Soundtrack

Loch Ness was originally composed as a soundtrack for a - never finished - 2012 Commodore 64 Loch Ness ‘Spotter Simulator’ videogame. An adventure / simulator / RPG in which the player takes the role of a cryptozoologist trying to proof the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. The sounds on this soundtrack come from the mighty Commodore 64 itself. This computer, released in 1982, came with a state of the art soundchip - the MOS technologies SID. Far ahead of its competition it sported advanced functions like waveforms with Pulse Width Modulation, envelope generators and a filter. With this chip the commodore 64 had a real 3 voice synthesizer build in - lightyears removed from the spartan primitive unmusical blips and beeps of the Ataris or Apple II’s…

For fans of Jerry Goldsmith's score for Ridley Scott 1978 movie Alien, this two-disc Intrada set is the ultimate fantasy. Everything is here and then some. Disc 1 contains Goldsmith's entire score as he originally intended it with every cue in place, including those that were later cut from the film plus his recomposed versions of cues the director made him change (Goldsmith's original main theme, for example, appears without its signature heroic trumpet melody because the director thought it wasn't creepy enough). Disc 2 includes the original soundtrack as issued on LP plus six other bonus tracks of demonstration takes and even the brief except from Eine kleine Nachtmusik used in the film. The stereo sound here is fabulous, the performances definitive, and the liner notes exhaustive. And the score, like the film, is a classic of its genre. With its mixture of the ecstatic chromaticism of Scriabin, the skittering strings of Penderecki, the harmonic waves of Ligeti, and the atmospheric percussion of Herrmann, Goldsmith's score became a template for all subsequent science fiction/horror movies. But as this splendid release so amply shows, the original still can't be beat.

Fledgling film composer Harald Kloser laid waste – musically – to the world for Roland Emmerich's environmental disaster pic The Day After Tomorrow, so it comes as no surprise that he's up to providing the soundtrack for the latest "humans in peril" popcorn diversion, Alien Vs. Predator. Following in the footsteps of previous Alien franchise composers like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, Kloser brings the symphonic dread through a winning combination of orchestral vastness and tried and true action-film dynamics. He also introduces a myriad of electronic elements into the mix that bring to mind the works of contemporaries like Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman – the "Alien vs. Predator Main Theme" is particularly striking and serves as a continuous creative source for the composer to dip his baton in. There's nothing groundbreaking here, and why should there be? Kloser is just building his resumé, and what better way to do it than scoring big-budget – and hopefully big paycheck – Hollywood pap.