Music Composed by Klaus Badelt
Rating: *** 1/2

Klaus Badelt’s Rescue Dawn is the first real surprise of 2007 for me. Seven months into the year and only a handful of scores have really registered as memorable for me, and Rescue Dawn is one of them. This should shock and awe readers who know that in the past I have been extremely hard on Badelt for his often lazy output. But Dawn, a beautifully meditative, and serious work that makes for a spellbindingly good listen on album, also showcases a deft knowledge of dramatic storytelling through music that Badelt has rarely shown to this point. This is an key factor to film music that many people forget. Does it sound good, but is it actually saying something at the same time?

From the touching, Barber-ian “Dieter’s Theme” to the slowly propulsive “Hope” (which becomes the scores main action or “development” theme), Badelt’s Rescue Dawn simmers with a gravitas not unlike Hans Zimmer’s bigger, more mesmerizing The Thin Red Line, a film and score that can be linked to Rescue Dawn in that both are stories set during war time in Asian locales. Because of it’s locale, Badelt tastefully (and thankfully) blends in Asian touches in “Hope”, long string lines in “Sign This” and “Rain” , which musically replicates the sound pattern of rain with duel harps softly plucking over a bed of warm basses. It’s moments like these that showcase Rescue Dawn’s wide dynamic - from the large scale “epic” to the boiled-down-to-the-basics solo piano and strings heard in “Gathering Rice” and “After The Fire”, giving the score a real humanity without pushing the dramatics over the top or by pouring on the artery-clogging cheese.

Klaus Badelt

Things pick up a bit as we hit the meaty part of the album with “Operation Rescue Dawn”, where Badelt dials in some of those single-minded suspense Media Ventures tropes (hey, they had to appear sometime!) into a flowering groove of strings, and exotic percussion likely making this track the centerpiece of the album. Quickly following is “It’s Him” , a stirring adagio for strings (ahem), and thundering piano chords which coalesces into gorgeous orchestral ambience adorned with a plaintive cello and piano. The album then shifts squarely into a grinding-contemplative mix of strings, harp and piano that effectively evokes the on-screen struggle (”America Gave Me Wings”, “Sleepwalkers”) — at times hynoptic, never depressing or heavy-handed — before re-awakening with “Mirror”, a reprise of the rythm first hinted in “Hope” and further fleshed out in “Operation Rescue Dawn”. The score proper concludes with “Rescue”, an emotionally explosive release that melodically is not unlike Badelt’s Eloi material from The Time Machine. Classy stuff.

Two vocal tracks bookend Badelt’s “Dieter’s Theme Reprise”, and both feature his material. The first features James Carrington (who?) on “Lights (Rescue Dawn Version)” and director Werner Herzog’s “This Is How I Remember Him”, a recording of Herzog’s account of his time working on a documentary with it’s subject, Dieter Dengler, also the subject of the film Rescue Dawn. Herzog’s words are also printed in the CD booklet, which strangely enough discusses the score for the documentary but never touches on the feature film version.

The score was performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra and they sound fantastic, thanks to a crisp and immediate recording/mix by Nick Wollage, Andrew McLaughlin and Stephen Krause. At just over forty-eight minutes, Rescue Dawn never runs out of steam nor does it overstay it’s welcome.

Whether it’s a sign of the apocalypse or just a situation where Badelt handles the human plight to survive better when it’s Vietnam and not an luxury liner turned upside down, time will tell. But in a year (’07) that has hurtled by yielding few lasting musical impressions in darkened theatres, Badelt has emerged as an unlikely hero; Rescue Dawn stands as one of the few scores I’ve heard that I will ever want to hear again.

Music Composed by Klaus Badelt; Arranged by Ian Honeyman, Andrew Raiher; Orchestrations by Robert Elhai; Conducted by Andy Brown; Recorded and Mixed by Nick Wollage, Andrew McLaughlin and Stephen Krause; Produced by Klaus Badelt and Christopher Brooks; Label: Milan Records, (M2-36285); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: May 22, 2007.

01. Dieter’s Theme (3:21)
02. Journey (1:21)
03. Hope (5:26)
04. Sign This (1:31)
05. Gathering Rice (1:46)
06. The Plan (2:22)
07. After The Fire (1:54)
08. Rain (2:56)
09. Operation Rescue Dawn (2:41)
10. It’s Him (4:05)
11. Keep Your Head Down (0:53)
12. America Gave Me Wings (1:57)
13. Mirror (1:44)
14. Sleepwalkers (2:40)
15. Rescue (4:43)
16. Lights (Rescue Dawn Version) (4:19)
Vocal by James Carrington
17. Dieter’s Theme Reprise (1:47)
18. This Is How I Remember Him (2:35)
Featuring Werner Herzog

Total Playing Time: 48:01