THE TWO TOWERS Score Review

Writing the articles that I wrote last night… the obituary on James Coburn and the remake of MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE… well, they got me in a bummed out mood, so I decided to put on one of my favorite all time COMFORT FILMS. A comfort film is that movie that you reach for when you are feeling down and you want to be lifted, to have your spirits raised… Basically, we’re talking about Linus’ Blanket or Maggie’s Pacifier. However, we film geeks have a selection of such filmic items. Last night, for me… It was NORTH BY NORTHWEST. I watched it 3 times in a row. God, I love that film. Eva Marie Saint is so hot when she’s flirting with Cary Grant. I’m convinced something was going on with them. Either that, or she was the best flirt ever!

Well as the film was coming to a close for the third time… as Cary and Eva head through the forest, Father Geek comes in my room with a gigantically poofy AIRMAIL EXPRESS package. I knew instantly what it was. My LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS Score CD. I ripped open the package, clutched the CD to my chest, watched as NORTH BY NORTHWEST concluded with the bliss of a train entering a tunnel… Hit EJECT and put THE TWO TOWERS in.

Before hitting play, I thumbed through the press notes – only to find that they are not press notes, but the Linear Notes and pamphlet insert writings and credits for the Soundtrack. I read through it all and was once again shocked to see that Howard Shore is again thanking me in the credits for the score and for the life of me, I can’t think of what I did for Howard that he’s thanking me for. Someday when I run into him, I’ll have to ask, cause I literally haven’t a clue. I’m honored to be thanked in the company that I’m being thanked, but I really can’t help, but feel like Waldo. Only bigger!

I hit play on the score, and listened the first time passively as I was working and sorting through email and hanging out in the chat room. Also there were several phone calls that came and interrupted the natural flow of the album. However, the initial listen came on substandard audio equipment, filled with interruptions and I was loving what I heard.

What I’m doing right now is this. I have loaded the Soundtrack into my full Dolby Digital Sound system in my room. I’m the only person in geek headquarters. I’m turning off the home phone and the cel phone. In a few seconds I’ll be turning the lights off and I will be plunged into complete darkness. I will be typing non-stop through this, my first uninterrupted or disturbed playing of the score. This review will be about the emotion impressions and the imagery that my mind will conjure upon listening to Shore’s score. I will be speculating about what may be on screen, the thoughts of the characters, and I may be completely wrong in my assumptions, but this is reacting to the music, knowing the story it is aurally illustrating…

Ok… Let me get the lights… I’ve poured myself a nice glass of Merlot, I’ve taken a sip… taken in the darkness and the only things I can see in my room now are the track numbers on the STEREO set-up and the screen of my computer. I’m hitting play… now…

Track #1 -- FOUNDATIONS OF STONE -- 03:51

The film begins with a series of noble builds, horns crying out…. Which transitions to the Ring legend music - however, it has a more sweeping feel to it… longer notes and fuller tones, the horns giving it a noble backbone… Now the drums and the horns come, the power of the forces against our characters, the danger… This is Gandalf and the Balrog… oh this is EPIC… oh my… the voices just cried out… oh my, take KHAZAD DUM and build from there, this has echoes, slight of the lost them of the series, but the choir… the beating drums… pounding pounding… Now, this feels like an impossible fight, then… silence…..

Track #2 -- THE TAMING OF SMEAGOL -- 02:48

The Hobbit theme comes in, I’m typing with my eyes closed, a smile, the theme evolves into sadness, there is silence… Oh…this is slinking music… the music for Gollum climbing that rocky wall down towards the sleeping hobbitsssesss.. Oh, violence, horns, strings, a fury a struggle, peril, horns growing dischordanent then quiet – strange instrument squirming sounding…

Track #3 -- THE RIDERS OF ROHAN -- 04:05

That sweeping light dancing propulsive theme of being surrounded and descended upon at all sides… the horns, powerful, the richness of the tones so great… then a reprieve, building building… then big again.. There is a searching sound here, an inquisitive nature mixed with a feeling of nobility and of people that are outdoors… wide spaces… a stillness, but now as the horns build with the theme, I’m getting a sense of epic grandeur, then there’s this fiddle… GOD I love the sound of it, it reminds me of sorts of echoes of the Norse feeling I got from Poledouris’ CONAN THE BARBARIAN without ape-ing any of that. The galloping percussion laying beneath it all driving this whole track forward.

Track #4 -- THE PASSAGE OF THE MARSHES -- 02:46

This begins with sighing bass horns… then wispy strings – ew, cold chill – drums – erratic --- squealing spine wrenching discomfort. Ew, I don’t like being here… this is a bad place, then whispers and more horns, whispers all over… this isn’t good, this is a bad place. I’m genuinely creeped. Opening eyes, that music was taking me to a dark place, now the track has become softer, yet even more eerie --- there’s that Gollum instrument again… feels like something related to a Zither… very sneaky sound

Track #5 -- THE URUK-HAI -- 02:47

They almost do the Hero theme… breaking it up with staccato placements, before full theme comes in, then the Trombones and Baritones take the Fellowship theme very full… then a few softer horns and flute --- Now the Rohan theme, full and strong… now the percussion of the Uruk Hai with that magnificent Uruk Hai theme… man this is great… this is fantastic, big smile… oh man, Uruk Hai running music… the theme of Isengard’s bowels… oh BIGGER THAN THAT… oh… then its over.

Track #6 -- THE KING OF THE GOLDEN HALL -- 03:49

Hero theme – then Rohan theme on some sort of strange fiddle, but like two of them slightly off… oh this is just nice… I’m thinking of Edoras, the pictures I’ve seen… Eowyn with her hair blowing, this fiddle, this is majestically beautiful sounding. There is such power in this track to just feel the wind and the isolation of this place… now there’s a dark theme coming in… percussion and low brass, now powerful storming music… the type where people are getting knocked aside or someone is making a forceful point… was that Gandalf browbeating Grima? God, that’d be awesome music for that. Oh man, this is the healing of Theoden, I can feel this, this is music to be reborn to, angelic, large and noble. Children could be born to this. Wow, chest heaving music.

Track #7 -- THE BLACK GATE IS CLOSED -- 03:01

This is the gate to Mordor – and it isn’t a good place to be. This music is dark and with a military march buried beneath, tom tom style, lots of tom toms. There is a mass of creatures on screen at this moment. Then lite strings -- OH WOW – the ring theme on lite strings… wow wow that was great – now evolving into a searching for something sound, wow – like tumbling down and down and down… Now another option, a different path sound… stillness and quiet…

Track #8 -- EVENSTAR -- 03:15

Elvish voices – beautiful and haunting, not quite like anything we heard last time giving way to a full sounding flute, very breathy… wispy. Voices beneath it swaying. I imagine to this there is holding and caressing. Then the soloist again, on top, very sad, but telling a story sounding, then we move back to instrumental that gives us that sad awakening feeling, waking from a dream you wish not to leave.

Track #9 -- THE WHITE RIDER -- 02:28

Oh This Is Big! Oh, Oh, I can’t wait to see what is on screen here… This is huge feeling, Old English, powerfully riding towards something… again and again… building to quiet, then to noble horns, a theme I don’t know – then boys choir comes in with light and the promise of redemption, but tempered with the voices of men, then the horns coming in full, riding, galloping, the wind, the smell of grass… Oh this is nice.

Track #10 -- TREEBEARD -- 02:43

Oh… there’s my Sub-Woofers… man… heh… I can feel this in my chest. This music feels like walking through the mud knee deep. There’s the sound of bugs and the sound… most like the opening of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, but very different. Some of the same instruments, just used differently. This is a long stride music. You can feel big steps. Not something to dance to, but just fascinating to feel while listening.

Track #11 -- THE LEAVE TAKING -- 03:41

This has a soft beginning, now we have that feeling of Lothlorien… that sound, but with longer movements… the whole once was lost background, but with a weird disconcerting metal against string rotation sounding thing causing the hairs on my arms to stand on end, building as if in circles… then collapse into the builds of revelations… Galadriel is soothsaying, I bet. This is like the stuff underneath her talking to Frodo, but now there is the lost music… I have no idea what’s happening on screen at the end of this track.

Track #12 -- HELM’S DEEP -- 03:53

Oh, well shits happening right now. Oh man, oh… oops, sorry, I stopped typing, I … oh, is that the sound of flight after flight of arrows going? Drums beating, beating and beating, then Angelic voices, triumphant distant horns, both building to join now with the drums.. oh nice little theme… then gone, now there is calm… there seems to be hope, Building to a revelation, something to be revealed, oh the sound of the Rohan, that fiddle, god I love that fiddle, then the full orchestra joins its theme, oh nice nice… Oh a soloist now, but not… is that Elvish?

Track #13 -- THE FORBIDDEN POOL -- 05:27

Oh I don’t know what to make of the opening of this… there is a sound of hidden things, oh upper register picking of some string instrument, a lost drifting harp, now is that a voice, yes a voice looking up… held… held… No real theme here, some… oh, yes yes there is, the ring theme, very interesting, it’s being disassembled by instruments that have never played it, haunting, this is a vision of Frodo I feel. They are talking about the ring, you can feel it. Wow, this is very good atmospheric deconstructionalist work on an earlier theme… conflict is building and building, something… gives to a smaller, now… boys choir at a bottom of a well telling us how they got lost – I feel. Nice.

Track #14 -- BREATH OF LIFE -- 05:07

Soloist and a strange sound behind them. The voice carries as if a very large hall, cathedral… the voice gives way as a horn takes it higher, then strings take over to bring us back to the voice. I have no clue what is happening. Feels Elvish. Echoes of the ring, but not quite, more like a tragic theme, very soft, takes its time. People are watching something still on screen. Something that is either dying or leaving. That’s what this sounds like. I – ya know, I haven’t a clue what this is. Uh oh, building big now, there’s something coming, something large and big, something is mounting, coming to a head. Something is nearly here, and now we turn from that…

Track #15 -- THE HORNBURG -- 04:36

Begins with the Rohan theme, which I am officially in love with, that sad down, then ever higher lifting it gives, where it joins then toys with the Fellowship theme, before turning into a building confluence of voices gathering for some reason. Oh … goose pimples… oh, I like this… Oh big voices raising up to hail something, then… there is something else here, determination sounded by horns, then it grows faint… a sad slow Fellowship theme, now a dying Rohan sound, like its defeated, now drums… lots of drums… Oh, here’s that fucking awesome bad guy theme I love. Duh dunna duh duh… Oh this is unflinching, there is a really bad ass thing on screen right now, the Rohans are trying to fight, but its back and forth… left undecided here.

Track #16 -- FORTH EORLINGAS -- 03:15

This is simply beautiful. I don’t know what is going on here, but this music was inspired by something I’m not seeing here… Oh that burst of horns… oh my I love that, there is a charge, oh… I love love love this. This is the best rendition of the Rohan music leading to the Fellowship theme as if reunited, not as full as in the last film, but indignantly still standing, now a child’s voice above it all, not at all like in the last film, this is hope, not despair, oh this is magnificent. WHAT IS ON SCREEN? This will be gigantic.

Track #17 -- ISENGARD UNLEASHED -- 05:01

Begins with a voice beckoning, answered by others, then again… this is a bit of Elvish or evil call and return work… but then it builds into horns and oh here comes Saruman…. Oh this is nice, about a minute and half in Uruk Hai melody giving way to innocence and a persistent defying Rohan melody… as if standing ready… quiet… something moving… moving still… Something is coming, voices are telling us this in a strange tongue – old English? Here’s that soloist again, the child, building, the threat is building, oh man… bigger and bigger, more adult voices, strings building, percussion beneath things marching, many voices in the fight, oh something soaring, it’s about to happen, bigger… then next track… ARGH…

Track #18 -- SAMWISE THE BRAVE -- 03:46

A single flute starts this – actually I think it was a recorder. The friendship theme of Sam and Frodo’s is here, they’re together climbing a billion steps, we’re pulling back from them, they’re going forward. Oh my… there’s a bit here that reminds me a bit of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, before turning into the rememberings of Hobbiton. Here’s Gollum, sneakin’ music, oh this is great… heh… echoes of JAWS there for a beat or two… Man, man this is great…

Track #19 -- GOLLUM’S SONG -- 05:52

Begins with many voices waving about – the music picks up the feel and continues. Wow this is nice. Now the Bjork sounding voice – remember that song in FRANTIC – that one that Emmanuelle whatsherface danced to, there’s a bit of that sound, but no modern feel, this is tragic, sad and a bit angry. There is hurt in this piece, this is doubt and fear and abandonment and being all alone. That’s what this song is. Just absolutely creepy feeling. Then it turns instrumental with the Rohan theme building majestically. As if to say MEN WILL NOT BE DENIED – hopeful, powerful and timeless - turning to an echo of the Fellowship theme that …. Oh, that horn – is that Minas Tirith?

Track #20 -- FAREWELL TO LORIEN -- 04:36

This track is the one track I don’t like on the CD. It just doesn’t do anything for me. I guess what it is is this. This track doesn’t belong on this CD as the last track. It belongs on a larger expanded FELLOWSHIP 3 CD SCORE Set, not on TWO TOWERS. On TWO TOWERS it feels like something from a different movie. Tonally it has no place with what came before. In fact I’m going to program it out of the rotation, because it just isn’t a part of this other music. It is nice music, it just doesn’t emotionally fit where they have it on the CD. I guess the aggravating thing is, several of the tracks above are abridged versions of larger scenes. Some of the tracks end almost as a cock tease to something that is about to come musically. I understand this is a bonus track on the bonus disc, but I would have much preferred say… Whatever the track is for the WARG BATTLE! You know you want it too. Or the Exodus from Edoras music… You know that’s got to be stunning.

So, how is it? I’ve heard it only twice thus far, the music is emotionally resonant and powerful. The Rohan theme is magnificent. The Hornburg track just kills me. Gollum’s Song gives me the shivers and the quivers that it should. The opening track and the music I can see Gandalf fighting the Balrog to is magnificent. The White Rider’s charge is huge. In all… I will next sleep with this music on repeat and dream of TWO TOWERS, and if my conscious brain was as titillated by the score as it was, I can’t wait to have the dreams that my full subconscious brain will conjure with all the images and designs that my brain has absorbed. OH TO LIVE IN THE DREAMS OF MIDDLE-EARTH!!! Howard Shore certainly has scored that dream…

Total Duration of Bliss -- 01 hour 16 minutes 55 seconds