More Babylon 5 CDs Than You Will Ever Need
by Jeff Bond
Babylon 5 soundtrack CDs, music composed by Christopher Franke
Including:
Babylon 5 Volume 2: Messages From Earth *** 1/2 Sonic Images
SI 8602-2
Babylon 5 - Severed Dreams ** 1/2 Sonic Images SI 0310-2. 22 tracks
- 33:15
Babylon 5 - A Late Delivery From Avalon ** 1/2 Sonic Images SI 0312-2
Babylon 5 - Walkabout *** Sonic Images SI 0318-2
Babylon 5 - Shadow Dancing *** Sonic Images SI 0321-2
Babylon 5 - Z'ha'dum *** Sonic Images SI 0322-2
Television music is such a gigantic, untapped resource of great music
that I can't help but get embittered as I listen to the beginning of an
unprecedented series of CD releases from Christopher Franke's Sonic Images.
Here's a television soundtrack fan's dream: a series of albums from individual
episodes, beautifully packaged and indexed, with complete scores averaging
out to around a half hour of music per disc. Meanwhile, we're lucky if
we can get a Star Trek CD every three or four years.
I admire what Christopher Franke has done for Babylon 5. Here's
a series that's produced on a veritable shoestring, that tries to tell
stories that span space and time in a way that's never been attempted by
a television series (or most movies) before. J. Michael Stryzinski's production
would have never been possible had its armadas of arcane spacecraft been
created by model builders (they'd still be trying to finish the ships for
the first episode); nor would it have been able to afford a full-bore orchestral
score every week. Franke's pulsating, textural scores for the series have
always functioned perfectly with its slick CGI visuals, focusing on atmosphere
and pacing in conjunction and conspiring to keep the viewer's attention
off the show's simple fly-by-night sets and props and on the intricate
interweavings of fate, interpersonal relationships and galactic politics
that keep viewers (all 20 of them) tuning in week after week. There are
no galactic fanfares and marches here, only misty synthetic chords that
gather into charging, kodo-drumming action cues that race along with the
show's bulleting CGI warships in battle sequences. Occasionally a piano
note or a delicate, chime-like ping will hang in the background as an adjunct
to character's discussions of the horrible Shadows or that annoying civil
war sparked off by President Clarke.
While the scores function perfectly in conjunction with the series,
I have doubts about their validity as individual albums, particularly in
the individual episode format undertaken in the last batch of five CDs
released. Franke's Babylon 5 Volume 2: Messages From Earth worked
quite well at nearly an hour in length, compiling four episodes and takes
on the series various title themes into a highly entertaining album. With
the driving, almost dance-oriented "Messages From Earth" and
the heroic "Voices of Authority" (one of the few episode scores
to feature a memorable, well developed melodic theme), Volume 2 was a great
overview of music from the series.
The individual episode scores, however, are almost indistinguishable,
and too often the cues just wander along from synthetic crescendo to crescendo
as they underscore each episode's dramatic brinksmanship and plot points.
The battle cues are exciting, but I defy anyone but the most obsessed B5
junkie to describe the differences between them. And while Franke's handling
of the electronic textures is adept, I think he could have made a little
better use of the German orchestra that's credited in every episode. In
particularly, the driving, fanfare-like title themes would gain a lot of
distinction from the kind of guts that an acoustic sound would bring to
them. While season 5's title music has yet to be put on CD, it features
a nice new fanfare in conjunction with the "Voices of Authority"
melody, and both would benefit greatly from a better use of the orchestra
and a little less of that bleating Casio sound.
As far as the existing CDs go, there's also a little question of value
for your money. B5 Volume 2 already contains lengthy suites (over
ten minutes each) of the episodes "Z'ha'dum" and "Severed
Dreams," both of which are now available as separate CDs. Volumes
1 & 2 contained around an hour of music; the individual episode CDs
clock out at around a half an hour each, but cost as much as the hour-long
albums. Nevertheless, despite my reservations, I hope the B5 CDs are successful,
because there are other series out there (The X-Files, the Trek
franchise, or how about the old Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau?)
that deserve this kind of treatment.
Fire PPGs at:
jbond@filmscoremonthly.com
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