by pepsukka on 10/23/2006
favorite track: 20
 
A true discovery! Excellent 2 CD package: over 140 minutes of music, and 28 pages of liner notes! Wow! Big thanks to Jeff Bond and Lukas Kendall. Package includes music from the three Michael Chrichton MGM film projects from the 70s.

British musician Roy Budd is best known for 70s thriller scores into which The Carey Treatment (1972) squarely falls, which is the first of the three scores. The 46 minute score features several piano-source cues (tunefully structured) in which he shows his talents. The rest of the score features suspense and action cues emblematic of Budd's "thriller" style of the period.

Westworld (1973), a clever science fiction (one can look at it with a whole new perspective in present day when real-life TV lives strong in media) receiving a quirky and inventive score by Fred Karlin. The initial cues in the movie are source-like take-offs of traditional cowpoke music, heavy on banjos, fiddle, brass and piano, plus Renaissance-style period music for scenes set in Medieval world. Karlin also used a combination of electronics and recorded parts of the score at his home studio ? a groundbreaking achievement that has since become the norm in the modern era of synthesizers. Total score length is 48 minutes.

Third score of the package is Jerry Goldsmiths score for Coma (1978). In the movie itself there is no music until 49 minutes into the picture, which is a rather interesting decision. Score includes nervous/disturbing strings and keyboards, gloomy mood, rambling/trembling and unsettled piano, violent whip-like outbursts, percussive slower-paced atmospheric suspense and eerie cue-colors. Total score length is 42 minutes.

All in all, one of this year's best finds for me. I recommend to anyone who is still not familiar with these scores. Definitely worth the price!