February 13, 2014

  • Batman: Brave & Bold Gets Stellar Release

    Fans of DC Comics animated series owe a debt of gratitude to this latest collection of music from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  La-La Land’s new limited edition release features collections of cues from 12 episodes taken from its three season run on Cartoon Network (2008-2011).  It will make an interesting companion to New Line Records’ release of the Emmy-nominated “Mayhem of the Music Meister” released a while ago.  The imagery of the series has a bit of a retro look and the score tends to help cement that unique approach.  Composers Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis, and Kristopher Carter all cut their teeth in this musical world working with Shirley Walker on the Batman animated series and let to the establishment of their company, Dynamic Music Partners.  For the present series, producers wanted to try and recapture the musical soundworld that Neal Hefti used in the classic live-action Batman in the 1960s and the result was that the team found inspiration from a host of influences such as Goldsmith, Morricone, Schifrin, Mancini, and Hagen.

    The appearance of a variety of superheros and villains allowed the team to create thematic ideas that could run throughout the series.  While there are no real specific tracks for these characters, thematic ideas recur within episodes enough to help identify them with the paired superhero of the week.  With nearly 100 tracks, the music moves through a few set stylistic ideas and then one tends to sit back and simply enjoy the ride.  Much of the action-based music tends to have one foot firmly planted in a Schifrin-esque funky or jazz universe that resembles the score for The Incredibles (“Gentleman Ghost Busted”, “Oa Arrival”) often pushed along by bongos to lend a more retro vibe..  Some of the more lyrical sections (“The Ideal Society”, “Father Son Bonding”, “The Logical Solution”) have rather warm thematic ideas that are a cross between Goldsmith and a bit of Horner.  Music often shifts into darker realms rather quickly even in these often beautiful openings.  There can be some interesting wind colors explored in some of the more intimate moments (“Conversation by the Sea”).  The blend of some acoustic instrumentation with high end samples and a nice synth/sampled string ensemble works quite well.  Plenty of interesting cues abound in this collection.  Some of the additional highlights are the Elfman-esque “Villains & Holidays”; a bit of 1950s sci-fi for “UFOS and Alien Monsters”; a nice blend of character themes and interesting funkier sounds for the episode “The Mask of Matches Malone”; some rock licks in “Outsiders vs. Despero”; a little Morricone Spaghetti-Western for “Giddyap”; nice 1960s Mancini-esque jazz for “Your Car or Mine?”; hints of the Hefti theme and Batman series scoring style in “Batmania Battle”; lounge jazz for “Joker Laughs Last”; some noir-ish jazz for the selections in the episode “Chill of the Night!”; and some period rock for “Bat-Mite Goes Too Far”.  All said, there are many great cues here that are well-sequenced such that the listening experience stays fairly fresh throughout both discs.

    The use of sequences where the music has a minute or two to unfold helps make the total listening experience rather enjoyable and allows for a great blend of darker narrative sequence, action music, and reflective moments.  There are a couple large projects in animated television music coming from La-La Land this year and this one is certainly part of the label’s great standards both in terms of musical presentation and accompanying booklet.  The information tends to be presented in a more general essay way for each episode which makes for quick reference and understanding without pushing the booklet to massive proportions.  Each episode has a synopsis in the booklet followed by the tracks for that episode.  This is another excellent compilation of music from an animated DC series.