Pazartesi 18 Oca 2010, 7:42

I love soundtracks, ever did love them and ever will love them. Now listening to soundtracks pretty much every day of my life I've stumbled across many great scores and many great composers. See every composer has his own little themes and styles and you really get to know and love those… it happens ever so often that you will watch a movie and try to guess the composer (or not so much guess and rather wait for the end credits to role just to see if you were right)

However.. ever so often comes a movie with a cue or track that surprises you - surprise because you think you know the composer although you clearly saw in the opening titles that this has been done by a totally different composer than you'd had expected by listening to the score.

Anyway.. coming to the point. In this journal I don't want to talk about tracks I heard in movies and thought "Hey that sure sounds familiar and I can't really say that I think XXX wrote it" but in fact discoveries similar to that when listening to the scores without the movie context (which is on a completely different level).

Today's pick are the completely unrelated movies "Transformers" (2007) and "Madagascar - Escape 2 Africa" (2008).

First let's talk about the two scores in question. Transformers being a pretty spectacular movie on its own had one thing going for it besides the special effects (I mean let's admit it.. the acting and the story were crap) and that's the great score - written by Steve Jablonsky (loved for his work for "The Island" - heck I DIGGED that one) while Madagascar was scored by none other than Hans Zimmer (I have to admit here.. when watching the movie the score didn't really strike me as amazing and only by listening to it separately later did I find it good).

So we have two pretty well known composers in two completely unrelated films. I have to say at this point that both composers are described as "similar" here on last.fm and I couldn't agree more.

Track 10 from the Transformers Score (aka Scorponok) is an action track particularly known for its key sequence from 2:30 to 3:20 which has gotten full attention by being used in the movies trailer). It's dark and majestic and gives us soundtrack geeks goosebumps whenever we listen to it.. simply said - it's good.

Now where comes Madagascar into play? I don't own a score from Madagascar and I'm not even sure if a score even exists but on the Original Soundtrack Release of the movie are 3 tracks credited to Hans Zimmer. The one I want to emphasize on is track 8 (aka Zoosters Breakout) which has also been known as "Main Title" for the movie.. at least I've seen it described as that. Now.. if you listen to this song and are anything like me you will feel the resemblance it has with "Scorponok" from Transformers. Just.. in a childish/playful/cheerful manner.

So yeah.. that's pretty much it. All this text just to underline the resemblance I felt between these two unrelated tracks :P

Anyway comment on it if you like and give me your own impressions.