Notes from the Soundscape

2015 was a good year for film music, and among the many excellent scores released that year was Gareth Coker’s score to the video game, Ori and the Blind Forest. Thematic, otherworldly, and elegant, the score featured enchanting piano melodies and female vocalists. Now...

The end of an era arrived this summer with the release of Dark Phoenix, the seventh film in Fox’s X-Men saga that began in 2000 with Bryan Singer’s X-Men. Following the original trilogy, Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class attempted a reboot with younger actors, but wh...

In early March, I came across a new band while browsing iTunes’ preorders and found the song “The Day the World Stood Still”. The following week upon the album’s release, I quickly I had discovered one of the best metal albums in years. The Raven Age is a British band...

In 2015, Ice Nine Kills released an experimental concept album, Every Trick In the Book (read my review here) where each song was based on a work of literature. Following both critical acclaim and a strong reaction by the band’s fan base, Ice Nine Kills recorded a foll...

Jurassic Park was the first soundtrack I ever owned. Thinking back to the release of that film 25 years ago, it was practically a classic before it even came out. Not only did Steven Spielberg deliver one of the best genre films of his career, John Williams did the sam...

Following up a band's debut album is often challenging, as for the first time, they have to start over and write new music now that the songs they formed the band around have been released. In many cases, sophomore albums differ greatly from what fans loved as styles c...

Three years ago, Breaking Benjamin returned from a 5-year hiatus with Dark Before Dawn, bringing in a whole new lineup of musicians behind frontman Ben Burnley. The album was somewhat safe, testing the waters of old fans and a new generation of listeners, and focusing...

One of the goals of this blog is to highlight some lesser known artists who I've discovered through iTunes or YouTube, like I did with Citizen Soldier last year. In doing so, I've learned a bit about how the music industry is changing with digital platforms becoming th...

Director Ryan Coogler painted a vast, complex, brilliant, and beautiful canvas for which composer Ludwig Göransson could create the soundscape for Black Panther, a visionary film flush with opportunity for an up and coming composer. Göransson surpassed my expectations...