Intrada

Long-awaited world premiere release of classic John Barry soundtrack in a 2-CD set! After two years of effort with two major licensors (UMG & Sony Pictures), Intrada realizes complete presentation of score plus classic original 1977 album! Peter Yates directs Nick Nolte, Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset in big screen version of Peter Benchley novel. John Barry supplies sensational score to match excitement, danger of underwater tale. Barry melds haunting, richly beautiful theme with abundance of dark, dangerous material to create unusually wide-scale score, replete with dense underwater motifs, aggressive action licks… ever-anchored by stunningly beautiful main theme. Intrada presents complete score on CD 1, in mono from only surviving 1/4" session masters vaulted in excellent condition by Sony, then offers complete (and generous) original Casablanca soundtrack album in stereo from superb condition actual album masters vaulted by UMG - and yes! - including great Donna Summers rendition of Barry's love theme!

Quigley Down Under interprets the modern Western score from a distinctly Australian perspective. Basil Poledouris' aw-shucks melodies and quirky arrangements employ French horn, banjo, and clarinet to create a vivid evocation of gunslinger life in the Outback. While Lonesome Dove remains Poledouris' definitive work in the Western arena, Quigley Down Under possesses no shortfall of charm or imagination; its playful approach bubbles with an energy quite uncommon to the genre, avoiding portent and ponderousness to communicate the joie de vivre of its characters and setting. Most impressive is Poledouris' stirring main theme, a bold, oddly funky reinvention of the classic Western fanfare that immediately serves notice that Quigley Down Under is a horse of a very different color.

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.