An ongoing series wherein I comment on Trevor's recent publicity.
I wanted to wish all my readers around the world a very Happy Holidays, whatever tradition you may observe. I know we're all looking forward to more new music from Trevor in 2016, and especially (hopefully) the new vocal album!
As a special fandom treat, recently I discovered...well...let's call it a "rough" transcript of an interview which Trevor gave to journalist Mick Wall back in 2011 which was posted on Wall's blog in June 2014. They discuss details of Trevor's London-era career, specifically the recording of Wolf, and the rather shocking revelation that the multitracks of Wolf no longer exist because they were later recorded over! Trevor also recounts the development deal with Geffen and the beginnings of YesWest, as well as a mention of his ongoing work on Jacaranda.
http://mickwall.com/?p=269
For those unfamiliar with Wall's work, he has authored a number of books on various rock bands as well as his own adventures in UK music journalism as a writer for Sounds and Kerrang! among other publications. As he notes in the transcript, Mick first met Trevor in London back in 1980.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Agent X's mission is terminated.
Remember how I noted in my last entry that we didn't know if Agent X had been renewed yet? Yeah, well, about that...turns out the news was released after I'd written my entry that the show hit the chopping block.
http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/legends-cancelled-season-2-tnt-1201638881/
I'm not surprised, really. It's a fun show in its' way but it is a bit ridiculous, although it was reportedly doing okay ratings-wise compared to the other shows which were cancelled, but these days even a million viewers isn't enough, it seems. The last three episodes have been scheduled thus: tonight the show will air in its' normal timeslot, and two episodes will be shown back-to-back on the 27th.
http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/legends-cancelled-season-2-tnt-1201638881/
I'm not surprised, really. It's a fun show in its' way but it is a bit ridiculous, although it was reportedly doing okay ratings-wise compared to the other shows which were cancelled, but these days even a million viewers isn't enough, it seems. The last three episodes have been scheduled thus: tonight the show will air in its' normal timeslot, and two episodes will be shown back-to-back on the 27th.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
props from the boss
Agent X series creator William Blake Herron gave Trevor and Paul a nice shoutout on Twitter during the airing of the latest episode "Long Walk Home."
Admittedly I found some of the cues for episode six, "Sacrifice," to be a bit too expected, but they fit the suspenseful tone as needed. Sometimes you need to blend in, after all. But I can see why Herron made this tweet - beyond an overall appreciation for this scoring team, that is. The narrative arc has turned quite solemn and serious over the past three episodes and Trevor and Paul made some studied choices in "Long Walk Home" to underscore the tension in a compelling fashion. It feels big - cinematic - and as I've stated previously they know how to do this so well. The central conflict of the series is not about whatever bad guys John Case has to take on for flag and country, but the dark side of his mission and his profession, the cost of warring in the shadows, what it does to a man, and specifically, what it has done to his predecessors. I have a feeling the final three episodes are going to implode not only the Presidency but the Brotherhood, the implications of which will be far-reaching. Now whether we get to move on from that is still up in the air (as we don't yet know if Agent X will be renewed for a second season), but the stakes are high, and the scoring reflects that.
What interested me most was almost a throwaway - a jazz tune heard in the hotel bar scene with Case and Marks/Volker. Incidental music choices are akin to wallpaper, of a sort, or they should be. Any scene with incidental music which calls attention to itself is always a poor choice, in my opinion, because it takes the viewer out of the story, if only for a moment. But this was quite well-made or chosen in that it's the kind of music you would expect to hear in that milieu, and that's a testament to good scoring - even for a 30-second cue, you make it seamless, a part of the world of the story.
I found the most important thing in this episode is that it is tonally allied - nothing is played for laughs, and even the action sequences have a touch of gravitas to them. This episode is exposition-heavy, and that can be death to a viewer's attention span, so the score has to engage the viewer's emotional spectrum, to let them know that revelation is as important as action. There's a great deal of emotional resonance throughout this episode because so much is at stake. Even though some of the action is little more than illustrated exposition - such as when John and Malcolm are in the Ops Room getting ready to knock out all the systems - and the camera circles like a shark, the music builds, but it's all manipulation, and it works well to distract us from the fact that there's really not much going on in that moment. The rest of the episode - save the shock of the very last scene - is fairly predictable, but remains propulsive and interesting.
Killer score? Yeah well, that remains to be seen but it is excellent scoring indeed.
Huge thx to Trevor Rabin and Paul Linford for the killer score this week! #AgentX @HEPHNERJEFF @PeterOFallon1
— William Blake Herron (@HERRONBLAKE) December 14, 2015
Admittedly I found some of the cues for episode six, "Sacrifice," to be a bit too expected, but they fit the suspenseful tone as needed. Sometimes you need to blend in, after all. But I can see why Herron made this tweet - beyond an overall appreciation for this scoring team, that is. The narrative arc has turned quite solemn and serious over the past three episodes and Trevor and Paul made some studied choices in "Long Walk Home" to underscore the tension in a compelling fashion. It feels big - cinematic - and as I've stated previously they know how to do this so well. The central conflict of the series is not about whatever bad guys John Case has to take on for flag and country, but the dark side of his mission and his profession, the cost of warring in the shadows, what it does to a man, and specifically, what it has done to his predecessors. I have a feeling the final three episodes are going to implode not only the Presidency but the Brotherhood, the implications of which will be far-reaching. Now whether we get to move on from that is still up in the air (as we don't yet know if Agent X will be renewed for a second season), but the stakes are high, and the scoring reflects that.
What interested me most was almost a throwaway - a jazz tune heard in the hotel bar scene with Case and Marks/Volker. Incidental music choices are akin to wallpaper, of a sort, or they should be. Any scene with incidental music which calls attention to itself is always a poor choice, in my opinion, because it takes the viewer out of the story, if only for a moment. But this was quite well-made or chosen in that it's the kind of music you would expect to hear in that milieu, and that's a testament to good scoring - even for a 30-second cue, you make it seamless, a part of the world of the story.
I found the most important thing in this episode is that it is tonally allied - nothing is played for laughs, and even the action sequences have a touch of gravitas to them. This episode is exposition-heavy, and that can be death to a viewer's attention span, so the score has to engage the viewer's emotional spectrum, to let them know that revelation is as important as action. There's a great deal of emotional resonance throughout this episode because so much is at stake. Even though some of the action is little more than illustrated exposition - such as when John and Malcolm are in the Ops Room getting ready to knock out all the systems - and the camera circles like a shark, the music builds, but it's all manipulation, and it works well to distract us from the fact that there's really not much going on in that moment. The rest of the episode - save the shock of the very last scene - is fairly predictable, but remains propulsive and interesting.
Killer score? Yeah well, that remains to be seen but it is excellent scoring indeed.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Happy (to be a Rabinite)
As your humble narrator I readily (and without shame or pretense) identify myself as a Rabinite and so I always enjoy learning when other musicians are fans of Trevor's...though I'm not sure whose good taste is being validated: mine or theirs. One extremely talented person whom I believe I can make a conclusive case for is indie singer/songwriter Happy Rhodes; two of her 90s-era albums feature elements which point to specific citations of Trevor's work, the kind which only a fan would make.
As an artist Happy was truly one-of-a-kind: with an extraordinary range, an adept sense of musicianship, and a timeless sense of presentation, very much in the mode of the ageless troubadour. Her style brings to mind other originators such as Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. I use the past tense because it appears Happy has retired from recording and performance, her last album was released in 2007.
On her 1995 album The Keep - a compendium of acoustic and rare tracks - Happy included something she called "The Yes Medley" and yet with the exception of one of the songs they all have one thing in common: they were written/co-written by Trevor. The inclusion of Rabbitt's "I Sleep Alone" tells me this is really a Trevor Medley, and that gets a big seal of approval from me. For South Africans, fans of Rabbitt may remain fans of Trevor, but as far as the rest of the world, it normally works in reverse; and not all Trevor fans are Rabbitt fans (I consider this a terrible tragedy). Of the YesWest songs Happy chose, those lyrics she includes are the ones Trevor sings on the original recordings. There's a madrigal feel to her versions which I believe fit in nicely with the Maestro's tradition of classical instincts.
On the 1998 release Many Worlds Are Born Tonight, there's a great trip-hop flavored track called "Proof" which features a sample of Trevor's voice - specifically the comically-panicked "Aaah!" from the second verse of "Something To Hold On To." Who else but a fan would desire to include something so obscure and yet so recognizable to other Rabinites (so much so, during live performances of the song Trevor allowed the audience to provide the sound, and they never missed their cue)? It's fan service, a literal shoutout, which equates to an aural wink and upon finding it I was wholly squeeful (in the lingua franca of the Internet).
As an artist Happy was truly one-of-a-kind: with an extraordinary range, an adept sense of musicianship, and a timeless sense of presentation, very much in the mode of the ageless troubadour. Her style brings to mind other originators such as Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. I use the past tense because it appears Happy has retired from recording and performance, her last album was released in 2007.
On her 1995 album The Keep - a compendium of acoustic and rare tracks - Happy included something she called "The Yes Medley" and yet with the exception of one of the songs they all have one thing in common: they were written/co-written by Trevor. The inclusion of Rabbitt's "I Sleep Alone" tells me this is really a Trevor Medley, and that gets a big seal of approval from me. For South Africans, fans of Rabbitt may remain fans of Trevor, but as far as the rest of the world, it normally works in reverse; and not all Trevor fans are Rabbitt fans (I consider this a terrible tragedy). Of the YesWest songs Happy chose, those lyrics she includes are the ones Trevor sings on the original recordings. There's a madrigal feel to her versions which I believe fit in nicely with the Maestro's tradition of classical instincts.
"The Yes Medley"
On the 1998 release Many Worlds Are Born Tonight, there's a great trip-hop flavored track called "Proof" which features a sample of Trevor's voice - specifically the comically-panicked "Aaah!" from the second verse of "Something To Hold On To." Who else but a fan would desire to include something so obscure and yet so recognizable to other Rabinites (so much so, during live performances of the song Trevor allowed the audience to provide the sound, and they never missed their cue)? It's fan service, a literal shoutout, which equates to an aural wink and upon finding it I was wholly squeeful (in the lingua franca of the Internet).
"Proof"
As a relentless and obsessed researcher into the greater realm of Trevor's cultural relevance I'm always on the lookout for moments like these...in the overall scheme of things it may only be important to me, but I believe Trevor wholly deserves numerous citations and acknowledgement from any and all manner of sources.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Media Watch: Trevor to appear in upcoming film scoring documentary
An ongoing series wherein I comment on Trevor's recent publicity.
SCORE: A Film Music Documentary, an upcoming release which is the first to focus on film scoring, is an independent production financed through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo. This documentary features dozens of interviews with noted film composers, directors, producers, critics and agents. On October 23rd it was announced via their official Facebook page that Trevor would be one of their interview subjects, posting a couple stills from his segment.
As of today, the film is available to pre-order on DVD, Blu-ray or digital download as a perk for donating to their post-production campaign on IndieGoGo:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/score-a-film-music-documentary#/
You can also view a preview trailer and read details about the production.
SCORE: A Film Music Documentary, an upcoming release which is the first to focus on film scoring, is an independent production financed through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo. This documentary features dozens of interviews with noted film composers, directors, producers, critics and agents. On October 23rd it was announced via their official Facebook page that Trevor would be one of their interview subjects, posting a couple stills from his segment.
Trevor interviewed in The Jacaranda Room.
As of today, the film is available to pre-order on DVD, Blu-ray or digital download as a perk for donating to their post-production campaign on IndieGoGo:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/score-a-film-music-documentary#/
You can also view a preview trailer and read details about the production.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
catching up with Agent X
Having finally purchased my season pass for Agent X I've been sort of binge-watching the episodes which have aired thus far and it's not difficult to imagine series creator William Blake Herron saying to Laura Engel: "So yeah, you know, that show Zero Hour was kooky and all, but I gotta have Trevor Rabin score my ridiculous espionage series too, okay?!"
Trevor and Paul are naturals for this kind of work, they can do it in their sleep. I just wish perhaps that they hadn't done so much of it over the years. A mix of orchestral grandeur, tense electronica, some interesting guitar, percussion, and synth textures and a bit of ambient and chorale wash here and there, it's everything we expect for this kind of narrative; which is not a bad thing, certainly. If anything I find the scoring a bit more like the National Treasure films than the score for Zero Hour, which I felt was supposed to be taken seriously no matter what was happening onscreen (Spoiler Alert: it was usually ridiculous). There's more of a playful quality, an almost ironic commentary on what action scores are supposed to do - but my impressions may be the result of having experienced Trevor using the score as the Straight Man in a number of films, such as Get Smart and G-Force.
The show? It's okay, I guess. It's got good casting and production values (although I'm sorry, you can't pass off Canada, or California, as Russia - the roads are too well-maintained). There's plenty of action: fight scenes, shoot-em-ups, daring stunts, cat-and-mouse strategies, verbal snark...it's meant to be escapist fun and it works on that level. It would be fun to riff and snark on it, and I may do that at some point, though it doesn't quite work as well on that level because this show knows you can't take it seriously, whereas with Zero Hour they thought they were being serious, at least. There are some scenes in Agent X which are high camp, and that's a refreshing change which hearkens back to the days of Bond (if anyone knows camp, it's the Brits). It's a little bit too by-the-numbers in terms of how each difficulty resolves itself, but again, it's supposed to be fun, so that's to be expected. It appears the trades agree with me, Variety weighs in thus: And wonder of wonders, it mostly works, at least initially, combining a sense of playfulness with bountiful action and, less successfully, a sweeping conspiracy. But c'mon, who wouldn't want a pet black ops field agent who you can use however you desire in order to defeat the bad guys. You'd think, though, that nothing good ever comes of plausible deniability (both historically and in Tom Clancy novels) so I don't know how well that actually works as a plot device except as wish fulfillment. Plus a butler who addresses you as "Madame Vice President." Sign me up!
The show does, however, serve to underscore that privacy is pretty much a nonexistent concept in the modern world, because although the Super Secret Agent is supposed to be a ghost, he is continually tracked through his series of adventures all over the world. We are all voyeurs - and this includes his boss Madame Vice President and her Jeeves - witnessing Case's escapades in real time because there is surveillance everywhere.
It is nice to hear that kind of "Let's go save the world" music which Trevor has been writing since Armageddon - it's so inspiring, like, whenever I have to brave crowds to go shopping, I imagine myself as I walk through the parking lot moving in slow motion set against the building gravitas of an aggressive orchestral motif on the soundtrack. John Case has an appropriately heroic theme, for example. And also the "Some Crazy Spy Shit is Going Down" music, such as we know from Bad Company, for example. Most of it has a really great groove to it - some of it even reminds me of themes from Gone In 60 Seconds - I consider that sort of thing to be more Paul's forte - as he's written some good cues of that type, like "The Throb" (Gone In 60 Seconds) and "Agent 23" (Get Smart). I'm assuming Herron's main directive to Trevor was: "Uh...you just do you, you know? I want people to know they're in an action movie because they would pretty much have to be if there's one of your scores playing." It's what I believe Gordon Goodwin once referred to as "that Trevor Rabin thing." As usual, the quality of Trevor and Paul's work elevates the material beyond its limitations and failings, and that is one of the true aspects of their marquee value: if they're on your project, it's going to sound like a blockbuster for sure.
There is a humorous use of Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker in episode three, "Back In Your Arms," - scoring a rather clumsy and brutal fight scene - and I appreciate that sort of nod, given Trevor's love of classical music. But it's rather an old joke, strictly speaking.
I do like the title/end credits theme, it's brash and crunchy.
Trevor and Paul are naturals for this kind of work, they can do it in their sleep. I just wish perhaps that they hadn't done so much of it over the years. A mix of orchestral grandeur, tense electronica, some interesting guitar, percussion, and synth textures and a bit of ambient and chorale wash here and there, it's everything we expect for this kind of narrative; which is not a bad thing, certainly. If anything I find the scoring a bit more like the National Treasure films than the score for Zero Hour, which I felt was supposed to be taken seriously no matter what was happening onscreen (Spoiler Alert: it was usually ridiculous). There's more of a playful quality, an almost ironic commentary on what action scores are supposed to do - but my impressions may be the result of having experienced Trevor using the score as the Straight Man in a number of films, such as Get Smart and G-Force.
The show? It's okay, I guess. It's got good casting and production values (although I'm sorry, you can't pass off Canada, or California, as Russia - the roads are too well-maintained). There's plenty of action: fight scenes, shoot-em-ups, daring stunts, cat-and-mouse strategies, verbal snark...it's meant to be escapist fun and it works on that level. It would be fun to riff and snark on it, and I may do that at some point, though it doesn't quite work as well on that level because this show knows you can't take it seriously, whereas with Zero Hour they thought they were being serious, at least. There are some scenes in Agent X which are high camp, and that's a refreshing change which hearkens back to the days of Bond (if anyone knows camp, it's the Brits). It's a little bit too by-the-numbers in terms of how each difficulty resolves itself, but again, it's supposed to be fun, so that's to be expected. It appears the trades agree with me, Variety weighs in thus: And wonder of wonders, it mostly works, at least initially, combining a sense of playfulness with bountiful action and, less successfully, a sweeping conspiracy. But c'mon, who wouldn't want a pet black ops field agent who you can use however you desire in order to defeat the bad guys. You'd think, though, that nothing good ever comes of plausible deniability (both historically and in Tom Clancy novels) so I don't know how well that actually works as a plot device except as wish fulfillment. Plus a butler who addresses you as "Madame Vice President." Sign me up!
The show does, however, serve to underscore that privacy is pretty much a nonexistent concept in the modern world, because although the Super Secret Agent is supposed to be a ghost, he is continually tracked through his series of adventures all over the world. We are all voyeurs - and this includes his boss Madame Vice President and her Jeeves - witnessing Case's escapades in real time because there is surveillance everywhere.
It is nice to hear that kind of "Let's go save the world" music which Trevor has been writing since Armageddon - it's so inspiring, like, whenever I have to brave crowds to go shopping, I imagine myself as I walk through the parking lot moving in slow motion set against the building gravitas of an aggressive orchestral motif on the soundtrack. John Case has an appropriately heroic theme, for example. And also the "Some Crazy Spy Shit is Going Down" music, such as we know from Bad Company, for example. Most of it has a really great groove to it - some of it even reminds me of themes from Gone In 60 Seconds - I consider that sort of thing to be more Paul's forte - as he's written some good cues of that type, like "The Throb" (Gone In 60 Seconds) and "Agent 23" (Get Smart). I'm assuming Herron's main directive to Trevor was: "Uh...you just do you, you know? I want people to know they're in an action movie because they would pretty much have to be if there's one of your scores playing." It's what I believe Gordon Goodwin once referred to as "that Trevor Rabin thing." As usual, the quality of Trevor and Paul's work elevates the material beyond its limitations and failings, and that is one of the true aspects of their marquee value: if they're on your project, it's going to sound like a blockbuster for sure.
There is a humorous use of Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker in episode three, "Back In Your Arms," - scoring a rather clumsy and brutal fight scene - and I appreciate that sort of nod, given Trevor's love of classical music. But it's rather an old joke, strictly speaking.
I do like the title/end credits theme, it's brash and crunchy.
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