The Return of Musikators

Marco Beltrami is back, and with it a whole series of orchestrators who had diligently much to do to his action-packed score for "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" to make it sound varied. That this has been achieved, of course, also testifies to the skill of studying composer whose style pleasantly contrasts with that of most of his Hollywood colleagues. A wealth of rhythmic ideas, constantly changing time signatures, a sophisticated electronic sound design of long-term-Beltrami colleague Buck Sanders and unusual instrumentation (especially in "Blonde Behind The Wheel") ensure that at all strenuous action, interest is not lost. However, anyone who is on streamlined Action á la Hans Zimmer and his Media Ventures crew should keep better of Beltrami uncompromising sounds. Easy on the ears is not his music definitely. As it is good that in between remains a little time to introduce Beltrami own melodic material ("JC Theme") and to vary (at the end of "Magnetic Personality", "Flying Lessons" and especially in "Radio"), a Topic whose epic is the potential indicated in the trailer apocalyptic visions Jonathan Mostow do justice.
Other salient features in addition to the pronounced rhythms (which can be quite regarded as a variation on Fiedels original, even if its melodic content is largely ignored) are a synthetically alienated female breathing, symbolizing all likelihood the counterpart TX shown by Kristanna Loken, and a few eye-openers for connoisseurs older Beltrami scores. Reminiscent of "Blade II" or the more routionierten "Joy Ride" but draw not depend on that it is "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" is a self-contained work, although it has little to offer to melody, but much of technical finesse.
The initial controversy surrounding the non-use of Brad Fiedels original theme from the first two films won a bit of perspective, after Beltrami himself drew attention to the fact that it hardly seemed in the second part, and a film must offer the subject once the room to use it. Irrespective of a possible future use in the film, however, Beltrami recorded an orchestral version of Fiedels theme that follows on this CD right after the impressive presentation of his own "T3". Thus also Fiedels followers should get something going.
Rounding out the album by two written songs for the film: "Open to Me," written by Beltrami himself and sung by Dillon Dixon, of his songs from "Scream" and "Mimic" already interpreted, and "I Told You" by Mia Julia Schettino. Both are very nice but not particularly remarkable work, but care in their ballad-like shape for a pleasant relax after a hard album.