Easy Dark Mode

A definitive 1960s soundtrack comes to CD at last: Wait Until Dark (1967), the brilliant, moody and haunting score composed and conducted by Henry Mancini. The name "Mancini" resonates today as a master of light pop and comedy. One of the touchstones of his career—and of movie music itself—is "Moon River," composed for Breakfast at Tiffany's and conveying the beauty and heart of Audrey Hepburn. However, Mancini was endlessly inventive and relished the opportunity to showcase a darker and more dramatic side of his ability. One of the best chances came on another, very different Audrey Hepburn movie, Wait Until Dark, and he did not disappoint. Wait Until Dark was a suspense masterpiece starring Hepburn as a blind housewife who is terrorized by three hoods (Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston) trying to retrieve a heroin-filled doll from her New York City apartment.

Intricacy, musicality, craftsmanship, and nuance are words that, back in 1989, were hardly ever used to describe death metal - a style so extreme, so ferocious, so intent on annoying parents at any cost that it seemed destined to self-destruct. But Dark Tranquillity and their expansive colleagues in Gothenburg, Sweden, refused to believe that death metal could not be musical, nuanced, and melodic, and that outlook continues to define them on Fiction. This rewarding CD was recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, the year that marked Dark Tranquillity's 18th anniversary. Perhaps 18 years isn't all that long compared to the Rolling Stones celebrating their 45th anniversary in 2007; nonetheless, 18 is an impressive number when one recalls all the naysayers who, in the late '80s, thought death metal would be long gone by the 21st century…