Children Song

Angelo Badalamenti's score for The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus) finds him utilising his orchestration skills to their full extent. His use of the string section in particular is extremely accomplished, with his lyrical writing helping to emphasise the often-melancholic tone of the film. Highlights of the soundtrack include the song "Who Will Take My Dreams Away?" (written with Marianne Faithful), and Badalamenti's sinister organ grinder music composed for the scenes featuring the trained fleas. Overall a very evocative and moving score, and a must for any serious fan of Badalamenti's film music.

Rachmaninov's songs for voice and piano count among his most heartfelt and beautiful compositions. Since his better-known piano preludes ooze melody from their every pore, why not adapt the songs for solo piano and you'll have what amounts to an additional set of Rachmaninov preludes? That's precisely what Earl Wild did with 13 of these gems. He doesn't merely weld the vocal lines onto the original piano accompaniments; instead, he fleshes out the textures in a style very much in keeping with the lush polyphony and galvanic rhythm typical of Rachmaninov's solo keyboard writing. And nobody plays Earl Wild transcriptions better than Earl Wild. From the bristling cascades in "The Little Island" to the wistful long lines and pent-up agitation of the familiar "Vocalise", Wild's unerring sense of style and utterly natural, singing technique hold your attention.

A year on from Portrait of an American Family, Marilyn Manson released the stopgap EP Smells Like Children. Where the full-length debut showed sparks of character and invention beneath industrial metal sludge, Smells Like Children is a smartly crafted horror show, filled with vulgarity, ugliness, goth freaks, and sideshow scares. Manson wisely chose to heighten his cartoonish personality with the EP. Most of the record is devoted to spoken words and samples, all designed to push to the outrage buttons of middle America. Between those sonic collages arrives one new song, retitled remixes of Portrait songs - "Kiddie Grinder," "Everlasting Cocksucker," "Dance of the Dope Hats," "White Trash" - and three covers ("Sweet Dreams," "I Put a Spell on You," "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger"), all given a trademark spooky makeover…

They immediately won the hearts of the fans and the press with their debut album "Something Wild" which was released in 1998 and they gave many a great live performance, too. The band completed two highly successful tours (including shows with Hypocrisy, Benediction and Dismember) and a fabulous gig at the legendary Wacken Open Air.At the end of 1998 CHILDREN OF BODOM barricaded themselves together with producer Anssi Kippo in the Astia Studio in Lapppeeranta to record their second release "Hatebreeder". The album was then mixed by the Finish Metal guru Mikko Karmilla (Waltari) in the Finnvox Studios in Helsinki. "Hatebreeder" includes the song `Children of Bodom´ which hit the number one spot in the official Finish charts and remained there for several weeks. The other songs also have all the makings of future hits and will rapidly worm their way in every ear canal - and stay there! CHILDREN OF BODOM`s new material is still very catchy but slightly more progressive. One thing`s for sure: We`re going to hear a lot of this band in the future!

The second album by Canadian band Ocean, Give Tomorrow's Children One More Chance, was released in 1972 on the Kama Sutra label in both the U.S. and Canada . The music on the second album moved away from the gospel sound toward more of a folk pop sound. Once again the songs were the highlight of the album, written by some of the best in the business, including Robbie Robertson and Richard Manual (the Band), Cook and Greenway, Steven Stills, Carole King, and others. Despite the strong songs on the album, Ocean only managed to score a minor hit in Canada with the song "One More Chance" and was subsequently dropped by the label.