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Posted: |
Jul 21, 2022 - 1:54 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#11 (of #30)
TIMESTALKERS [1987]
Dragon’s Domain DDR748 (2021) ***** (46 mins)
(Part of The Craig Safan Collection Volume 1)
Best Track: Goodbye to 1886
This was provisionally a few places lower, but on the hottest UK day ever recorded, I opened an ice-cold Diet Pepsi and pressed play.
About 15 minutes later I was as high as a kite. Sun, soda and Safan. Would I have had that reaction playing Lorne Balfe? Well, it happened again the next day to the same score so I’m crediting Craig. Dragon’s Domain should sell this on street corners. Pandemic!
It’s Safan in 1987 - the glorious can-do-no-wrong synclavier period - and mostly an all-electronic affair. When acoustic instruments come in on top of it (as our heroes go back to the Old West of 1886), it really hits the spot. Even an old fella's cheesy singing just adds to the unique vibe. With the exception of maybe the unreleased The Legend of Billie Jean, it’s the most 80s sounding thing he ever produced. And that can never be meant in a bad way.
The film... it’s so awful it’s actually verging on good. William Devane’s wife and son get blown up right infront of his eyes at the opening, but he seems to forget all about them. He buys a trunk of 1886 memorabilia and somehow ends up with a hand-held time machine. Even when he has command of time itself, his family’s demise just means he’s free to roam the future with no ties. Their miraculous return in the last minute (orchestrated by someone who cares more than he does) is a mere consolation for his unrequited desire to visit 2586. Throw Klaus Kinski in there and you have a bad classic.
Safan was handed a big shiny turd with Timestalkers and somehow still made lemonade. It’s an absolute 80’s blast which should be a cult soundtrack by now.
This came out on a double CD along with the score to Die Laughing (1980), easily the best thing Safan produced this early in his career. The cover art and liner notes are minimalist by DD’s standards, but the discs are magnificent. A limited release of 500 units, and still available:
https://buysoundtrax.myshopify.com/products/the-craig-safan-collection-vol-1-timestalkers-die-laughing?_pos=7&_sid=19a86e0d5&_ss=r
The film is on Youtube with pretty good picture quality, if interest gets the better of anyone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDk3Qjea8M0
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Posted: |
Jul 23, 2022 - 10:59 AM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#12 (of #30)
ROUGH MAGIC [2015]
Perseverance PRD091 ***** (48 mins)
Best Track: A Vision full of Majesty
A dozen years since he last scored anything, Craig Safan came back with this, his sonic impressions of neolithic cave paintings. As you do.
I was obviously thrilled at the return, and very impressed with this unique sonic offering in 2015. But there was a lingering caveat. The years since have allowed me to put that caveat in the trash.
Angelic a-ha songwriter (and John Barry nemesis) Paul Waaktaar-Savoy once said something like this: “a-ha rock heavier and harder in soundchecks than Def Leppard can in their wildest dreams. The reason we don’t sound like that on record is we have other, better options. They don’t.” Ouch.
Where musical invention lags, sheer noise can fill the hole. I think of Mutts here... Producer Mutt Lange, waving goodbye to Michael Kamen at the studio door, then turning everything up to the max like Tom Cruise in Risky Business before Def Leppard arrive. And the Adventures of another Mutt in 2008, his musical over-accompaniment telling me the greatest film composer to ever play the game was gone and probably wasn’t coming back.
Rough Magic, Safan’s ‘poke’ to the film community after a dozen year absence, might be very unique but it’s also a godless cacophony. Parts of it make the atonal Wolfen sound like The Last Starfighter. Was he playing to his current day strengths, arranging strange sonic textures using modern software? Well... since then it’s been one revelation after another. When Safan did this, the musical cupboards were full. He had every other option in the world but wanted to do this.
How do you even describe Rough Magic? The score to an Arthouse Avatar was my initial description, and I can’t think of anything better. Actual European cave ambience is heard throughout, the instrumentation is unhinged and often hard to place, and the percussion is... well, I think back then, our dear ancestors spent a lot of their free time running for their lives.
If CD stores were still a thing, I can only wonder which section this would have appeared in. It’s the last of Safan’s three recent concept albums to appear here and I’ve labelled ‘em soundtracks for convenience. But... in rock’n’roll albums, there’s an unwritten rule - put your weakest track second last. Safan has followed this rule (to my taste at least) on each of these!
The CD is still available from Perseverance. It’s just about the ballsiest release ever, so major credit to Perseverance as well as Safan.
https://www.fortytwotradingco.com/rough-magic-cd/
TRIVIA: At the start of track Astonish and Transform, Safan recreates the strings from Wolfen. Then lays his Nightmare on Elm Street 4 synth theme on top of it. Whatever he imagined happening in this neolithic moment, it can’t have been good.
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Posted: |
Jul 28, 2022 - 2:50 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#13 (of #31)
COURAGE [1986]
Dragon’s Domain DDR755 (2022) ***** (54 mins)
Best Track: Lobby In Danger
This hidden gem of a score came out of nowhere. Discussed only once in 30 years of interviews/articles, and not included in either of the composer’s two personally-curated compilations.
The first of these, a 1996 promo Craig Safan Film Music, seems a strange artifact today. Highlighting his strongest score excerpts, he skips the synclavier glory years entirely, jumping over everything between the prelude, The Last Starfighter (1984) and the last gasp Stand and Deliver (1988). No Courage then.
Safan delivers a memorable, evocative score for a forgettable film. It’s his first time exploring sounds south of the American border and, per the Stand and Deliver liner notes, this was his demo tape to land that assignment. But Courage is the better of the two. It doesn’t hurt that he did it in the middle of 1986, the same year and right inbetween #1 and #2 on this list.
The film is online. Sophie Loren as the mother of a drug addict who helps the FBI bring down a drug dealer. It’s all a bit dull, thankfully finishing just 2 hrs 15 mins into the 3 hour runtime on the Youtube version (the remainder is just repeated scenes).
The score, however, is used very well in the film, and generously mixed (if YouTube is any way to judge). The sound on the CD is absolutely first rate and there’s some beautiful playing on the Latin American instruments.
The limited edition (500 units) Dragon’s Domain CD is still available:
https://buysoundtrax.myshopify.com/products/courage-original-soundtrack-by-craig-safan?_pos=3&_sid=20b72d879&_ss=r
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Posted: |
Jul 31, 2022 - 3:46 PM
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By: |
McD
(Member)
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#14 (of #31)
REMO WILLIAMS: The Adventure Begins [1985]
Composer Promo RW5891 (1996) ***** (61 mins)
Perseverance PRD010 (2006) ***** (70 mins)
Intrada ISCV177 (2011) ***** (70 mins)
Note For Note NFN1020 (2020) ***** (72 mins)
Best Track: Main Title
Placing Remo was a tough one. It’s his second best known score, a huge part of his legend and, mostly, wonderful. But it’s way too long as a listening experience on disc.
The Main Title is the source of much its reputation but also a mixed bag. The first theme (the Korean theme) is not an original piece. As far as I know this detail was kept quiet for years. The sonic choices are also hit and miss. Mainly the synthesised percussion. And the gunfire. Yeah, gunfire. Having just watched the film again, I can understand how it was judged to be consistent with the vibe. But I still wish it wasn’t there, and entirely different percussion had been used.
Remo is the second of three Safan scores made in the shadow of John Williams. This time Raiders. And although he went another direction stylistically, he sure studied what made Raiders work. It famously has two main themes played back-to-back after Spielberg couldn’t choose between them. Listen to the brass flourish at the end of Raiders’ second theme (1:02 of the Raiders March) and then the Remo theme. It’s clear where Safan’s inspiration came from.
I’m convinced a classic film score CD could be created from the remainder. But as it stands, there’s just too much music on here, and the second half tests the patience. ‘Gas’, anyone? It works just fine in the movie but not on disc. Ironically, the source cues later added to an already over-stuffed program give much needed variety. But Complete & Chronological has not been a friend to this work.
On CD: Remo has been released four times! So far. Each has cover art worse than the last.
Composer Promo (1996): a decent release, but sound is inferior to all others. And no source cues are included.
Perseverance (2006): Based on sound and content, had this been the last word on Remo it would have been just fine. Liner notes focus on background.
Intrada (2011): A reissue of Perseverance, claiming some baloney about previously reversed channels now fixed. Liner notes go track by track and tell you where to insert the source cues if you’re so inclined.
NoteforNote (2020): same as previous release, now from another sound source. Sound is improved, but no liner notes.
They’re all OOP and any of last three should suffice. Unless you're a hardcore audiophile, there is no reason to upgrade from Perseverance.
The Film: I hadn't seen it since the early 90s but Remo was an unexpected delight watching now on bluray. The Statue of Liberty sequence is genuinely thrilling. The Arrow disc is packed too including a 13 minute interview with Safan himself. The Joel Grey interview (from around 2012) spends much time discussing his casting over a Korean. It’s good future-proofing, considering it wasn’t a huge issue at the time (Cloud Atlas came out that year featuring a handful of name actors including Hugh Grant in Korean make-up). By the time Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins came to the UK, the adventure was officially over and the film renamed Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous. It’s a shame it flopped and we didn’t get more.
TRIVIA: Well, there is a sequel / reboot made directly for TV from 1988. Also scored by Craig Safan. Allegedly.
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TRIVIA: Well, there is a sequel / reboot made directly for TV from 1988. Also scored by Craig Safan. Allegedly.
"Allegedly"? Intrada released the whole thing in their (now defunct) Signature Edition line, paired with another Safan score!
https://www.discogs.com/release/8989115-Craig-Safan-Remo-Williams-Original-MGM-Television-Soundtrack
You didn't know about it?
EDIT: Whoops, Justin beat me to it...but maybe my Discogs link will be helpful for purchasing (there's a copy there now for only $23) so I'll leave it up!
Yavar
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Considering Safan has had a close relationship with Intrada over the years, signs off on their releases of his music, and this was even a *Signature Edition* no less so it had his literal signature on the thing... that seems bizarre, to say the least. He's such an eclectic and varied composer in terms of style. How can you be so certain that he didn't score the TV pilot?
Yavar
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Huh, interesting. Still a situation that stretches credulity. I don't doubt your Safan expertise and maybe he had a lot of help on the score from an assistant or something, but surely Intrada would have had some MGM paperwork or some kind of document which indicated the composer's identity as well.
Yavar
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I can't imagine what they were thinking, if he didn't do the score, giving Safan on-screen credit for the pilot score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OwtVJNZ4Uk
Credit: 4:06 in.
If he doesn't want to get into the details fine, but at least Craig could just say who did the score.
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Right Kev, but in those cases there were still key cues/elements of those scores which clearly sounded like Horner, and he was the overall "author" even if Don Davis or whoever tackled certain cues. McD seems to think that NONE of the Remo TV pilot score sounds like Safan, aside from the reuse of themes from the movie. Which again is odd, as Justin pointed out he's the (only) composer credited onscreen.
Of course there are oddball cases where a composer is credited who didn't write a note for something, like in the 1950s Lionel Newman being credited for The Bravados, when it was entirely composed by his brother Alfred Newman and Hugo Friedhofer (Lionel didn't even conduct, but supervised the recording in Europe which occurred under the baton of Bernard Kaun). Who knows what weird business reasons might account for something like this, but it certainly seems to be a rare occurrance.
Safan is still with us and I wonder, McD, if you ever tried to ask him?
Yavar
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