Customer Reviews

James Bond - Bond Back in Action [SOUNDTRACK]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nic Raine, The City of Prague Philharmonic, and Silva Records must be applauded for their efforts to recreate not just the Bond sounds, but much of the music of John Barry in earlier recordings. "Bond Back in Action" is itself a good idea, especially the inclusion of previously unrecorded parts of the early Bond scores. The down side is the unavoidable feeling one gets listening to this music..."I wish these were the original cuts, and I wish John Barry was conducting." Even with the best of these recordings, something is missing...Barry, himself. Sadly, most of the unreleased music is still in existence, and John Barry is still with us. It would be delightful if Barry would produce, or record an album of unreleased Bond music, along with some of the missing recordings of other music (the original scores to "Mary Queen of Scots" and "The Last Valley," come to mind). In the meantime, Raine's interpretations will have to do.

After years of waiting for some of the unreleased material from the Bond films, this CD has them. The suite from Dr. No has the tarantula music and the death of Dr. No. From Russia With Love has The Zagreb Express cue. While Goldfinger and Thunderball offer similar themes from the CD's or the 30th anniv. collection, the cues sound great. You Only Live Twice has some new cues in addition to some old ones. But the highlight of the CD are the suites from OHMSS. They include Gumbolds Safe, Meeting "the girls", and the ski chase music. Diamonds Are Forever has some new Wint and Kidd cues. All and all a very satisfying release for Bond music fans.

I have some mixed feelings about this cd. On one hand it brings us some of the best film music ever made, and some quintessential tracks which were previously unreleased. The main drawback is that, as the original sheet music form the 60ies were lost, conductor Nic Raine had to write them all over again. That's were the problems arise. The suites from From Russia with love to You only live twice are flawed all over (esp. tracks 3,6,9 and 12) with notes to high and poor timing. For these, stick to the original recordings. Still, the bits from Dr.No, OHMSS, and Diamonds are forever provide stunning music, leaving you flabbergasted why it was not on the soundtrack album. `Gumbold's safe break' is a master piece. My advice: rumors are the 007 soundtracks are going to be rereleased containing the missing tracks. Wait for these, or in the mean time this is a nice spoiler.

The inclusion of many parts of movies that were not released previously was excellent as were many of the choices. The sound is a bit different from the original soundtrack in places, but very close and quite pleasing to listen to - it is quintessential James Bond and well worth buying.

Although I was initially disappointed that this was not the original soundtrack, I was glad to hear that most of them were reasonably faithful to the cues heard in the films. The "Dr. No" cues were particularly welcome -- the original soundtrack of that movie is dreadful. "From Russia With Love" only has one new cue -- "The Zagreb Express," which is OK but nothing to write home about. I'm not sure why "The Golden Horn" appears here. It never made it into the film, and is really a waste of three minutes here. The cues from "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball" have all been released before. The brief "Human Torpedo" cue from "You Only Live Twice" is fine, and sounds pretty much as it does in the movie. But the best music on the album comes from OHMSS. The original soundtracks of this movie and of "Diamonds Are Forever" were extremely disappointing -- mostly inane sight cues. But here we get some of the wonderful suspense and chase cues from the film that never made it to the soundtrack. The soundtrack of "Diamonds Are Forever" was even worse -- two instrumental versions of the main theme (surely redundant) -- and so I was looking forward to the selections on this album. Disappointing, really -- just reworkings of cues already on the soundtrack album. So that's it. Some good, some bad. They promise an album to follow up covering the Roger Moore years; if it includes some of the cues from "The Spy Who Loved Me" not featured on the original album (another awful piece of work) then it will be welcome.

This CD contains both music still unavailable on any soundtrack and suites constructed to immerse the listener into the highly impressionable and pleasurable music of the cinematic James Bond experience. The background score for DR. NO is virtually non-existent except for one cut (The Island Speaks) on the original soundtrack CD. Here we finally get a suite (track 2) of Monty Norman's score for DR. NO and it is brilliant. The reconstruction of the musical elements from DR. NO recorded digitally is impeccable and very impressive. I think it is outstanding and made me re-think the valuable contribution to the James Bond series that Monty Norman has made. This alone makes this CD an essential recording to own. From an esthetic perspective the tandem suites (tracks 12 and 13) from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE are beautifully haunting yet powerful and evoke the aura of 007 as only John Barry so brilliantly can. These two tracks are pure Barry. The FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE score is also well presented (tracks 3 thru 7) including a previously unreleased cut (Zagreb Express) and highlighted throughout with Vic Flick's impeccable guitar work. I also enjoyed the music from GOLDFINGER and THUNDERBALL. The DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER main title (track 19) is beautifully nostalgic and makes one yearn for those days when this film was first released. Considering any attempt to include the synthesized elements that were originally included, the score to ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE has always been a difficult one to reconstruct. A commendable job is done here. Nic Raine and the Prague Philharmonic demonstrate some outstanding craftsmanship on this CD and I highly recommend it. I play this CD quite often

A great CD to have! It has great soundtracks from select 007 films.
Great recreated songs, with great sound. A Must have!

...

I bought 'The Classic John Barry', conducted by Nic Raine and performed by the Prague Philharmonic some years ago, and it turned me right off these re-creations. Raine's conducting of pieces such as 'Raise the Titanic' was too rapid, while his 'Eleanor and Franklin' was cut short. Two of John Barry's finest third-decade themes were ruined.

Since then, I have stayed away from Raine. I preferred the Joel McNeely 'Body Heat' re-creation and while the timing wasn't perfect, there was some conducting panache to it that made it more Barry-like to me. 'Somewhere in Time' as conducted by John Debney wasn't as good from my perspective, but then it is hard to create the same emotion given Barry's own personal circumstances around the time of the original score.

However, I still bought 'Bond back in Action'. Here, I can finally tell why some fans regard Raine as one of the best interpreters of John Barry's work. He certainly is the most prolific. ...these tracks are 85 per cent faithful and there are some marvellous moments with the cues from 'Thunderball' onwards. However, some are lacklustre for the same reasons as the earlier Raine album: going back, 'Goldfinger' cues such as 'Into Miami' sounds less stereo than stereotypical; the theme from 'From Russia with Love' is rushed, though it can grow on you; 'The James Bond Theme' at the beginning lacks both the originality of the oft-heard Norman version or the sheer gut feel of the 1962 Barry recording.

Some of the later cues are not that great: bits of 'OHMSS' are flat, particularly 'This Never Happened to the Other Fella', which is on the OST anyway; and the 'Escape from Piz Gloria' does not sound as taut as the film version. 'Diamonds Are Forever' is interesting in that the arrangement is closer to the one Barry first used in his early 1970s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performance rather than anything from the film. That said, it is fuller and more spectacular than the original, with Raine putting the Prague Philharmonic to good use.

So know there are musicians taking odd liberties. However, there are few enough to make me splash out. My recommendation: if you're a diehard Barry fan, listen to the clips here or at a CD store first, and see if Raine and the Prague Philharmonic's liberties are tolerable (in the context of the compression and your computer's speakers). Also note that the manuscripts for a lot of this work have disappeared so one must congratulate Raine for his patience and service to the music of John Barry and the James Bond series.

If you are a purist who must have very close re-creations, then stay away, since these RealAudio tracks at Amazon.com are fairly representative.

For me, for the first time, I feel I can sincerely look the orchestratorconductor in the eye and thank Mr Raine for his work. A good mixture of tracks, with flaws in the execution that I can live with.

This CD was supposed to be a project to recreate music that were omitted from commercial Bond soundtracks...good idea! But somehow along the way, they decided to recreate popular tracks from the soundtracks. Bad idea!

They recreate the From Russia WIth Love title music, Alpine Drive from Goldfinger, Mountains and Sunsets from You Only Live Twice, among others... But they shouldn't have even bothered. Most of these recreations PALES in comparison from the original. Although the Golden Horn of From Russia With Love is passable, and so is the Wedding of YOLT.

As for the tracks that they recreated which were not included...some were done admirably like Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, Gumbold Break In and Who Will Buy My Yesterdays. HUman Torpedo from YOLT is also good. However, Bond Meets the Girls from OHMSS doesn't remotely resemble the version in the movie, and Escape from Piz Gloria track sounded like a goofy broken record player in certain parts.

Perhaps they will learn from their mistakes and leave the originals alone. Hopefully, the CD for the Roger Moore years, if it ever comes out, will avoid making these snafus.

To start out, this CD contains all the un-released music from the first 7 Bond movies. But they are all recreations of the missing songs. The music that you get are remakes of the ones done by John Barry. So this creates 3 problems: The songs are either too fast, to slow, or don't sound like the originals at all. It is a horrible CD. Two stars for the effort but minus three for bad remakes. Think twice before buying this CD.