Saturday Playlist #15: Star Trek

I quite like the old Star Trek films. I don't love them by any stretch, but the ones with the original crew are fun and harmless, except for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which is so bad it makes the Next Generation films look good. And let me tell you, they're not. Watching them is like being at a party with all the boring people from somebody else's office. You don't like them, you don't know what they're talking about and one of them keeps saying "Make it so". Ugh. Thank Christ for JJ Abrams and his balls-out brilliant reboot.

Of the eleven Star Trek films, six composers contributed scores - Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Leonard Rosenman, Cliff Eidelman, Dennis McCarthy and of course the spankulous Michael Giacchino.

"All of that is very interesting", I hear you yawn, "but what about that version of Pulp's 'Common People' that William Shatner did? That was freakin' awesome!"

I don't know, you people.

William Shatner - 'Common People'

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #15:

STAR TREK

An Album Of Clannad B-Sides

As the world continues to barrel inexorably towards the December release of Avatar, it’s full steam ahead for interweb types who need to write something – anything – about it more often than they need to do that breathing in and out thing.

This week my eyes have been assaulted with previews of James Horner’s soundtrack to the film, which seems to me to be taking things a bit too far. I mean, what next? An in-depth analysis of the end credits? “Those names just keep on rolling up the screen in a relentless vertical direction, reminding us all that what we have just witnessed is a bunch of people who worked on a film for a bit… breathtaking. Stupendous. James Cameron is a genius and should be cloned so he can make all films ever from now on until the end of time.”

Unsurprisingly, the soundtrack is apparently so unspeakably amazing that entire planets have stopped rotating in order to have a good listen. Well, The Incredible Suit has had a bit of a listen here, and can confirm that it sounds a lot like an album of Clannad B-sides. I tried to avoid reading the track titles because I’ve heard they’re a bit spoilerific, but I do know that one track is called ‘Becoming One Of “The People” Becoming One With Neytiri’. So not only is Cameron changing cinema as we know it but he’s also taking an axe to sentence construction and sensible use of the English language.

Furthermore, following in the turgid, ear-insulting footsteps of Celine Dion, Leona Lewis is singing the song for the end credits, the 30 seconds of which I could bear to withstand were some of the absolute worst noises my ear drums have ever tried to stop from reaching my brain.

Anyway, I don’t want to diss Avatar or its soundtrack too much* in case it all does turn out to be orgasmically astonishing, so I’ll halt there in order to point out some much more exciting soundtrack news: Alan Silvestri’s full score for Back To The Future has finally got a proper release, courtesy of Intrada. This is fantabulous news because a) it’s completely ace, b) it was only previously available in snippets on other soundtrack albums and c) it comes with a second CD of a score that Silvestri recorded before dumping in favour of the one we all know and love.

Have a listen to a few clips here and tell me that’s not better than Enya’s cast-offs.

*Too late

To comment on this post, click here