Beyond age limits

This new CD of James Horner's hard to put into words, in fact. After it had been a year silence about the TITANIC -Komponisten, he can follow the same four CD releases of his famous last work The Four Feathers. It started with radio in the States, followed by BEYOND BORDERS and The Missing and HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG in December.
BEYOND BORDERS is certainly his most unusual job since FREEDOM SONG and will provide substance for a lot of discussion. Acceptance stands and falls with Horner's striking use of electronic sounds and synthesizers. The mentioned in the booklet 89 musicians of the Symphony Orchestra Hollywood Studio are misleading. Synthesizers and samples prevail on this 55-minute CD by Varèse Sarabande (in this country in sales of Colosseum). Whether this has to be an unusual choice for an epic gambling in various trouble spots of the world love drama from Hollywood, so the emotional intensity is even more surprising. Rarely do you know what's coming next. The music surprises on sonic as on a musical level, which can be a tremendously exciting and intense listening experience, the CD. Horner's otherwise usual Zitierfreude limited to a short chord progression (eg known from JUMANJI) and two interesting variations of his "Dark Side of the Moon" music from APOLLO 13. Apart from the CD pulls the listener little by little the familiar footing away. Starting with the naming of the pieces (the CD is divided into three sections, "Ethiopia", "Cambodia" and "Chechnya" with four pieces of "i" to "IV") and the surprisingly synthetic cast in combination with diverse songs and ethnic instruments on the use of techno elements in "Cambodia" to moments of classical dramatic orchestral leadership and Robert Schumann's "Reverie" in "Chechnya", the listener never knows what to expect next. There are moments when you do not even know what mood actually prevails. Hope and despair are close together in this score. In some passages do every chord seems to negate its predecessor of the statement here (especially in the first two pieces of "Chechnya"). Above all is a certain wistfulness that hints at evil, it comes the fate of the protagonist. Horner bases this mainly on two main themes, one of which is often presented as a gentle piano variation. The music is serious, grown-up and at times astonishingly uncompromising. A real surprise, which gives hope for good Horners coming work.