Positioned between the second and third seasons of the legendary animè series, Yamato: The New Voyage was a slightly awkward full-length TV movie which offered only a little bit of expansion on the Space Battleship Yamato franchise – and not much dramatic innovation. As the second theatrical Yamato film had killed off the entire cast of characters (which, after fan outcry, was rectified in the second TV season, which retold the second film’s story without the high body count), The New Voyage had to do a bit of backpedaling, remind the audience that their heroes had not died, but had simply been banged up a bit in their fight against the Comet Empire, and get the ball rolling hastily for yet another showdown with an all-conquering alien force.

Cinematically, I’ve never thought The New Voyage was up to much – it lacks the dramatic punch of Be Forever Yamato and even the weak swan song that was Final Yamato – but its music, when heard apart from the movie itself, is a revelation.

Hiroshi Miyagawa’s music is to the Yamato franchise what John Williams’ music is to the Star Wars universe, plain and simple. And in this installment of the saga, Miyagawa brings some new elements into play, including the first major use of synths in his Yamato soundtracks. The modernization of the sound, while quite a departure from what came before it, isn’t unwelcome or out of place. Early on, most of the synth work is relegated to pads underneath a mostly orchestral score.

The real innovation isn’t technological, however, but musical. In The New Voyage, Miyagawa starts to put some of his well-established themes from two previous movies and two years of television series through very interesting permutations. Dessler’s theme (that’s Desslock for you Star Blazers fans) goes from being a strident, militaristic piece to a sweeping, wistful love theme that recurs throughout much of the score. The Yamato theme itself runs through some minor key variations, and one incredibly haunting cue (“Mystical Yamato”) which gives it a very ethereal quality.

One of the new themes composed specifically for this movie is introduced in the first track as a song (complete with vocals in both Japanese and English), but that motif too reappears in various places. The heraldic brass of the opening track was a huge break in tradition for the series, but it’s a break that was needed by this point. Overall, The New Voyage makes for better listening than viewing.

1. Yamato: The New Voyage (1:50)
2. Isao Sasaki (1:42)
3. New Voyage – instrumental (2:54)
4. Yamato Meditation / Great Love (2:12)
5. New Cosmo Tigers (2:29)
6. Tsunpa March – March Of The Underwear (0:45)
7. Mystical Yamato (2:04)
8. Wandering Iscandar (2:10)
9. Mamoru and Starsha (2:11)
10. Crisis On Iscandar (1:12)
11. Desler’s Suffering (1:42)
12. Desler In Silence (2:19)
13. My Feelings For Starsha (1:51)
14. Wandering (2:39)
15. Goruba’s Theme (4:17)
16. Goruba’s Theme – synthesizer (1:16)
17. Goruba’s Theme – piano (1:18)
18. Goruba’s Theme – strings (1:35)
19. Goruba Chord (0:13)
20. Parting – guitar and orchestra (1:54)
21. Parting – strings (2:01)
22. Parting – piano and orchestra (1:13)
23. Parting – guitar solo (3:00)
24. Sasha My Love – instrumental (3:49)
25. Sasha My Love vocals by Chiyoko Shimakura (1:48)

Released by: Nippon Columbia
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 50:24

Sometimes I like picking up a one-hit wonder’s “best-of” CD just to see what else they did, especially if I liked the one single of theirs that got anywhere. While Natural History shows that not every Talk Talk song was worthy of heavy rotation in the airplay, it does show that the band’s one-hit wonder status is probably undeserved.

I try never to let music videos cloud my judgement of whether or not the song is good, but I must admit that least part of my fond memories of the band’s biggest single, “It’s My Life”, include the extremely cool nature-film video with its flock of ink-blot birds throughout the entire song. It ran so far against the grain of what music videos were at the time that I considered it excessively cool (and I know I’m not the only one, either). “It’s My Life” itself is an interesting song the likes of which I haven’t heard since – heavy on synths, but also heavy enough on musicianship and great vocals that it still sounds like an organic whole, not a machine-assembled song.

Other standouts include “Such A Shame”, which has a style similar to “It’s My Life” (or perhaps that should be the other way around, since “Shame” predates it by a year or two), and one of my personal favorites, Life’s What You Make It. Though from the same album as “It’s My Life”, “Life’s What You Make It” has a soulful sound the straddles the styles of Talk Talk and Squeeze, with some excellent Hammond organ work and some great lyrics to go with it.

There are a couple of live tracks, nice ones to be sure, but Talk Talk was at the height of its powers in the studio, not on stage, and butting live cuts up against studio tracks only heightens that contrast.

If Natural History tells us anything, it is that we may have underestimated Talk Talk when the radio industry in general seemed to shrug them off as one-hit wonders.

1. Today (3:30)
2. Talk Talk (3:15)
3. My Foolish Friend (3:18)
4. Such A Shame (5:22)
5. Dum Dum Girl (4:02)
6. It’s My Life (3:51)
7. Give It Up (5:19)
8. Living In Another World (7:00)
9. Life’s What You Make It (4:25)
10. Happiness Is Easy (6:29)
11. I Believe In You (5:55)
12. Desire (6:56)
13. Life’s What You Make It – live (4:40)
14. Tomorrow’s Started – live (7:45)

Released by: Capitol
Release date: 1990
Total running time: 71:47

It’s been nearly five years since it first hit PCs (which few people could have missed, given that a marathon Sci-Fi Channel airing of David Lynch’s Dune was sponsored by Electronic Arts in support of the release), and despite all the good stuff we’ve gotten from both game developer Westwood Studios and their in-house music guru Frank Klepacki, Dune 2000 is still my favorite PC strategy game – and still my favorite computer game soundtrack.

Klepacki does invoke Toto’s groundbreaking rock-orchestral score in places, mainly in the use of specific instruments such as percussion and electric guitar. But the vast majority of the music from Dune 2000 isn’t trying to be an extension of the film (which is sometimes more than we can say for the game’s cinematic cut scenes), it’s a sweeping, atmospheric and stunningly original movie-quality soundtrack. Some of the music’s electronics almost steer it into the abstract, sounding in a few places like some of the better tracks from Evan Chen’s soundtrack from Crusade. It’s sinister, mysterious, and utterly appropriate to the game’s action. Even separated from the game itself, Klepacki’s music makes for a compelling listen. I highly recommend both the game and the music – they’re still among Westwood’s all-time best.

1. Menu Theme (0:52)
2. The Ambush (4:14)
3. Attack On Arrakis (4:03)
4. The Atriedes Gain (4:16)
5. Enter The Ordos (5:13)
6. Fight For Power (5:51)
7. The Fremen (4:31)
8. Harkonnen Battle (4:16)
9. Land Of Sand (5:03)
10. Plotting (4:32)
11. Robotix (4:10)
12. Rise Of Harkonnen (3:37)
13. The Soldiers Approach (4:01)
14. Spice Scouting (5:10)
15. Under Construction (4:32)
16. The Waiting Game (4:13)
17. Score (2:05)

Released by: Westwood Studios / Electronic Arts
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 70:39

“What’s this?” I asked. “A Paul McCartney tribute album benefitting cancer charities and featuring the Finn Brothers? Sign me up!”

Actually, this nice little selection, proceeds from which go toward the fight against breast cancer, has many good covers of Macca’s post-Beatles best. Owsley kicks things off with a picture-perfect reading of “Band On The Run” which doesn’t stray very far from the original Wings recording. SR-71 turns “My Brave Face” – one of my favorite latter-day McCartney solo tunes simply by virtue of the fact that it isn’t “Hope & Deliverance” – into a gleeful hard-rock thrash. Semisonic also faithfully replicates “Jet”, rocking it out a bit but not so much that it’s unrecognizable. The Virgos give a similar treatment to “Maybe I’m Amazed”, while the Merrymakers punch up “No More Lonely Nights” (another personal favorite) a bit. Some of the other renditions fly under the radar a bit – Matthew Sweet’s “Every Night” for one.

And as for Tim and Neil Finn? It pains me to say it, but their cover of “Too Many People” is a mess – it sounds like an unrehearsed one-take-and-that’s-it wonder, without much effort. The arrangement isn’t organized, the sound quality isn’t even up to the standards of the brothers’ admittedly (and intentionally) lo-fi Finn album, and the vocals just smack of a cover band that’s been asked to play something they’d mostly forgotten. Sad to say, the Finn Brothers, who drew my attention to this collection, turned out to be its biggest disappointment. I was stunned. I was also looking forward to the They Might Be Giants cover of “Ram On”, but it wasn’t so much disappointing as just inscrutably cryptic in its new arrangement.

Overall, a nice set – and one that truly turned my expectations on ear by introducing me to some excellent new artists while the known quantities gave me a wee bit of a let-down.

1. Band On The Run – Owsley (5:14)
2. My Brave Face – SR-71 (3:00)
3. Junk – Kevin Hearn, Steven Page and Stephen Duffy (2:56)
4. Jet – Semisonic (4:15)
5. No More Lonely Nights – The Merrymakers (4:11)
6. Let Me Roll It – Robyn Hitchcock (4:21)
7. Too Many People – Finn Brothers (3:43)
8. Dear Friend – The Minus 5 (4:45)
9. Every Night – Matthew Sweet (2:56)
10. Waterfalls – Sloan (4:21)
11. Man We Was Lonely – World Party (2:59)
12. Coming Up – John Faye Power Trip (3:43)
13. Maybe I’m Amazed – Virgos (4:14)
14. Love In Song – The Judybats (4:04)
15. Warm And Beautiful – Linus of Hollywood (3:08)
16. Ram On – They Might Be Giants (2:40)

Released by: Oglio
Release date: 2001
Total running time: 60:30