Tolkien - Thomas Newman ‎(Soundtrack OST) 2019 Ltd Numbered, Gold & Black Marbled - Sealed 180 Grm LP 500 copies

Thomas Newman ‎– Tolkien (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Label:
Music On Vinyl ‎– MOVATM252
Series:
At The Movies –
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition, Numbered, Gold & Black Marbled, 180 gram
180 gram audiophile vinyl, Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on Coloured Gold & Black Marbled vinyl. Includes 4 Page booklet.
NEW SEALED
Country:
Netherlands
Released:
02 Aug 2019
Genre:
Stage & Screen
Style:
Soundtrack

Tracklist

A1 Dragons
A2 Impecunious Circumstances
A3 The Great War
A4 The TCBS
A5 White As Bone
A6 John Ronald
A7 Vinatta (Friendship)
A8 Rugby
A9 Kings And Queens
A10 Army Of The Dead
A11 Luthien Tinuviel
A12 "A Good Man In The Dirt"
A13 Dutch Courage

B1 Sunlit
B2 Starlit
B3 Everything That's Good
B4 Geoffrey
B5 Eik (Oak)
B6 The Ascanius
B7 Black Rider
B8 Scuppered (Ancient Things)
B9 Other Sorts Of Scars
B10 Dark Magic
B11 Fellowship
B12 Helheimr (End Crawl)

Notes

Barcode and Other Identifiers
Barcode (Scanned): 8719262011519
Barcode (Text): 8 719262 011519
Rights Society: BIEM/STEMRA

"What it sounds like instead is a very traditional Thomas Newman score. It has all the things that has made Newman famous throughout the years – the pianos, the effortlessly elegant strings, and the unique complement of specialty metallic and woodwind instruments twanging and fluttering away in the background, which in this instance include a psaltery, a hurdy-gurdy, a Bansuri wood flute, and a hammered dulcimer. It contains many of the gorgeous orchestral textures we have come to associate with Newman’s writing over the years, and in this case also finds time to work in a subtle and occasionally quite unusually-voiced choir. If one was to make comparisons to other scores in Newman’s past, works like Oscar & Lucinda, The Horse Whisperer, and The Shawshank Redemption, crossed with a little bit of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and a splash of Victoria & Abdul, spring to mind. Unfortunately the one thing that it lacks, and which stops it from reaching the exalted heights of those other scores, is thematic strength.

There are themes in Tolkien, but for the most part they are like gossamer, fleeting, imperceptible, gone before you realize you’re listening to one, and difficult to bring back. Having listened to the score multiple times, and seen the film, it’s clear what the themes should be, but for some reason Newman never follows the leitmotif lead of Wagner – whose music plays a major part in the plot of the film – and instead provides little proto-melodies, recurring textures and cellular ideas, which are lovely but very rarely coalesce into anything you can really grasp on to.

Having said that, the most obvious recurring idea appears to be what I am calling the ‘Helheimr Theme,’ so named after the Nordic yawp of encouragement the four friends adopt as their battle cry. The theme is a wonderful amalgam of darting pianos, trilling metallic instruments, lithe woodwinds, and a sheen of warm strings, energetic and playfully positive. The most unique aspect of the theme, however, are the vocals, which are clearly live people, but have been distorted and electro-acoustically manipulated in post production to sound like synths. The voices don’t appear to be saying anything tangible, and my feeling is that they are intended to represent the origins of the languages Tolkien creates in his head, gradually developing but not yet fully formed. You can hear these ideas clearly in cues like “Impecunious Circumstances,” the excellent “The TCBS,” and later in “A Good Man in the Dirt,” “Sunlit,” and “Everything That’s Good”.( Moviemusic)