CD Review: The Plan/ Razor– Original Soundtrack
Composer: Bear McCreary
Label: La La Land
Suggested Retail Price: $15.98
Grade: B+
What a wonderfully long, strange ride it’s been for Bear McCreary and the crew of the Battlestar Galactica. Having gotten his wings as a protégé of Elmer Bernstein and an assistant to Richard Gibbs, McCreary came to the fore as a musical co-pilot for Gibbs on GALACTICA’s 2003 miniseries. It was an in-your-face revision that turned Glenn Larson’s enjoyable camp show into a brooding, ultra-realistic, meta-political program that probably wouldn’t have shorn its sci-fi trappings if could have. The oh-so-serious tone stripped away the STAR WARS- majesty of Stu Phillips’ original music into bare bones percussion and stunningly anachronistic bagpipes for the new anti-music millennia, a sound that didn’t seem to really play anything but the series’ overwhelming darkness.
Yet over the course of a five-year journey that finally landed them on the “real” Earth, BSG screwed the outright naysayers, not to mention scoffers like myself, to become one of the television’s best series. It packed a spellbinding dramatic gravitas that went far beyond anything that could be called Syfy, let alone a reboot. Ditto McCreary work, which swiftly revealed the method to its madness, filling its seemingly boring skeleton with an amazingly gutsy approach to scoring space opera. The percussion may have continued to steer this ship, but it was fleshed out with rock guitar, strikingly good themes, haunting vocals, and yes, even a traditional orchestra. And it turned out all along that those ethnic instruments were there to create a sense of colonies flung together, something that just might be the series’ most important tonal element.
As critical and cult success has shown, there’s no better way to capitalize on a show’s success then by spinning it off into stand-alone TV movies, let alone milking its dead corpse for a sour aftertaste. RAZOR served as an intriguing way to keep GALACTICA’s interest afloat during the show’s stop-and-start airings, and THE PLAN a pretty incomprehensibly awful way to get some mileage out of the show months after it had ended. In any case though, there’s no denying the thoughtfulness, and quality of McCreary’s work for both TV movies, which now get a combo release on La La Land, a label that continues to terrifically present all music BSG.
Beginning with Raya Yarbrough’s haunting vocals and McCreary’s guitar thrashing out THE PLAN’s “Apocalypse Theme,” the CD segues into the kind of percussive, ethnically transfixing melodies that have made the show’s music so impressive, finding world music as its own beautifully haunted form of otherworldliness. In fact, you’d probably have to think back to Toto’s DUNE soundtrack to hear a similarly meditative mélange like this. Barely hitting any of the actions of a psychotically militaristic spaceship, or trying to decipher The Cylons machinations, McCreary’s work is all about mood, frequently tense and often psychedelic, yet always melodic. In fact, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to tell where RAZOR and THE PLAN’s music finished, and started, given the thematic cohesiveness of McCreary’s vision for a series where nearly every episode had its own motif- let alone melodies that tied the whole trek together. And here McCreary proves it by seamlessly sequencing between the two soundtracks to make this CD one long-running headtrip, though there is a definitely noticeable, and nicely sporting tip of the hat to Phillip’s original theme for “Husker in Combat.”
Complementing the melodically hypnotic flow of THE PLAN and RAZOR is a live version of THE PLAN’s “Apocalypse Theme,” where adoring throngs cheer, “So say we al!” before being treated to the raw, reverberating strings, drums and guitars of McCreary’s band. For whether he’s strumming, pounding, thrashing or ethereally floating about, THE PLAN / RAZOR goes out by proving McCreary’s work are far more of a conceptual rock opera than a space one. Except instead of a double album, it’s gone on for dozens of episodes and numerous CD soundtracks. It’s a jam session that could just as well be taking place in a mythical fantasy kingdom or on the hills of Ireland. Such is the timeless, TV-less impact of McCreary’s work, a saga of his musical growth that gets a particularly nice coda here.
Since the Galactica has gone into the sun, and the fate of its prequel CAPRICA is definitely more dicey than GALACTICA’s was at the start (despite McCreary’s yeoman, and very different musical approach to the show), the composer is definitely smart enough to look for other venues while keeping very busy on TV with shows like EUREKA and THE HUMAN TARGET. And while he’s more than deserving of an AVATAR-type big screen break, videogames should more than temporarily suffice given his impressive work on DARK VOID.
For this CAPCOM alien invasion take on THE ROCKETEER, it’s all about heroic orchestrations and mean-ass percussion. And the popcorn crowd that might find McCreary’s GALACTICA work just a bit subtle will doubtlessly appreciate the composer’s steroid take on his ethnic-beat sound, not to mention a fully unchained use of the orchestra. McCreary runs with the possibilities of an 80-piece symphony and a musical budget that could take care of a whole season of BSG, delivering a thematically epic score that would befit any summer sci-fi lollapalooza. With throttling drums and exotic winds getting across the darkest Africa setting of its space nasties’ incursion, McCreary delivers one rousing adventure run after the other as his patriotic sounding, high-flying hero blasts the BEM’s back to their own dimension.
Further complementing VOID’s thematic throwback feel is McCreary’s use of the Ondes Martenot, a Theremin-like electric instrument that his mentor Bernstein used in such scores as HEAVY METAL and GHOSTBUSTERS. And there’s no doubt that Elmer would be proud of how well McCreary integrates the sound into his orchestra, paying tribute to Elmer’s great fantasy scores while also making DARK VOID sound very much like his own uniquely percussive voice. Throughout VOID, McCreary does an effective balancing act between the two styles. Screeching guitar chords and electric violins that are very much from Commander Adama’s universe mesh with a symphonically nostalgic throwback to the days when two-fisted heroes wore rockets on their backs. So if you’re looking for the proof that the walls have come tumbling down in the difference of what music’s being done for the movie theater and your console, then McCreary blows any doubts with DARK VOID. If the Battlestar had gone for this kind of firepower in the first place, the Cylons wouldn’t have had a chance. But then, we might be poorer for the brilliantly innovative understatement that’s helped put McCreary on your PS3.
So say we bye with Bear to GALACTICA here, then put on a new videogame jetpack with the composer here
