By Douglas E. Winter


Why Things Went Wrong


Listeners puzzled by Daft Punk’s orchestral am- bitions for Joseph Kosinski’s TRON: LEGACY (2010) [VW 162:72] will find the score for Kosinki’s OBLIVION (2013) by fellow Frenchmen M83 down- right disturbing in its pursuit of the same Hans Zimmer aesthetic (+180 Records, $14.99, 30 tracks, 69m 6s). That’s not a criticism of the grand and propulsive (if not memorable) music, but a reaction to the irony of idiosyncratic and indepen- dent artists submerging their talents in a tried, true, and increasingly tired template.


Fronted by multi-instrumentalist Anthony Gonzalez, M83 creates dreamy ambient/electronic song structures and instrumental asides, show- cased most recently in HURRY UP, WE’RE DREAM- ING (2011). That sound is nowhere to be found in OBLIVION, save in the eponymous end title, sung by Susanne Sundfør. Instead, Gonzalez—who says his music proved “too indie” for Hollywood—found his compositions filtered through Joseph Trapanese, the orchestrator for (surprise, surprise) TRON: LEGACY.


Trapanese is not the problem, but simply the mediator of a common denominator solution. Big budgets generate ever-grander CGI flourishes that bleed (or burst in 3D) from the screen, over- whelming, if not repressing, imagination in fa- vor of manipulation. The soundscape of choice for these multi-million dollar excesses—and, inevitably, their down-market imitators—is a


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melodramatic rhapsody of bass-heavy sound design, digitally-sweetened orchestrations and rampaging percussion. Witness Zimmer’s score for MAN OF STEEL (2013), with its crescendoing rep- etitions, churning minor strings and twelve drum- mers drumming (WaterTower WTM39424, $13.88, two discs, 18 tracks, 85m 7s; limited edition, $19.88, two discs, 24 tracks, 118m 21s). Its bonus track—a 28m+ suite of computer-com- posed demos, “Man of Steel (Hans’ Original Sketchbook)”—reveals the musical dilemma, which is mired in generational shifts in the means of creating, recording and manipulating music. As the rock-and-roll revolution swept the Six- ties and Seventies, film scores held fast as popu- lar culture’s last bastion of classical music. Genre films, with prim budgets and the urge to differ, were the first to abandon the orchestral palette— and to bend it to new purposes. Riz Ortolani massed strings for ironic effect in CANNIBAL HO- LOCAUST (1980); Pino Donaggio channeled Ber- nard Herrmann for Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock homages; and then, of course, there was John Williams, whose anthemic neo-romanticism tran- scended every genre and set the new baseline for aural emotion. His long-overlooked but consum- mate score for De Palma’s THE FURY (1978), now available in an expanded edition (La-La Land LLLCD 1238, $29.98, two discs, 42 tracks 110m 54s), wrapped a fine paean to Herrmann in more sensational swaddling. But the times—and the compositional tools—were a-changin’, with the symbolic tipping point in Ennio Morricone’s icy electronic atmospheres for John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982), recently issued in a new recording by Alan Howarth, with unused tracks and the Howarth/Carpenter supplemental cues (BSXCD 8895, $15.95, 16 tracks, 60m 45s). One of horror’s last great traditional orchestral scores came when Clive Barker, forgoing indus- trial grind cues by Coil, urged Christopher Young to bring classical majesty to bear on the blood- strewn existential fetishism of his directorial de- but, HELLRAISER (1987). Young created an unabashed masterpiece, evoking the doomed ro- manticism at the fractured heart of Barker’s vision while offering musique concrète earfuls of Hell. BSX Records has paired the reissued score with Young’s music for the sequel, HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (1988), which resurrected his themes while add- ing choral washes and the unforgettable collision of two string orchestras and a calliope (BSX-8919, $19.95, two discs, 27 tracks, 103m 46s). The same year, Tangerine Dream scored Kathryn Bigelow’s NEAR DARK (1987). The newly

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