Silva Screen Records releases a CD of music from the 1960s Doctor Who story The Krotons, composed and performed by Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. A rare example of a pre-80s soundtrack scored entirely by the Workshop, The Krotons’ release catches fans off-guard as part of the label’s series of classic soundtrack releases celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who.
BSX Records releases a CD, Star Trek: Music From The Video Games, containing newly-arranged and performed music from many Star Trek video games and computer games from the 1990s onward.
Intrada releases a 3-CD set of original episode scores from the first season of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, featuring music by series theme composer Stu Phillips, among others. This marks the first release for any soundtrack material from the show beyond the series pilot (already re-released by Intrada).
Silva Screen Records releases a CD of music from the 2013 made-for-TV movie An Adventure In Space And Time, composed by Edmund Butt (Life On Mars, Origin, Intergalactic).
Intrada releases a 4-CD set of original episode scores from the second season of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, featuring music by Bruce Broughton, John Cacavas, Herbert Don Woods, and series theme composer Stu Phillips, among others. This marks the first release for any soundtrack material from the show’s second season.
La-La Land Record releases an expanded 2-CD edition of the soundtrack from the 1974 Planet Of The Apes TV series, featuring music by Lalo Schifrin, Richard LaSalle and Earle Hagen. This release adds an addition CD of material to the previously released music from the previous decade’s single-CD edition.
IDMusic releases Ambition by Atanas Valkov, and album that serves, in part, as the soundtrack to the short film accompanying the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
La-La Land Record releases a remastered, expanded 2-CD edition of the soundtrack from Richard Donner’s 1984 film Ladyhawke, scored by Alan Parsons Project orchestral arranger Andrew Powell, and featuring most of Powell’s Project bandmates, including production by Parsons himself. Clocking in at over two hours, this edition of the soundtrack features more of the orchestral and choral pieces from the score than the prior CD release.
Lakeshore Records releases the complete, remastered soundtrack from the 2015 documentary film Journey To Space by Cody Westheimer.
Intrada releases the complete, remastered soundtrack from the 1995 science fiction movie Judge Dredd by Alan Silvestri. This is the first time the entire score from the movie, as well as its Jerry Goldsmith-composed trailer, have been made available.
Silva Screen Records releases a 3-CD set of Murray Gold’s soundtrack music from the 2014 season of Doctor Who. Music from the entire eighth season, including the Christmas special The Last Christmas, is included.
A renowned film music composer whose early sci-fi works put him on the map, James Horner dies at the age of 61 in the crash of his private plane. After his early genre efforts for sci-fi and horror films produced by Roger Corman, Horner took on the daunting task of succeeding Jerry Goldsmith as the composer of the Star Trek film franchise at the age of 28 with Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (in which he also had a very brief on-screen cameo). Other major films followed: Krull, Aliens, Cocoon, Star Trek III, The Land Before Time, The Rocketeer, Apollo 13, Braveheart, Titanic, and Avatar, among many others. Mr. Horner was 61 at the time of his death.
Varese Sarabande releases Penka Kouvena’s soundtrack-style instrumental concept album The Woman Astronaut. A veteran orchestrator for game soundtracks to software titles that have sold a combined billion dollars, Kouvena’s semi-autobiographical concept mirrors her struggles for equality as a soundtrack composer.
Columbia Records releases the soundtrack from the 2015 science fiction movie The Martian by Harry Gregson-Williams.
Warner Music Canada releases the album Space Sessions: Songs From A Tin Can by former Canadian astronaut and International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield. Hadfield’s guitar parts and vocals were recorded aboard the station itself, in the relatively quiet confines of his sleeping quarters, using his iPad, and were then overdubbed and finished after his return to Earth. All of the songs on the album are written by Hadfield with the exception of his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, which set YouTube viewing records in 2013 when it was released just before Hadfield’s departure from the space station.
Cinewax Records releases, both digitally and on physical media, Kurt Stenzel’s score from the documentary film Jodorowsky’s Dune. Concerning an abortive 1970s attempt to commit Frank Herbert’s seminal SF novel to film, the music is done in an analog, 1970s style.
The Alan Parsons Project’s 1980 album, The Turn Of A Friendly Card, is re-released in an expanded form spanning two CDs, including the hit singles “Time” and “Games People Play”, and adding new demo material from the archives of the late Project co-founder and songwriter, Eric Woolfson. This is the album’s second re-release, having already been remastered as a single-disc release in 2009.
Disney Music releases John Williams’ soundtrack from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, breaking with tradition by not making the soundtrack available until after the film’s premiere. For the first time in the history of the Star Wars film series, the soundtrack has been recorded with Los Angeles studio musicians rather than the London Symphony Orchestra (partly to accommodate composer Williams, now in his ’80s).
Chiptune music duo 8 Bit Weapon releases an all-instrumental album of ambient electronic music, Disassembly Language: Ambient Music for Deprogramming, Vol. 1, created entirely via the SID sound chip on vintage Commodore 64 computers.
Japanese synthesizer pioneer Isao Tomita dies of heart failure at the age of 84. A classically trained composer, Tomita had composed music for such early anime series as Kimba The White Lion, and such live action series as Mighty Jack, prior to importing (at no small expense) a Moog III synthesizer. He experimented with all-synth interpretations of classical music with albums like Snowflakes Are Dancing and The Planets, which quickly became his primary career track as these albums became successful worldwide. He eventually resumed his film/TV scoring career in the 1990s, contributing music to The Twilight Samurai and Welcome Home, Hayabusa. He was working on a new stage musical at the time of his death.
La-La Land Records releases the four-CD Star Trek: The 50th Anniversary Collection soundtrack box set primarily featuring music from the original series and The Next Generation, along with new works by Ron Jones and the premiere of a reconstructed selection of music from the 1970s Star Trek animated series.
Soundtrack specialty label Varese Sarabande releases a 2-CD set featuring Michael Giacchino’s complete score from Star Trek Beyond.
Milan Records releases the soundtrack from the 2016 science fiction miniseries Mars by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis.
Dudley Simpson, the Australian-born veteran BBC composer whose sound defined Doctor Who in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as such series as Blake’s 7, The Tomorrow People, Moonbase 3, and many others, dies at the age of 95. Simpson scored his first Doctor Who serial, the second season opener Planet Of Giants, in 1964 at a time when the series often relied on stock music. He solidified his position as Doctor Who’s house composer during the Troughton era, scoring pivotal stories such as The Evil Of The Daleks, The Ice Warriors and The War Games, and became the dominant musical sound of the series during the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, during which he provided all but a handful of original scores and stock music fell by the wayside. It was only when incoming producer John Nathan-Turner took over as Doctor Who’s showrunner in 1980 that Simpson’s Doctor Who tenure ended. He retired to Australia in the 1990s.
La-La Land Records releases a 2-CD set of selections from the soundtrack from season 1 of the Fox sci-fi series The Orville, featuring music by Bruce Broughton (Lost In Space), Joel McNeely (The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles), John Debney (seaQuest DSV, Doctor Who), and Andrew Cottee.
Songwriter and occasional actor Neil Innes, best known for his association with Monty Python, The Rutles, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, dies unexpectedly at the age of 75. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s hit “I’m The Urban Spaceman” brought him into the orbit of the Beatles, and he contributed a background track to their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour. His participation in a later parody of the Beatles, the Rutles, led to TV specials and well-received albums, which counted among their fans and participants the former members of the Beatles themselves. Innes contributed material to the shortened final season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which made him one of only two members outside of the Python troupe to write material for the show (the other was future Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy creator Douglas Adams); his work with the Pythons continued into their feature films in the 1970s and early ’80s; he was also a cast member in the Pythons’ live performances during this period.
Legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone dies at the age of 91. With over 500 film and TV credits to his name, he was one of the most prolific composers by either Hollywood or European standards, and his early partnership with director and college classmate Sergio Leone led to his first international success, the score from the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. That brought Morricone to Hollywood’s attention, and he went on to score such films as Once Upon A Time In The West, Two Mules For Sister Sara, Guns For San Sebastian, Duck You Sucker, Exorcist II, La Cage aux Folles, Orca, The Thing, Once Upon A Time In America, Red Sonja, The Untouchables, Bugsy, In The Line Of Fire, Mission To Mars, The Hateful Eight, and many others.
Label Logic releases Threesome, Volume 2 by The Lickerish Quartet, a trio of former members of Jellyfish, continuing the band’s crowd-funded trilogy of power pop EP releases.
Orchestral conductor, arranger and composer Louis Clark, best known for the chart-topping early ’80s mash-up Hooked On Classics, dies at the age of 73 after a period of illness. Aside from the Hooked On Classics single and album, Clark was the architect of the orchestral arrangements for Electric Light Orchestra during that band’s 1970s peak years, working in the albums Eldorado (1974), Face The Music (1975), A New World Record (1976), Out Of The Blue (1977), Discovery (1979), and ELO’s contributions to the Xanadu soundtrack (1980). He went on to become a full-time member of Electric Light Orchestra Part II (later renamed The Orchestra), creating that band’s orchestral arrangements as well as performing on stage, often playing the orchestral parts with synthesizers and samples. He also worked on numerous solo projects by members of ELO, including Kelly Groucutt’s Kelly album (1982), Roy Wood’s Starting Up (1987), and collaborating with Jeff Lynne on Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl (1989). He also did orchestral arrangements for acts such as Asia, Renaissance, America, and Ozzy Osbourne.
Disney Music digitally releases the soundtrack from the VR gam Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge, featuring music by Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead), Joseph Trapanese (Tron Legacy, Tron Uprising), and Danny Piccione.
