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 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 6:09 PM   
 By:   Senn555   (Member)

INTRADA Announces:



DISTANT THUNDER
Music Composed by MAURICE JARRE
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 271

Maurice Jarre's score for the 1988 Paramount film Distant Thunder was deep in his “synth period,” scoring a run of Peter Weir films (Witness, The Mosquito Coast) and others with all-synth or mostly electronic ensembles. “David Lean … always insisted that the music should really creep into the scene, and that the audience should not be consciously aware of the real entrance or exit of the music,” Jarre told Film Score Monthly in 1993. “Sometimes it is easier to do this with electronics, because they allow you more control over dynamics than an orchestra. … Electronics can creep in from absolutely no sound at all.” Directors like Weir liked the extra control synth scores gave them, and Jarre himself had been experimenting with electronic music and musique concrète since the 1950s.

Jarre enlisted his usual band of synth players—including Michael Boddicker, Ian Underwood, Ralph Grierson and Nyle Steiner—all among the elite instrumentalists in their field at the time. Jarre always recorded his tight little group as an ensemble, and they would play whole sections together, recording directly into a mixing board. In the score’s “Main Title,” Distant Thunder opens with eerily descending diminished chords (voiced by a choral effect) over a low sustained drone, with a lone trumpet voice referencing the film’s military undercurrent. The motif is punctuated with a tumbling percussive figuration that becomes a recurring ingredient in the score. For this premiere release Intrada presents the score in stereo from the original session tapes stored at Paramount.

In Distant Thunder, the theater of operations is the unforgiving marshes of Vietnam and, subsequently, inside the troubled mind of Mark Lambert (John Lithgow), a “bush vet” living in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula ten years after the war. Lambert suffers psychologically the horrors he witnessed there and long ago abandoned his wife and son, Jack (Ralph Macchio), to retreat from society. After watching one of his comrades commit suicide, Lambert timidly reenters civilization—meeting the compassionate Char (Kerrie Keane), who gives him a job and encourages him to reconnect with Jack. Driven back into the forest by Char’s overprotective boyfriend, Moss (Jamey Sheridan), Lambert is pursued by his resolute son.

INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 271
Retail Price: $19.99
Available Now
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.8566/.f

 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 6:41 PM   
 By:   SpaceMind   (Member)

Ordered!

 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 6:48 PM   
 By:   The Mutant   (Member)

I remember renting this on VHS back in the 80's. It was the first "grown up" drama that I sought out. I remember the grey, dull hopeless landscape and Lithgow's performance more than anything else.
I'll have to track this movie down an watch it again after all this time.
Ordered.

I believe this was directed by Halloween 2 helmer Rick Rosenthal.

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 7:05 PM   
 By:   GoblinScore   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)
Gloomy film but excellent score, really nice finale.
Its bittersweet hearing "forgotten" scores from those no longer with us.
Exciting but I know someday it'll really all be over.

Thanks intrada for doing this one :-)

 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 8:03 PM   
 By:   Josh   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)

I'm right there with you, amigo.

 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 8:18 PM   
 By:   Advise & Consent   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)

I'm right there with you, amigo.


Count me in as well, please. smile

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 8:36 PM   
 By:   GoblinScore   (Member)

Well, hell, going to have to put up a 'get off my island!' notice if this
keeps up! wink
At worst, you have to admit MJ wrote 'orchestrally' for synth players, which is admirable. I've always enjoyed his style in this medium, the sound to me is
unique, not your run of the mill droning business.

 
 Posted:   Feb 17, 2014 - 8:57 PM   
 By:   CindyLover   (Member)

I remember renting this on VHS back in the 80's.

I saw it on video as well - I remember little about it apart from the opening and closing scenes (which are basically given away on the Intrada tracklisting, so I won't do it here). Lithgow was fine as ever; movie... let's just call it well-meaning and leave it at that. As for the music, I didn't bother taping anything off it, but that doesn't mean it was awful.

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 9:59 AM   
 By:   Kim Peterson   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)
Gloomy film but excellent score, really nice finale.
Its bittersweet hearing "forgotten" scores from those no longer with us.
Exciting but I know someday it'll really all be over.

Thanks intrada for doing this one :-)


I am not a "dude", but you are not alone. I like Jarre's synth work too. Still waiting for SOLARBABIES.

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 10:35 AM   
 By:   GoblinScore   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)
Gloomy film but excellent score, really nice finale.
Its bittersweet hearing "forgotten" scores from those no longer with us.
Exciting but I know someday it'll really all be over.

Thanks intrada for doing this one :-)


I am not a "dude", but you are not alone. I like Jarre's synth work too. Still waiting for SOLARBABIES.


Always room for una femme on Jarre Electronic Island, Kim smile

Solarbabies is a great, hokey as hell score, and while it's so 80's & probably won't sell
very much beyond that core group, I'd snap it up instantly, shocker - to not have to watch the film again would
be a real treat!!! MGM, so it's surely a matter of time...

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 11:36 AM   
 By:   Roy Donga   (Member)

Makes my daysmile it's nice in a way being just about the lone dude who loves Jarre's synth work, unconditionally (maybe Paul McLean too??)

Same here
That's six of us now

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 12:15 PM   
 By:   Jim Bailey   (Member)

I'm a huge synth fan in general so you can count me in too!

 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 12:20 PM   
 By:   DeviantMan   (Member)

I'm thinking now that Jarre's
FIREFOX
is becoming a grail for me...
vintage synths and an orchestral finale plus working with Eastwood.

I really want to get this into my collection.

DISTANT THUNDER will do for now...

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 18, 2014 - 12:24 PM   
 By:   GoblinScore   (Member)

If I could physically hug a thread....it would be this one wink

FIREFOX sounds like its tangled in some nefarious red-tapey legal thing
as well as being incredibly expensive for some reason too - my memory
was that score was all electronic until the last couple of reels - so, since
when did it become so expensive to release 15-30mins. of orchestral music?
I thought there were new limited edition AFM rules set that made all this stuff
feasible to be released now? Why THIS title is such a problem is beyond me.

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 24, 2014 - 6:15 PM   
 By:   GoblinScore   (Member)

At last!
A very moody listen, certain textures that will resurface in Jacobs Ladder & Ghost. Only 1 melodic cue in the main of the score really, "Its a Deal".
Still listening, just felt compelled to post. Wonderfully moody stuff & perfectly timed to end a bad Monday. Great package & notes by Tim Greiving
which look to cover what I wanted - performance tales.

 
 
 Posted:   Feb 25, 2014 - 12:43 AM   
 By:   governor   (Member)


Great release, great music. Thank you Intrada !

 
 Posted:   Feb 25, 2014 - 2:00 AM   
 By:   batman&robin   (Member)

Great release, indeed! An instant buy for me. Thank you, Intrada!

 
 Posted:   Aug 25, 2014 - 6:26 PM   
 By:   David-R.   (Member)

After about six months...

AVAILABLE UNTIL SEPT 8 2014 OR WHILE SUPPLIES LAST

http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.8566/.f?sc=13&category=-113

 
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