MP3: Bad Words (2014)
Score: Excellent
Label: Back Lot Music / Universal
Released: March 18, 2014
Tracks / Album Length: 25 tracks / (41 mins.)
Composer: Rolfe Kent
Special Notes: n/a
Review:
Rolfe Kent’s music for Bad Words is another light score designed to support a tale of irrational, impulsive human behaviour without drawing attention to the music. The composer’s instrumental palette is comprised of mostly woodwinds played with breathy exasperation, a jaunty rhythm, and a piano which sometimes offers little moments of sobering introspection (“Meeting Bowman”) to break up the score’s hurried pace, or add a wry sensibility, especially in “Poolside” where the theme’s melodic arc is oddly (but appropriately) reminiscent of Maurice Jarre peculiar melodic structure.
Most of the tracks are fairly brief – Kent tends to write lean scores with cues designed to get in / out with sharp precision – and the album does have a steady flow, but the first third tends to hover around a hurried motif, with pizzicato strings and woodwinds. The addition of some brass in “Burning Todd” adds some fresh colours, however, especially when Kent switches to a manic circular figure on keyboard that evokes a little of Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre.”
The score also becomes a little more dramatically emboldened through the inclusion of some great syncopated rhythms between woodwinds, strings, leather clapping sounds, and some eddying figures on lower strings in “Bust Your Nut.” Other colours that dominate the final section of the score are marimba and a few cymbal hits in the tension-climbing “Trying to Lose,” and a very light use of hurdy-gurdy in the closing cue, “Parting Letter to Bowman,” which recaps the main theme and wraps up the score with some of the original jauntiness of the opening tracks.
The mastering of this digital-only release is very crisp, bringing out the fine details of Kent’s immaculate instrumental palette.
© 2014 Mark R. Hasan
Additional Links:
Composer on IMDB — Composer Filmography — Soundtrack Album
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