RELATED
SITES:
Ganymede
Ink Syndicate
CannonFilms.com
The Dunsel Report
SYNDICATION:
Atom Feed
BLOG LINKS:
John Gorenfeld
Paul Frankenstein
Jim Steinman
Soul of Trek
True Father
ST XI
ASSORTED
WRITINGS:
"Cannon
Films: The Rise and Fall of Menahem Golan" (2001)
"Fast Company" (2007)
"Sci-Fi Law" (2007)
"Last
Man Dancing" (2001)
"Our Alien, HE" (1987)
"Drummer
on Top: The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith" (2002)
"Doubting Peter" (2000)
"The
Home Mixing Handbook" (unfinished, 2004)
"Ballot
Box Deja Vu: California's Anti-Gay Propositions" (2000)
"Singin'
the Hi-Res Blues" (2003)
BIO:
I
grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now live in Brooklyn, New York.
I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Swarthmore College and
a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Feel free to email
me at patrick@runkle.info.
From
2000 until 2004, I was the editorial director for ArtistPro,
a music-industry trade publisher in the Bay Area. I also was
editorial director for ArtistPro's short-lived national magazine,
which was distributed to all the members of the GRAMMY organization.
(That includes Phil Spector.)
Current
activities include my band, Ganymede, my trips to Canada, and various other things I do. (See above for links.) I also have a large collection of oversize video boxes from the early 80s.
ARCHIVES:
January 2004 /
February 2004 /
March 2004 /
April 2004 /
May 2004 /
June 2004 /
July 2004 /
August 2004 /
September 2004 /
October 2004 /
November 2004 /
December 2004 /
January 2005 /
February 2005 /
March 2005 /
April 2005 /
May 2005 /
June 2005 /
July 2005 /
August 2005 /
September 2005 /
October 2005 /
November 2005 /
December 2005 /
January 2006 /
February 2006 /
March 2006 /
April 2006 /
May 2006 /
June 2006 /
July 2006 /
August 2006 /
September 2006 /
October 2006 /
November 2006 /
December 2006 /
January 2007 /
February 2007 /
March 2007 /
April 2007 /
May 2007 /
June 2007 /
July 2007 /
August 2007 /
September 2007 /
October 2007 /
November 2007 /
December 2007 /
January 2008 /
February 2008 /
March 2008 /
April 2008 /
|
|
Mike Oldfield's most recent album, Music of the Spheres, was released in March. It's fantastic, and immediately recalls a "classical" version of Tubular Bells, with a little bit more thematic development and a focus on rich melodies. Mostly orchestral, Spheres hits many of the highlights of Oldfield's career, such as a gorgeous Incantations-flavored bit in "Shabda" and some Ommadawn-style classical guitar virtuosity in "Silhouette."
When I heard that Music of the Spheres was to be a "classical" orchestral release, I was ready to be annoyed and bored. Mike's previous experiments with orchestra, a long track on the pleasant-but-inconsequential Voyager and the embarrassing Millennium Bell, were fairly syrupy, dull and underwhelming. But the arrangements on Spheres are uniformly energetic and fresh.
I have to say, it was about time Mike did something good. One of my favorite all-around musicians, his last great achievement was Tubular Bells III, which was ten years ago, and I was really worrying that he'd lost his touch. While I loved the electronica flavor of TB III, I thought Mike's subsequent forays into dance music were pretty pathetic, especially 2002's Tres Lunas and 2005's Light + Shade, parts of which sounded dangerously like background music for The Weather Channel.
In an unrelated tidbit, the biggest news in the film score community recently is the release, after 23 years, of Jerry Goldsmith's thundering score to Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. The 3000-copy limited edition sold out within two days, a powerful testament to Goldsmith's continued drawing power. The Baby score is an absolutely classic iteration of the Goldsmith formula: take a crappy genre movie, write a complex, percussive, beautiful score that absolutely puts the movie to shame, and have the movie and score go completely unnoticed.
|
