{"id":4428,"date":"2012-03-13T12:59:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T16:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4428"},"modified":"2012-03-13T12:59:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T16:59:13","slug":"cd-sherlock-holmes-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4428","title":{"rendered":"CD: Sherlock Holmes (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>S<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Label: Water Tower Music\/ Released: January 12, 2010<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 12 tracks \/ (52:30)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: \u00a0n\/a.<\/p>\n

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Composer: Hans Zimmer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Hans Zimmer (& Company)\u2019s score for the first Sherlock Holmes<\/strong> film remains the best this far, surpassing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (2011) \u00a0partly because more effort went into crafting an almost maniacally theme that\u2019s expressed through a marvelous grouping of folk instruments. The best description of his genre-bending score is twanging rhythms with steep diversions into eastern European folk harmonics, and regular doses of bass-slamming percussion.<\/p>\n

Zimmer\u2019s knack for hook themes and beating them into minimalist figures dominates almost every cue, with the Yiddish \/ gypsy fusion piece \u201cI Never Woke Up in Handcuffs Before\u201d being the album\u2019s highlight: it\u2019s a textured piece with rapping percussion, squealing strings, and a frenetic pace designed to exaggerate Holmes\u2019 stumbling, and increasing bruising in a alley chase sequence.<\/p>\n

In spite of little injections of modern \/ pop rhythms in cues like \u201cData, Data, Data\u201d and \u201cPsychological Recovery\u2026 6 Months\u201d Zimmer\u2019s score is a marvelous evocation of grungy industrial London, where signs of progress come in the form of cheap immigrant labour and a kludge of disparate cultures packed into dirty, ramshackle apartments.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s grunge factor is occasionally contrasted by a somewhat mordant (and suitably perverse) tragic theme (\u201cMy Mind Rebels at Stagnation\u201d) where the might of the orchestra\u2019s strings just swells to operatic heights; and the use of \u00a0cimbalom and violin plucks which infer skulking, clue-searching, and a sense of being watched by some hidden personage. The addition of a solo violin adds to the cue\u2019s drama, alongside dissonance at the stereo peripherals, and sudden moments of deadness preceding fast rhythmic figures (of which the most pungent are close-miked double-bass).<\/p>\n

Much of the score is really just one theme split into multiple parts, but the thrill comes in the refreshing rhythmic variations, such as the off-beats in \u201cHe\u2019s Killed the Dog Again\u201d before fast-moving strings, and the brass which Zimmer uses to exaggerate Holmes\u2019 increasingly dire states of peril.<\/p>\n

The minimalism Zimmer & Co. indulged to wonderful extremes in The Ring<\/a><\/strong> (2002) is heavily apparent in several cues, but perhaps the most striking is \u201cMarital Sabotage\u201d with grinding bass figures, frenzied strings in the background, a rapidly escalating snare drum that switches to the frenetically paced cimbalom, and a 5-beat pattern beaten twice to create a blurring effect. Zimmer also sits on his chords for long stretches, much in the way his Batman <\/a><\/strong>cues disallow any respite; repetition and irresolution are followed by hard percussion clusters, and the cue simply fades out with a slight echo.<\/p>\n

Sherlock<\/strong> is a near-perfect score because it evokes the time period, gooses the action with contemporary and traditional rhythms, and features an ongoing contrast between the dire, the tragic, and the absurd, with the cimbalom often deciding a cue\u2019s mood.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the best scores of 2009, and perhaps after some of Zimmer\u2019s older scores have been given the expanded special edition treatment, Sherlock<\/strong> will get the same \u2013 giving fans of the film and composer a greater breadth of thematic variation. The current Water Tower CD is perfectly fine, but this is a great candidate for more.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 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>\/\u00a0S<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ S . Rating: Excellent Label: Water Tower Music\/ Released: January 12, 2010 Tracks & Album Length: 12 tracks \/ (52:30) . Special Notes: \u00a0n\/a. . Composer: Hans Zimmer . . Review: Hans Zimmer (& Company)\u2019s score for the first Sherlock Holmes film remains the best this far, surpassing Sherlock Holmes: […]<\/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":[162,1141],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-19q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428"}],"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=4428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4438,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4428\/revisions\/4438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}