Customer Reviews

Dune: Original Soundtrack Recording

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This is one of my favorite movie scores of all time. Unlike many soundtrack composers, Toto doesn't flagrantly rob the classical composers, then claim work they scarcely had touched as their own. (I'm not talking about short quotes, stylistic similarities, or credited quotations.) You know who you are out there, so hang your heads in shame... An old movie done as a cartoon on a very famous sword and sorcery tale comes to mind, as well as a fantastic tale told about trollish and elvish creatures on a far away world. Then, there's the recent tale about a fallen Roman general. Magnificent music in all of these, but some of the pieces are lifted wholesale from other sources, without credit. Dune? A great deal of it sounds sort of New Age by way of several overtly psychotic states of mind.

This is meant as a compliment: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is missing more than a few marbles, (He'd have to get a wheelbarrow load to reach zero!) Leto is practically a saint, in the good sense of the word, while Paul's mother and her teacher are manipulative.... women. (This last is a grand understatement!) Paul? He's a male messiah in a female dominated religion. His family has been slaughtered by the Harkonnens and he's been abandoned to a fate most people would not wish on their enemies. Paul ends being manipulated by his environment, his teachers, and the Fremen. By force of training and circumstance, he drinks a derivative of the spice brewed up by some horrid method from Arrakis' sand worms in order to fully realize his remarkable powers. (One wonders if he will end up looking like the monstrosities the spaceship pilots become upon long ingestion of melange, the famous `spice' of Arrakis. Yuck! They end up looking like gigantic grubs!) Is it any wonder that the music has to reflect many different points of view? And Toto has done a fantastic job. I've listened to this music many times, and have never grown tired of it.

Eno's Prophecy theme is deceptive; at first, it just sounds beautiful. On repeated listenings? It grows in emotional power that gives it a life far beyond the environs of the movie. Harkonnen's `theme' is a maniacal Baroque nightmare. The rest? When Paul drinks the Water of Life, one can feel how close his sanity and soul come to slipping away from him. The Final Dream? A climax to an emotionally savaged life. This music brings visions to my mind up and beyond Dune's plot and characters... and this is one of the highest compliments I can pay to any score, for any purpose. This score is so varied, I can't describe it with any all-encompassing phrase. Rock and Roll? A few pieces are reminiscent of Toto's normal work. Symphonic power? You bet. Space Music? Outer and inner.

Do I highly recommend this soundtrack? From Mount Everest!

This score works like the classical music in the movies of Stanley Kubrick, it can stand on it's own, while it also enhances both the scene and the feelings of the audience. This is why when ever I listen to the music, I never feel bored by it. It offers a great variety of musical material from classic to typical Toto-Music, while it is also so inspiring that you won't need to see the movie when listening to it. The music perfectly transmitts the scene, it captures you in this wonderful magical world of Dune .

For such a long movie, the soundtrack sure is short. I was disappointed at first when I looked at the jewel case and saw only 40-some minutes of music. But the quality definitely makes up for the quantity. The electronic instruments (not to mention the soft rock style on some tracks) make it easy to pinpoint the time of conception, but good music is good music, right? Right.

When I first saw the TV version of Dune, I thought great movie, but I was well aware of its flaws (especially why it did not do well). Look at the film today, people still hate it, but it's a cult classic. More surprisingly, the music is by Toto (except for the prophecy theme which is by Brian Eno, Roger Eno, and Daniel Lanois-kings of modern new age music). It was strange to think the musicians who did "Africa" and "Rosanna" did this score. It is an excellent set of music. The rerelease album does not include the Prophecy Theme, but does include outtakes from the original album. What we have is the complete set of music written by Toto, even the demo version of the main theme. While mainly a rock oriented soundtrack, listening to the album front to back has a symphonic feel (of course), abundant with recurring themes. Exceptional tracks include: Main Title, Robot Fight, The Floating Fat Man, Riding the Sandworm, Dune (Desert Theme), Main Title-Demo Version, and Take my Hand. What I think would please people is if David Lynch decided to release a definitive edition of Dune (a combination of the theatrical and TV version, along with other stuff taken out of the 6-hours worth of footage that's locked away somewhere). Chances of that happening: 0. Either way, the music is incredible...

TOTO'S SCORE FOR DUNE IS WHAT EVERY MOVIE DREAMS OF. SLIGHTLY OFFBEAT, ORIGINAL MUSIC THAT FITS THE MOVIE PERFECTLY AND HELPS TO MAKE IT BETTER WITHOUT DISTRACTING YOU FROM THE MOVIE ITSELF. THE MUSIC IS IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES, AT JUST THE RIGHT LOUDNESS, AT THE RIGHT TIMES. GOOD MUSIC, GOOD-BUT-STRANGE MOVIE, AND A GOOD COMPOSER. WHAT MORE CAN A EPIC ASK FOR?

Main theme by Eno, all other music by Toto. Specially noteworthy is the last track: Take my Hand, which is the music for the end credits.

This is a great soundtrack, by a great Band. The music is grandiose and magnificient. Do all you can to find a used copy!

Once again, producer de Laurentis pushed for a pop band to do a movie that called for an orchestral score, and this time he won (he was nixed on Conan the Barbarian, which yielded Basil Poledouris' soul-stirring score). Toto does as well as a rock band can, but the often thin music can't compete with the power a full orchestra could lend to a movie based on an epic story like Dune -- the listener is left unsatisfied hearing an electric guitar when a full brass section is called for. Still, a valiant effort.