a surprise how much I enjoyed RUNAWAY then, which is why I posted it. But RUNAWAY is not atrocious noise, it's a very structured and organized score. I can understand why it's not everybody's cup of tea though, the music sounds as if it were out of pure electricity.
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OT: And the damn thing goes on for fifty bleedin' minutes! If Strauss's Alpensinfonie isn't the epitome of over-indulgent, late Romantic bloat I don't know what is.
Oh, it is, no doubt about it. It is probably the longest orchestral piece (as in one uninterrupted cue) I have in my collection. I enjoy it a lot though. Over the years, I really came to enjoy music from the Baroque or earlier all the way to the present, from Bach to Beethoven to Berio. It depends on the mood. I enjoy electronic scores like RUNAWAY, giant romantic epics like the Alpensinfonie, a Lana Del Rey album like ULTRAVIOLENCE, and the 6 Pieces for Orchestra by Anton Webern all in one evening.
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6 Pieces for Orchestra by Anton Webern
I'll be looking that up. In the meantime, can someone please compose a concert work titled: "Six Not So Easy Pieces" in honor of Richard Feynman. Don't forget the bongos 
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I enjoy electronic scores like RUNAWAY, giant romantic epics like the Alpensinfonie, a Lana Del Rey album like ULTRAVIOLENCE, and the 6 Pieces for Orchestra by Anton Webern all in one evening.
Those weren't accidentally chosen, I listened to exactly those pieces on that evening.
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I’d snap up a new version if it was mastered at a normal level.
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