The Lord of the rings movie trilogy soundtrack's my favorite music for any movie and for any type, ever. Howard Shore's composition is so rich, intricate and engaging, that it's an integral part of the movies ; Yet, I also love listening to it independently.
This kind of experience is actually quite interesting, because without the added sounds of dialogues, fights, footsteps and general ambiance from the movie, the soundtrack offers a pure musical field, which I love listening to either on headphones, or, better yet, on the 7.1 hifi setup, even if the CD's only in stereo, as the speakers take over the entire range.
Off course, if I had the full recording editions (which i'll discuss further in this entry), I'd get a 'superior' sound but even a simple CD spread over 7.1 channels is quite impressive in itself.
I'm talking, evidently, of the movie trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, and not the animated movie, which has a completely different feel and theme, that it'd need a separate entry, once I re-watch it.
I find that this soundtrack is both rhythmic, especially in those battle scenes which have drumbeats, my absolute favorite, but also quite mellow in other moments - either to mark suspense or romance, or slower actions going on-screen.
It's epic, it's rhythmic, it's slow at times, and we are offered some beautiful songs and performed by some of the cast members, Liv Tyler, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Miranda Otto ; but also by musicians Enya, Annie Lennox, Emiliana Torrini, Sissel Kyrkjebo.
Howard Shore was such a good choice for its creation, composition and conducting ; this soundtrack has specific themes (nature, battle, regions, characters...).
The best part is that it's an orchestral soundtrack, with rare exceptions of songs. Everything flows naturally from one chapter to the next, flawlessly and with no break. The best continuous soundtrack I've ever heard! What a bright and brilliantly composed piece of art, which conveys perfectly well the adventures, fantasy, romance and friendships in such wonderful music!
There are two main types of soundtrack cds :
The exert portions, one cd per movie, with 18+19+19 tracks, respectively to each movie ;
or The full recordings, comprised by 3CD+1DVD for the first two movies, 4CD+1DVD for the last, with 37+45+55 tracks, respectively.
The full recordings offer the complete soundtracks on dvd, with 'superior sound' which must be somewhere between the qualities of the cd and the bluray, without ever reaching that highest level, simply due to technological limitations.
Unfortunately, these boxsets are all out of print and available only as second hand, for 100's of €/$/£, way out of my budget. As I discovered these editions really late, I couldn't buy them when they were released, and thus the only ways to listen are evidently through online streaming or by watching the movies - which is never an issue, since I absolutely love them.
As the back-covers never show the titles and there are so many tracks, let me link to each movie's different editions with discogs :
Fellowship of the ring... Complete / Regular
The two towers ... Complete/ Regular
The return....Complete/ Regular
They have additional editions which the above links will send you to and there are also full trilogy boxsets Regular/ Shorter
There is a difference in total tracks for each of those as follows 18+19+19 VS 13+13+12, so I think it's best to get the regular, fuller version, released on reprise records/Warner, instead of Deluxe, which is a very misleading name in my opinion... I have no understanding of any improvement in this edition in comparison to the regular.
No comments:
Post a Comment