Appocalypse Now Redux Redux

A couple weeks ago digiboy who was on this list when it was hosted by yahoo but then got lost when it moved was asking about the vaguely Tomita sounding synth music from "Apocalypse Now Redux"

The old archive link is here -
http://boards.jp/forums/showthread.php?t=13493

it gets pretty long and eventually someone butts in and tries to sell some tomita albums he has sitting around (wonder if he had any takers).

Anyway it seems worthwhile to make a synopsis of what went on.

1970s:

1. Francis Ford Coppola came up with some musical themes for the film collaborating with his father Carmine Coppola to create a score.

2. He decided he wanted the original score to be realized with synths and contacted Tomita to see if he'd record the score. Tomita turned him down citing the amount of time it would require. I assume Tomita left unmentioned the fact that he's a vastly experienced film composer in his own right rather than a session synth performer/arranger. I'm sure no slight was intended as Tomita's side project for RCA creating synth renditions of Classical music was and still is by far his best known project outside Japan.

3. Francis Ford Coppola hired Patrick Gleeson (who earlier had recorded "Beyond the Sun" a complete EMU poly modular rendition of Holsts th eplanets released - quite fittingly - by Mercury records, he was also Herbie Hancock's synth tech collaborator) to supervise a team of top West Coast synthesists who went on to synthesize much of the score.

4. One of the themes in the original film that Gleeson credits to Carmine Coppola is very reminicent in melody to Holst's "Mars, Bringer of War".

2000s:

5. When "Appocalypse Now Redux" came out a couple years ago many not yet scored scenes were "restored" to the edit. The producers of "Redux" hired Ed Goldfarb to create new music to fit into the unscored added material. He put step #2 - trying to hire Tomita and #4 - Carmine Coppola wrote a theme very reminicent of Holst's "Mars" both together and got a wrong assumption (2 + 4 = 5).

Goldfarb reported in Keyboard magazine that the original synthesists were intentionally trying to sound like Tomita so he created new material guided by what turned out to be his mispresumption. The original synthesists weren't aiming for Tomita, although the Carmine Coppola theme gave Goldfarb that impression. This info was only revealed in response to the keyboard article a month after it ran by Gleeson. Gleeson apparently wasn't contacted and did not participate in the restoration but his rebuttal rings true.

So "Appocalypse Now Redux" has additional music intentionally reminicent of Tomita in addition to original music that coincidently sounds like Tomita.


nick
www.technopopshop.com

 

Very interesting, Nick. I had read bit and pieces of that info before, but never really tied them all together like that. Thanks...