MP3: Pablo (2012)
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Rating: Very Good
Label: Light Drop Music / Released: September 1, 2013
Tracks & Album Length: 18 tracks / 35:30
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Special Notes: n/a
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Composer: Lior Ron
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Review:
Newcomer Lior Ron provides a lively main theme for this needed documentary on influential graphic and film title / sequence designer Pablo Ferro. Anchored to a highly rhythmic Latin theme with acoustic guitar, trumpet, assorted skin drums, piano, marimba, and shifting tempi, this is a beautifully performed and orchestrated score which bubbles with the energy, class, and rebellious nature of Ferro’s work which involved sometimes untraditional fonts, geometric shapes, intersecting patterns, and had traditional images blurring or passing though each other during famous title sequences for films like Bullitt (1968 )and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).
Perhaps the score’s most attractive element isn’t its Latin rhythms but Ron’s heavy use of acoustic instruments, which mines the performers’ expertise and gives the score a nice jazzy touch, especially in several extended sections for piano. The intimacy of the small ensemble – a contemporary jazz-fusuion combo – is sometimes augmented by slight synths and electric bass, and some elements of the main theme are spun off into purely rhythmic or wholly melodic versions with specific emotional slants. (A nice marriage of the two is “Stan Lee,” with the jazzy trumpet – a major element in Ron’s score – stepping back for a lengthy section for intersecting percussion.)
The album features a nice programme of the score with tight editing, and while most of the cues tend to make steady use of the whole instrumental combo, the energy that bubbles from Ron’s music is very addictive. Amid the inevitable lure in using synth emulations and material from a music library, it’s nice to hear a score that’s very organic, and filled with robust musicianship.
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© 2014 Mark R. Hasan
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