Tron 1982

Disney's pioneering 1982 effort in computer animation has garnered a small but devoted cult audience, despite–or perhaps because of–its now-dated, rudimentary vid-game aesthetic. But while designers Jean Giraud and Syd Mead gave its visual design a certain streamline moderne panache, its musical score attempts a similar back-to-the-future fusion with somewhat more mixed results. Given the composer's often chilling, landmark synthesized score work a decade earlier on Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Wendy Carlos seemed like an apt choice for Tron. But without her previous collaborator's taste for Beethoven, Elgar, and Rossini, Carlos's instincts wend from atmospheric, 20th-century European modernism to cheesy '50s B-film melodramatics, with the sonic limitations of '80s synth technology sometimes a burden. Still, those fond of her solo work and collaboration with Kubrick on Orange (and The Shining) will find familiar charms in "Water, Music, and TRONaction," "TRONscherzo" and "Theme from TRON." But Journey's "Only Solutions" and now all-too-ironic "1990's Theme" further fix the score firmly in the '80s. This debut CD-release of the score also features three bonus tracks, the original "TRONaction" and two other unused cues, including a solo synth rendition of the film's anthem. –Jerry McCulley

Released in 1980, In Person, is a live album by Japanese keyboard player Kitaro who's pioneering use of synthesizers, exotic plucked and percussion instruments propelled his success as a prominent Electronic New Age artist in the 1970's and is still active today. This successful live album introduced Kitaro to a wider audience and featured his musical works up to that point. The Grammy® and Golden Globe-winning Kitaro has garnered global acclaim over a more than three decade long career with a signature sound and a pioneering fusion of cultures, techniques and spheres of consciousness that are truly his own. Universally acknowledged as the founding architect of new age music, Kitaro's various sound collaborations and resonant, multi-textured compositions truly defy the constraints of any genre.