James Horner - Aliens: The Deluxe Edition

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Free Music Notes for Aliens: The Deluxe Edition

Free Music Review: Even better the second time around..
Hit: 5 Stars

This is one of James Horner's great triumphs in film scoring. It's just too bad that the majority of the music didn't wind up in the scenes for which it was written (a problem that plagued Jerry Goldsmith's score for the original "Alien" as well). That aside, the Deluxe Edition is a revelation of just the kind of spooky, even downright terrifying music that Horner is capable of creating (not to mention the action cues that have become akin to textbook examples of action film scoring). The "Main Title" masterfully sets the tone of the film giving us deep orchestral rumblings juxtaposed with a lonely string line reminiscent of Aram Khatchaturyan. These two elements would form the backbone of how Horner would fill his score with the sense of the impending doom that lay in store for our characters. I'm immensely grateful for the tense, non-action oriented music included on the album. Unlike the first incarnation of the "Aliens" soundtrack it gives more than just a glimpse of the huge, dark paintbrush that James Horner was using to color his score. Of course, the action music is fantastic. It's straight-forward, muscular, go for the jugular kind of stuff that wouldn't be heard in film again until the likes of a guy named Hans Zimmer would come bursting on the scene a few years later. While the bonus cues are also a lot of fun, particularly the percussion-only cuts, my single favorite new cue is "Combat Drop". Although Cameron ultimately chose not to use this cue and opted for one of the percussion-only tracks (not credited to Horner, but to a Harry Rabinowitz), the listener is given greater insight into what Horner had in mind for the heroics of the space marines.

Ultimately the score would never see the composer's vision in the way it was intended. Instead, what we got with the film version of "Aliens" was a musical dice-job that doesn't do Horner's work justice. However, this new presentation of a first-rate James Horner score gives us a fresh new way to look at a modern masterpiece of film scoring. Highly recommended

Aliens: The Deluxe Edition Poster