I'm no fan of Michael Bay, and I've not seen the any of The Transformers films. I can't say I even like the 80s cartoons. But boy, I recently picked up Jablonsky's score to the first Transformers film and I love it, listen to it quite a lot.
I liked it so much I went looking for the other Transformers scores and found Revenge Of The Fallen was still readily available, but Dark Of The Moon was download only, now out of print, and Age Of Extinction just went out of print. I just grabbed Revenge Of The Fallen and Age Of Extinction for a reasonable price.
Michael Scorefan told me about some of this, but can anyone shed some light on the lack of availability for these scores.
They were a victim of their own success — they were licensed for release in a smaller print run (much like the dedicated soundtrack labels do with 3,000/5,000 unit releases) and they sold very well.
I love the scores, the first three are wonderfully fun, the last, Age Of Extinction, isn't quite up there, but still solid. It is a real shame Dark Of The Moon never got a physical release.
Jablonsky's scores for Ender's Game and Battleship make great companion pieces for the Transformers albums. They're not as propulsive as the Transformers scores, but still lots of replay value, especially Ender's Game.
I like the first score a lot. I've noticed that this type of music is used in the television show The Last Ship. I believe he scored the first pilot episode, and some of his score is still used in the TV show. It sounds very similar to the first Transformer score.
There was a documentary some years back called, "When We Left The Earth" and the score sounded a lot like the first Transformers score. I imagine it was a case of tracking. I always wanted to see a score release for that documentary.
It wasn't really used at all, in the film (not in this form anyway), but too bad they didn't take along this for any of the other films. It's also probably my favorite from all the Transformer scores.
For the 2nd I do love the new "Prime" theme, mostly the variations with the female solo voice (Infinite White etc), and particularly the piece where the Fallen Falls (~first part of last track on OST). There's another mix with some big male choir (in additon to the solo voice), which sounds really great, and also another with an extra solo violin line, none of which is the version on the OST. You might wonder who sits and selects which mixes to use for the CD releases...
On the 3rd I like these themes and their variations:
The first is excellent, as others have said (despite wearing some Zimmer and some Newman on its sleeve). The sequels have some neat moments too, but are often overpowered by too much noise. Love most of the films, though. Very underrated once you "get" what Michael Bay is all about.
Overall a very good album with very good ( but not note for note sound-alikes ) covers of the film scores. Not quite as excellent as their Batman Trilogy album:
