{"id":6602,"date":"2013-05-14T11:02:38","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T15:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6602"},"modified":"2013-05-14T13:31:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T17:31:57","slug":"cd-grand-canyon-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6602","title":{"rendered":"CD: Grand Canyon (1991)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records<\/a> \/ Released: April 9, 2013<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 28 tracks \/ (67:44)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 24-page colour booklet with liner notes by Daniel Schweiger \/ Limited to 2000 copies.<\/p>\n

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Composer: James Newton Howard<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

The early 1990s were James Newton Howard\u2019s busiest period, largely because he brought to film his own unique hybrid of electronic, rock, and symphonic writing that seemed to fit any genre he would tackle. 1991 alone yielded seven feature and TV films spanning period jazz, treacly romantic schmaltz, comedy, and action, and Grand Canyon<\/strong> <\/strong>was sort of an amalgam of the ideas Howard was applying in his scores.<\/p>\n

Unlike Hans Zimmer, Howard\u2019s scores often begin with bass pulses and deepening rhythms that eventually crest to set up the main theme, and GC\u2019s title theme follows that design: a rock beat, a pulsing rhythm, and a sudden smash cut to a gliding melodic line which, during its progression, makes use of the isolated intro elements.<\/p>\n

RCA\u2019s original CD (still available from online merchants like iTunes) featured the main score cues plus a Warren Zevon tune (\u201cSearching for a Heart\u201d), and LLL\u2019s expanded CD rescues from the vault a wealth of alternate, unreleased and unedited cues (some of the tracks were extensively cut down for the album), and those who\u2019ve wanted longer, if not exclusive versions of Howard\u2019s pensive, brooding bass lines will find long examples here. The new cues don\u2019t necessary add more to the score\u2019s tension, but part of the composer\u2019s style for GC was maintaining an electronic ‘heart pulse’, and cuts like \u201cMack Gets Lost\u201d prolong the tension with rhythm until the score\u2019s choral section slowly seeps in.<\/p>\n

They also set up fatter cues like the next track, \u201cMy Sister Lives Around Here \/ Those Rocks,\u201d where Howard gathers his synth-rock combo, with diverse percussion, a bass groove, and wordless chorals. Rhythm and synth chorals are also central to \u201cThe Baby,\u201d a cue where Howard plays with and slowly adds more instrumental colours which, in subsequent bars, will dominate and lighten the mood from danger-prone to almost mystical.<\/p>\n

The rock underpinnings in GC make it an easy score to give short-shrift, but it\u2019s probably one of Howard\u2019s most meticulously constructed works of the nineties because of the way themes and motifs are reconfigured to give continuity to a fairly uneven film. Lawrence Kasdan\u2019s drama is also partly a satire and fantasy about strangers whose lives converge through unlikely events, and the finale at the Grand Canyon (where else?) is supposed to be the quasi-religious finale that caps the characters’ now-altered lives and their new relationships.<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s score is rooted in the characters’ quasi-religious awakenings because his 7 -note theme sounds like a liturgical chant. The first significant choral version is heard briefly about a quarter into the lengthy \u201cDon\u2019t Want Out.\u201d Amid rock rhythms and later bluesy sax and keyboards, Howard uses the chorals as a portent of his closing \u201cGrand Canyon Fanfare,\u201d in terms of its eventual tenor, and the ethereal notes that are restated with regality in the finale. The cue ends with another recap of the guitar-heavy intro with pulsing bass line, plus an assortment of syncopated rhythms which are found in many of Howard\u2019s thriller scores, especially in what could be regarded as his \u2018holy thriller trinity\u2019 – Flatliners<\/strong> (1990), Falling Down <\/strong>(1993), and The Trigger Effect<\/strong> (1996) \u2013 each of which deserve a proper expanded commercial release.<\/p>\n

When Howard finally delivers his closing fanfare, its big and bold and bombastic, and harmonically it’s not dissimilar to a Miklos Rozsa declaration of Roman grandeur. (The CD’s bonus cue – \u201cFilm Thriller\u201d – is a very overt homage to Rozsa\u2019s noir style.) Howard\u2019s surging chorals are a little thick, and there\u2019s a sense he labored hard to find the feeling Kasdan was aiming to convey to audiences with his uneven film, but it\u2019s a suitable closing for a score that makes use of classical and contemporary styles in a fusion that\u2019s no longer shocking or unique; what should still impress, however, is the score’s organized construction, and the now-vintage electronics which feel very warm and fat in LLL\u2019s beautifully mastered CD..<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2013 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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Select Merchants:<\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" —\u00a0BSX<\/a> —\u00a0Intrada<\/a> — \u00a0SAE<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0G<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ G . Rating: Excellent Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records \/ Released: April 9, 2013 Tracks & Album Length: 28 tracks \/ (67:44) . Special Notes: 24-page colour booklet with liner notes by Daniel Schweiger \/ Limited to 2000 copies. . Composer: James Newton Howard . . Review: The early 1990s were James […]<\/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":[2039,1455],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1Iu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602"}],"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=6602"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6618,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6602\/revisions\/6618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}