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The wave of remakes inspired by Japaneses films continues with Pulse,
a Wes Craven-penned thriller that tells
the story of young computer hackers who channel a mysterious signal that
opens a doorway to another world, full of forces looking for a portal to
cross over in order to wreak havoc.
The film, directed by Jim Sonzero, is scored by Elia Cmiral and the Lakeshore Records
album will hit store shelves on Sept. 5th. However we did receive an
advanced promotional copy of the album, including only Cmiral's score (the
regular album also features three songs by Intercooler, Overnight Lows and
Los Amigos Invisibles). Born in Czechoslovakia, Elia Cmiral wrote scores for several European films and
three ballets before coming to the United States to attend USC's famous Film
Scoring Program. His first work in America was the tango-based music for Apartment Zero. By the mid-1990s, after scoring the
Nash Bridges television series, Cmiral was selected to score John Frankenheimer's
suspense thriller Ronin, starring Robert DeNiro - for me, his best
score to date. Following the success of Ronin, Elia has continued
to provide highly original and evocative scores for major Hollywood studios
as well as independent filmmakers, including Stigmata, Battlefield Earth,
Bones and Species 3.
Pulse is Cmiral's second collaboration with Craven, having
scored Wes Craven Presents: They in 2002. Now, Cmiral crafted a contemporary electronica/modern orchestral
score. Using an ISDN connection from his home in Los Angeles, he conducted
seventy minutes of score with a sixty piece orchestra located in his native
Czech Republic. With three programmers to handle the huge amount of sound
design and five orchestrators, he used extensive synths and percussion
programming, a programmed choir and live voices including his own. According
the composer the work was intense, and Sonzero has made him explore every possible or impossible musical and sonic corner.
In fact, after listening the disc's 38
minutes of Cmiral's score, we can notice that this is an atonal, dissonant, very
experimental and heavily sound design based music. Unfortunately, apart the
images the music does not succeeds to be an easy listening experience:
there's no clear estructural development, no theme or motif to catch our attention
- only "Video Diary", with its solemn string chords, give us a hint of a
thematic idea. But most of time there's just a certain number of
significantly recognizable sounds which the composer used throughout the
whole score, like an extremely low single pulse
tumbledown. Tender piano occasionally makes appearance, but atmosphere and
chills, courtesy of sinister strings and clusters of electronic sound,
remain the essence of the score.
At the end the composer deserves to be congratulated for his decision to
avoid the clichés of the classic horror orchestral score that the producers
wanted. Instead he created a succession of suspensefull ambience music
interrupted from times to times by orchestral/electronic thrills. Although
the resulting score did not please me very much, at least it showcases a
genuine attempt of creative effort. Something currently very rare.
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