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Soylent Green/Demon Seed (1973/1977)
Music by Jerry Fielding, Fred Myrow
Soylent Green/Demon Seed Soylent Green/Demon Seed Soylent Green/Demon Seed
Click to enlarge images.
Price: $19.95
Limited #: 10000
View CD Page at SAE Store
Line: Silver Age
CD Release: May 2003
Catalog #: Vol. 6, No. 8
# of Discs: 1

Released by Special Arrangement with Turner Classic Movies Music

FSM adds to its library of science fiction soundtracks with a doubleheader of provocative music from 1970s M-G-M films: Soylent Green and Demon Seed.

Soylent Green (1973) was the last and arguably the finest of Charlton Heston's trilogy of early-'70s sci-fi films, beginning with 1970's Beneath the Planet of the Apes and continuing with 1971's The Omega Man. (All three soundtracks are now immortalized as FSM CDs.) Heston plays a detective in this dystopian, overcrowded future, where the death of a prominent executive leads to a discovery of the shocking truth behind the society's precious foodstuff.

The music to Soylent Green was composed by Fred Myrow (1939-1999), an eclectic musician who worked in film, theater and the concert hall. Myrow provided an imaginative, pop-based main title (for a montage of still photographs), futuristic-sounding source cues (featuring electric violin and synthesizers), and strange, atmospheric moods for the underscore. The CD includes his original, unused classical-styled music for Edward G. Robinson's death sequence, as well as the actual classical works (by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Grieg) conducted by Gerald Fried for the finished film. The Soylent Green portion of the CD is entirely in stereo.

Demon Seed (1977) was directed by Donald Cammell (Performance) and stars Julie Christie as the wife of a scientist (Fritz Weaver) who has invented the Proteus IV supercomputer. However, Proteus soon develops the need to procreate—and uses Christie as the means to that end, trapping her in her house and terrorizing her. Jerry Fielding's avant garde score was a high-water mark in the composer's experimentation, featuring eerie suspense and violence as Proteus and Christie engage in a battle of wills.

Fielding conceived and recorded several pieces electronically, using the musique concrete sound world of Karlheinz Stockhausen; some of this music he later reworked symphonically. FSM's premiere release of the Demon Seed score features the entire orchestral score in stereo, as well as the unused electronic experiments in mono and stereo.

Jerry Fielding Scores on FSM
About the Composer

Jerry Fielding (1922-1980) was one of cinema's most distinctive voices in the 1960s and especially '70s, the perfect musical complement to the films of Sam Peckinpah, Michael Winner, Clint Eastwood and others. His scores are marked by modernism and intricate orchestrations but also a poetic beauty and intensity—an appropriate accompaniment to the decade's strange and often sad (but never sentimental) criminals and antiheroes, be they in westerns (The Wild Bunch) or crime films. He was, however, capable of numerous styles (he was a former Vegas bandleader), and wrote a great number of scores (from sticoms to dramas to sci-fi) for television. IMDB

Fred Myrow Scores on FSM
About the Composer

Fred Myrow (1939-1999) was an accomplished composer for the concert hall, film, stage and records, capable of work in an eclectic array of styles. His film scores include Leo the Last, Soylent Green and PhantasmIMDB

Comments (8):Log in or register to post your own comments
Pardon me, but I thought it was about time Cookie Monster stepped aside for the real Fred Myrow in his FSM composer portrait.



Love me some "Soylent Green"; and Jerry Fielding at his trippiest.



Love me some "Soylent Green"; and Jerry Fielding at his trippiest.[/endquote]

Truly mind-blowing, head-trippy, other-wordly Fielding at his best.

The opening bars make me levitate.

I traded away the CD after a few listens. Sadly didn't do much for me.

The Prologue/Opening to Soylent Green is one of my favorite single cues, ever.

I originally bought this for the Fielding score, which I've listened to dozens of times while shamefully ignoring SOYLENT GREEN. Well, not quite "ignoring" it, but it hadn't been getting a lot of attention from me in the last four or five years. So I put on SOYLENT GREEN again today - and it's totally wonderful!

I'd really forgotten how great the Fred Myrow (and Mark Fleischer) score works on CD. Just as "Soylent Green" itself is not quite what one is supposed to think it is at the start, this marvelous music is a complex hybrid and a true revelation of spaced-out genius. So the "upbeat" R n' B opening is tinged with a kind of crazy madness, the source cues are not quite 100% innocuous (I can hear a warped nod to "The Girl From Ipanema" in the Fleischer-credited cue "Home Lobby Source"), and the very vague country n' western touches are anything but comforting. Then there's the truly hypnotic avant-garde chimes and meanderings and oddly shifting textures of the low-key stuff - which is not in the least boring, but totally compelling. Some of it is sort of in the same musical universe as Denny Zeitlin's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, but it might be more logical to draw a parallel between Myrow's score and Michael Small. You just know that when Michael Small did a "patriotic" theme, the effect which it produced was quite the opposite of pride, and often way-out creepy.

Soylent green is . . . COOKIES! IT'S COOKIES!!!

DEMON SEED is playing on TCM at this very moment, at least in my neck of the woods (So Cal). Tonight's theme is "technology gone mad," with DEMON SEED bookended by WESTWORLD and SCANNERS. Great scores, all, the first two of course already released on CD by FSM, the latter to be featured in the upcoming FSM Cronenberg comeback box (hardy har har).

I'll second what our esteemed "Admiral" said above! I love blasting that prologue opening from my car stereo speakers while driving down the highway! Makes me feel so fucking ultra-cool! :D

Track List
Instruments/Musicians
Click on each musician name for more credits
For more specific musician lists for the scores on this album, go here:
Demon Seed
Soylent Green

Leader (Conductor):
Jerry Fielding, Gerald Fried, Fred Myrow

Violin:
Israel Baker, Robert Barene, Virginia Bartold, Arnold Belnick, Blanche Belnick, George Berres, Harry Bluestone, Henry Arthur Brown, Herman Clebanoff, Manuel Compinsky, Shirley A. Cornell, Glenn Dicterow, Bonnie J. Douglas (Shure), Assa Drori, Elliot Fisher, Ronald P. Folsom, Sam Freed, Jr., David Frisina, Werner L. Gebauer, Debbie Sue Grossman, Thelma Hanau (Beach), Anatol Kaminsky, Nathan Kaproff, George Kast, Louis Kaufman, Richard Kaufman, Ezra Kliger, Jacob Krachmalnick, Bernard Kundell, Robert S. Levine, Marvin Limonick, Alfred Lustgarten, Gordon H. Marron, Alexander Murray, Irma W. Neumann, Stanley Plummer, Jerome Joseph Reisler, Nathan Ross, Ambrose Russo, Sheldon Sanov, Albert Saparoff, Ralph Schaeffer, Haim Shtrum, Paul C. Shure, Ralph Silverman, Marshall Sosson, Joseph Stepansky, Charles Veal, Jr., Gerald Vinci, Kenneth Yerke

Viola:
Alfred Barr, Myer Bello, Denyse N. Buffum, Rollice Dale, James F. Dunham, Pamela Goldsmith, Allan Harshman, Myra Kestenbaum, Louis Kievman, Mark Gabor Kovacs, Joel B. Lish, Alex Neiman, Dan Lionel Neufeld, Gareth D. Nuttycombe, Robert Ostrowsky, Sven Reher, Harry Rumpler, David Schwartz, Linn Subotnick, Milton Thomas, Herschel P. Wise

Cello:
Ron Cooper, Douglas L. Davis, Selene Depuy-Hurford, Joseph DiTullio, Justin DiTullio, Marie Fera, Igor Horoshevsky, Judith M. Johnson (Perett), Armand Kaproff, Dennis Karmazyn, Raphael "Ray" Kramer, Ronald A. Leonard, Frederick R. Seykora, Eleanor Slatkin, Jeffrey G. Solow, Mary Louise Zeyen

Bass:
Milton Kestenbaum, Abraham Luboff, Peter A. Mercurio, Buell Neidlinger, Meyer (Mike) Rubin, Ray Siegel

Flute:
Burnett Atkinson, Louise M. DiTullio (Dissman)

Oboe:
William Criss, Gordon Pope

Clarinet:
Edmund Samuel Chassman, Gary G. Gray

Bassoon:
Norman H. Herzberg, Jack Marsh

Woodwinds:
Gene Cipriano, Louise M. DiTullio (Dissman), Earle D. Dumler, John F. Ellis, Dominick Fera, Bernard Fleischer, Norman H. Herzberg, Arnold Koblentz, Marty Krystall, Ronald Langinger (aka Ronny Lang), Jack Marsh, John Neufeld, Ethmer Roten, Sheridon W. Stokes, Howard P. Terry

French Horn:
James A. Decker, Vincent N. DeRosa, Robert E. Henderson, Arthur Maebe, Jr., Richard E. Perissi, Gale H. Robinson

Trumpet:
John Audino, Maurie Harris, Malcolm Boyd McNab, George Werth

Trombone:
Glenn Ferris, Francis L. "Joe" Howard, Lewis Melvin McCreary, George M. Roberts, Thomas Shepard, Lloyd E. Ulyate

Tuba:
John T. "Tommy" Johnson, Ray Siegel

Keyboards:
Douglas Clare Fischer, Caesar Giovannini, Ralph E. Grierson, Richard P. Hazard, Artie Kane, Lincoln Mayorga, William Osborne, Clark Spangler, Ian R. Underwood

Guitar:
Michael J. Anthony, Larry E. Carlton, Joseph Robert Gibbons, Alton R. "Al" Hendrickson, Mitchell L. "Mitch" Holder, Lee M. Ritenour, Thomas "Tommy" Tedesco

Fender (electric) Bass:
Charles W. Rainey

Harp:
Catherine Gotthoffer (Johnk), Denzil (Gail) Laughton, Dorothy S. Remsen

Percussion:
Hubert "Hugh" Anderson, Larry Bunker, Victor Feldman, Joe Porcaro, Emil Radocchia (Richards), Mark Z. Stevens, Tommy Vig, Kenneth E. Watson

Orchestrator:
Greig McRitchie, Leonard "Lennie" Niehaus

Orchestra Manager:
Lloyd Basham, Martin Berman, Harry W. Lojewski

Supervising Copyist:
Harry W. Lojewski

Copyist:
Willard W. Jones, Ray Mace

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