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I have a problem with a lot of re-recordings of soundtracks. The tempo tends to be wrong, the emphasis is different (or, worse yet, there is none), or the whole thing sounds hollow. Conductors like Cliff Eidelman and Joel McNeely - themselves composers (see, respectively, Star Trek VI and Shadows Of The Empire) - make a living these days off of re-recordings, and labels like Silva Screen - the folks behind Cult Files and Space and Beyond - do re-recording compilations as their bread and butter. But the results aren’t always pretty.

Why do I bring up the whole re-recording issue? Because Symphonic Suite Yamato is, essentially, a rearranged orchestral suite of music from animè series Space Battleship Yamato (known in the English-speaking world as Star Blazers). But what sets this CD apart from other re-recordings is the complete participation of original Yamato composer Hiroshi Miyagawa. He knows the music - he wrote it. He conducts it, too, meaning that we haven’t wound up with a weak, watered-down interpretation of the original. A new interpretation, to be sure, but that’s not a bad thing.

So good, in fact, was the resulting recording that music from Symphonic Suite Yamato - originally intended to be a stand-alone recording - was actually used in later Yamato movies such as The New Voyage.

The suite kicks off with an overture built around the solo female vocal piece “The Universe Spreading Into Infinity”, one of the most haunting, lovely and unforgettable cues featured in the original series. Though it starts out as a female solo vocal again, Miyagawa reinterprets the theme for full orchestra with an absolutely stunning result. As blasphemous as it main seem, the martial main theme associated with the series and movies doesn’t kick in until later, setting the tone for the entirety of Symphonic Suite Yamato: a musical experiment bringing some lesser-known themes to the fore and developing them, as well as some new twists on the better-known pieces.

“Scarlet Scarf”, which was used as the closing title music for the Yamato TV series in Japan (and has seldom been heard in the English-dubbed edition of the series), is taken through some similarly surprising progressions, starting out with the customary mournful rendition and then exploding into a more military sound.

The track titles have little to do with music from specific scenes, and deal more with the moods Miyagawa was attempting to bring across with his new arrangements.

Overall, Symphonic Suite Yamato is a lovely thing to listen to; the closest comparison I can think of in recent American soundtrack music is the first two Babylon 5 soundtracks, which composer Christopher Franke re-sequenced and amended to create new longform compositions which stood on their own. And Symphonic Suite Yamato does it so much better.

1. Overture (5:22)
2. The Birth (4:27)
3. Sashia (1:39)
4. Trial (2:40)
5. Take Off (2:56)
6. Reminiscence (2:10)
7. Scarlet Scarf (4:27)
8. Decisive Battle (4:36)
9. Iskandall (3:32)
10. Recollection (3:16)
11. Hope For Tomorrow (5:09)
12. Stasha (3:16)

Released by: Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd.
Release date: 1977 (released on CD in 1995)
Total running time: 44:27

Lagging behind the release of the songtrack by several months, this is the orchestral soundtrack of the sleeper hit Christian film Left Behind. While many of the songs were entertaining, the score - performed by the London Symphony Orchestra - was exceptional. As pleased as I am to hear it released on CD, I’m also surprised. Left Behind wasn’t exactly a box office smash, and it was a movie aimed squarely at a specific niche audience which doesn’t normally demand the orchestral accompaniment to a movie. I was stunned to see this release at all.

Covell’s score is sensitively assembled and arranged, with some lovely choral work drifting in and out of the proceedings. It would’ve been easy to make the music overbearing, but instead Covell sticks to some time-honored film scoring traditions, doing some of the best work with a movie’s main theme motif this side of John Williams. For the movie’s more unnerving action segments, some very slick synth work comes to the fore, featuring a nifty bit of electronic percussion which is an excellent test of the bass speakers in your car (I discovered this by accident). The final of these unnerving sequences - the unveiling of the Antichrist - is some pretty effective and creepy stuff.

Three tracks - “Prologue”, “Rapture” and “Seven Years” - include some sound clips from the movie over the beginning of the music. Depending on my mood, I find this either annoying or terribly effective at setting the tone of the music which follows. (It’s at least better than the treatment given the Apollo 13 soundtrack, which overlays big portions of the music with movie dialogue.)

Overall, I found the Left Behind score most enjoyable, memorable, and worthy of repeat listening - just as the movie stands up to more than one viewing.

1. Prologue (0:27)
2. Left Behind - Main Title (3:22)
3. Surprise Attack (5:17)
4. Rayford’s Conversion (1:55)
5. Dirk’s In Trouble (2:06)
6. Rebuild The Temple (2:13)
7. Rapture (2:50)
8. Rayford Comes Home (4:02)
9. Loss Of A Friend (3:18)
10. Buck’s Mission (2:46)
11. Chloe’s Choice (2:58)
12. One Left, The Other Taken (4:14)
13. Goodbyes (3:03)
14. I Don’t Want To Lose You (1:48)
15. Prayers For Buck (2:00)
16. Seven Years (4:27)
17. The Final Chapter (2:52)

Released by: Reunion
Release date: 2000
Total running time: 49:38

Much was made of Tal Bachman’s lineage about the time “She’s So High”, his debut single, hit it big. Tal is the son of Randy Bachman, late of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Guess Who. And lest there be any doubt, Tal Bachman’s tunes prove that he’s fully capable of making dad proud.

“She’s So High”, the aforementioned (and somewhat over-played) 1999 single, is just the tip of the iceberg on Bachman’s self-titled freshman set. The closest he came to duplicating that success was with the grungy power ballad “If You Sleep”, which owes some of its exposure to its inclusion on the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack. But perhaps Bachman’s true hidden strength is in his Beatlesque ballads which eschew power chords for strings and other more traditional elements. “Like Nobody Loves Me” and especially “Beside You” are two gorgeous specimens of pure pop music.

Bachman’s harder-edged compositions are a joy to behold as well. “Romanticide” and “Strong Enough” mix catchy hooks with literate lyrics, increasingly a rarity among the younger generation of performers. And other numbers such as “You Don’t Know What It’s Like” demonstrate that the junior Bachman has most definitely been listening to harmony-heavy bands such as Queen and ELO.

My only question now is: where’s the follow-up?

1. Darker Side Of Blue (3:20)
2. She’s So High (3:43)
3. If You Sleep (4:45)
4. (You Love) Like Nobody Loves Me (3:55)
5. Strong Enough (4:18)
6. You Don’t Know What It’s Like (3:08)
7. I Wonder (4:39)
8. Beside You (3:15)
9. Romanticide (3:23)
10. Looks Like Rain (3:30)
11. You’re My Everything (3:16)
12. I Am Free (5:24)

Released by: Columbia
Release date: 1999
Total running time: 47:34

The latest from ex-Crowded House frontman Neil Finn is as much a departure from his signature sound with the Crowdies as it is from his previous album, Try Whistling This. With such past collaborators as Jim Moginie of Midnight Oil, former Crowded House producer Mitchell Froom, and Betchadupa guitarist (and Neil’s son) Liam Finn aboard, you’d expect something of the same sound, but there was a lot of experimenting going on with One Nil, possibly due to the influence of new collaborators - and multi-instrumentalists - Wendy and Lisa (yes, as in of early Prince and the Revolution fame). Fuzz guitar, unusual percussion, violin and distorted vocals are front and center on this album. (But, with Froom playing support, so are such cozy familiar elements as Hammond organ.)

One relatively new element which is welcome is Finn’s discovery of ELO-esque wordless background vocals, where a thick tapestry of voices sings a vowel sound in the background. That’s a sound I love in pop music, whether it’s ELO, Queen, Jason Falkner or the Beach Boys, and it works wonders on this album is such songs as “Hole In The Ice” and “Last To Know”.

I’m not sure what wisdom there was in kicking the album off with the slightly nondescript guitar piece “The Climber”, whose lyrics make up somewhat for the shortcomings of the music itself, but it’s not terribly representative of the rest of the disc. Nor, indeed, is any other single song.

My early favorites here are “Hole In The Ice”, the almost Smash Mouth-esque “Don’t Ask”, “Secret God” (which takes a little while to pick up its real pace), “Turn And Run”, “Anytime”, “Driving Me Mad” (an autobiographical number about a songwriter whose evasive muse is disrupting all else in his life) and “Into The Sunset”. In the meantime, this album’s Weird Song Award goes to “Elastic Heart”, which - even though I like it in places - is easily one of the most experimental of One Nil’s dozen tunes.

If I have but one disappointment, it is that “Secrets” - a lovely tune demoed on Finn’s web site (with great vocal harmonies by Wendy and Lisa) - did not appear in any form on the finished album. Perhaps it will turn up on a future CD single, but I was a little saddened to see such a great song omitted.

Other than that, however, One Nil is a nice follow-up to Try Whistling This, and will certainly intrigue more than a few Finn fans with its surprising sonic turns.

1. The Climber (4:11)
2. Rest Of The Day Off (3:48)
3. Hole In The Ice (4:10)
4. Wherever You Are (4:45)
5. Last To Know (3:02)
6. Don’t Ask (3:54)
7. Secret God (5:27)
8. Turn And Run (3:46)
9. Elastic Heart (4:00)
10. Anytime (3:24)
11. Driving Me Mad (3:58)
12. Into The Sunset (4:12)

Released by: EMI Australia
Release date: 2001
Total running time: 48:39

The first solo effort by Fleetwood Mac’s best-known frontman proves that he had a musical voice that was being held back in the structure of the world-famous band. Buckingham’s efforts on the Mac’s Tusk double LP seemed to meet with either indifference or non-comprehension on the part of the listening public, and his contributions to 1981’s Fleetwood Mac album Mirage were, while still experimental, a little bit subdued in places. Law & Order is a demonstration of how brilliant Buckingham can be when set free: the songs retain an experimental feel, but they’re never anything less than commercial.

Some of Buckingham’s fellow Macsters make cameo appearances, with Christine McVie harmonizing on the dreamy “Shadow Of The West” and Mick Fleetwood lending a very recognizable hand at the drum kit for the now slightly-obscure hit single “Trouble”. But Buckingham is perfectly capable of shining on his own. The quirky “Bwana”, one of the best things he’s ever done, begs one to put the CD player on “repeat 1.” His cover of the standard “September Song” is a vocal showcase for him, and it’s an interesting contrast to the somewhat more low-key cover of the same song on Jeff Lynne’s Armchair Theatre.

1. Bwana (3:06)
2. Trouble (3:53)
3. Mary Lee Jones (3:12)
4. I’ll Tell You Now (4:18)
5. It Was I (2:39)
6. September Song (3:13)
7. Shadow Of The West (3:57)
8. That’s How We Do It In L.A. (2:52)
9. Johnny Stew (3:06)
10. Love From Here, Love From There (2:47)
11. A Satisfied Mind (2:47)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1981
Total running time: 36:25