CD: Terra Nova (2011)
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Rating: Excellent
Label: La-La Land Records / Released: October 9, 2012
Tracks & Album Length: CD1: 23 tracks / (76:48) + CD2: 23 tracks / (55:10)
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Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by Brian Satterwhite / Limited to 3000 copies.
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Composer: Brian Tyler
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Review:
Sometimes a short-lived TV series tends to offer the most intriguing concepts, with enough meat to really inspire writers, directors, and composers to craft something unique, and certainly with Brian Tyler’s score, the decision to use a full orchestra makes Terra Nova a really potent listening experience.
Tyler’s robust orchestral / rock / grunge Final Destination scores are superb, and often transcend weaker film entries, if not enhancing deliberately ridiculous sequences into guilty pleasures. TN features an unusual main theme (writer / composer Brian Satterwhite dissects its construction in his excellent liner notes) which immediately feels like music stemming from some netherworld – a hard to quantify stratum in which strange life may exist (which, in the series’ concept, consists of dinosaurs).
Tyler’s writing is highly thematic, but his knack for muscular action cues means cuts like “Patrols” has a slow build before the percussion thunders, and violin figures seem to distort as their worm their way up the harmonic ladder. Not unlike Bear McCreary’s Human Target (2010), Tyler opts for a more classical style, giving the series a punchy epic scope, if not the veneer of a big budget production.
Many of the cues – either in their original length or in edited form – are very long, allowing for beautifully plotted thematic development. Just as Tyler created wry cues for his horror and action scores, there are some striking uses of colour, especially the initially quiet “Save Your Spot” with its warped string tones and sustained chimes from which pensive strings and whole chords rise before a fast turn to churning rhythms. Tyler’s also one of the best writers for brass instruments and their addition – even in modest doses – gives several suspenseful cues extra urgency.
Picked from the show’s 13 episode run, La-La Land’s CD set has a nice flow which totally immerses the listener into Tyler’s epic world. This is a really fine score with minimal repetition, and fine orchestrations. Pity there won’t be a second season, but like several aborted TV series, it’s often the music that captures the creativity of what could’ve been.
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© 2013 Mark R. Hasan
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External References:
IMDB — Soundtrack Album — Composer Filmography
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Select Merchants:
Amazon.ca
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