The 4th Floor
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Composer: Brian Tyler
Lable (Release Year): GNP Crescendo Records (2000) Availability: **** Rating: *** |
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The 4th Floor, starring Juliette Lewis and William Hurt, is a new thriller movie featured on HBO. The movie features a very dark score by a young new comer Brian Tyler. This actually is not his film score featured on CD. He previously scored the independence film, Six String Samurai. Unfortunately the soundtrack for Six String Samurai does not have much of his music. Also, his cues are in bit and pieces and mostly have dialogues over. So it is hard to judge his music from that soundtrack. The 4th Floor should be the debut soundtrack that features only his music. It is easy to compose an eerie and unsettling score. However, it is very hard to craft a extremely ominous score that is also very "enjoyable" on its own. Bernard Herrman and Jerry Goldsmith are the masters of doing such. Unfortunately, some young composers have to start their career by scoring some horror/suspense movies. I personally think it is a tough thing for them because it is hard to captivate fans or increase you popularity with an unsettling score. Brian Tyler has done nice job on The 4th Floor, his score is disturbing enough yet be able to maintain some enjoyability. The score has mainly two themes. The first one is introduced rather quickly in "Main Titles". It is sad and you can feel it is a theme for a character who is very worried. It reminds me of the themes from Craig Armstrong's The Bone Collector. The theme appears quite frequently, notably in "Window Watching", "The 1st Window" and "Movers". It is usually played with strings, solo violin, cello, or piano. The second one is "Collin's Theme". It is also sad and poignant but has a different feel. The melody of the theme is played with duduk only. It appears as frequent as the main theme. In addition, Brian Tyler threw in many tricks in creating the moody ominous feel. For example, he uses a female angelic voice and duduk to enhance the innocent and mysterious feel respectively. His use of ominous low brass also reminds me a bit of Elliot Goldenthal's or Howard Shore's approaches in creating unsettling mood. Standard tricks like pizzicato string ("The Inside of My Mind), chaotic percussion ("Portcullis Pt. 2") and dissonant string chords are also well used. Not only the slow cues, but the action cues are also extremely unsettling. "Attack The Locksmith", "Portcullis Pt.1", "Blood On Hands", and "Climatic Battle" utilize the same percussion heavy fast paced motif. So are all cues that dark? Pretty much. "Jane and Collins" and "The Park" both have a charming beginning but they both turn quickly back to the eerie manipulation of instruments. "Belle", a ballroom dance piece, is the sole track that is relaxing. The last track "End Titles" is a reprise of the Main Theme, Collins' Theme and the Attack Theme. The tracks are mostly very short. But since they very coherent, the flow maintains very well. Although as much as I like horror and dark score, I probably would not pay frequent visit to the score. I would rather listen to Coma any day. As effective as it is, the score still lacks some characters. It has decent thematic materials and techniques. However, it does not have a special signature that makes it stands differently. Nonetheless, fan of the genre should check this score out. | |
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