Search - Alloy Orchestra :: New Music for Silent Films

Alloy Orchestra
New Music for Silent Films
Genres: Jazz, Pop, Soundtracks

Track Listings (17) - Disc #1
1. Metropolis
2. Garden of Earthly Delights
3. The Clock
4. Maria's Theme
5. Escape from the Underground City
6. Aelita
7. Life on Mars
8. The Blue Room
9. Theme from Sylvester
10. Cabaret Medley
11. The Wind
12. Burundi
13. False Alarm
14. Zone of Silence
15. Ophelia
16. Deep Water
17. Baptism of Fire

CD Details

All Artists: Alloy Orchestra
Title: New Music for Silent Films
Members Wishing: 1
Total Copies: 0
Label: Accurate Records
Release Date: 12/13/1994
Genres: Jazz, Pop, Soundtracks
Style:
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 743431500526

Synopsis

Amazon.com

With a passion for the zany but an ear for more conventional melody when needed, the Alloys offer the best of both musical worlds in this alternately appealing and grating collection of scores inspired by and made for equally peculiar silent movies. Included is the tasty but teasing one minute and 49 seconds of music to Victor Seastrom's The Wind, an exotic suite for the Soviet science-fiction comedy Aelita, Queen of Mars, and the savage percussion on First Night. But the most dramatic and listenable moments are for Fritz Lang's Metropolis. These five tracks fluctuate from eerie pulsations connoting the futuristic cityscape, hissing percussion to complement the clockwork of zombified workers, a romantic interlude of synthesized strings to commemorate the film's heroine, and a resounding finale aptly called "Escape from the Underground City." --Joseph Lanza

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CD Reviews

The best and most original silent film scores around!

bjorn-toby-wilde | 09/28/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Practically no one watches silent films anymore and that's a great shame. The 3 members that make up the Alloy Orchestra realized that and composed new original scores for some of the great silent classics using a strange combination of synthesizers, accordions, saxophones, drums, gongs, corrugated metal, and other percussion instruments. The first time I saw them was when they performed METROPOLIS a few years ago and I was hooked immediately! I've seen them many times since.Their version of METROPOLIS is perhaps the most popular score they've done -- and with good reason! The film is a science fiction classic, but we've only been able to view it with either a dull organ score in the background or the rerelease in the 80s with music by Pat Benatar ad others. But the Alloy Orchestra version is the only one to do justice to it. It has a beautiful, quirky, and haunting score that alternates between mechanical sounds for the machinery scenes to soft harps and synthesizers for heart-rending scenes.If you've already seen the Alloy Orchestra perform METROPOLIS live, you will want to own this (as well as their CD "Silents" which includes more selections from METROPOLIS). If you haven't and you have a taste for the unusual, give this CD a try. The only film I've seen featured on this CD is METROPOLIS. But I enjoy listening to the other selections as music on their own. Hopefully, when the Alloy Orchestra returns to my city, they'll perform some of the other films I never got to see yet. Until then, I'll watch METROPOLIS on my DVD player with the sound turned off and play the selections from their CDs."

Thrilling music for films new and old

rkchin | new york city | 11/21/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The next time you watch an old silent film, consider the music, the performers just might be the Alloy Orchestra. They are among many new--some might term "avant-garde"--artists to score new music to old films. The Alloy Orchestra, in particular, is famed for using "junky" percussion and loud noises to stomp excitement into silent films.

They favor anything they can beat a stick at, drums, old radiators, chimes, metal objects, trashcans, anything; and the more junky, the better. The addition of synthesizer allows the ensemble to recreate almost any sound, melody, and mood possible in a movie. The Alloy Orchestra is composed of Ken Winokur, and Terry Donahue on percussion, and Caleb Sampson on synthesizers.

The album, New Music For Silent Films is a compilation of pieces the Alloy Orchestra has scored for five films; "Metropolis", "Aelita, Queen of Mars", "Sylvester", "The Wind", and "First Night". I was disappointed F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was not included among the selections. rkchin."