July 9, 2014

  • Hamlisch's D.A.R.Y.L. Premieres on CD

    Young Barrett Oliver (The Neverending Story) plays a young amnesiac boy who is found by a family who tries to help him while also discovering he has special abilities.  D.A.R.Y.L. is one of those many unusual science and computer-based teen movies from the 1980s.  Simon Wincer’s film would be the  first of many family-oriented films that the director would helm in his career (Free Willy, The Phantom, The Young Black Stallion).  Marvin Hamlisch’s film music career had featured a number of early comedies for Woody Allen, and romantic dramas (The Way We Were, Sophie’s Choice), in addition to his amazing song writing gifts and work on Broadway (The Chorus Line).  D.A.R.Y.L. however is quite interesting as it was his first science fiction project.  It also came at a time when the composer’s recent stage projects had been horrible failures and so the current film, the only one he would score between 1983-1987, came along at a seeming nadir in his career.   La-La Land Records is releasing the score in a limited edition of 1500 copies which will give the composer's fans some wonderful music to enjoy and hopefully introduce the score to a slightly wider audience.

    The tunefulness of Hamlisch’s music is on full display from the beautiful opening “Main Title” with a gentle whistled introduction against rich strings that feels even a bit more like a mid-1970s score at first.  Some unusual dissonant ideas enter in the center of the track before a harmonic idea provides a hint of the song “Somewhere I Belong.”    The more gentle orchestral style, with warm harmonies and touching solo ideas, will also feature some electronic touches along the way.  In “Long Long Ago/Is It Me?”, Hamlisch begins with the simple piano lesson music and then grows this into a somewhat classical style and then uses it to move into his main thematic material.  The music has a real romantic gentleness to it with warm orchestra writing and beautiful thematic development.  Electronics are used somewhat sparingly and when they do appear (as in the opening of the “Baseball Montage”) they tend to create a more pop-like groove to the music, revisited in “Turtle’s Homer”.  The harmonica solo in “The Departure” is another of those somewhat pop-like instrumentals.  He also finds some rather intense and bizarre musical settings for TASCOM by creating a blend of synthesizer sounds and unusual orchestration.  Synths are often used to create extra tension along with some martial music that will be used in the army sequences and for the character General Graycliffe to provide appropriate menace.

    After presenting the score proper, La-La Land includes 3 additional “bonus” tracks including Teddy Pendergrass’ cover of “Somewhere I Belong”, a brief excerpt of a Beethoven variation setting, and a Muzak-ish take on “Isn’t It Romantic”.  They have also restored music to the score that was dialed out of the film.  Like many of Hamlisch’s scores, D.A.R.Y.L. proves to be a rather engaging work filled with memorable thematic content that provides great continuity to the score.  The music can shift quickly from a pop to classical feel effortlessly.  The result is one of the surprising little scores that further enhances the composer’s discography.