One of Kurt Russel’s iconic screen characters, Snake, returned after the events of Escape from New York (1981) to take on the search for the President’s daughter who has snatched an important nuclear key that could destroy the world.  John Carpenter turned to Shirley Walker to provide a fuller orchestral backdrop to the new film.  Carpenter has worked with Walker before Memoirs of an Invisible Man, the first action score written by a woman.  Hard to believe that even by 1996 there were still very few women given the opportunity to help major studio projects let alone action films.  Rachel Portman had managed to break some ground here in more dramatic film making, but arguably that would not have been possible without the hard work of composer, orchestrator, and conductor Shirley Walker.  Films like Escape From L.A. allowed her the chance to demonstrate that what it took to write action music was to simply understand how to compose great music.  And that she certainly was capable of as demonstrated in her superb work on series like The Flash and Batman: The Animated Series.  She was really just beginning to break out in films like Willard and the Final Destination series when her life was cut short due to a stroke.  Certainly one of the hardest working folks in the industry, Walker left behind some great animated television music, plenty of personal stamps on scores of the 1980s and 1990s, and launched a few composers on their way as well.  La-La Land has been a great source of bringing her work, and those of her co-arrangers and composers, to disc.  Here is a newly-expanded edition that allows fans of the film to really hear a great deal of the score.

Marked to indicate whose work is being heard where, the score is a more realistic collaboration of ideas by Carpenter that are then fleshed out by Walker.  Walker maintains some of these electronic soundscapes while adding additional orchestration.  The original main title from Escape from New York (co-composed with Alan Howarth) kicks off the album and then this theme gets transformed in the new score.  The result is an often grittier score with interesting industrial sounds worked into the general sound mix.  The pulses and beats certainly honor Carpenter’s sound, and yet Walker manages to swirl a great deal of material around them.  The music takes on more shape than it had in the earlier score and then expands it adding in additional rock-based riffs and a bit more snarl and growl.  The orchestral moments often grow up out of these textures with stunning effect (”The Broadcast/The Coliseum”; “Decapitation/Game Time/The Game”).  There are some interesting moments like “Sunset Boulevard Bazaar” with its ethnic-sounding melodic ideas and intriguing underlying ostinato pattern; insanely funky “Motorcycle Chase” with industrial influences or its orchestral parallel, the superb “Queen Mary/Hang Glider Attack” (a little David Shire-like);  some Morricone-like harmonica moments (“Showdown”, “Presidential Decree”); mysterious and dark electronic ideas with often rich bright harmonies glowing across the sound picture (“I Think We’re Lost/Taslima”);  intense string textures (“The Black Box/Target L.A.”); and interesting action sequences (“Escape from Colisseum”) that continue to build to the film’s finale.

La-La Land allows fans of this score a quite ample presentation that clearly marks both composer’s contributions to the score.  There is a bonus track (“J.C.’s Blues”) to round off the album.  Great notes and overview will provide further information about this update to an equally iconic 1980s electronic work.

One of the huge releases from La-La Land this year must certainly be this massive limited edition collection of music from Superman: The Animated Series and The New Superman/Batman Adventures.  These latter 1990s series continued the great work of animated television music that Shirley Walker had created for Batman: The Animated Series and her team of composers (Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis, Kris Carter, and Harvey Cohen) helped insure that these programs had some great musical support.  Most of the team here, minus Cohen, would work on DC Comics Batman: The Brave and the Bold which also saw a 2-disc release from this label concurrently.  With over five hours (!) of musical material, one cannot attempt to be terribly exhaustive, though a few comments are certainly in order about the release and its content.

First up, is the main title that Shirley Walker created for Superman: The Animated Series.  The music was used during the series’ first season (1996-1997) but subsequently dropped when the show was aired as The New Superman/Batman Adventures.  (It was put back for subsequent video release of the episodes. )  Of course, that main title is also included and is used to bookend the music on disc two.  Other nice touches are the original end credits and a few promo cues that help start or conclude a disc, plus a fuller presentation of the theme as used for the video end credits.  A few additional “bonus” tracks are sprinkled throughout.

Disc One focuses mostly on the three-part episode, The Last Son of Krypton including a bonus track of music and effects.  Essentially a feature-length program when edited together, the storyline begins the story arc that follows the birth of Kal-El and the last days of Krypton as the baby is sent to earth.  The music tends to only hint at the primary Superman theme in music that is both epic for larger action sequences, and equally touching for moments with Kal-El’s family (a dedicated “Family Theme” presents this music).  The first part of this music focuses on the conflict between Jor-El and Brainiac.  There is an interesting electronic idea that occasionally flits over the music suggesting appropriate menace along with dark dissonant harmony.  A more Williams-esque style sort of asserts itself in the central episode with great brass writing and many skittering strings that really soars in “Clark’s First Flight”.  The final episode tends to create a variety of interesting off-kilter melodic ideas and interesting use of tension building devices with drone ideas alongside big symphonic adventure music.  The team of Ritmanis, McCuistion, and Cohen each take one of these sections and manage to build on the previous musical ideas over the course of this story arc.  Two additional episodes (“Monkey Fun” and “Tools of the Trade”) fill out this portion of the release.  “Monkey Fun” adds some appropriate jungle feel with an increase in percussion effects resulting inreally interesting action music in tracks like “Monkey Business/Babysitting with Fleas/Bacteria Attack.”  In “Tools of the Trade”, themes are introduced for several characters (Turpin, Kanto, and Darkseid) which will become further developed throughout a larger story arc

Disc Two focuses on music from the three-part “World’s Finest” from season two which features the Joker, and music from “Myxzpixilated”, which introduced the character Mr. Myxzptlk, and “Father’s Day”, the first episode to feature an entire score by Walker.  There is a fun little “bonus” here written as background string quartet music.  Fans will appreciate the appearance of the Joker (with its Elfman-esque bounce) and Batman themes from the Batman: The Animated Series as well as new thematic material for Lex Luthor and a jazzy love theme for the relationship of Bruce and Lois Lane throughout the “World’s Finest” selections.  It is marks one of the first integrated collaborations for McCuistion and Ritmanis.  There are some interesting electronic/theremin-like sounds (first appearing in “Joker Undoes Carlini”) as well as some great large-scale orchestral music.  Cohen’s music for “Myxzpixilated” is another great highlight running the gamut of Stalling-esque cartoon styles to Mancini (for some source music in an apartment sequence) and even a little Herrmann.  Walker’s score adds more rhythm percussion and some guitar ideas to give the music more of an edge at times.

For discs three and four, we move into music from episodes that focused on additional characters: Green Lantern (“In Brightest Day”, which received an Emmy nomination and is the source for the theme that would be used in Justice League as well as featuring some large orchestral scoring); Lex Luthor and Mercy Graves (“A Little Piece of Home”, which revisits Walker’s Lex Luthor theme and features some jazzy music as well); “Livewire” (showcasing more electric guitar and rock styles);  Darkseid, Orion, and New Genesis (“Apokolips…Now”, a fascinating blend of a variety of character themes with hero action music and even a little noir-ish style); Kara/Supergirl (“Little Girl Lost”, another Emmy nomination, and featuring some excellent Copland-style Americana and Williams-esque writing, as well as some interesting percussion and electronic additions); and Parasite (“Feeding Time”, an episode with a more involved score with interesting rhythmic challenges and intensity).  Disc four culminates a story arc involving Darkseid in the two-part “Legacy”.  The score is easily among one of her most brilliant equally paralleling her work for Mask of the Phantasm.  The amazing orchestral writing is often quite stunning to hear and one cannot help but feel that the world lost such a talent way too soon!

The massive presentation here includes a good booklet with information related to each episode and identification of who worked on what project, or whose music was included in a given sequence.  Air dates and summaries are also all here.  This time, the booklet features all the track title labels while the back of the package lists episodes and track numbers which works very well for a quick glance.  The music is all great superhero music and fans of the genre will certainly find much to enjoy.  Each of the contributors for these scores finds a way to create music that is uniquely their own, while also managing to provide some connection to the style setup for the series as a whole.  The pairing of these composers with specific episodes certainly allowed each challenges which they were able to tackle with great end results.  Apart from their being a host of music, the bottom line is that the sequencing of these discs makes this entire package an amazingly engaging listening experience.  One forgets rather quickly that these scores were for animated television!