Michel Colombier's music for Colossus: The Forbin Project
is the 526th Soundtrack of the Week.
There's a surprisingly lack of electronic music
or computery sounds in this score. The movie is about
a rogue AI that takes over the world, so...
Mostly it's a straight-up orchestral dramatic score with
a few detours.
There's a soaring and somewhat jaunty main theme
that gets several work outs. And the piece "Under Surveillance",
starts out as a groovy swinging type of tune, with the
electric bass guitar leading the way, before sliding into
what sounds like a love theme. There still have to be musical colors that suggest
something weird an Colombier went with African and Asian
instruments, which contrast sharply with the traditional
orchestral heard most other places. When things have to get really weird he runs them
through tape delays. Mostly we're hearing percussion instruments,
and the effect is really good. There's also a cool 6/4 jazz rock piece called "Schedule for Today"
with the piano taking the lead in a Dave Brubeck style before
wah-wah guitar comes in. And "Forbin's Hi-Fi" is like a lounge, bossa sort of thing. It's an intriguing blend of style and moods for a classic techno-thriller.
Makes me want to see the movie again!
2018 July 13 • Friday
Today might be Friday the 13th but we have good luck! I refer
to our copy of the new Coin-Op Comics Anthology 1997–2017.
I'm pretty sure there's nothing in here that I didn't already
have. Maybe some of the issues of Blab! but, who knows, they
might be in this apartment somewhere. I certainly read them and
did own them at some point, even if they're no longer with me. And there probably isn't much for me to say about this since I think
Gutbrain has managed to praise every issue of Coin-Op as it came out. But if you don't know about Coin-Op, Peter Hoey and Maria
Hoey's beautiful blend of narrative, design, art, storytelling, research,
reference, daydreams, music, movies, monsters, comics, style, basically
a massive portion of the potential of the comics medium, then here's your
chance to immerse yourself.
I was determined to pick up mine from the first really cool place I walked into, and so it happend that last week I got a copy (signed by Maria Hoey) at Quimby's in Chicago, one of the coolest cool places in the world.
But where you get it matters a bit less than getting it does. Buy this book!2018 Jul7 11 • Wednesday
Kem Nunn's novel Tapping the Source is somehow the inspiration
for the movie Point Break, despite the fact that there
are no bank robberies, no cops, no sky diving, no nothing really in common with the movie. It is, however, an excellent book. I read it as quickly as I could and bought
another one of Nunn's novels as soon as I had finished.
The story is multi-faceted. Martin Amis once pointed out
that the two stories that are said to be all stories,
a stranger comes to town and a person goes on a journey,
are actually the same story from different points of
view. Tapping the Source begins with a stranger
coming to town, which thus impels the main character,
a young man named Ike Tucker, to go on a journey
which brings him, a stranger, to the surfing town of
Huntington Beach. Raised in the desert by his uncle and knowing
nothing except how motorcycles work, Tucker
is following in the footsteps of his sister, Ellen.
He has the names of three men who he believes
have murdered her. She was with them, then she disappeared.
That's basically all he knows. When in Rome... the men in question are surfers so
Ike, a scrawny hick from the desert, has to learn to surf.
It sounds clear cut. But the mystery part of it
turns out to be not simple or even linear. This is a
novel with mystery as part of its DNA, as opposed to
a mystery novel. It's not a puzzle with a solution. It's
closer to a coming of age story and an exploration of
the psychic landscape of adolescence, fear, desire,
loss of innocence and acceptance of individual power
and responsibility. The title itself refers to an awareness of the beauty and strength
of the natural world and something beyond that, something that escapes
verbal summation, a feeling of the energy of life itself running
through everything, including yourself. It's a source of, well,
possibly everything, including power, and one of the tragedies
mapped by the book is how this power can corrupt. Nunn's writing style is robust yet economic,
never overdoing descriptions or overwriting anything for that matter.
It's also an extremely shadowy book, the only one I can remember that convincingly imbues
pages of writing with the visual style of
film noir. A typically gratifying touch is how Tucker often sees
reflections of himself in dark places, calling
to mind the famous Biblical passage about seeing through a glass darkly. The writing feels carefully crafted, never out of control and never missing the mark.
The characters are distinct, well drawn and convincing, and their development
is sure-footed and perfectly paced. It might as if the story is heading for an
obvious and conventional conclusion but the direction it ends up taking is
more plausible, more quotidian, sadder and more chilling.
2018 July 09 • Monday
The 525th Soundtrack of the Week
is Ted Dicks's score for Virgin Witch.
This new release from Trunk Records is vinyl only, I think.
It's one of a very few cymbalom-centered soundtracks and
the proprietor of Trunk Records speculates that it might
be the same musician, John Leach, who played cymbalom
on John Barry's music for The Ipcress File.
It's a fantastic album, wonderfully atmospheric but also
swinging and jazzy in sections. The cymbalom has a haunting
and otherworldly quality to it that immediately gets the
ear's attention and imbues the music with interest and
eeriness.
The cues are handled by a fairly small ensemble,
mostly a jazz combo with a few orchestral instruments
thrown in and a large contribution by the flute. Some of the pieces start out sounding like
Aaron Copland and then a sinuous and sultry
saxophone line will come in and change everything. So thanks to Trunk for a record that's as excellent
as it is obscure! I think it sold out very quickly but
let's hope another pressing or digital release is forthcoming.
2018 Jul7 06 • Friday
Our exploration of bookshelves in
Columbo brings us to the episode "Suitable
for Framing".
There are at least
two books with Ellery Queen titles, The Origin of Evil and
The Devil To Pay. And McCall's Cookbook, which isn't too exciting. While the
character might own this book, it wouldn't likely be on this
living room shelf with a bunch of novels. More interesting is the copy of Fred Allen's
Treadmill to Oblivion, clearly discernible behind
Don Ameche's right shoulder, on the left edge of this screenshot.
While I have at least one of Allen's books, I don't have Treadmill to Oblivion, a situation that will almost certainly change if I come across a reasonably priced copy with dust jacket in a used book store.
The dust jacket is important. That's the work of the great artist Al Hirschfeld, who also did this wonderful portrait of Columbo, used for the cover of TV Gudie and a collection of Columbo short stories by co-creator William Link.
2018 July 02 • Monday
Do isolated music tracks for Columbo episodes exist?
Could they be released in a box set, all of them, complete and
chronological, say, tomorrow? Apparently not. So we must scrounge,
and if you look at ye olde YouTube you will find that
a few enterprising hunters and gatherers have things to share with you.
And thus the 524th Soundtrack of the Week
is Billy Goldenberg's gorgeous music for the Columbo
episode "Ransom for a Dead Man".
We'll start with the main theme, which recurs several times
throughout. It's this tantalizing and haunting minor key melody
which keeps climbing and climbing, modulating the key up a half step
when it seems like it can't go higher. The blend of electric
and acoustic instruments also gives it an eerie feeling. While
this is a solid episode of Columbo, the music is more
powerful than anything else in it other than the performances of
the two leads.
The first time you hear it is in a pretty straightforward
and mid-tempo 4/4 arrangement but it comes back as a sprightly
waltz and, at the end, as kind of an old timey jazz swing tune.
Then there's this fantastic 6/4 piece that I think is used
for the ransom drop scene, in which the triangle, that ubiquitous
element of television scores of the time, plays a key role.
It has a driving and soaring quality to it, reminiscent of John
Barry's "007" and some of Joe Harnell's music for The
Bionic Woman. There's also another jazz waltz that's a close cousin to
the main theme, similar harmonic structure, different melody,
but very much companions to each other. Somewhere in there also is a nightmarish piece with
a maddeningly repetitive part providing the foundation
for some strange figures. It eventually stops and
then there are some equally strange sounds, what sounds
like an overblown flute underwater and then some creative
use of tape delays, again blending electronic and acoustic
sounds to dramatic and atmospheric effect.
