Cinematic: Classic Film Music Remixed

They Say...

Review by Rick Anderson, All Music Guide

Since the late 1990s, there's been a slowly growing craze for taking vintage jazz, soul, rock, and R&B recordings and giving them dramatically new and different (usually techno-flavored) remixes. For this project, Bob Duskis of the Six Degrees label commissioned a group of producers and electronica artists to take music from classic film scores and give it the remix treatment, and the results are uneven in all the best ways. Some of the tracks will be familiar even to casual movie fans: the love theme from Ben Hur, the main title music from They Call Me Mr. Tibbs. But most of it is actually fairly obscure. You may remember the film Hour of the Gun, but chances are good you haven't committed much of the film score to memory; ditto the music from the "Goodbye Colonel" scene in For a Few Dollars More. The mixes presented here are generally quite respectful, even when they're funky and creative:, and the styles presented vary wildly. Mark de Clive Lowe uses orchestral samples brilliantly on his mix of the Hour of the Gun main title, and incorporates a contribution from rapper Replife quite gracefully. Phillip Charles' reworking of the theme from The Taking of Pelham 1, ,2, 3 uses cut-up sound sources to masterful effect, and the Bombay Dub Orchestra nicely interpolated Asian sounds into their mix of the love theme from Ben Hur (twice, strangely enough). There aren't any clunkers, though a couple of tracks don't quite live up to the standard set by the best ones. Highly recommended.