by
Paul Tonks
STAR TREK: NEMESIS – Jerry Goldsmith, Varèse Sarabande VSD-6412 ***
A few Columns back, I confessed that Star Trek was partly responsible for ensnaring and inveigling me into the world of film music. That was with THE MOTION PICTURE and especially THE WRATH OF KHAN. Each new film has therefore held a degree of fascination for me in the (admittedly waning) hope that a new score will be something special. There will be some readers who won’t know or immediately recall the legacy of talent involved thus far, so here it is:
STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979) Dir. Robert Wise / Jerry Goldsmith
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) Dir. Nicholas Meyer / James Horner
STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984) Dir. Leonard Nimoy / James Horner
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986) Dir. Leonard Nimoy / Leonard Rosenman
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989) Dir. William Shatner / Jerry Goldsmith
STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991) Dir. Nicholas Meyer / Cliff Eidelman
STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994) Dir. David Carson / Dennis McCarthy
STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996) Dir. Jonathan Frakes / Jerry Goldsmith
STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (1998) Dir. Jonathan Frakes / Jerry Goldsmith
STAR TREK: NEMESIS (2002) Dir. Stuart Baird / Jerry Goldsmith
The “odd numbered are bad / even numbered are good” chestnut has never been applicable to the scores. In fact, there are none of the scores that are flat-out “bad”. Even THE VOYAGE HOME, with the jarring clash of style presented by Rosenman, still has some exceptionally good sequences because of the music. Unfortunately, it remains my opinion that The Next Generation crew have yet to benefit from anything as interesting. FIRST CONTACT benefited from allowing itself to bleed into the horror genre, treating The Borg as a creepy, dangerous enemy. That resulted in some exciting musical change of pace, especially it seemed when Goldsmith was assisted in the writing by his son Joel. It also featured a surprisingly warm and nostalgic new theme used to convey the significance of Man’s first encounter with Vulcan. GENERATIONS, INSURRECTION and now NEMESIS have nothing to really distinguish themselves like that regrettably.
NEMESIS has a creepy villain (Shinzon), but clearly he’s more about standing in shadows and plotting than getting into the fray. The new score has lots of dark, pregnant passages to portray the nasty slaphead. But just like any aspect of the music, be it individual heroic action, all-out battling or quiet reflective moments, it’s all somewhat undermined by another element…
Goldsmith has been using keyboard effects to say “sci-fi” for quite some time. He experimented with a completely electronic score on 1984’s RUNAWAY, wherein his most overt use of drum machines was apparent. He’d experimented with electronic elements both in and out the sci-fi genre for some time before of course. Even STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE has its notable effects. But come the stylistic trends of the 80s and Goldsmith immersed himself, accumulating a small palate of sounds. The problem for this reviewer, for the Trek scores he’s subsequently scored and most definitely for NEMESIS, is that he‘s not let go of them.
Opening with “Remus”, the very first thing you hear is what I’ll call The Whisper. This is closely followed by what I’ll call The Swish. Both drive me nuts because they feel like a very patronizing way of suggesting ‘sci-fi’, sounding like the sort of noises kids would make playing with toys. They’re closely related to the annoying noises that stuck out like a sore thumb in the prologue to INSURRECTION. I’ll get to what they’re even more closely related to shortly, but there are two reasons why this is such a disappointing beginning. Firstly, it would appear that like INSURRECTION there is no title sequence. This increasing movie trend really doesn’t help a composer! Secondly, both movie and score have been preceded by the promise this is a big action affair. After a limp rendition of the MOTION PICTURE Theme, there certainly is an interesting dramatic segment. It doesn’t last long however, and is an immediate victim of electronic percussion and effect. This is the template for the whole album.
“The Box” follows The Swish with the one of Shinzon’s textural associations; a Gong that sounds right out of TREK III’s Vulcan Temple. Again, the cue ends dramatically but hasn’t felt like anything more than a quick burst of suspense. Immediately following is the contrasting “My Right Arm”, which introduces the quieter side to the score. When added to the similarly subdued “The Knife”, “Ideals” and “A New Friend” these cues total a substantial portion that goes against the idea of this being the promised action-fest. “My Right Arm” also re-introduces a motif Goldsmith’s been arbitrarily using since THE FINAL FRONTIER. There it was attached to the mystery of the God creature, but subsequently – who knows? Noticeable by its absence this time out is his Klingon Theme, which originally depicted the malevolent race as a whole, but then somehow came to be a hero motif for Worf. These facts all make me wonder what kind of thinking goes behind his Trek scoring process. With a rich library of themes and established style to draw or be inspired from, I’m just not impressed with something reliant on cute electronic effects. Or that sounds generic amongst his other action writing, once the drama does kick in.
The first “big” moment is at the end of “Odds and Ends”. It’s a stuttering introduction to the score’s action material, and actually ends up sounding very much like a piece from BASIC INSTINCT. Moving into “Repairs” we find The Whisper, the TREK V Theme and all sorts of clanking and whispering noise dissolving into another much-touted moment. Goldsmith reprises The Enterprise Theme from THE MOTION PICTURE, specifically the grand moment when we saw the ship head-on for the first time. But – here it’s a weak rendition, plays only momentarily and is undermined by the parping electronic effect that follows. This cue goes on to feature several moments of déjà vu I could have done without. There’s a watery, shuddering noise that reminds me of the climax effect used in Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”! There’s also a bowing effect in the brass that’s right out of his THE SHADOW, which was also the home to the cousins of The Whisper and The Swish. Talking of which, if it hasn’t become annoying to the listener yet, I defy anyone to defend it after the 4 times in a row at the start of (and then repeatedly during) “The Mirror”.
The action “continues” into “The Scorpion”, starting with an alarmingly close approximation of the opening to TOTAL RECALL. This cue’s impressively rhythmic passages are – you guessed it - spoiled by a pause for The Whisper, other electronic elements, and more so by a part quote of the MOTION PICTURE Theme which fizzles out. The same goes for “Lateral Run” and “Engage” immediately after.
Here’s a positive comment though: “Final Flight” is an exciting self-contained and un-interrupted action cue. It’s flavoured by Holst’s “Mars” and sounds interchangeable with Goldsmiths’ action writing for most of the action movies he scored through the Nineties, but I enjoy it nonetheless!
So it comes down to the End Credits. Has Goldsmith been cheated by a sourced song? Does he get to write a new tail end Overture? Does he do that awful downplay of a few notes in the Theme? The answer to all 3 is "no." “A New Ending” begins with a subtle quote of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies”, but you’d hardly know before the fanfare strikes up. The rendition is straightforward without addition or subtraction. Actually all that’s missing is any life in the performance, but by this stage you’ll be used to that.
I’ve gone into some detail here, and to hardcore Trek and Goldsmith fans this will no doubt seem like a thorough assassination. It really has pained me to have to do so however. My opinion of this score and the few that have preceded it don’t change my enjoyment of the genuine classics that came before. My feeling now is that the Trek series suffers from over-conceptualisation at the hands of a production hierarchy that’s long since expended any creative input it had to offer. Goldsmith’s overuse of electronics in his Trek oeuvre may seem directly proportionate to the film series’ overuse of CGI, but is in reality a reflection of the composer’s own stylistic preferences and career development. Or lack thereof.
Star Trek and now NEMESIS has become “made up of several unremarkable ores. Essentially a great rock in space.”
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS – Howard Shore, WEA 9362484082 *****
I decided to take my time in presenting an opinion of THE TWO TOWERS soundtrack album here at The Poop. My first impulse was to whip up a track-by-track review like I did for DIE ANOTHER DAY a few weeks back. It would have been a fun coup to flag it all over the place as another exclusive first look at a score. After I played the disc through for the first time, I paused over the keyboard. I felt this wasn’t something to rush to talk about. It needs to be soaked up in its broader context. A first impressions review simply would not do it justice. It also arrived just after I received the Extended FELLOWSHIP DVD, and the last thing I wanted to do was burn out my enthusiasm for either. On top of that, I still won’t have seen the movie – which always leaves me feeling at a disadvantage.
At the bottom of this piece I invite you to check out 3 appraisals of the album that appeared elsewhere in the last few weeks. One of them does exactly what I would have sought to accomplish. What I decided to pause and consider with you here, is what makes this and the FELLOWSHIP score important to the world of film music and why.
Like many who are passionate about film music, I felt that the Nineties was a lean decade for the craft. Plenty came out. There were lots of new names. But theirs and the old hands’ artistry felt “thin – like butter scraped over too much bread.” Howard Shore’s was one of very few names I found myself consistently excited to hear attached to projects. After DEAD RINGERS, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was my proper introduction to the composer, and to this day I maintain it was one of the finest scores of that otherwise “thin” decade. As one millennium became another, it was still to Shore I’d turn whenever it seemed there was nothing new being attempted. His LOOKING FOR RICHARD, THE GAME, EXISTENZ, DOGMA, and especially THE CELL were amongst the few albums to get continuous play in this period. Then came THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING.
Every Christmas I’m asked to write at least one Year’s End appraisal of the film music that’s been released. Here’s what I had to say in summation of 2001:
“When I received a CD-R promo of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING in October, it was with some trepidation I pressed "Play" for the first time. No one could class me as a hardcore Tolkien fan. A fan nonetheless, but with a comfortable distance from the material so as not to personally feel the need for perfection. My trepidation was really in respect to several friends to whom this would be more important. Bubbling under that were more personal concerns, having built Howard Shore up in my own mind as something of a last hope for intellectual composition in an increasingly dumbed-down industry.
“To be concise about this score will no doubt seem like unnecessary praise giving, but I believe this to be the most work put into a film score since I dare not think when. Two layers of misconception need to be filtered out to approach this level of appreciation. Firstly, it’s Act One in his preconceived 9-hour opera. Secondly, the album is a mere 72-minutes cut and paste from over 2 & ½ hours. Both factors would ordinarily dilute the material into something incoherent or disjointed. That isn’t the case. As much consideration has been taken in compiling this album as the placement of cues in the film. The music itself is an astoundingly dense work incorporating Tolkien’s own musicality where the film’s narrative itself could not. The highlights of which are far too numerous to list fully. Ultimately, the placement of this at my Number 1 spot for the year was secured when my trepidation at pressing ‘Play’ gave way to the biggest of geek smiles, which reappears every time I hear one of those many highlights. 2002 has a lot to live up to.”
Well – now it has.
Act Two of Howard Shore’s Ring Cycle has exceeded my loftiest expectations of where the material might go. I keep reading about Shore seeming tired when interviewers have met him over the last few years. That was certainly true when I talked with him in London after he’d just completed the Moria sequence of FELLOWSHIP. Hearing this album for the first time is a quite awe-inspiring experience knowing that he’s composed, orchestrated and conducted it all himself. The sheer volume of work would be enough to exhaust a whole team of lesser composers. It’s not just the density of the writing, the number of new motifs, or the fresh variations on established ones. It’s exhilarating knowing that combined together, it all makes for the most enormous pre-conceived film scoring undertaking there’s ever been.
It astounds me even more that as the project has gone on, Shore has had to agree to expand his workload repeatedly. Most contemporary scores are subject to tweaking at the recording stage. Most require editing and re-writing to accommodate a film still being put together. Some have entire cue re-writes ordered. As much as he had that to contend with, it must have been as nothing compared to returning to the material for the Expanded DVD. And he knows there’ll be two more of those to come. And he’s re-written it as a concert work. And he’s fit in two movies in-between (PANIC ROOM and SPIDER). Oh – and all that GANGS OF NEW YORK hullabaloo I’ve been reporting on in the regular Column.
This is the first aspect I want to highlight as being very important about this project; that Shore should have invested so much time and thought into it. Also of course that he decided he wanted to before starting out. Beyond that, I still marvel that there was the like-minded backing of those working above and around him. Studio support, let alone Producer / Director support has become all too rare.
THE TWO TOWERS opens with “Foundations Of Stone”, and does the best service possible to the most exciting sequence from FELLOWSHIP. Without spoiling how the film begins for anyone, let’s just say Moria’s male chorus are back. After a gentle prologue and a familiar statement of the pregnantly meaningful Ring Theme, this pounding tug on your memories from the Mines is a perfect beginning. It’s also fair warning that this is a far angrier piece than Act One. Hobbits abound, but there are no folksy pauses or portrayals of innocent wonder anymore.
Even though I reject the notion of this being a sequel, many won’t. Film and soundtrack fans spend a great deal of time hoping for re-appearances of favourite themes and moments in sequels. This track is therefore the next aspect to highlight; an important demonstration of why Shore’s opera-thinking has ensured a great proportion of its audience will get what they want.
The album that follows is woven as fine as Mithril with themes new and old, employing the leitmotif technique to its dazzling finest. I got into quite a discussion with some Bond fans after announcing that DIE ANOTHER DAY used part-quotes of the James Bond Theme. Here we have examples of themes introduced in FELLOWSHIP treated in a myriad of ways, most of them extremely subtle. The best of these revolve around The Ring itself, whose couple of motifs keep popping up in fragmentary fashion all over the place (e.g. “The Forbidden Pool”). There are bold new variations to be found too. The Fellowship Theme undergoes magnificent transformation for the first half of “The Uruk-hai”, appearing sectionally, then as a grand entrance and ending as an olde English dance. Other examples include turning the “Lothlorien” woods motif into a brass call to arms (“The Hornburg”), the gentle moths’ flight we heard when Gandalf was atop the Isengard tower passes to a solo boy (Ben Del Maestro during “Isengard Unleashed”), and the pounding beats propelling the Uruk-hai soldier dogs just get faster and more furious.
One very prominent new theme will easily linger in the listener’s memory. The race of Man, the people of Rohan, and all that King Theoden stands for – or once stood for – is represented by it. Heard first in “The Riders of Rohan”, it’s a noble national anthem that when passed to solo fiddle (“The King of the Golden Hall”) speaks volumes for what has happened to that nobility. Over the course of the album it re-appears several times as a battle cry, and later turns out to be at the very end of the End Credits suite.
There’s lots of additional new material nearly as significant, but no doubt to be become more so in THE RETURN OF THE KING. Enya is not attached to the project in any way, partly down to Aragorn and Arwen having nothing to do with one another in this movie. Their story is touched upon by the cue “Evenstar” though, which was the necklace pendant she passed him in FELLOWSHIP. This features Isabel Bayrakdarian’s vocals intermingled with some beautiful flute passages (that almost evokes the tender voice John Barry has developed). “Treebeard” as a character could have been portrayed a number of ways. The wooden percussion Shore has chosen is highly evocative, and one can only hope the subtle textures are not lost in the final sound mix. Gandalf didn’t really own any of the music for himself in FELLOWSHIP, but the glorious fanfare of “The White Rider” makes up for that. It’s re-appearance at the end of “Forth Eorlingas”, when our heroes sally forth (hence the name), is quite breathtaking.
Lastly there’s the one character tucked into the shadows of FELLOWSHIP who certainly did have his own motif, but now gets a lot more play time; dear old Sméagol, aka Gollum. “The Taming Of Sméagol” (Track 2) may begin with the album’s lightest moments, but these are quickly forgotten as they give way to the insinuating cimbalom newly attributed to him. We hear from him again during “The Passage Of The Marshes”, “The Forbidden Pool”, “Samwise The Brave” and most importantly, the closing “Gollum's Song”. When Enya was announced as being attached to FELLOWSHIP, many eyes rolled and stomachs churned. Surely her day was past? And despite the Tolkien references in her songs, she’d be completely anachronistic to an operatic form taken by Shore? I for one thought her contributions were quite beautiful. Now we have Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini for “Gollum’s Song” and without wanting to spoil too much, it would seem someone had the vocal style of Björk in mind. I don’t mean the very heights of screeching the poppet popster can reach, but the off-kilter balladic stuff she’s done. Personally I love this short song, and I love the thinking behind its use. For me, the biggest surprise about it is that no part is sung in any of Tolkien’s languages. Perhaps that was a limitation of this singer. Perhaps it’s a gradual move forward toward the inevitable Celine Dion collaboration on THE RETURN ON THE KING! (kidding)
All these cited examples of themes new and old are another aspect of the project I’m singling out as important. After a shelf-full of awards given to FELLOWSHIP, we can only hope the trilogy will be influential in some way upon the world of film music. The fans all love their themes and variations, so for once I welcome a series of copycat movies and scores that apply the same techniques and effects.
I’ve deliberately left off a lot of the album’s best moments from this review, appreciating that many listeners will enjoy the surprises for themselves. There’s just one more I’d like to mention however, and that’s the slow-burn masterpiece of “Isengard Unleashed”. In a recent Column I talked about how much I looked forward to hearing Elizabeth Fraser’s new contribution. She’s at the very beginning of the track and turns out to be almost the least intriguing element of the piece. The charging clap of choral thunder it turns out to be is one of the most exhilarating musical experiences I’ve heard in years. Again, I can only hope it survives the sound mix.
So what was all that I began with by saying about this being an important album in the context of the film music world? You’ve already seen me gush over the aspects of: Shore’s workload, studio support, the leitmotif technique and the possibilities of influencing future projects. But the biggest aspect I want to impress upon you is just how good the music is. That sounds like a pretty empty statement, but when placed next to other highly anticipated works in recent years by the likes of Williams, Goldsmith, Horner, Elfman or whoever – RINGS is full of consistently fascinating writing. It’s fun to play. It’s thought provoking inasmuch as you accumulate an ear for the recurrences of phrases in fractions. As a reviewer or one of many content to obtain a soundtrack album ‘blind’, it’s also thought provoking in the sense of building genuine anticipation for seeing what plays to and inspired these pieces of music. Much as I was excited by obtaining ATTACK OF THE CLONES way in advance of the movie, or of SIGNS or even DIE ANOTHER DAY this year, it’s been a very long time since this self-confessed soundtrack geek was quite so frothingly champing at the bit to fully experience a score in context.
So ultimately the main reason I’m telling you this score, this project and this composer are important to the industry is because I’m telling you!
Before I let you go for a cold shower to wash away the memory of so much fannish adoration, do bear in mind that even at 72:37 minutes, like the first album, this will be made up of lots of edits and segues. Also, it seems certain Shore will be going back and expanding this score next year for the already planned Extended DVD Edition! Once again what you’ll hear is by no means the end result.
(P.S. My checkdisc didn’t contain the “Farewell To Lórien” Bonus Track or any of the CD-ROM content. Probably just as well…)
Now as promised, here are the other album reviews I recommend for further reading:
FILM SCORE MONTHLY talks in general terms about the success of the disc as a continuation of the first.
SOUNDTRACK.NET includes soundclips and a few choice words from Shore.
AIN’T IT COOL NEWS details how to derive an orgasm from playing the album. Remember to have last Column’s Soundtrack Dictionary on hand…
Don’t forget the main Column now if you haven’t read it already!
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