Music Composed by Chuck Cirino
Rating: **

Movies are essentially product — produced, marketed and distributed on a global scale for consumption by millions of customers with an insatiable appetite for cheap thrills. And who can blame them, when marketing people spice things up with rampaging komodo dragons in thrilling battles-to-the-death with pissed off killer cobras — all realized with the latest advancements in PC visual effects software — you have a surefire hit… In Asia, or at least a shot airing on the Sci-Fi Channel. With great stories like these screaming to be told, you need resourceful filmmakers willing and able to pull it all together for dollars a day. That’s where director Jim Wynorski steps in. And along with him comes his composer of choice, Chuck Cirino, whose three recent scoring efforts, A.I. Assault, Komodo vs. Cobra and Solar Attack are compiled here for your enjoyment.

Considering that the budgets for these films were probably less than a week’s rent on Russell Crowe’s fitness trailer, Cirino is tasked with realizing his music completely with hard-working synthesizers. While they do a fair job of emulating the sounds of a propulsive symphony orchestra (Solar Attack “Main Title”), they are augmented by plenty of electronic washes and pads (Solar Attack “Surrender”), and never fully convince that they are anything more than a very nice set of sounds from a very nice sample library.

Chuck Cirino

The sexily titled Cinemusic clocks in at a butt-numbing seventy-six minutes plus, clearly sequenced for endurance. Knowing this, most of the music is breathlessly paced, with Cirino building plenty of momentum in his “Main Title” for Komodo vs. Cobra (easily the best score of the three represented here, and perhaps could have been it’s own album, at almost thirty-minutes in length), complete with contemporary e-guitar and brass strains over a plunking groove of percussion. Despite the fast-moving sections, the highlights are the softer, exotic regional sounds in “Bora Bora”, recalling the composer’s standout work for Wynorski’s 1989 comic-book actioner The Return of Swamp Thing (still awaiting a CD release…). Doing his best to generate some epic thrills in “Reasons To Die”, you can’t help but acknowledge what a real live orchestra can do for this kind of film music.

A little referencing of big-budget soundtracks is expected in scores of this ilk. A variation on Hans Zimmer’s theme from The Rock in Komodo vs. Cobra’s “The Decision” (a highlight of the album, despite the familiarity) pops up, as does Danny Elfman’s Men In Black in the sound-effects-heavy A.I. Assault’s Home Free” and “Into Oblivion”.

While it’s difficult to figure out who this release is geared towards — it’s not purely entertaining enough to pull in the hardcore filmmusic afficinado, nor are the films well-known enough to attract attention from the general public — the fact that this album was limited to 1,000 copies points towards Cinemusic: The Film Music of Chuck Cirino functioning more as a showreel for the composer to generate future work than it is a CD designed for hours of listening enjoyment. Considering the fact that there is still an unwavering demand for science-fiction and horror programming that is easily dubbed into foreign languages, I don’t think the hardworking Mr. Cirino needs to worry about finding future projects, as he seems more than capable of scoring the inevitable thrilling future installments of mutated komodo dragons.

Music Composed, Produced and Performed by Chuck Cirino; Assembled and Produced by Mike Joffe; Label: BSX Records, (BSX CD 8824); Availability: Limited to 1,000 copies; U.S. Release Date: January, 2007.

A.I. Assault
01. Robokill (5:30)
02. Main Title (2:20)
03. Jungle Bungle (2:13)
04. Killbot (3:33)
05. The Tower (5:58)
06. Into Oblivion (3:12)
07. Home Free (1:01)

Komodo vs. Cobra
08. Main Title (3:33)
09. Bora Bora (2:15)
10. Reasons To Die (1:05)
11. The Trek (3:46)
12. Cobra vs. Cameraman (5:16)
13. The Decision (2:15)
14. Sleeping Giant (0:56)
15. Escape From Isla Damas (6:37)
16. A New Breed (1:35)

Solar Attack
17. Main Title (4:15)
18. Orbital Decay (3:36)
19. Target Detroit (2:17)
20. Credibility Lost (1:13)
21. The Sky Is Falling (3:21)
22. In Russia (2:13)
23. Arming Missiles (2:14)
24. Race In The Sky & Sea (4:21)
25. Surrender (1:55)

Total Running Time: 76:30