La-La Land Records is releasing music for the upcoming TV Series, Caprica, featuring music by Bear McCreary.

Caprica  is set 50 years before the storyline of Battlestar Galactica where we first see two important families that will be of import to a future viewers know but the characters have yet to discover: the Graystones and the Adamas.  It is a Sci-Fi Channel pilot episode which appeared on DVD in April.  The show itself will not appear on Sci-Fi until next year.  Bear McCreary, having worked on all four years of the updated Battlestar Galactica, returns here to provide another great cinematic score. 

McCreary’s penchant for creating engaging themes is on full display as the disc opens with a delicate melody, voiced on flute, for “The Graystone Family” (which will recur throughout the score and in a sensitive and beautiful piano rendition for “Amanda Graystone” at the center of the disc).  A more plaintive idea appears in the following “Terrorism on the Lev” with electric violin cast against syncopated drum loops.  There is an implication for the sort of world instrumentation that McCreary used in Battlestar Galactica, but it flows more out of the traditional orchestral backdrop.  “Grieving” is another of a Glass-like minimalist sound with a wrenching theme that feels closer to Elfman when all is said and done, this melding of other sounds still has McCreary’s stamp on it through a wonderfully rich orchestral texture of winds and strings. 

The music works on many levels to underscore a more inner world of the characters, suggesting an inner emotional turmoil for scenes as it twists and turns from sadness to brief glimmers of hope (“Lacey and Zoe-A”).  This is in contrast to the slowly evolving electronic menace of the developing artificial intelligence threat, often scored with percussion programming, some ambient background and dissonant clusters that pile together thematic elements from which a thread of a motive or more complete theme might escape.  It is also interesting to hear how the thematic ideas move between instrumental colors, picked up almost effortlessly from one instrument to another in a natural ebb and flow which itself colors the emotional impact of the theme at that moment.  The Graystone theme has that quality of impending darkness that is reminiscent of the “Anakin’s Theme” in the Star Wars “prequels”.  With each appearance it seems to gain in tragic importance.

With its mix of semi-traditional scoring and minimalist touches, Caprica is a great listen with strong thematic content in fuller orchestral garb coupled with a balanced mix of active percussive cues.  There is enough variety of texture and development in both to make this another of McCreary’s fine scoring efforts in an increasingly long list of accomplishments.  Like any good score it makes you want to watch what it was meant to accompany.

I might have commented here before that I tend to be pretty wary of sci-fi TV series.  Everytime I get hooked into one, it gets cancelled.  So I find that I can catch up with them much faster once they hit DVD.  Such will probably be the case with Fox's popular sci-fi series Terminator--The Sarah Connor Chronicles a high-octane TV spin off from the 1990s cult classics.

The score is by Bear McCreary who has been building a continuously impressive set of work on series television.  Music from Battlestar Galactica and Eureka recently helped fans hear the music work on its own apart from the show.  Now La-La Land has released music from one of the new Fox hit sci-fi series, Terminator—The Sarah Connor Chronicles. 

McCreary employs a hint of Feidel’s original Terminator theme in the opening title music for the series, and then takes that percussive underpinning into a variety of different places throughout the first season scores displayed here.  There is a beautiful lyricism to “Sarah Connor’s Theme” that is always under attack by the percussive backdrops that incessantly find their way into the music.  Metallic sounds are an important component to the score as a whole.  Often they are manipulated in intriguing ways with sampling and other synth ideas.  The backdrop may bubble along in an almost nightmarish version of minimalism, but thematic threads recur enough to create a sense of continuity overall. 

McCreary uses strings in this score, but they too are electric in nature, with their sounds lending an unsettling warmth to the score.  Some wind writing helps to deliver a more human element as well.  Action sequences, of which there are plenty here, are also quite exciting pieces filled with great percussive variety.  Again it is a rhythmic pattern for the Terminator that helps bridge the gap between the earlier films and the new series.  “John and Riley,” from the episode “Automatic for the People,” comes about a fourth of the way in to the disc and calms things down just a bit in a gorgeously-scored track.  Thematic ideas for Derek Reese and Catherine Weaver should be welcome for fans of the music for this series as will the cartoonish “Atomic Al’s Merry Melody” which recalls classic WB cartoons. 

The “Motorcycle Robot Chase” (from “Gnothi Seuton”) features a lot of musical sequencing and manipulation done by Captain Ahab sounding a lot like electronic video game gunfire.  It is a bit much overall, but it is interesting in terms of the sounds being created here and how it relates rhythmically to the Feidel theme.  As is often the case with this sort of music, it tends to work less on its own then when matched to picture, but it does provide a glimpse of what is going on underneath all the effects.  McCreary does not rely on ambient design techniques for his atmosphere here tending to use the rhythmic pulses of various sounds to connect things to the mechanical android worlds.  This coldness works well against the more lyric string and wind writing, though this too may receive some alteration in sound.

The release features music from season one, with just a few tracks from the fall season.  Ten episodes in all are represented here.  The disc opens with Shirley Manson performing “Samson and Delilah” in a special arrangement by McCreary used in the series.  Another song penned and performed by Brendan McCreary is also included about half way in, somewhat messing up the continuity of the score material.  It is all icing on a very richly satisfying series of tracks.  Out of most of the McCreary TV scores released by the label, this one is perhaps the best overall musically and will most likely be followed soon by a second volume from the newest season.

The disc on La-La Land does not appear to be a limited edition so there should be time to catch up with this after the holidays!