Any Given Sunday (score)

When it was released, Any Given Sunday did rather well at the box-office. After all, it was an Oliver Stone movie, and it was a film about football with Al Pacino yelling and screaming at any given turn. While the soundtrack officially released was filled with tons of songs that were "from and inspired by" the film, there was no score release to be heard of. So it was a pleasant surprise that Richard Horowitz decided to release a promo album of his score.

As one would expect the score has a lot of rhythms and percussion, with a large almost "techno"-ish mixture of orchestra and synth effects. But the opening cue, "Final TD", actually contains a rather heroic string section and female soloists with a slight underlying drum beat - different from much of the score. Anytime in this review where I say "orchestral", I'm pretty sure it was synth based - except for some of the violings. The credits on the back of the liner notes indicate as much.

There are a few types of cues on this album. There is the "ambient percussive" type, some examples of which can be best found in "Cap in the Hospital", "Red Jungle", and "Red Bossa". These cues tend to have lots of stereo separation with plenty of chimes and tonal bells overlying each other. Another type of cue is the "hard percussion beat" type. These involve a rather large, fast percussion base, with very little (albeit some) melody or orchestra. Some of these cues are "Cheeter", "(Manarrandara) Quarterback Speak", and "Distorted Jungle". Some of them include some interesting vocalization effects, and were a mixed bad to listen to. The more melodic orchestral cues, such as "Final TD", "Twisted Burning", "Cap Scores", and "Verdi Burundi" seem to be straight-out orchestral pieces, but Horowitz has added a twist. He has modified them into a new remix with a techno underpinning that I found to be quite interesting. Just when you thought something might be a clean-cut orchestral piece, it suddenly gets modified in a way that is truly inexplicable and unique; for instance, "Not a Sonata". I should point out that many of the track titles are quite literally descriptions of the cue. "Horn Over Horn" is filled with synth horns and a rhythm track. "Electro Heave" has an electric sounding modification pulsation over rhythms with some vocalizing. "YOpera" is a quite interesting techno-ish remix of an opera cue but distorted in such a way as to unrecognizable - except that it once was opera.

Many of the cues on this album are one-time listens. That is to say that you probably won't keep this album in the CD player for a few weeks. However, it is quite an interesting album to listen to, and while I can't say that I enjoyed every single track, there were plenty of tracks that musically (or rhythmically, I suppose) I found to be quite interesting in terms of technique and the resulting sound. The liner notes are quite extensive, and Horowitz himself details the process of his involvement in the film. Ultimately, this is an album to get if you only truly enjoyed the music in the film that wasn't on the pop soundtrack. I don't think the average film music listener will get much from it, but I think it's a great example of Horowitz's styling and abilities. The album is available through SuperCollector at www.supercollector.com.