Oct 31, 2010

Sundaze 1005

Hello, after a week of comedy shows projecting Halloween in mostly bland fashion, though " It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" concept was rather clever, "Community" was by far the best..worth watching even if you don't follow that show. Enough about that or Halloween, something that was originally called Samhain and was the celtic new year where the old and dead was respectfully guided out of earthly life, the christians usurped it and surplanted it with All Souls and left Halloween as a negativly distorted version of Samhain. Time to be a pagan and revert to Wicca the only somewhat sane religion that is out there (safe Buddism perhaps).

Todays post is about the struggle of good and evil.

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I ripped this from vinyl because at the time there had only been a 2003 limited edition of the soundtrack on cd, amazing considering The Dark Crystal had been the biggest ever foreign film box office succces in Japan until Titanic came along...go figure. Unfortunately at the time i ripped this 3,5 years ago, i had just 80 gigs so i kept it to ogg 7, cdr's still cost money too at that time, so from all the vinyl rips i did my first year only a handful were burned..by far the most wave files were converted to ogg 7 and then deleted, much to my regret now..c'est la vie.. That said this soundtrack is still rare on cd..best option for a digital copy is rip it from the dvd which is available at amazon for a fiver very cheap for a (cult) classic..the movie is kinda inbetween..it aint exactly a family movie..too dark and philosophical and adults in the west at least, weren't that comfortable with being adressed by puppets ( clearly deeper embedded in asian cultures).

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the story goes..

The narrator explains at the beginning of the prologue that the film takes place on "another world, another time... in the age of wonder". The setting is Thra, a biodiverse planet featuring creatures, environments, and magic inspired by common folklore. Thra has three suns; the Greater Sun, the Rose Sun, and the Dying Sun. Many creatures and races inhabit the planet, but the dominant race is the urSkeks, who came from another world and are the guardians of the Crystal of Truth. The Crystal harnesses the forces of nature, especially the light of the three suns, for the benefit of all inhabitants of Thra.

One thousand years before the beginning of the movie, during the Great Conjunction of the three suns, the urSkeks cracked the Crystal of Truth, and split into two races; the hunchbacked, gentle beings known as the Mystics and the vulture-like tyrants known as Skeksis. In that moment the Crystal became the Dark Crystal. The Skeksis then drove the Mystics from the castle where the cracked crystal resided and instituted a reign of terror over their world. Their wrath was particularly directed toward the elf-like Gelflings, due to a prophecy that promised the restoration of the crystal and the end of the Skeksis' power. The prophecy, rediscovered in an ancient Gelfling city, read:“

When single shines the triple sun,
What was sundered and undone
Shall be whole, the two made one,
By Gelfling hand, or else by none.

Right from the start comparisons were made with the Lord Of The Rings saga but that's a rather light comparison, a better one would be that Tolkien could have written it, though in his time setting it on another planet would have labelled it sci fi which it isn't. It's a moraality fairy tale. ”

Trevor Alfred Charles Jones (born 23 March 1949) is a South African orchestral film score composer. Although not especially well known outside the film world, he has composed for numerous films and his music has been critically acclaimed for both its depth and emotion. His first big moviework Excalibur brought Jones to the attention of Jim Henson, who was making The Dark Crystal, and looking for a composer who was young and eager to work in the experimental, free-wheeling way which Henson preferred. The resultant score is an expansive, multi-faceted work, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, augmented by inventive use of Fairlight and Synclavier synthesizers, as well as period instruments like crumhorn, recorder, and the unusual double-flageolet, which Jones came across by chance in a music store.



Dark Crystal Soundtrack - Trevor Jones (82 88mb)

01 - Ouverture
02 - The Power Ceremony
03 - The Storm
04 - The Mystic Master Dies
05 - The Funerals - Jens Journey
06 - The Skeksis Duel
07 - The Pod Dance
08 - Love Theme
09 - Gelflin Song
10 - The Gelflin Ruins
11 - The Landstrider Journey
12 - The Great Conjunction
13 - Finale

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Bo Hanson died earlier this year age 67, he was well known in Sweden, in the rest of the world his Lord Of The Rings album had been all but forgotten certainly after the magnificent movies came out earlier this decade. However at the time in the late sixties when the Tolkien books had become very popular, he was the first musician that decided to make a concept album inspired on these books and he managed to capture the atmosphere so well that after the 70 swedish album "Sagan om ringen " reached Britain he signed a contract with Charisma, the progressive rock label at the time (72) . Bo Hansson's Rings can be seen as an early example of multi-instrumentalist rock, "an early classic of space music" with strange, otherworldly music that sometimes transcend their source material (the trilogy).



Bo Hansson - Lord Of The Rings (196mb)

01 - Leaving shire (första vandringen)
02 - The old forest - tom bombadil (den gamla skogen - tom bombadil)
03 - Fog on the barrow-downs (i skuggornas rike)
04 - The black riders - flight to the ford (de svarta ryttarna - flykten till vadstället
05 - At the house of elrond - the ring goes south (i elrondas hus - ringen vandrar söderut)
06 - A journey in the dark (en vandring i mörker)
07 - Llothlnrien
08 - Shadowfax (skuggfaxe)
09 - The horns of rohan - the battle of the pelennor fields (rohans horn - slaget vid pelennors slätter)
10 - Dreams in the house of healing (drömmar i läkandets hus)
11 - Homeward bound - the scouring of the shire (hamfärden - fylke rensas)
12 - The grey havens (de grl hamnarna)

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3 comments:

Cass said...

Greetings, Rho. A re-up these two would be most appreciated, when time allows.

Cass said...

Many Thanks :)

Anonymous said...

"Tolkien could have written it, though in his time setting it on another planet would have labelled it sci fi which it isn't."

Fact check here.

"sci-fi" is a term invented by (well, in truth, popularised by, but may as well have been invented by) Forrest J. Ackerman and it came into popularity from 1961 onwards. Tolkien's major work was published in the mid-1950's.

The venue for The Lord of the Rings is a continent called Middle-Earth. That continent is on a planet named Arda.