2nd July 2010

One of the most enduring director-composer partnerships is the ongoing collaboration between David Cronenberg and Howard Shore: probably only beaten by Steven Spielberg's relationship with John Williams. Shore has written the music for every Cronenberg film since Shivers, with the exception of The Dead Zone and Fast Company. And even though I'm by no means a big fan of Howard Shore, I was moderately thrilled to pick up a CD the other week containing the scores to Dead Ringers, Scanners and The Brood. Even though I'm trying to offload a lot of CDs from my collection and cut the numbers drastically, I made an exception for this one: it's long out of print and hard to find, and while I'm not a massive Shore fan I do like his work on The Fly and particularly Videodrome.

In truth, I usually find Howard Shore's music depressing, solemn and bleak. I suspect that's why it works for David Cronenberg: there' s little or no joy in his films and most if not all of them boast downbeat endings. I remember coming out of a London Film Festival preview of Dead Ringers feeling especially miserable. Even something with a crowd-pleasing yuk factor like The Fly doesn't conclude happily. But Shore also got the job of scoring the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and I found those scores depressing, solemn and bleak as well: certainly no fun to listen to. Surely those scores should have been uplifting and exciting, and I found myself wondering how much more fun the films would have been if, say, John Williams had been in charge. If he can make something of a hopeless mess like The Phantom Menace he could surely have made something of nine and a half hours of Tolkein.

Yet, curiously, even though the soundtrack to Videodrome is one of the most profoundly depressing CDs on my shelves, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. Maybe it's the sounds of early 80s modems and computer farty noises alleviating the despair, but I rather like it. Nor could I dispose of this latest acquisition, despite the strings-only suite from The Brood consisting of over twelve minutes of agonising misery and the Scanners tracks alternating orchestral despair and synthesiser tones that were probably at the cutting edge of electronic music back in 1980. Admittedly I had to draw the line at his Naked Lunch CD - unstructured freeform jazz of the "any note will do" variety just emerges as a racket and while it suits the movie it's unbearable as a standalone listen.

In fact, I have the Scanners tracks playing right now and I'm almost laughing at the sense of despair contained in the music. I'm not actually sure why - maybe in the same way that you laugh at the horrors of the devices in the Saw movies. But I don't respond in the same way to other CDs that are even more depressing. The soundtrack to the despicable Irreversible is unlistenable and I resent the £1 I paid for it in a local shop's closing down scale: it sounds like a test disc for oscilloscope displays. Close behind is something from the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop for the Jon Pertwee years of Doctor Who, portions of which made me feel physically ill.

The crucial thing is that while Scanners and The Brood are on one of the least cheerful CDs I've got, they're not actually boring. So many modern scores are just dull - as a standalone experience, you put them on and some time later you're vaguely aware that they've finished. Nor are they memorable: I find it increasingly hard to hum the music as soon as they've finished or even while they're still playing. Admittedly you can't exactly sing along to Scanners either (well, you can, but they'd lock you away) but unlike many current film scoundtracks it's interesting as music: the unusual choices and combinations of sounds rather than easily accessible tunes.

Compared to such a deliberately uncomfortable sound palette (ooh, pretentious, moi?), it's strange to hear a much more traditional-sounding score for Dead Ringers. No farty synths here. But, as with Shore's more recent works for David Cronenberg such as A History Of Violence, the results just aren't as interesting, although they are just as typically miserable. And frankly we need all the cheering up we can get. (Well, I do, anyway.)

The CD that's cheered me up recently has been the long-awaited release of John Beal's Terror In The Aisles score. Most if not all of the original music from the clips was stripped out for inclusion in the compilation film and the resultant patchwork needed rescoring from scratch. Further, in places it had to capture the feel and flavour of Halloween and Dressed To Kill without using those exact tracks, so Beal had to use stylistic soundalikes. I've always loved the film and treasure my battered old Palace Video VHS; it would be nice to have it on DVD but I guess the legal clearances involved make it impossible. But the music's terrific.

Untill the next time.

Richard.

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