Virtuosity

 

Virtuosity (Original Motion Picture Score)

Music Composed by Christopher Young

The newest addition to Renovatio Records’ catalog is Christopher Young’s complex score for the 1995 sci-fi action thriller Virtuosity, directed by Brett Leonard and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, with supporting roles played by Kelly Lynch, William Forsythe, Stephen Spinella, William Fichtner, Louise Fletcher, and Kevin J. O’Connor. Washington plays Parker Barnes, a former cop imprisoned after killing a terrorist that murdered his wife and daughter. In a not-so-distant future, Barnes is being used by the government as a guinea pig to test a virtual reality system designed to train police officers. The goal of the VR system is to capture Sid 6.7 (Crowe), an artificial intelligence program that was developed as an amalgam of psyches of the most violent serial killers in history. Eventually, Sid manages to escape from cyberspace and creates himself as an android in the real world. Thus, Barnes is reactivated as a cop because he is the only person that has ever been close to capturing Sid in VR. As expected, a number of thrilling action and chase sequences ensue, as Sid wreaks havoc and commits acts of terrorism, torture and murder across the city of Los Angeles.

Even though it is just a retelling of the familiar plot formula in which a rogue cop is reactivated because he is the only one capable of dealing with a dangerous villain, the film offers plenty of interesting ideas. Just having an artificial person walking the streets as any regular person is enough to get one’s attention. Plus, Crowe plays Sid with such charisma and fun that you cannot wait for the next scene involving the character. The story interestingly touches a bit upon the psychology behind a programmed personality like Sid’s; he’s just an interactive “software in the flesh” that is constantly in motion and analyzing people so that he can adapt his profile, using his vast library of psyches to raise the bar of those who challenge him. Since the terrorist that killed Barnes’ family is part of Sid’s personality, the stakes are higher making the action sequences a lot more engaging. And it is in Barnes and Sid’s confrontation where the heart of the film really lies; one character looking for redemption and proper justice, and the other just toying with his chaser. All of this makes of Virtuosity an enjoyable thriller, worthy of appreciation, in spite of its flaws.

For the score, composer Christopher Young was brought by producer Gary Lucchesi, who had worked with him previously on Jennifer 8. Young’s approach for the music is quite interesting as well, resorting to complex techno-electronic music for the first two thirds, while adopting a full orchestral soundscape for the film’s climax. The electronic cues have pulsing rhythms to accentuate action and suspense scenes, offering plenty of enjoyable synthetic textures, techno loops, and electronic guitar riffs. The orchestral cues, on the other hand, fittingly provide an organic feel to the struggle between the hero and the villain. As expected, throughout the score there’s a palpable emotional baseline focused on Barnes. The cue “The Evaluation” introduces Young’s main idea for the titular character, a progression of a repeating four-note figure, usually performed by solo guitar or piano. This motif perfectly encapsulates the character’s melancholy, its dynamism allowing Young to play around with the idea throughout the score. Notice, for example, the final part of the track “The Loyalizer”, in which the figure descends in key each time it’s played, encompassing Barnes’ emotional downfall after allegedly having just killed an innocent person by accident. Young also incorporates elements and melodies from Peter Gabriel’s song “Party Man” into the score; this material is namely associated with Barnes' lost family. The orchestral arrangement of this song heard in the optimistic “Safe”, when Barnes has finally found redemption and broken free, is one of the score's highlights. All in all, Virtuosity was a clear indication of what Young’s mind was capable of producing. The entire score is a dynamic non-stop entertainment, with surprises on each turn.

At the time of the film’s premiere in 1995, an all-song album was released by Radioactive Records, with the only existing presentation of the score being a promotional release assembled by Young himself and Douglass Fake. In 2019, Intrada Records provided the first commercial presentation of Young’s score, in the form of a generous 76-minute CD that contained all of the composer’s contributions to Virtuosity. This new release by Renovatio Records compiles the best cues from the score, in chronological order, intertwined with some of the most memorable songs from the film, namely “Young Boys” by Lords Of Acid, “The Loyalizer” by Fatima Mansions, as well as Peter Gabriel’s own “Party Man”, featuring The Worldbeaters. With just over an hour of music, let yourself be captured by the musical reality of Christopher Young!

Track list:

1. Virtuosity (2:15)

2. Game Over (3:30)

3. LETAC (1:38)

4. Nano-Cells (2:44)

5. The Evaluation (1:49)

6. Party Man (Demo) (0:49)

   Peter Gabriel/Christopher Young

7. Birth (1:33)

8. Leaving Prison (2:20)

9. Media Zone (3:00)

10. Young Boys (Stript) (2:35)

    Lords Of Acid

11. Symphony Of Colision (2:11)

12. Sid On Video (1:27)

13. The Loyalizer (3:39)

    Fatima Mansions/Christopher Young

14. Flashback (3:25)

15. Parker Escaped (3:03)

16. The Cemetary (1:56)

17. Computer Suicide (2:22)

18. Death TV (2:26)

19. Splinters (4:07)

20. Dysfunction (4:46)

21. Never Net (6:06)

22. Safe (1:50)

23. Party Man (5:39)

    The Worldbeaters/Peter Gabriel

Tracks 14 and 22 include interpolations of "Party Man" written by Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and George Acogny

Total running time: 65:10

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Credits:

Music Composed and Produced by Christopher Young

Executive In Charge of Music for Paramount Pictures: Randy Spendlove

Conducted by Pete Anthony

Orchestrations by Christopher Young, Pete Anthony and Marco Beltrami

Orchestra Scoring Mixer: Robert Fernandez

Assistant Scoring Engineer: Tim Boyle

Orchestra Recorded at Paramount Scoring Stage M

Orchestra Scoring Crew: Paul Wertheimer

Synthesizer Scoring Mixers: Dann Michael Thompson and Rick Winquest

Synthesizer Supervisor: Daniel Licht

Synthesizer Programmers: Mark Zimoski and Kevin Hayes

Synthesizer Coordinator: John Van Houten

Assistant to the Composer: Mark Killian

Music Scoring Consultant: Larry Mah

Music Preparation: Bob Bornstein

Orchestra Contractor: Sandy DeCrescent

Music Editors: Lee Scott, Christopher Kennedy and Scott Grusin

Tracks 14 and 22 include interpolations of "Party Man" by Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and George Acogny

"Party Man (Demo)"

Vocals Performed by Peter Gabriel

Written by Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and George Acogny

Arranged by Christopher Young

"Young Boys (Stript)"

Performed by Lords Of Acid

Written by Praga Khan, Jade 4 U, Oliver Adams and J.K. Magick

Produced by Praga Khan, Jade 4 U and The Lords Of Acid

Lords Of Acid perform courtesy of Antler Subway Records and American Recordings

℗1994 American Recordings

"The Loyalizer"

Performed by Fatima Mansions

Written by Cathal Coughlan

Includes Arrangements and Score by Christopher Young

Produced by Jerry Harrison

Remixed by Juno Reactor for MCT

Recorded in the U.K.

℗1994 Radioactive Records, J.V.

"Party Man"

Performed by The Worldbeaters and Peter Gabriel

Written by Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and George Acogny

Produced by Peter Gabriel and George Acogny

Peter Gabriel performs courtesy of Geffen Records (U.S. and Canada) and Virgin Records Ltd. (rest of the world)

The Worldbeaters perform courtesy of U. Groove Ltd.

℗1995 George Acogny Inc. and Peter Gabriel Limited

Renovatio Records [0-01702-19053]

Se7en

Se7en (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Music Composed by Howard Shore

Our next release is Howard Shore’s score for the 1995 crime thriller Se7en, directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and a prominent cameo role by Kevin Spacey. The film follows a pair of detectives, the methodical William Somerset, who is nearing retirement, and hot-headed David Mills, who has just been relocated to replace the former, as they attempt to capture a serial killer and prevent him from completing a series of gruesome murders based on the seven deadly sins. A critical and financial success, Se7en is regarded as one of the best mystery thrillers ever made, as well as a distinctive influence in filmmaking due to its aesthetic, style and plot. 

After the infamous Alien 3 experience, Fincher was able to express his true voice as a filmmaker in Se7en, presenting an irredeemable and decaying society trapped in a depressing world of ugliness, depravity and despair. With its dark color palette, the film showcases a gritty noir style, being bleak, intense and quite horrific in its subject matter. It successfully captures the viewer's attention despite its grotesque depictions of violence. Fincher wittingly chooses not to have the killer's victims finished off on-screen. Instead, he shows the crime scenes, providing glimpses of the corpses, leaving the audience to imagine and visualize the killer's atrocities as they are analyzed and discussed by the protagonists, a storytelling resource that is disturbing as it is fascinating.

Much of the film’s grim mood is accomplished thanks to Shore's score, who Fincher approached after listening to his score for The Silence of the Lambs. Shore employed an orchestra of up to 100 musicians, combining elements of brass, percussion, piano, and trumpets. The music Shore composed consists of two distinctive qualities: a quiet mechanical underscoring approach, and a heightened and louder in-your-face approach. The former is used mostly during dialogue scenes and in some sequences in which the leads are investigating the crimes; in these sections Shore introduces his predominant musical identity for the score, a theme for the serial killer John Doe fittingly consisting of seven notes: two descending pairs followed by three pulsations. The latter approach is a lot more aggressive and rhythmic in nature, consisting of pulsating passages of low brass, crashing piano, timpani hits and trumpets, creating disharmony but producing a relentless sense of unease. The best and most memorable presentation of this motif is during the climax set in the desert, an ending that has been regarded as one of the best in cinematic history. Shore manages to surround and engulf the listener with the score’s apprehensiveness and atonal passages, making the music work as significant menace and turning the scenes into Doe’s perspective, even when the character is not even on screen. Great examples of these are the cues “Gluttony”, “The Apartment”, “The Desert” and “Envy & Wrath”, which perfectly elicit the sense that, as Somerset himself puts it, ‘John Dow has the upper hand’.

Regarding its album releases, Se7en is a complicated matter. An original soundtrack album was released in 1995 by TVT Records, consisting mostly of vintage jazz and light rock songs, with almost twenty minutes of the score in two lengthy tracks at the end, inexcusably omitting the songs “Closer (Precursor)” by Nine Inch Nails and “The Hearts Filthy Lesson” by David Bowie, which were used with great effect for the opening and closing credits. Concorde later released a bootleg in 1998 with 60 minutes of music, a presentation that was later leveraged by Shore’s own label Howe Records in 2016. These two presentations contain the complete score, which is quite difficult to tolerate in full given the nature of the music Shore has put together. This new release by Renovatio Records provides 45 minutes of Shore’s music, including the best and most memorable parts of the score. The main and end credits songs have also been incorporated, as they are both as pivotal to the tone of Se7en as Shore’s own score.

Track Listing:

1. Prelude (2:09)
2. Main Titles: Closer (Precursor) (2:48) - Performed by Nine Inch Nails
3. Gluttony (4:57)
4. Greed / Behind The Painting (3:09)
5. Sloth (3:32)
6. Chasing Joe Doe (5:56)
7. The Apartment (4:09)
8. Lust & Pride (3:53)
9. Arresting John Doe (3:53)
10. The Desert (7:06)
11. Envy & Wrath (5:13)
12. Somerset Alone (0:56)
13. End Credits: The Hearts Filthy Lesson (4:57) - Performed by David Bowie

Total Running Time: 51:54

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Alien: Resurrection

Alien: Resurrection (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed by John Frizzell

We have another surprise for this Alien Day! To complete the saga of Ellen Ripley, Renovatio Records presents you with the score for Alien: Resurrection by John Frizzell. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the 1997 sequel is set 200 years after Alien 3. Sigourney Weaver comes back as Ripley, who has been cloned by the United Systems Military (USM) with the purpose of removing the alien queen embryo from her body. As a result of this cloning process, Ripley has inherited some of the physical attributes and capabilities of the Xenomorphs, such as acid for blood. The USM plans to breed the aliens aboard the spaceship USM Auriga, using human beings (delivered by a group of mercenaries) as involuntary hosts. As expected, after maturing, the aliens eventually escape from their enclosures and start wreaking havoc across the ship. Ripley sees herself forming an alliance with the mercenaries to try to escape and destroy the Auriga before it reaches Earth. Little do they know that the alien queen has also absorbed some attributes from Ripley’s DNA, and is now able to develop a uterus and give birth to a new kind of monster. Secondary roles were played by Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, Dominique Pinon, J. E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, Kim Flowers, Gary Dourdan, and Michael Wincott.

Though the film generally received a bit more appreciation by fans and critics than its predecessor, Alien: Resurrection lacks in originality as it was conceived as a combination of the mystery of Ridley Scott’s original film with the action of James Cameron’s sequel. Thus, the film ended up recycling what by then had become a tired concept, resorting to forced scenarios for the sake of having new groups of humans being hunted and nastily killed by the Xenomorphs. The once mysterious and fascinating beast was brought down to nothing more than a two-dimensional killing monster, which is a bit of a letdown. However, the film is a lot of fun and has several things to appreciate. As its predecessor, it is wonderfully shot (courtesy of Seven’s cinematographer Darius Khondji), the set designs look amazing, and ADI Studios' animatronic special effects are outstanding. Thematically, the film is quite shallow, but it does explore the dangers of genetic engineering under greedy hands, functioning as a cautionary tale. In the future, humans have become so unsympathetic and primitive when striving for their goals that the only individuals showing genuine human emotions are manufactured people. Moreover, the best developed concept of Alien: Resurrection is the parallelism between the cloned Ripley and the android Call (Ryder), both characters being the result of human creation, and both struggling to find their purpose in life. Their relationship evolves from being flirtatious at first to nurturing by the end, with references to motherhood, birth and identity appearing from scene to scene, against a backdrop of religious undertones and sexual innuendos. The film aims at answering several intriguing questions concerning the identity crisis of these man-made individuals: Is Ripley a person, a construct, a monster? Why is Call the most humane character in spite of her not being a human? Why does the newborn creature that the alien queen gives birth to identify Ripley as its mother? All of these questions are indeed engaging and very well planted, but unfortunately, they are not clearly resolved, overshadowed by the quick pace of the film and many scenes that are borderline an assault on the senses. Nevertheless, Alien: Resurrection stands as a very distinctive entry in the Alien franchise, namely for its compelling visual style and for several memorable sequences: a gut-wrenching scene in which Ripley meets her former failed clones, a breath-taking underwater chase, the newborn’s horrific demise, and a scene in which Ripley is abducted and slowly carried by a Xenomorph through the dark that it is filmed in such a way that it looks like they are having sex... All of this enhanced by Frizzell's omnipresent score.

Back in the mid-nineties, composer John Frizzell was relatively unknown in the business, working mainly as an assistant for James Newton Howard. He auditioned to compose the score for Alien: Resurrection knowing that he would have big shoes to fill after Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and Elliot Goldenthal. Director Jeunet heard Frizzell’s samples and the composer was brought on board, facing four arduous months of writing and recording the score. The director requested him that the music should have a unique approach that would differentiate it from the previous films in the franchise. To achieve this, Frizzell found inspiration in the sensual and erotic overtones of the film, leading him to create several themes and motifs for characters and situations. The main theme for the film is constituted by a set of ascending and descending string movements that accompany an ominous descending melody. This sensual theme is presented in the “Main Title” cue and it is recurrently used throughout the rest of the score, the melody itself working as a motif for the Xenomorphs. Ripley receives her own theme; a tragic melody in strings that appears in the superb cue “Post-op”, as the character wakes up, evoking a rebirth. The opening three notes of Ripley’s theme also serve to effectively accentuate the heroics performed by some of the characters in later parts of the score. Frizzell also provides Call with a theme of overlapping string notes that fittingly elicits her human-android duality; the most significant apparitions of this theme can be found in “Call Finds Ripley” and during “The Chapel”. All of these themes mature in instrumentation and rhythm as the movie progresses and the characters evolve, while the score showcases how well Frizzell uses electronic and synthesizer sound effects, blending them with the powerful 100-piece orchestra and supplemental choir. His idea was to merge the acoustic and the electronic to reflect the synthetic and the organic concepts of the film, respectively. One of the best examples of this blend is the opening part of “The Aliens Escape”, which features a prominent use of industrial percussive loops, accentuated by orchestral timpani hits and relentless string and brass phrases.

The action music provided by Frizzell also deserves attention. There are several action passages throughout the score, but “They Swim…”, in particular, is the pièce de résistance in this regard. This rousing and bombastic track, which allegedly took Frizzell a month to compose, underscores the nail-biting underwater sequence in which the group of humans is chased by two Xenomorphs through a flooded level of the Auriga. It provides many instances of harmonic and enjoyable rhythmic action that is as engaging as Horner's music for Aliens, but the most effective bit involves accelerating percussion hits over string crescendos and brass stings as one of the Xenomorphs calmly and effortly swims approaching to its victim, who desperately struggles to escape. This part alone is nerve-racking and will have you gasping for air. Overall, Frizzell's work for Alien: Resurrection offers plenty of characteristics to appreciate, from compelling motifs to rousing action, and even several nods to the previous three scores in the series. This assignment was Frizzell's big break into the industry, allowing him to develop a career in composing scores for horror and thriller productions.

Alien: Resurrection was released in 1997 by RCA Victor in the form of a rather short album that included about half of Frizzell's complete score. The album provides several of the major action highlights but is missing several standout cues mostly from the third act, namely the finale "I'm a Stranger Here Myself", a beautiful orchestral and choral track that rounds up the score and the film nicely when the survivors reach Earth for the first time in the franchise. Furthermore, the listening experience of this album is disrupted by the insertion of Handel's operatic source piece "Priva Son D'Ogni Conforto" from "Julius Caesar", which is totally out of place. As a result, bootlegs with the complete score quickly surfaced until La-La Land Records assembled a 2-CD limited release in 2010 that includes 86 minutes of Frizzell's finished score, as well as alternate takes, and the original album presentation. While totaling up to a generous 140 minutes of music, many listeners considered this presentation to be an overkill and quite repetitive. For these reasons, Renovatio Records has produced a new 52 minute album that includes most of the material already available in the original album presentation, but with longer versions of several tracks, plus most of the music for the third act that was left out of that album. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this Alien Day as it should: re-listening to all the scores from the Ripley saga!!!

Track listing:

1. Main Title (2:12)

2. Post-Op (1:22)

3. Docking The Betty (1:19)

4. Facehuggers (2:10)

5. After Hours On Deck (2:10)

6. Call Finds Ripley (2:59)

7. The Aliens Escape (4:47)

8. Elgyn's Death (3:35)

9. Ripley Meets Her Clones (2:48)

10. What's Inside Me? (2:48)

11. They Swim... (7:00)

12. The Chapel (3:18)

13. The Abduction (3:32)

14. Birth Of The Newborn (4:10)

15. The Battle With The Newborn (6:10)

16. I'm A Stranger Here Myself (1:54)

Total Running Time: 52:09

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