A new kind of pre-announcement

Every soundtrack label has to do it, but we'll do it our own way... pre-announcement of forthcoming albums! Now, instead of giving away a number of tricky leads, we will give you an exclusive first listen to one handpicked track from each of our new CDs. Regular announcements of the new releases will be made on our Coming Soon page, but in the meanwhile, here are a couple of mp3 teasers for you! Can you identify who the composer is? You think you know from which score the track comes from? To quote other labels: "Let the guessing begin!"

Raising funds for orchestral Indy score

One of MovieScore Media's most exciting young composers, George Shaw (J-ok'el and Marcus), is currently working on the score for a wonderful fan-made Indiana Jones film, Tresaure of the Templars. We are proud to be working with George on this project – but it is ultra low-budget and an Indiana Jones film certainly needs an orchestral score. Therefore, George is seeking to raise some funds to hire as many real musicians as possible to record the exciting score. If you would like to be a part of this venture, please feel free to donate via Paypal. 100% of donations will go towards recording studio expenses and hiring live musicians. And in addition to supporting struggling musicians, you can get your hands on some exclusive albums. Donate $20 or more and receive a limited edition promo CD of George's recent score to the film Sailfish. Donate $50 or more and you will receive the Sailfish promo CD and a compilation CD of some of George's own favorite pieces from various scores he's written. Donate $100 or more and you will receive a Sailfish promo CD, a compilation CD, and an autographed CD of the final Treasure of the Templars score along with a thank you and your name printed in the CD liner notes!

Less than 100 copies left of 'The Dark Hour'

Craig at Screen Archives just let me know that there is less than 100 copies left of Alfons Conde's The Dark Hour, one of our two acclaimed albums featuring this Spanish composer's music. The other one, The Abandoned, has received a lot of nice reviews, the latest appearing on the popular film music community site Main Titles. The reviewer is very impressed by the score, but is clearly madly in love with one of the bonus tracks: "I can't shut up explaining how brilliant simply "Fireworks Overture" is. They said it would revoke back the memories of John Williams and Bruce Broughton but I never expected it would do it so literally. It's a build up and climax of 9 minutes and my god is it a joy to hear such a work in progress. Kudos Alfons Conde, you really impressed me here."

MovieScore Media announces 'The Flock'

As promised, we have another Guy Farley score coming up for release and we are now ready to announce the title: The Flock. This is possibly Guy's darkest orchestral score so far, and it is fascinating to hear this very talented composer's approach to thriller scoring. The film stars Richard Gere and Claire Danes in a story about a missing girl and the intense struggle to find her alive. To give you an idea of what the score sounds like: Howard Shore's Seven meets Guy Farley's unique ability to write thematically driven scores! The CD (our third Farley score after Land of the Blind and The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey) is scheduled to come out on July 29 - the film came out on DVD in the US on May 20.

Get your MovieScore Media CD signed!

Several of MovieScore Media's composers will sign their CDs at a very cool event at Dark Delicacies on June 28th at 2 p.m. Scott Glasgow will sign his MovieScore Media album Hack! as well as Bone Dry and and Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles; George Shaw will be signing our latest album, J-ok'el, as well as his previous album The Loch Ness Monster and Other Short Films; Ryan Shore will be signing our recent CD featuring his scores for Numb, Kettle of Fish and Coney Island Baby; Douglas Romayne will be signing Expressing the Inexpressible (available for download through Film Music Downloads); and Jeff Toyne will be signing his acclaimed MovieScore Media album Shadow in the Trees. Other guests include Charles Bernstein, Alan Howarth, Stu Phillips, Carl Gottlieb and Tommy Yune. Dark Delicacies is located at 4213 W. Burbank in Burbank, California.

Legend of Butch and Sundance #3 on chart

Our album The Legend of Butch and Sundance, featuring the legendary Basil Poledouris' last score, was the #3 score on the Cineradio Top-20 for April! The chart is composed of music played on soundtrack music specialty shows such as WUSB “Destinies”, Bohemia After Dark, “Cinematic Sounds” and “A Fistful of Soundtracks.” The CD edition of the album is sold out but it's still available as a download here.

Digipaks are here to stay!

After much thought, I have decided to keep our exclusive digipak packaging for all of our CDs. We had a poll on this blog where 55% wanted us to change to jewel cases and the remaining 45% wanted us to keep the digipaks. That was not an overwhelming result - had it been 80/20 in favor of jewel cases, the situation would have been different. Also, I have received a lot of emails from fans who feel very strongly about the unique touch digipaks give our albums. By the way, those of you who believe that we package our CDs in digipaks to save a few bucks are wrong! It is actually a little bit more expensive to do the digipaks - but it's worth it!

J-ok'el scoring footage - and Marcus interview

As a teaser for those of you who are waiting for our dark and beautiful orchestral album featuring George Shaw's score for the independent horror movie J-ok'el (coming out exclusively on CD on June 24) we have three scoring session videos for you showing George conducting the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Capitol Records. Also, please enjoy a video interview with George on his score for Marcus, the bonus score on the J-ok'el album.

Reuniting with George and Ryan

I am happy to announce that MovieScore Media is once again teaming up with George Shaw and Ryan Shore, two of my favorite composers. Announced today is a new George Shaw album featuring his impressive orchestral score for J-ok'el, a US-Mexican horror film, which is also going to feature George's score for Marcus, previously only available as a download. Also, the first album in a series of four (!) planned ones with Ryan Shore, we release a collection featuring music from three films: Numb (starring Matthew Perry), Coney Island Baby and Kettle of Fish. The selection from the last-mentioned plays as a great 45-minute jazz album featuring nine incredible tunes performed by the Ryan Shore Quartet. If you are a fan of inspired jazz writing, this is one not to be missed! Visit our "Coming Soon" page for more info and a couple of teasers.

Announcing Laura Rossi's 'The Cottage'

Just announced on our web site: the CD release of The Cottage, a hilarious horror comedy score by Laura Rossi, whose eerie score for Shooting Shona is already available as a MovieScore Media download only album here. I am sure that great names such as Bernard Herrmann and Danny Elfman will pop up in reviews of the Cottage score - this is dark orchestral music written with a large dose of humour, and it is in my opinion a very entertaining album and definitely our funniest release so far. A few words about the artwork: we had the option to choose between the US and UK DVD artwork. What you see is the British version, which reflects the black comedy nature of the film. The Cottage is coming out on CD and online on June 3. Enjoy!