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Posted: |
Apr 15, 2009 - 3:13 PM
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By: |
TerraEpon
(Member)
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I think praise and thanks are due to James Fitzpatrick of Tadlow and Morgan, Bonn & Stromberg of Tribute for taking the high road in the way they have run their companies. They announce their upcoming releases and do everything they can to deliver a good product. They treat their customers with respect and don't turn music making into a circus of hype. Or even LalaLand, who's now announcing a week in advance. Not a LOT of time, but it's fair enough. FSM's release yesterday was the perfect example of how not to do it (yet people are praising them for doing it this way!) -- out of the blue, a day after many of the same people would have ordered a new release from the same composer. Yes, it's not as if they nessesarily know, but the point is that many people probably end up paying a needless extra shipping fee -- or even passing on the later -- because of it. If both Intrada and FSM had announced a week early, people who be able to say "Hey! Both of these, great!", hold off a day to order the Intrada...etc. It's just so...silly.
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It's one of the reasons I do the clews thing on our releases - someone always guesses and I, in my way, always acknowledge - therefore with That Man From Rio, which was a very quick sellout for us, people knew it was coming and had a pretty good idea of when we were going to announce. We've got five really wonderful releases coming in the next eight to twelve weeks and believe me everyone will basically know what they are at least a week in advance when Morricone guesses correctly
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Posted: |
Apr 16, 2009 - 3:32 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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OK Thor, I'll bite or maybe just nibble. I'm really only familiar with Baxter's scores by hearing them in the films they belong to. Lots of wild stuff for the Poe films where he employs a lot of dissonance, frantic string writing and echo effects. His scores to the Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello beach films are pretty "pop"ie with lots of 60s drum set back beats. I think Master of the World is probably one of his most full on romantic era styled scores, at least compared with the other scores of his I've heard. A couple of the clips for Goliath and the Barbarians (Sword Dance & Mountains of Mystery) echo some of the exotica music he pioneered in the 50s and that I'm a huge fan of. Colorful, exotic, impressionist writing. His orchestrations in this area are usually outstanding. I can't wait to hear the whole score since I've never heard any of it at all before. A nice surprise! In any case, I have 8 or 9 Baxter exotica albums and this will be my first of his scores. I've been puttng off buying the Baron Blood and Black Sunday CD forever, but may need to change that soon. Those are more in his "Poe" vein of horror score writing. NOW we're talkin'. I got more out of that paragraph than this whole thread combined. Thanks. From how you describe it, I'm really curious about those "exotica" elements. This is him, right?:
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Posted: |
Apr 16, 2009 - 6:28 AM
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By: |
Mark Ford
(Member)
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NOW we're talkin'. I got more out of that paragraph than this whole thread combined. Thanks. From how you describe it, I'm really curious about those "exotica" elements. Yes that's him, probably from back in the 50s or early 60s. He later abandoned that toupee! In what little I heard in those 2 clips from Goliath, the sound recalls his exotica writing from 10 years of his exotica albums. The exotica sound he pioneered used lots of percussion instruments such as gongs, finger cymbals, bells, chimes, xylophone, vibraphone, harps, bongos, etc., and the use of exotic (i.e. non-western) rhythms derived from African, Latin, Carribbean, Polynesian, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, combined with scales and some harmonies also from those places. He threw all this together with masterful, very colorful, ravelesque, impressionistic orchestrations and harmonies and voila, Exotica, lush music that took you to far off places. Sword dance sounds like it came right out of one of those albums. If anyone is interested in Baxter's exotica, the now out of print Capital Records' "The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter" is a great place to start. It's a little pricey now though starting at around $39 US on Amazon Marketplace. It's a 2 disc compilation of selections from his exotica albums done for Capital in the 50s and the sound is just superb (like all of his Capital exotica recordings). Possibly one of my top 10 favorite CDs in any genre. From there you can find most of the albums these selections were taken from on CD as they have very slowly been released over the past 15 to 20 years, although some good ones still haven't seen the light of day yet. Baxter worked in lots of musical genres during his lifetime, but for me at least and what is considered to be his greatest legacy, exotica was his crowning achievement. Plus, he wrote THE exotica classic "Quiet Village", that shot to superstardom with Martin Denny's version, bird calls and all! To check out more about Les and his exotica music, go to the official sites: http://www.lesbaxter.com/ & http://www.baxmusic.com/. There are a number of sound clips there, especially on the Bax Music web site. Some out of print recordings have many full mp3's, including the above mentioned "Exotic Moods of Les Baxter". Cheers!
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