January 13, 2017

  • Revisiting Jurassic Park

    One might wonder at first glance if there was a need for an updated and expanded release of both these 1990 John Williams’ scores.  In the case of Jurassic Park (1993), the original album was fairly generous with well over an hour’s worth of music.  For The Lost World, some may have scratched up their original album of 68 minutes of music as it was in a flimsy cardboard casing with 3D popup art.  Looking over the four disc’s worth of music here, there will be different reasons for considering La-La Land’s recent set that will make it worth your time.  The set is a limited edition of 5000 units.

     

    Spielberg’s first outing to Crichton’s dinosaur theme park was a big blockbuster return for the director.  It was a great year for both he and John Williams as their next collaboration that year, the stunning Schindler’s List, was about as far from this sci-fi thriller as one could get.  For this new presentation, La-La Land has put the score back in film order.  There are a number of tracks here that look familiar but are film versions (so completists will probably want to hang on to their original CD).   There is undera half hour of “bonuses” here.  The overall score time plays out to just around 77 minutes.  An additional section featuring a run through of the theme, the “Stalling Around” music from the animated segment, and then the film version of “Welcome to Jurassic Park” (the album version is used after the “finale”).  The booklet is not much help to navigate why some of this is appearing like this, and theoretically there was room to have the complete original album included.  That frustration all goes away because…well, the sound is simply amazing!
    The “Opening Titles” with that plunked low note really pops out in this remastering.  It sets the tone for one amazing musical moment after another.  While some of the new segments are nice to have, it is really hearing this often stellar sound which reveals so much detail throughout these recordings.  You can really get a sense of the integrated electronics in tracks like “Dennis Steals the Embryo”.  There is also an almost Always-like wistfulness to some of the relaxed pauses of “A Tree for My Bed” or the touching “Remembering Petticoat Lane.”  Having the larger sequences back in film order helps get a better sense for the way Williams is building tension and follows the desperation and unfolding terror that kicks off in “To the Maintenance Shed.”  “The Raptor Attack” is equally intense and again the detail in the remastering is simply awesome.  Over and over again, one tends to check the playlist to just see which track is playing and this alone often is an indication of how different, and so much better, this new release sounds.

     

    One could simple pick this up for the sheer audio quality that reveals so much in Jurassic Park, but the real icing comes in nearly an hour’s more worth of music from the 1997 sequel, The Lost World.  In addition to creating an entirely new main theme, the score features some of the composer’s most chilling work to that point.  Some of the most interesting sequences were those that recalled Hatari!  “The Hunt” is one of the primary cues that introduced some of this interesting percussion music.  As one listens here, you can get a sense of Williams utilizing some of his earlier West Coast jazz rhythms, often blending 7/8 and ¾ meters, coupled with stark contemporary concert music.  The whole sequence featuring the bandaging of a baby T-Rex is included here and while one can see why Williams chose to just give us a taste of this on the album, the opportunity to hear it as intended apart from the film is one of the big selling points of this set.  The same goes for extended music and previously unreleased segments for the final portion of the film as well.  This included an extended “Visitor in San Diego.”  Again, the detail, especially in the percussion writing, cuts through and builds the tension quite well.  There is a bit more electronic integration as well that helps create a different level of complexity and contemporary feel to parts of the score (sometimes it feels not far removed from the way it would get used for Sleepers composed the previous year).  The Jurassic Park theme closes out the primary presentation with a very breezy performance.  An alternate main title and film version incorporating the ”Tranquilizer Dart and End Credits” closes off the disc nicely.

    So one need not hesitate to grab this set of Williams’ scores.  Stunning sound throughout makes this a demonstration-level set and easily justifies the re-issue of Jurassic Park which has never sounded better.  The extra music from The Lost World is worth the time as well with a better sense of the original intent of the score, even if the film itself might have cut music, or used different music altogether.  The CDS maintain the imprint of dinosaur outlines for each disc.  The booklet makes for a good read.  Some will be a bit frustrated that the track listings are buried within the booklet itself.  It might have been nice to have the front couple pages open up for the first score and the back couple for the other score (or at least had them all together).  This is magnified by the number of times you will want to reference these at least the first couple times.  All said, the new set is worth every penny and provides a bit of a window showing some of the early action and scoring ideas that Williams would continue to nuance in future action scores over the next two decades.