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It is SO thematic, SHOCKINGLY thematic. It's the kind of score we all endlessly complain is forbidden by the studios today. The kind we used to hear in every movie in the 90s and rush out and buy. The kind we mourn the absence of. It's breathtaking.
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The YouTube samples still play for me, strange... BRILLIANT score, woefully, shamefully underappreciated.
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I'm going to add this to the list of GREATEST EVER SCORES for a Horror Film. It joins the ranks of Bernard Herrmann and my personal faves - THE FURY & DRACULA by John Williams, POLTERGEIST by Jerry Goldsmith - as a thrilling/beautiful work that just gets better every time you play it. Just listen to those clips James has linked above* and tell me I'm wrong. Hard to believe it belongs to a film of the past few years. *or don't, cos they're dead Jim.. Holy flip, this is mega praise! I may have to get it, despite not having seen the film.
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I've not seen the film either Ob. And I don't like track 1. And I only thought the score was allright on first listen. But it just gets better and better with subsequent plays. It's fantastically thematic and symphonic, but with that slightly modern vibe that Armstrong brings to a lot of his work. I'll check samples. The only soundtrack I've ever bought then got rid of was The Clearing. I know this is nothing like that but it put me off him for the last ten years (well, that and never actually seeing any films he scores). I'm glad lots are enjoying it though. I hope to join the ranks.
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I'm finally watching the film, and it's fascinating to see how this gorgeous score was treated. I'm noticing that a lot of the big epic cues have the bass brought WAY up, and the high strings and such that carry the melodies are purposely buried. The mixers clearly recognized that this was a score from another era and tried to turn it into a modern soundscape/musical wallpaper score. They weren't entirely successful, the score is too sweeping to be totally strangled, but a combination of dropping some cues, and remixing others to drown the richly thematic nature of them means that the score, as heard in the film, displays only a small fraction of its dazzling brilliance. Also, I'm gonna hazard a guess that about 1/4 of the music in the finished film isn't Armstrong's, chunks of it sound like generic replacement music, especially as Igor and the girl travel through the forest in stagecoach in act three. I'm even more grateful that Armstrong was, by some miracle, allowed to write and record this titanic score, and that we got an album of it, sounding the way he intended it to. The film itself isn't as bad as I'd expected, James McAvoy is too talented to be anything but compelling, and despite the film's flaws, he's mesmerizing here, because he's been given such a deranged character to play here. He's really a force of nature let loose. The score remains probably my favorite of the last ten years.
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That's FRONK - EN- STYNE
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