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Posted: |
Aug 18, 2011 - 6:11 PM
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By: |
Spymaster
(Member)
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Just received mine from Creature Features, signed by McCarthy and Chattaway (yay!)
Heard the McCarthy disc tonight.
Firstly I have to say that, from a sound quality point of view, this blows away every release of McCarthy's music since the original Encounter At Farpoint CD. GNP/Crescendo somehow managed to make McCarthy sound like shit on CD, flat and uninteresting, and that included Generations. But this sounds glorious. Exciting, fun, vibrant, textured and dynamic, a real pleasure to listen to. Well done James Nelson!
I hope future releases will include all the old GNP material (including "Yesterday's Enterprise") because this sounds light years better. And I hope Nelson gets his hands on Generations too!
Terrific notes by Jeff Bond too!
I can't say I'm overwhelmingly in favour of the 5-6 minutes of music per episode approach - I much prefer the more comprehensive, completist approach of FSM's Ron Jones box set - but the suites do seem to represent the best material and - hey - who expected "Conspiracy" would ever see the light of day? OMG I love that score.
The Chattaway disc tomorrow night. Why oh why no Tin Man?!
One final (minor) cosmetic note to LLL - I don't know who provides your clam-shell jewel cases but they're too small for your inlay cards. Like Breakdown most of the corners are crumpled which looks a bit cheap and unprofessional and lets down the look of this great set. I'm going to try and flatten the cards and put them in a new case, but I shouldn't have to. Thanks!
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The Chattaway disc tomorrow night. Why oh why no Tin Man?!
Very strange is the sequencing for the cues from the two-parter Descent though. That should be revisited in a future volume by La-La Land.
Define "Strange"
????
Ford A. Thaxton
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Posted: |
Aug 19, 2011 - 3:06 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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Nice overview of disc 1 Crazyquark. And yes, I also agree about the source music as featured on the discs. I personally don't care much for those tracks, especially 'naming dance' appearing twice on disc 2. It's only a small fraction of music, but still it takes me outside of the trek music experience.
Isn't that why they made the "skip" button on CD players? Or the option to not import all the tracks from the disc to your iPod or mp3 player, so you don't have to hear the tracks you don't like?
Tom, of course I wont uncheck these on Itunes or skip over them on a cd player, or like you suggest an even dumber approach and not import a couple of track so my rip is imcomplete. I am obviously a retard who doesn't know how to skip tracks and has to go through life listening to tracks I don't like. 
I'm just voicing an opinion on the inclusion of these tracks (big difference). On a compilation that already features the best from episodes, I feel these tracks aren't that important and could've easily been replaced by better cues. That's a personal preference. I don't care much for source music. On the Ron Jones set I can see why it's all there, Lukas made it as complete as can be, but on this 'best of' volume 1, they are only taking up space IMO. Again, a minor criticism.
There are exceptions such as "The Inner Light" flute solo, but for instance the music box theme from 'The Survivors', I could've done with just the one cue. I do appreciate the polka version of the TNG material on disc 3, those extras are great.
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Simply, after watching the two parts I had the impression IMHO that there were more interesting cues. Given the fact that there was not much space on the GNP album for so much music I would have chosen other cues. Since there's some great and exciting action scoring in there I hope there's a chance to revisit this music on CD.
As I recall, those cues were chosen by Mr. Banning and Jay Chattaway
They felt they were best ones from these episodes.
Ford A. Thaxton
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Posted: |
Aug 19, 2011 - 8:20 AM
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By: |
CrazyQuark
(Member)
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If previous releases like the Ron Jones set are an indication I somehow doubt a re-release will happen. (Personally I never had problems with the audio quality on the TNG-discs anyway but I sure are no expert when it comes to stuff like that.)
Actually "right now" the german label ZYX music (who always handled GNPD Crescendo releases at least in Germany) are re-releasing a lot of old stuff, two boxsets are sceduled for August which contain Star Trek II, Star Trek Generations & the Sound Effect Disc in one box and First Contact, Insurrection and TNG Vol.4 in another. According to amazon.de, they will also re-release the DS9-pilot score in September as a single disc (as before).
...and that aside I'm ready for Disc 2:
When it comes to Chattaway's music I'm also a big fan of his action & suspense-music, and many favourite Star Trek-scores are composed by him but to be honest I never really cared much for his TNG-output. So let's see what we have here... 
REMEMBER ME
I always liked the opening cue a lot - it's rather short but it reminds me a lot of his score for "Tin Man" (which can't be a bad thing) and besides that I think it's a nice track to open up this disc. The rest of the episode score is rather mediocre with some nice moments here and there nevertheless.
THE HOST
For me this is the biggest surprise on this whole set - I never really remembered any of the music from this episode, but it is great. The whole selection here from this episode is outstanding if you ask me, and for me the music from this episode is one of my favourites from this set. Very melodic and emotional - I love it!
DARMOK
Hm, I think from all the action music selections on this disc the tracks from Darmok are probably the best. I don't like Chattaway's action music from that time period very much I'm afraid, since it sounds rather repetitive and doesn't seem to have any forward motion. But these cues here at least sound somewhat powerful nevertheless. Favourite track however is "Telling a story - Gone forever".
SILICON AVATAR
The opening action music sounds very similar to the action music in "Darmok", which isn't that bad but overall this is one of the episodes which screamed for a more "Ron Jones"-like apporach, since the opening is rather cinematic and for me one of the most memorable scenes from TNG, from a visual point of view, and the music doesn't really reflect that in my opinion (which isn't really Chattaway's fault of course). The other cues from this episode aren't bad but nothing stands out for me.
THE PERFECT MATE
Somewhat similar in style to the music in "The Host". Overall, I like "The Host" more, but the tracks featured here aren't bad either. Quite nice.
I BORG
I really like the way Chattaway works with the Courage-fanfare in his scores. At TNG's early years both McCarthy and Jones seemed to use it all the time for no particular reason other than the fact that "it's Star Trek" and later McCarthy used it mostly for episode outros. Chattaway never really did that, but instead he uses the fanfare when it makes sense in the story - which is exactly what happens here and I think the result is great: it gives the fanfare some sort of meaning it usual lacks.
THE INNER LIGHT
Well, when the tracklist for this set was announced it probably wasn't much of a surprise to see this episode featured here - still I wasn't sure if this was neccessary after the awesome arrangements on previous Star Trek-CD's from GNPD Crescendo. After listening to these tracks I think it's actually quite nice to have the original tracks as well. Another thing that surprised me are Chattaway's source music cues. While I said on Disc 1 that I'm usually not particulary fond of source music as a whole, I think Chattaway's "Naming Dance/Ceremony"-tracks are outstanding and sound very beautiful (especially the unused "Naming Ceremony") Overall I love them and for me they are stand-out tracks on this set (not only because of the obvious different sound style).
RELICS
For "Scotty's Bridge" the same as I said on "I Borg" applies here. When it comes to the action music, once again I don't like it much. It sounds even more toned down than Chattaway's action music from season 5, and somehow it also sound rather unmotived and tired to me. Same thing applies to...
STARSHIP MINE
THE CHASE
Doesn't sound too bad - but right now I don't know what else to say about this track. xD
JORNEY'S END
This track is quite nice - I really like how it seems to "battle" between the action music and the more peaceful music, just like the track title "War or Peace" suggests - it sounds like the music can't decide and have to battle this out which is a nice effect. "Wes Goes on His Way" sounds also very nice but this track made we wonder about who decides when to attach the Credits to Courage's fanfare to a track and when not. For example, the quote in "I Borg" is much more obvious and noticable then the more subtle use here, but I guess all the notes must match otherwise it doesn't count or something.
So, when it comes to the Disc as a whole I think that overall McCarthy's disc is more fun to listen too, as I said I'm not too fond of the action music here but it makes sense to me that these tracks are included, otherwise the disc would appear very monotonous. The selections from "The Host" and "The Inner Light" are some of my favourites from this whole set and I'm very glad to have them included here, so... this disc is a weird mix of favourites and least-favourites for me... xD
What I would love to see on a Volume 2:
"Power Play", which features Chattaway's best action music writing for TNG (imho of course - and "Tin Man" aside, of course)
"Frame of Mind" - very unusual episode, and Chattaway handles that exceptional well in some outstanding myystery/suspense-like cues (when Riker tries to escape with the help of Enterprise-crewmembers and of course the music for the finale, where everything "falls apart").
I'm not sure if this would be possible, since GNPD Crescendo already released a track from this episode: "Birthright Part 1" - while I think "Data in Dreamland" is a very outstanding track for sure, I also really loved the music for the Worf/DS9-storyline from this first part in particular. Chattaway also references McCarthy's DS9-theme at one occasion (I think the only time this happened in TNG), and for me having some thematic material in the music can't hurt. 
Ok... Disc 2 done! 
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Posted: |
Aug 21, 2011 - 7:47 AM
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By: |
CrazyQuark
(Member)
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So... time to finish this review up.
Disc 3:
CODE OF HONOR
When the tracklist was announced I wasn't sure what to think of this inclusion - sure, it was composed by Fred Steiner, but I never really noticed the music as outstanding while watching the episode - well, that might have something to do with the episode's quality, but I'm not sure. Anyway, when I first listened to it I thought "Well, it sounds like TOS" but that was pretty much it. But after some further listening it really grew on me quite a lot, and now I think it's a great score. This is also one of the scores that really works best in complete presentation rather than picking about two or three cues or something, so the presence of the whole score on this disc is much appreciated! Overall, a very fun and adventurous score.
FACE OF THE ENEMY
Well, this is one of the episodes where I noticed the music while watching - which probably wasn't too hard. McCarthy's and Chattaway's scores from this time usually all sounded very similar so I guess it's somewhat noticable when someone else drops by and does something very differently. And here on the soundtrack it's even more noticable because here's no sound mix the music could get buried in, so it's easily possible to appreciate the music even more. For example, it seems that Davis took his inspiration from Horner's Star Trek-scores, which seems a bit odd at first (especially with Goldsmith's TMP-theme as main title for the show) but it sure isn't bad - I like that quite a lot, but I never really noticed the similarities while watching the show. But besides of the Horner-influences, I think this score sounds very creative and "motivated", just like Davis had a lot of fun composing it. In the end, like "Code of Honor" I'm glad it's included here - it's a great score and in my opinion simply one of the very best from TNG's last three seasons.
THE PEGASUS
Hm, this is a bit more complicated for me. Unlike "Face of the Enemey" I never really noticed the music in this episode, so I wasn't sure what to expect here. After listening to it I would say it sure isn't bad, but for me the whole soundtrack sounds very "samey" and wallpaperish. I would imagine that Rick Berman was very happy about this score, but since there's a (unusual?) big amount of alternate cues I'm not too sure and I wonder why the gave him such a hard time here??? While the music sounds quite nice, there's nothing really memorable in it - it definitely sounds like Star Trek; instead of doing something more unique like Davis, Debney fits in there quite nicely, but that's it, because it just doesn't stand out in any way. A "typical" Star Trek-score, nothing less, nothing more imho.
BONUS MATERIALS
Lol - I guess when it comes to bonus stuff McCarthy is always there for a surprise. Quite funny additions but these tracks (as well as the hidden acapella version) makes me wonder: McCarthy never really cared much for Goldsmith's TMP-theme, did he?
Ok, that's it! Last but not least I would like to add that I also like the set's design/artwork a lot and the liner notes are great as well (I had hoped from more comments from the composers themselves, but hey, you can't have everything - and yeah the booklet is quite big already) so overall I think this is a great set with outstanding material on each of the disc (I think my very favourites would include "Time Squared", "The Host", "The Inner Light", "Code of Honor" & "Face of the Enemy" but most of the other stuff is great as well - for example I really like that we got a couple more quotes from "Picard's Theme" on this set as well as the fanfare which opens up "The Child"). Simply a great addition to the TNG-material already available - thanks to everyone who made this possible! After all, it was kind of surprising for me that this did happen after the Ron Jones-set last year.
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Posted: |
Aug 21, 2011 - 12:31 PM
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By: |
Thgil
(Member)
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I was FIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY able to finish the set the other night. We've already gotten a complete review but I was wondering if anyone else is ready to give their thoughts. As it's been said before, once the CDs actually arrive, it seems that people have nothing more to say.
Now, while I'm definitely a lover of Jones' style, I was really excited about this release. It had some stuff I'd wanted for quite a while ("Haven") and other material I'd only begun to open up to ("Conspiracy", "The Host"). I'll admit, I used to be a jerk who would see that the episode coming on wasn't a Jones episode and disregard it outright. However, as time has moved on, and I've started using my ears, I've come to realize that there's a lot of good stuff in The Next Generation.
Anyway, onto my favorites:
Haven was an interesting listen. I had re-watched the episode in anticipation and found much the same thing to be true for me as had been for others: it has no solidified theme. It's good, but it's missing a unified idea.
Hide and Q is one I've really, really liked for years now. I really like the score from beginning to end but a comprehensive McCarthy box would be monetarily dubious at best for any label so I'm just glad to have any music from the episode at all. Choosing this set of cues was a great idea. The track encompasses pretty much the entire vibe of the episode. It's mysterious, sad and beautiful. I love, love, love the moment in the track which underscores Data's refusal of Riker's would-be gift.
Conspiracy. Here we are. This is where it gets really dissonant, which I love. The throbbing electronic effect for the parasites, as well as the more aggressive electronics, really drive much of the track. The electronic pizzicatto-esque motive for the worms is really ear-catching. The denouement is appropriately unsettling and open-ended, just how I like it.
The Child... Everyone knows about The Child. I enjoy it too. The reprise of the metallic motive from the opening in "Growth Spurt" is really effective.
Elementary Dear Data is soooooo short, but it's so very fun. I love it! Enough said there.
Time Squared. Good stuff. It's got a throbbing electronic pulse which is kind of Conspiracy-esque but a bit more propulsive. I like the use of the "Child" motive near the finale.
Conundrum was surprisingly action-filled. I haven't seen the episode in years and was unprepared for the quality of the action material. This is a terrific track. It's like a mini-score in and of itself. The conclusion is very satisfying and serves its purpose far beyond the call of duty.
All Good Things... I prefer the presentation on Best of Star Trek Vol. 2 far better, but its inclusion here was appropriate.
To Chattaway:
Remember Me is a really good one. I would have preferred to have had more of the waterphone-driven material in the presentation but what's there is really good. It's got the wonderful opening and one of the two vortex cues which are definitely crucial to the score. The best part is the finale though. The eerie string effects and subtle electronics create the perfect atmosphere for such a unique episode and perform very well on album. The action finale is far better on CD than in the episode with the sound effects and dialogue over it. And, at last, the wonderful denouement gives the listener the perfect wind-down to such a tense score.
The Host begins in a very action heavy manner. While it opens with an admittedly swashbuckling personal log entry cue and a presentation of the love music, it quickly segues into a sudden action passage which is indicative of Chattaway's early Trek sound. It presents the main themes of the episode idea in a nutshell and is the perfect set-up for what's coming. The next track, "No Pain, No Gain" is my favorite in the episode and definitely one of my favorites in the set. It starts off delicate and beautifully and ends with a bold string statement of the motive for Crusher's love. Well worth the price of the set alone.
Darmok... What's not to love? It's got more early Chattaway Trek action material and some really pretty stuff in"Telling a Story/Gone Forever", another favorite of mine.
Those three are definitely my favorites on the disc.
The Inner Light has some pretty stuff, including the famous theme and the source music.
Relics has some nice music for Scotty which is really nice. "Scotty's Bridge" and "Mister Good Hands" anyone?
Guest Composers:
Code of Honor; wanted it for years and it didn't disappoint. Steiner was wrong for the show in my opinion but oh-so right on album. A HUGE plus for the set.
Face of the Enemy. What can I say? The only other scores of Davis which I'd heard before this were his Matrix trilogy. What do I think of his more "traditional" stuff? I love it. As soon as it ended I said out loud, to a room full of myself, "Good God, that was terrific!" And it was. Obvious why he wasn't brought back I think. Definitely Horner-influenced but in a good way. I loved his finale. It even had counterpoint! Enough said.
A terrific set.
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Posted: |
Aug 21, 2011 - 1:49 PM
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By: |
CrazyQuark
(Member)
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I was FIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY able to finish the set the other night. We've already gotten a complete review but I was wondering if anyone else is ready to give their thoughts. As it's been said before, once the CDs actually arrive, it seems that people have nothing more to say.
Indeed! Thanks for your thoughts as well - I for one are definitely interested in what other people think about this set!
Now, while I'm definitely a lover of Jones' style, I was really excited about this release. It had some stuff I'd wanted for quite a while ("Haven") and other material I'd only begun to open up to ("Conspiracy", "The Host"). I'll admit, I used to be a jerk who would see that the episode coming on wasn't a Jones episode and disregard it outright. However, as time has moved on, and I've started using my ears, I've come to realize that there's a lot of good stuff in The Next Generation.
That sounds familiar - it was pretty much the same thing for me, I needed a long time to warm up with McCarthy's music, that also includes his action material - I still have some problems with it in the episodes because it's a bit too undramatic and to lighthearted for my taste (especially later in DS9), like it would say: "Yes, there's action, but don't bother! Everything will be alright!" but I noticed that I like this kind of music much more on album, without the episode. (For example I probably would have never cared for "Conundrum's" music during the episode, but on the album I think it's a terrific listen.)
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Is there a hi-res version of the cover art available? I apologize if this has already been answered.
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