That sound you hear is not a blaster beam, but the collective nerd boner being sprung over Film Score Monthly’s expanded release of James Horner’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The score is what many believe to be the composer’s career highpoint (those would be the people who love to stick it to him, considering at the time he was still a young lad from England Southern California.)

The new release adds an additional 30 minutes of material not heard on the GNP/Crescendo CD, and has been completely remastered from well-preserved three-track stereo mixes. Read more…

La-La Land Records will re-issue Trevor Jones’ long out-of-print thriller Runaway Train (3000 copies). The label will also celebrate their 100th release with a two-disc set of music by Bear McCreary’s for Battlestar Galactica’s fourth season. A limited (1200 copies) release of Michael Linn’s Allan Quartermain and The Lost City of Gold (which allegedly references Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from King Solomon’s Mines, naturally, because it was a sequel, right?)

With the burgeoning success of online (and legal) TV & movie-watching sites like Hulu, access to entertainment has never been easier. However a disparity in royalty payments is starting to get a rise from creative contributors like our beloved film and television composers.

The Hollywood Reporter has picked up a Reuters story about the issue, and include a quote from composer Nathan Barr (Hostel, True Blood) who has been left asking where’s the cheddar?

“True Blood is my first big show for TV, and it’s definitely going to see a lot of play on the Internet. It’s a big issue for me,” Barr told Reuters. “I don’t understand why composers don’t get paid if someone downloads it.”

More: hollywoodreporter.com

Walt Disney Records have released Michael Giacchino’s original score for Up exclusively to digital download sites iTunes and Amazon.com MP3.

On iTunes (256kbps AAC / DRM-free for $9.99), the disc runs just over 60 minutes, and includes three bonus sound effects tracks, a 25 page digital booklet (in .pdf) and a seven-plus-minute featurette on the music for the film (“Composing For Characters”), featuring Giacchino and the filmmakers. The same contents, minus the video and booklet, are available from Amazon.com’s MP3 store for $8.99. There are no reported plans to release the score on CD. Deal with it!

Rather than scaring film composers with your persnickety online persona, here’s your change (L.A. area nerds only) to get up close and uncomfortable with some of your favorite film composers, thanks to La-La Land Records and Dark Delicacies. Read on for the full Circus of the Film Score Stars roster:

La-La Land Records presents a special composer signing event.

When: May 31st, 2009, 2pm
Where: Dark Delicacies – 4213 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505
Read more…

Is the economic downturn seriously hampering your filmmusic fun? Need some good music, fast and most of all, cheap? Composer Chris Tilton (Fringe, Mercenaries 2, Black) has heard your cries, and has released his latest videogame score, Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian, for free on his website. Performed by the sizeable Slovak National Orchestra, Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian evokes the large-scale fantasy-adventure scores of that genre’s 1980s golden age — minus the contemporary pop loops and patches. Grab it.

More: christilton.com

It took just two Terminator films to make a lasting impression on popular culture. Unlike for many sci-fi-based films and series, er, let’s say, Star Trek which took countless iterations – both television and feature film – to become pop lexicon, the sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ravaged visage as The Terminator is as identifiable as Spock’s pointy ears. Part of the success of the Terminator films has been the creative force of it’s creator, James Cameron, the groundbreaking visual effects, and the pants-soiling action. Perhaps just as important, but often overlooked — and not surprisingly because it’s film music — is Brad Fiedel’s original music. Fiedel breathlessly rendered Terminator with crude synthesizers, and for the sequel injected more scope and breadth into his palette, while retaining the elements that made the first score so effective: an unrelenting terror of metallic percussion hunting the soundscape. Read more…

In anticipation of their 100th release, La-La Land Records announced they will continue their expansion/complete releases series (which started with Shirley Walker’s excellent Batman: Mask of the Phantasm) with Danny Elfman’s dizzying sci-fi satire score for Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!

The film, which featured the last great all-star cast, didn’t connect with 1997 audiences, but has since developed a cult following. The expanded release is expected to present the music in a more complete fashion (minus a few cues, plus a few bonus tracks), a first for Elfman, who to date has not had any of his scores benefit from limited edition treatment. Pre-orders for Mars Attacks! begin May 12, the same day La-La’s Airplane! goes on sale. Read on for La-La’s verbage and tracklist: Read more…

Fans of whimsical, European-style film music take note, Milan Records will release KAADA’s original score for the Norwegian film (the country’s Oscar entry for “Best Foreign Film”) and festival fave O’Horten on May 19.

The single-named, and all-caps (doesn’t he realize caps = screaming on the interwebs?) KAADA is fast becoming one of Norway’s prodigious scorers, handling music duties on 15 films in the past seven years. From the official PR:

At last year’s Cannes film festival premiere, Variety called KAADA’s music outstanding. His score focuses on calm melodies played on exotic instruments, many of which he built himself. His work is highly original and can be compared to Jon Brion’s. Kaada is an accomplished classical musician, touring with various chamber orchestras and performing at festivals.

Sample tracks from the album are available at milanrecords.com.

Imperative Records, the outfit who’ve released two Immediate Music (everyone knows this one: “Code Red”) related albums (Trailerhead and Epicom, as the group Globus) are presenting what must be the first of it’s kind: a trailer music concert. You know the power and influence of film has reached insane levels when the music — albeit good, candy-coated fun — from theatrical previews garners it’s own “multimedia event”. It sounds like a rollicking good time, combining 100 musicians; orchestra and choir. Coming soon to a (The Broad) Theatre near you — specifically Santa Monica, June 27 at 8pm. Read on for the official details.

Direct from London’s Wembley Grand Hall to Santa Monica’s The Broad Theatre… Imperative Records presents: “Trailer Music Live” The US premiere of an epic multimedia event. Experience music and visuals featured in more than 2,500 motion picture theatrical trailers and television franchises including “Lord of the Rings,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Harry Potter,” “Spider-Man,” and more… Read more…