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How refreshing to be talking about someone like Jerry Goldsmith rather than the "usual" MV/RC related twaddle.

Is it like a film music 'high-five' moment, you know, The Asteroid Field 'gimme five' , The Windmills of Your Mind, 'gimme five' , It's A Long Road....... ( Thor's lone hand in the air )

And just for equalities sake...

Me: John Barry's 007 And Counting 'gimme five' ....

Thor:

He, he....yeah, something like that.

James Horner

I've seen the last 15 minutes or so of this film, it's gobsmackingly goofy beyond belief, it made me feel I was on drugs.

Not a big fan of the score, it just sounds like John Scott was listening to a lot of Maurice Ravel.

All this time I seriously though Niki Reiser was female.

My mistake: The Name is Niki.

The name is popular in Austria (Niki Lauda) and Switzerland. It is a proper name but is is also an abridged version of Nikolaus.

Yes, it greatly expands the original material....but not in the best way: I find both the recording, direction and the balance between material from Edelman and Jones in the original release much more taut and poignant.
I hardly ever listen to the rerercording.

Don Davis - The Matrix

Varese's Deluxe Edition. I love the score, in fact I think I like it the best from the trilogy, somehow. It's just great.

I am listening to it in preparation for the Sunday concert in Kraków, where this score will be played live to picture, conducted by Don Davis himself. Good times ahead

If the orchestra doesn't flunk... They did flunk some performance, though I don't think it was this one, regarded as the best orchestra in the country and one of the best in Europe, I think.

I don't often listen to MSM score releases.

But when I do, they're better than most of the normal releases that year.

NP: Gagarin: First in Space by George Kallis.

hearing the full score live when played in front of the picture still remains one of the best performances I've seen live. Fantastic orchestra that was, right Bregt?

hope the performance lives up to your expectations as well Pawel

It certainly has some gorgeous moments, but it's not the word that springs to mind when I think of Davis' Matrix music. 'Awesome' is a more appropriate description methinks.

It adds a few minutes, subtracts quite a few others, and both the sequencing and the recording tends to bring the material of Jones and Edelman into a more similar sounding texture. The clear distinction between the composer's work becomes less obvious than on the original album, and in part because Edelman's more atmospheric cues are where most of the chopping happened. 'Promontory' is stronger than on the original album, but still not the complete track, alas. The recording does give the music more room to breathe than the tighter original score tracks did. Where it loses out is in the substitution of orchestral textures for electronic ones -- pieces like 'Elk Hunt' suffer a little in the translation.

NP: Spartacus - Alex North

I'm listening to CD 5, one of the discs that features a number of notable names who were inspired by North's love theme to come up with their own variations.

I like some of them - the Santana version and the Nathan Barr/Lisbeth Scott stand out - but some are just too meandering. Yes, that's you the 11-minute Mark Isham version!