INTRADA
Announces:
THE BLACK HOLE
Composed and Conducted by JOHN BARRY
INTRADA/WALT DISNEY RECORDS D001383402
John Barry's 1979 score to the Walt Disney Studios sci-fi epic The Black Hole has consistently been one of the most demanded soundtracks. It was no small feat, and Walt Disney Records and Intrada are now proud to announce its premiere and complete release on CD. The Black Hole was a unique assignment for Barry and he responded with one of his most unusual and audacious scores. His main title for the picture is a strange, dizzying piece, half-waltz, half death-march, driven by a swirling ostinato for synthesizer. Barry was immediately inspired by the image of the black hole and its power in writing this music: “The concept of this bottomless three-quarters swirling thing, the black hole, was the film’s central image for me, and the thought behind the movement of the main theme.” Barry recorded The Black Hole with a 94-piece orchestra that included synthesizer and an unusual percussion instrument invented by Craig Huxley called the blaster beam. While the score was released on an abbreviated LP at the time of the film's theatrical run, its restoration and release on CD has been an elusive event.
John Barry's score was the first digitally recorded soundtrack in motion picture history and was recorded using the 3M Digital Recorder. The format was used sparingly for several years until technology moved on, and due to its limited use, finding working machines had become quite a challenge some 30 years later. Randy Thornton's producer's notes chronicle the entire odyssey through the investigations and trials until successful transfer of the 32-track digital elements, with simply stunning results. Now The Black Hole is presented in complete form with a striking clarity not heard previously.
Set in the far future, The Black Hole follows the crew of the spaceship Palamino: cool-headed Captain Dan Holland (Robert Forster), trigger-happy Lt.
Charlie Pfizer (Joseph Bottoms), ESP-gifted scientist Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux), star-struck space researcher Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), tag-along veteran journalist Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine) and quotation-spouting robot V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (voiced by an uncredited Roddy McDowall). When the Palamino enters the gravitational field of an enormous black hole it finds the lost spacecraft Cygnus and its eccentric commander, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, who runs the ship with the help of an army of mysterious robots, including his deadly bodyguard Maximillian. Reinhardt’s plan to take the Cygnus into the black hole’s event horizon eventually threatens the lives of the Palamino crew—just as it apparently doomed the original crew of the Cygnus.
INTRADA/WALT DISNEY RECORDS D001383402
Retail Price: $19.99
AVAILABLE NOW
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.7229/.f
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