The often unfairly derided ’70s sci-fi melodrama Space: 1999 is a classic example of a TV show whose renewal came at the expense of a lot of creative interference. Wanting to ramp up the action and romance in an effort to boost ratings, please the advertisers and justify the expense of making the thing in the first place, ITV demanded a major overhaul of the show. Even the top-line actors weren’t immune: Barry Morse vanished without a trace or even so much as a later mention in dialogue. The carefully-designed, muted-color costumes were covered by new, more colorful jackets. And the show was now being run by none other than Fred Freiberger, a producer whom many credited with making the original Star Trek’s third season its last.

Oh, and the music changed a bit too. Space: 1999’s first season relied on a library of new compositions by longtime Gerry Anderson collaborator Barry Gray, as well as the music Gray had composed for other Anderson productions such as UFO, supplemented by occasional commercial music library tracks. Gray declined to take part in Space: 1999’s second season, leaving the composer job up in the air. While commercial library tracks would still be used, the new theme tune and all incidental music custom-made for the show was composed by Derek Wadsworth – and like the revised costumes, the new score was as colorful and shiny as the first season’s was dour.

Not that this will rate as an improvement for every listener. Fans of ’70s TV scoring – which often relied on the disco style prevalant on the radio at the same time – will find much to enjoy here, while those who preferred Barry Gray’s outstanding but bleak season one score may be left scratching their heads. Wadsworth’s music seems to be based largely on the arrangement and production style of Gamble & Huff’s “Philly soul” sound – it’s classic early disco, and in places it’s really good listening on its own, especially the track “Escape From Psychon”, from which excerpts were endlessly reused in moments of tension throughout the season. Whether or not modern sensibilities will decree this as suitable music for an ostensibly serious SF series is another matter, though it’s also worth noting that in its second year, Space: 1999 was seriously descending into the “camp” category – and then toward the end of that season, any hope of the show recovering its reputation was literally blown away by a little movie called Star Wars.

Culled from a limited-edition 2-CD set (now hopelessly rare and excruciatingly expensive) originally issued by the Gerry Anderson fan club Fanderson, this general release from Silva Screen concentrates entirely on Wadsworth’s work, which is good in that there’s a stylistic unity to the whole thing. Silva’s first season soundtrack included some library tracks, but that isn’t the case here. Again, I’m grateful to Silva for bringing this music to those of us who aren’t willing to skip a house payment to buy a soundtrack CD.

Space: 1999 Year Two is good listening if you have a stomach for 1970s musical styles. Even if the arrangements were very 1970s, Wadsworth’s dramatic instincts were fairly sharp, and the lush arrangements for orchestra-with-some-rock/disco-elements indicated that the show’s producers were still spending money on the music. For those who can’t conceive of this being the sound of a TV science fiction series, Space: 1999 Year Two will either be an education or it’ll drive you crazy.

1. Space 1999 Year 2 Main Theme (0:49)
2. Strange Light (3:00)
3. Rendezvous In Space (5:53)
4. Escape From Psychon (9:14)
5. We’re All Aliens (1:57)
6. A Swarm Of Space Bees (2:32)
7. The First Capsule (3:06)
8. The Exiles Emerge (4:40)
9. Return To Golos (7:23)
10. Make Me A Pretty Nose (1:10)
11. Garden Of Vega (2:37)
12. The Strongest Passion (2:35)
13. Seduction (5:26)
14. Alpha Ahoy (1:54)
15. The Emporium (4:13)
16. The Abduction Of Maya (4:02)
17. Sore Loser (1:51)
18. Light Years Away (5:28)
19. Space Animal On The Loose (4:21)
20. Showdown At Copernicus (7:06)
21. Space 1999 Year 2 End Titles (0:32)

Released by: Silva Screen
Release date: 2009
Total running time: 79:49

Sometimes I review soundtracks without having seen the movies first. Sometimes this happens because the soundtrack is part of a merchandising blitz ahead of the movie release (see: every Star Wars soundtrack over the past decade-and-then-some). Sometimes I just haven’t gotten around to seeing the movie yet, or the soundtrack’s been sent to me by the label ahead of the movie’s release. But this is a first: I haven’t seen the movie because it hasn’t been translated into my language yet. (For the record, I’ll take subs, dubs or both.) We’re talking about the first half of the surprising resuscitation of the Space Battleship Yamato franchise, better known in the English-speaking world as Star Blazers.

This revival is two-fold: the first-ever live-action film based on the classic anime series is expected at the end of this year. The first animated continuation of the original series in over a decade was released at the end of 2009. To say that both are eagerly awaited is an understatement along the lines of “Those Gamilon planet bombs sure are reducing property values around here.” This soundtrack, of course, is from the recently-released (but apparently not very financially successful) Space Battleship Yamato: Fukkatsu Hen (Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth Chapter). Clocking in at over two hours, the movie may have gained bad word of mouth by ending on a cliffhanger promising resolution in further movies… which, naturally, could be endangered by this film’s cool reception at the box office.

So much time has passed since the last movie in the series (1983’s Final Yamato) that there were numerous impacts on the new film(s?), including the death of the original voice actor behind lead character Susumu Kodai and even the death of Hiroshi Miyagawa, the composer who created almost all of the original Yamato themes and scores. For Rebirth Chapter’s music, it was apparently decided to mix-and-match existing music from Miyagawa’s previous work (in the form of new arrangements with new bridging material by Naoto Otomo. If that’s not confusing enough, Final Yamato themes by the late Kentaro Henada are also referenced.

And then, if we aren’t already right on the edge of losing musical cohesion (though Otomo’s arrangements do wed the Yamato film and TV compositions quite nicely), roughly half of the soundtrack is taken up by selections from the classical canon. Perhaps the classical music is explained as a plot point of some kind in the movie, but simply as a listening experience, it’s disconcerting (ha!) to hear a thundering, hard-rock-with-orchestra remake of the original Yamato theme and then wind up with Beethoven and Grieg a few tracks later. As much as I love the new treatments of Miyagawa’s music, I really find myself wondering if a more cohesive end result couldn’t have been achieved by finding some new talent and allowing them the freedom to reference Miyagawa and Haneda – if they wanted to – among their own original work.

The highlights of the soundtrack are the first track – a gorgeous new recording of Miyagawa’s “The Universe Spreading To Infinity” theme (but not a significantly altered arrangement) – and especially track 6, “Yamato Hasshin”, which is the aforementioned rocked-out new version of the original Yamato theme, featuring J-pop band The Alfee. My favorite revived piece of Kentaro Haneda’s is “Fly-By Warp”.

It’s hard to really judge fairly the odd balance of classical music and more-recent-but-still-recycled Yamato music without knowing what role the classical pieces may (or may not) play in the narrative. Someone’ll have to translate it for the western world so I can make that determination. But purely as a listening experience, Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth Chapter’s soundtrack is pleasant enough, but never really establishes a feel that’s truly all its own.

1. Mugen Ni Hirogaru Uchuu (Miyagawa) (1:42)
2. Cascade Black Hall (Mahler) (2:39)
3. Kodai No Kikan (Miyagawa) (5:55)
4. Wakamono Tachi (Miyagawa) (1:43)
5. Hyoukai Ni Nemuru (Miyagawa) (3:13)
6. Yamato Hasshin (Miyagawa / featuring The Alfee) (5:45)
7. Senka No Uzu He (Kousuke Yamashita) (3:50)
8. Fly-By Warp (Haneda) (2:47)
9. Amar (Tchaikovsky) (5:35)
10. Golui (Beethoven) (5:33)
11. Joou Ilya (Chopin) (5:27)
12. Mirai Heno Tatakai (Beethoven) (5:46)
13. Sus Dai Yousai (Grieg) (5:46)
14. “Fukkatsu Hen” No Tame No Symphony (Haneda) (4:17)
15. Metzler (Kousuke Yamashita) (2:45)
16. Kono Ai Wo Sasagete (featuring The Alfee) (6:00)

Released by: EMI Japan
Release date: 2009
Total running time: 65:32

In the early 1970s, while the British viewing public had been treated to electronic music in films and TV via the likes of Tristram Cary and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the film scoring scene in America had stayed rooted in orchestral scores and, increasingly, pop-music-compilations-as-soundtracks. The Andromeda Strain was a bit of an aural shock for moviegoers in the U.S., and its score, rooted in radiophonic methods and sounds, was extremely unusual – probably the strangest film score since Forbidden Planet.

Melle is associated with more traditional scoring, especially in the suspense/horror genre (Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery being among his best-known work), but for this movie he used decidedly non-traditional means to create his music, with only a smattering of familiar instruments. The first three tracks really don’t make many concessions to an audience not already familiar with electronic music; “Desert Trip” is really the first truly tuneful track on the album. (“Desert Trip” also has a place in my own local history: one Fort Smith radio station which has held an annual Easter Egg hunt has used the middle portion of “Desert Trip” as the background music for on-air clues for as long as I can remember.)

“OP” and “Xenogensis” provide more material that borders on actually being melodic, but “Strobe Crystal Green” brings things full circle into the abstract. For those not accustomed to early electronic and radiophonic music, The Andromeda Strain soundtrack – away from the movie – can be a challenging listen at best, in the same vein as the music from the Doctor Who story The Sea Devils (broadcast the following year). Quite a bit of it isn’t just atonal, but eschews just about any notion of melody, harmony or rhythm, in either the western or eastern traditions. It’s not just noise, though: there is structure, just not in a traditional musical sense.

I frequently dock big points for a running time that clocks in well short of the capacity of a compact disc (especially at the premium price Intrada charges for its excellent limited-run soundtrack CDs), but there’s actually a historical reason for this one: when initially issued on vinyl in 1971, The Andromeda Strain’s soundtrack was released as a hexagonal LP, and its running time was a byproduct of that unusual shape, since all of the tracks had to fit within a circular area within that hexagon. Intrada’s CD is round, but as it uses the LP master tapes as its source material, it has no more music than that hexagonal LP. Let the buyer beware of the running time vs. price ratio here.

1. Wildfire (2:46)
2. Hex (4:00)
3. Andromeda (2:24)
4. Desert Trip (4:14)
5. The Piedmont Elegy (2:23)
6. OP (2:45)
7. Xenogenesis (2:40)
8. Strobe Crystal Green (4:55)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 26:07

An Electric Storm is the adventurous debut album by a British outfit called White Noise. Even if the group is new to you, its members are familiar names: White Noise was a collaboration between electronic musician David Vorhaus and BBC Radiophonic Workshop members Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire, doing a little bit of work on the side. Originally, White Noise set out to record a single only: two songs. Island Records insisted on an entire album of material… and unfortunately, that’s where it started to go downhill, rapidly.

An Electric Storm starts out promisingly enough, putting the two most interesting numbers up front. “Love Without Sound” and “My Game Of Loving” were the A and B sides of the originally planned single, showing off the concept behind White Noise very well: to apply the working methods of the Radiophonic Workshop to something that was intended, from the outset, to be a pop song or two. Even these two songs aren’t without issues, however. “Love Without Sound” has a fantastic, mysterious feel, with vocals that anticipate the singing style of the new wave and new romantic genres by a good ten years, and “My Game Of Loving” isn’t bad either, with almost Brian-Wilson-esque vocals.

But both songs become novelty tunes with the addition of intrusive laughter on the former and orgasmic moaning on the latter. The “instrumental” backgrounds – and I used that term loosely since, as with Derbyshire’s famous version of the Doctor Who theme, few traditional instruments were used – are intriguing. Any album with Derbyshire and Hodgson involved would have been spectacularly well-produced at the very least.

Though I’m not as fond of the music, this leaves the relatively uncluttered “Firebird” and “Your Hidden Dreams” as the gems of this album. “Here Come The Fleas” takes things firmly into novelty song territory.

The last two tracks on An Electric Storm are wanna-be epics that wind up weighing the whole endeavour down. “The Visitations” clocks in at over ten minutes, and few of those minutes stand out as interesting music, while “The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell” is a noise montage with track after track of overdubbed screams, resulting in a piece that, quite frankly, I’d be happy never to hear again. Legend has it that the trio cranked out the two longest tracks in the shortest amount of studio time simply to fulfill Island’s demands for a full album. An Electric Storm in hell, indeed: it’s almost as if the group made a deal with the devil and was in a hurry to get out of it.

To be blunt, An Electric Storm is really the A and B sides of two decent, if trippy, singles, and a further collection of filler material that’s not worth the time (and keep in mind, very few times in theLogBook.com’s Music Reviews has it ever been said that anything’s not worth at least one listen for curiosity’s sake). There would’ve been no honor lost in just doing a four-song EP – and my opinion of this collection minus the three filler songs would’ve been raised considerably. White Noise actually continues to this day, having released an album each decade since An Electric Storm, though most of the “group”’s output since this album has been Vorhaus on his own; Derbyshire and Hodgson went their own way following this album. It’s a pioneering piece of electronic pop music, but the artistic achievement isn’t quite on par with the technical prowess on display.

1. Love Without Sound (3:07)
2. My Game Of Loving (4:10)
3. Here Come The Fleas (2:15)
4. Firebird (3:05)
5. Your Hidden Dreams (4:58)
6. The Visitations (11:14)
7. The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell (7:22)

Released by: Island Records
Release date: 1969
Total running time: 36:11

Perhaps unfairly best known for having his music repurposed into the backing tracks for classic Warner Bros. cartoons, the late Raymond Scott has another claim to fame that often gets overlooked – he was one of the true pioneers of electronic music in America. In this area, Scott was a true renaissance man: not only did he pioneer the sound, but he built his own instruments and early devices that presaged sequencers, and he even did some of the first work on multi-track recording, at roughly the same time that Les Paul was experimenting with similar ideas. In the 1950s and 1960s (at roughly the same time as the ascendancy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop), Scott was carving out his own path in an entire new genre of music.

Not only that, but Scott was trying his hardest to make his experiments pay for themselves: he marketed his unusual new sounds as music beds and jingles for commercials, with some success. The two-disc Manhattan Research, Inc. collection chronicles and archives that material, with a selection of Scott’s finished spots (both with and without announcers/singers) as well as demos and experiments that never made it to radio. The commercials range from obscurely local/regional campaigns (Baltimore Gas & Electric Company) to major national campaigns (IBM, Bufferin, Vicks, General Motors and a Sprite radio campaign that remains famous enough that it’s now become an ironic cover song). In a way, Scott achieved his aim by getting a new style of music into the ears of millions of listeners – but until now, not with any recognition.

While the commercials are a nostalgia trip that goes back even before the writer of this review was born, some of the purely instrumental pieces are startlingly ahead of their time: the “Night and Day” track on the first disc could’ve caught on in the 1980s had it been revived then. “Take Me To Your Violin Teacher” could easily be mistaken for modern chiptunes performed with 1980s video game hardware… and yet it was recorded in 1969. “Ripples (Montage)” anticipates abstract-but-tuneful electronic film scoring. “Cindy Electronium” sounds like late ’80s/early ’90s video game music.

There are a few throwbacks as well; Scott tries out completely electronic renditions of his existing compositions including “The Toy Trumpet” (which becomes almost unrecognizable) and “Twilight In Turkey”, both of which featured in their original, jazzier forms on Reckless Nights & Turkish Twilights. Some of his electronic music beds are also quite obviously very close cousins of the music from his Soothing Sounds For Baby albums. There’s also one very interesting guest star on a few tracks: the voice of none other than Jim Henson graces some tracks recorded in 1969, including “Limbo: The Organized Mind”, a free-form ramble set to Scott’s electronic sounds, and a couple of Bufferin commercials which seem to have sprung from “Limbo” both conceptually and musically.

A lot of this information, incidentally, is included in a book that clocks in at around 140 pages and covers Scott’s entire life and career, not just the material on these two CDs, in a wealth of detail.

Raymond Scott is still overdue for a reassessment of one of the electronic music pioneers in the United States, to say nothing of being a composer whose works influenced generations of children (by way of Warner Bros. cartoons). Manhattan Research, Inc. really isn’t a “general audience” listening experience, but it’s an invaluable archive for anyone interested in how electronic music gained a foothold in our national consciousness: in little snippets, 30 or so seconds at a time, behind commercial announcers and jingle singers.

Disc One
1. Manhattan Research, Inc. Copyright (0:11)
2. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. (Instrumental, Take 4) (1:14)
3. Bendix 1: The Tomorrow People (1:06)
4. Lightworks (1:52)
5. The Bass-line Generator (3:10)
6. Don’t Beat Your Wife Every Night! (1:44)
7. B.C. 1675 (Gillette Conga Drum Jingle) (3:16)
8. Vim (0:59)
9. Auto-Lite: Sta-Ful (Instrumental) (0:47)
10. Sprite: Melonball Bounce (Instrumental) (1963)
11. Sprite: Melonball Bounce (1963)
12. Wheels That Go (0:50)
13. Limbo: The Organized Mind (4:33)
14. Portofino 1 (2:13)
15. County Fair (1:01)
16. Lady Gaylord (1:02)
17. Good Air (Take 7) (0:38)
18. IBM MT/ST: The Paperwork Explosion (4:31)
19. Domino (0:33)
20. Super Cheer (0:34)
21. Cheer: Revision 3 (New Backgrounds) (0:39)
22. Twilight in Turkey (1:32)
23. Raymond Scott Quote / Vicks: Medicated Cough Drops (1:34)
24. Vicks: Formula 44 (0:46)
25. Auto-Lite: Spark Plugs (1:00)
26. Nescafe (1:06)
27. Awake (0:35)
28. Backwards Overload (6:04)
29. Bufferin: Memories (Original) (0:59)
30. Bandito the Bongo Artist (1:30)
31. Night and Day (Cole Porter) (1:45)
32. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. (“395″) (1:07)
33. K2r (0:19)
34. IBM Probe (1:56)
35. GMGM 1A (1:49)
36. The Rhythm Modulator (3:37)

Disc Two
1. Ohio Plus (0:17)
2. In the Hall of the Mountain Queen (0:49)
3. General Motors: Futurama (1:04)
4. Portofino 2 (2:14)
5. The Wild Piece (a.k.a. String Piece) (4:07)
6. Take Me to Your Violin Teacher (1:40)
7. Ripples (Original Soundtrack) (0:59)
8. Cyclic Bit (1:04)
9. Ripples (Montage) (4:06)
10. The Wing Thing (1:00)
11. County Fair (Instrumental) (1:00)
12. Cindy Electronium (1:59)
13. Don’t Beat Your Wife Every Night! (Instrumental) (1:45)
14. Hostess: Twinkies (0:32)
15. Hostess: Twinkies (Instrumental) (0:32)
16. Ohio Bell: Thermo Fax (0:24)
17. Pygmy Taxi Corporation (7:11)
18. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. (Announce Copy, Take 1) (0:29)
19. Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. (0:44)
20. Lightworks (Slow) (1:40)
21. The Paperwork Explosion (Instrumental) (3:30)
22. Auto-Lite: Ford Family (1:03)
23. Auto-Lite: Ford Family (Instrumental) (0:54)
24. Raymond Scott Quote / Auto-Lite: Wheels (1:50)
25. Bufferin: Memories (Demo) (0:44)
26. Space Mystery (Montage) (5:11)
27. The Toy Trumpet (2:15)
28. Backwards Beeps (1:05)
29. Raymond Scott Quote / Auto-Lite: Sta-Ful (1:36)
30. Lightworks (Instrumental) (1:29)
31. When Will It End? (3:14)
32. Bendix 2: The Tomorrow People (1963)
33. Electronic Audio Logos, Inc. (5:23)

Released by: Basta
Release date: 2000
Disc one total running time: 58:48
Disc two total running time: 63:11

Let’s say it’s the 1970s, and you’re doing a movie about a plot to kill a lot of people at the Super Bowl – a movie that won’t wind up on MST3K. A disaster movie, a well-worn and dying breed at the time, one that requires a big, dramatic orchestral score. Who do you call? You’ve probably got one John Williams – the man best known at the time as the maestro behind Jaws – on speed dial. (This is really more of a figure of speech than anything – you probably call the switchboard operator downstairs from your posh office on the studio lot and have her call Williams for you, because speed dial hasn’t been invented yet. Damned inconvenient.) That seems to have been the case for Black Sunday, which has just been released by Film Score Monthly.

Black Sunday is an oddity in Williams’ repertoire – aside from diehard Williams fans, not a lot of people know it’s even there. The movie was released early in 1977 by Paramount, and as is well known by now, another movie hit theaters in May 1977 which all but erased Black Sunday from the public film-going consciousness, a movie that also had a John Williams score. As such, Black Sunday has the odd distinction of being the only post-Jaws Williams soundtrack that has never been released – not even on vinyl or any other medium – until now.

And it was definitely worth the wait: there’s little in the Black Sunday soundtrack that sounds dated; only one distinctively ’70s-style source cue and the end credit suite, played over a gentle, mid-tempo ’70s-style soft rock beat, give the game away (and in any case, the typically extensive Film Score Monthly liner notes reveal that this version wasn’t used in the final edit of the film; another mix, minus the pop elements, is presented here but also went unused). The vast majority of the music sits nicely between Jaws and Star Wars, with menacing, brooding themes for the building suspense, and Williams’ signature style of action music, though it takes on a more worried tone than his often celebratory style.

The Black Sunday soundtrack is a lost gem from the Williams repertoire, and fans of his music from this era won’t be let down – even if the music comes from a movie that isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as Williams’ more, ahem, super efforts.

1. Beirut (0:37)
2. Commandos Arrive (1:14)
3. Commandos Raid (5:30)
4. It Was Good / Dahlia Arrives / The Unloading (3:12)
5. Speed Boat Chase (1:51)
6. The Telephone Man / The Captain Returns (2:13)
7. Nurse Dahlia / Kabakov’s Card / The Hypodermic (3:30)
8. Moshevsky’s Dead (1:56)
9. The Test (1:56)
10. Building The Bomb (1:53)
11. Miami / Dahlia’s Call (2:26)
12. The Last Night (1:28)
13. Preparations (2:43)
14. Passed (0:31)
15. The Flight Check (1:50)
16. Airborne / Bomb Passes Stadium (1:45)
17. Farley’s Dead (1:33)
18. The Blimp and the Bomb (3:12)
19. The Take Off (1:43)
20. Underway (0:39)
21. Air Chase, Part 1 (1:12)
22. Air Chase, Parts 2 & 3 – The Blimp Hits (7:19)
23. The Explosion (2:36)
24. The End (2:19)
25. Hotel Lobby (source) (1:47)
26. Fight Song #1 (0:50)
27. Fight Song #2 (1:48)
28. The End (Alternate) (2:17)
29. The Explosion (Revised Ending) (2:11)

Released by: Film Score Monthly
Release date: 2010
Total running time: 64:01