{"id":2316,"date":"2011-02-14T01:20:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T06:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2011-02-14T01:20:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T06:20:42","slug":"cd-haunted-summer-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2316","title":{"rendered":"CD: Haunted Summer (1988)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>H<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records\u00a0\/ Released:\u00a0October 22, 2010<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length:\u00a018 tracks \/ (77:06)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes:\u00a016-page colour booklet with liner notes by Randall Larson \/ Limited to 1200 copies.<\/p>\n

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Composer:\u00a0Christopher Young<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Haunted Summer<\/strong> was originally released by Silva Screen on CD, and was part of the first soundtrack discs to feature additional music not present on the related LP, immediately rendering the Cerberus Records LP obsolete to collectors. Like the Silva disc, La-La Land\u2019s placed the album cuts first, and the bonus film versions afterwards (albeit indexed instead of the edited suite format on the Silva CD), although the running time is considerably augmented by almost 20 mins.<\/p>\n

Haunted Summer<\/strong> was an important leap wherein Christopher Young continued to refine his balance of deeply melancholy themes and almost ethereal harmonies. Young\u2019s main theme \u2013 \u201cMenage\u201d \u2013 is based around a repeated phrase around which the composer deepens bass tones, fusing a soothing combination of strings and synths. There\u2019s a deep yearning quality that penetrates the listener, and it\u2019s one of the reasons Young remains the King of Melancholy: he\u2019s able to craft simple themes of devastating tragedy, and capture the nature of a person wounded by a complex barrage of emotional baggage.<\/p>\n

The use of solo violin and piano are also hallmarks of Young\u2019s early horror work, as are female voices designed to evoke the drifting between physical and spiritual plains. There\u2019s also Young\u2019s affection for gentle waltzes, as in the music box rendition \u201cVilla Diodati\u201d; and the perfect balance between organic and electronic elements \u2013 a skill that allowed Young to drift between genres and musical styles, and slowly detach himself from the exploitation realm.<\/p>\n

The best description of Haunted Summer<\/strong> is a dream: it\u2019s a musical fusion of organic and orchestral, formal time signatures and drifting tempi, and impressions of styles seen through a gauzy lens, all meant to underscore a fuzzy period drama of characters harboring their own little dreams and horrors.<\/p>\n

When things get musically dark, Young delves into his wonderful experimentalism, warping tones, echoplexing wooden knocks into rippling rappings across the stereo image, and pulling apart theme vestiges into eerie sonic fragments.<\/p>\n

La-La Land\u2019s new mastering brings out further details in Young\u2019s orchestrations, as well as the quieter segments where the composer reduced dynamics to distant sounds reminiscent of the last waves from a rippling sound pattern, be it violin solo or washed-out tones.<\/p>\n

To Young\u2019s credit, his early music has aged extremely well; the synths may be vintage, but scores including Haunted Summer<\/strong> and Flowers in the Attic<\/strong> (1987) are still potent impressions of slow-moving horrors.<\/p>\n

With much of Young\u2019s early work already available on CD, what\u2019s left are the rarities, such as Tormented<\/strong> (1988), The Power<\/strong> (1984), and an expanded edition of Hider in the House<\/strong> (1989).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0H<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ H . Rating: \u00a0Excellent Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records\u00a0\/ Released:\u00a0October 22, 2010 Tracks & Album Length:\u00a018 tracks \/ (77:06) . Special Notes:\u00a016-page colour booklet with liner notes by Randall Larson \/ Limited to 1200 copies. . Composer:\u00a0Christopher Young . . Review: Haunted Summer was originally released by Silva Screen on CD, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[304],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-Bm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2319,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/2319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}