{"id":5015,"date":"2012-06-02T13:39:25","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T17:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5015"},"modified":"2012-06-02T13:39:25","modified_gmt":"2012-06-02T17:39:25","slug":"cd-pressure-point-1962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5015","title":{"rendered":"CD: Pressure Point (1962)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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

.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Label: Kritzlerland <\/a>\/ Released: December 28, 2009<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 16 tracks \/ (35:28)<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Special Notes: 8-page booklet with liner notes by producer Bruce Kimmel \/ Limited to 1000 copies..<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Composer: Ernest Gold<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Review:<\/p>\n

Dramatic jazz scores were in vogue from the early fifties to roughly mid-sixties, and the trend for the fusion probably goes back to Elmer Bernstein\u2019s Man with the Golden Arm <\/strong>(1955), insofar as a jazzy score accenting the psychological hell of a character, tormented by personal abuse, drugs, or bigotry.<\/p>\n

1962 may be the part of the central period when jazz was both cool and wholly functional within such a m\u00e9lange of cinematic personal troubles, and Kritzerland\u2019s CD features the full score to a little-known work by Ernest Gold (Exodus<\/strong>, The McCullochs<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>]), taken from excellent mono master tapes.<\/p>\n

As producer CD Bruce Kimmel observes in his fairly personalized liner notes (so enamored with the film, Kimmel caught it 5 times during its theatrical run), the score has great similarities with the Twilight Zone <\/strong>scores of the era (\u201cSlipping Down the Drain\u201d in particular), and Gold\u2019s approach is no less different: a small orchestral occasionally performing jazz-influenced cues and the odd source cut, and featuring a grimness that often spirals to wretched lows.<\/p>\n

Even without having seen the film, Gold\u2019s score evokes the battle between a psychiatrist and his \u2018monstrous\u2019 patient, and the stressors that affected the latter in his younger days. In Pressure Point<\/strong>, jazz merely establishes a tone of discombobulation: off-kilter rhythms, repetitive piano figures, and often shrill brass with a shimmering backbeat. The influence of both Bernstein and Alex North (Streetcar Named Desire<\/strong>) are apparent, and Gold creates a truly unsettling journey into madness, with only a few bits of calm between non-melodic pieces that rarely come to any resolution. Most of the cues cover varying shades of madness, and given the patient\u2019s ongoing illness, it makes perfect sense most of the score deals with episodes of unresolved rage, and how that character chose to express himself.<\/p>\n

Like a few of the Twilight Zone<\/strong> scores (which were, quite often, performed by small orchestras, chamber orchestras, or jazz combos), Gold makes use of peculiar electronic sounds in the stellar cue \u201cDaddy Issues,\u201d including what appears to be a synthetic or electronically processed violin, and watery string plucks which presage their eerie appearance in Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s Alien<\/strong> (1979). Then there\u2019s the inherent nastiness of \u201cRaw Liver,\u201d which sounds like lengthy portrait of someone trying very hard not to upchuck from the slow, gross ingestion of something utterly wrong.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a special robustness to Gold\u2019s writing which makes every cue unique, due to the instrumentation or the sharp orchestrations which beautifully evoke the conflicts between patient and shrink. A carnivalesque tone dominates \u201cLaugh And You Won’t Hear Us Coming\u201d wherein the bowing has a grotesque gnashing style, but the album eventually winds down towards a soothing final cue; perhaps because of the carefully arranged colours, there\u2019s still continuity between harsh and gentle cues.<\/p>\n

Kritzerland\u2019s mastering is clean, and the tracks flow well in spite of some brief running times. The album as a whole is fairly short, but there\u2019s no narrative fat, and among grisly suspense scores of the era, this is easily among the best of the early sixties which should not be overlooked by genre fans.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

External References:<\/p>\n

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

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0P to R<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ P to R . Rating: Excellent Label: Kritzlerland \/ Released: December 28, 2009 Tracks & Album Length: 16 tracks \/ (35:28) . Special Notes: 8-page booklet with liner notes by producer Bruce Kimmel \/ Limited to 1000 copies.. . Composer: Ernest Gold . . Review: Dramatic jazz scores were in […]<\/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":[741],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1iT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015"}],"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=5015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5018,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions\/5018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}