GHOST STORIES & SPACE ODYSSEYS

September 23, 2020

Don Davis’ SPACE ODYSSEY and Howard Blake’s CANTERVILLE GHOST & AMITYVILLE 3D Soundtracks

Among Dragon’s Domain Records September releases are these dynamic genre scores of note. SPACE ODYSSEY: VOYAGE TO THE PLANETS is a BBC science fiction adventure told in documentary style about an international crew of scientist/astronauts exploring the solar system. The 2-part TV odyssey imagines a six-year mission undertaken by a crew of five, piloting the nuclear thermal rocket-powered Pegasus spacecraft. The crew face a number of hardships and disappointments along the way, which provide dramatic adventure and danger between the various interactions experienced by the crew.

The music by Don Davis (MATRIX trilogy, BOUND, JURASSIC PARK III) for SPACE ODYSSEY both energizes the story with a powerful sense of discovery and also pride in accomplishment for the mission fictionalized in the film. It’s a powerful work with a strong main theme and containing some of the composer’s most affecting music. With a live orchestra used primarily to express the sweeping variations of the main theme, the electronics provide eerie music to describe the planets visited by the Pegasus crew, as well as those situations where the astronauts are in danger.

Two ghost story scores by acclaimed British composer Howard Blake (THE DUELLISTS, THE CHANGELING, S.O.S. TITANIC) range from the light-hearted 1986 TV version of THE CANTERVILLE GHOST, with John Gielgud as the cantankerous spirit to the guttural 3-Dimensional horror of AMITYVILLE 3D, both possessing excellent orchestral scores by the British composer.

Both releases are available on CD with accompanying digital 24 Bit Wav and MP3 files in limited editions of 500 copies. For details and to sample tracks, see BuySoundtrax

Book One
Book 1 Cover

This website was created partly to promote the book series, Musique Fantastique [Second Edition] 100+ Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music by Randall D. Larson, but more importantly is intended to be a resource for news, views, & interviews about music for science fiction, fantasy, and horror films. As an extension of the books, it provides additional material and links to further resources about this unique genre of film and television scoring. For news on the book series, scroll down toward the bottom of the home page.

The Author
Randall Larson (small)

To contact Randall, email soundtraxrdl@gmail.com

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Frontispiece artwork by Allen Koszowski from Musique Fantastique 1st Edition, Scarecrow Press, 1985.