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Edit: I think that particular part is called Two Faced.
I can tell you exactly how I felt when I first heard Éric Serra's score at an advanced screening at the Empire Leicester Square for GE back in '95: Let down, disappointed, underwhelmed, displeased, and downright baffled. Sure the GB was okay-ish, but when that abomination titled "Ladies First" first assaulted my ears in the auditorium, my mouth was agape that something so hideous could be used in a Bond movie. After that particular jarring piece of audio garbage, I'm afraid I was highly attuned and sensitive to anything that came afterwards, to the point where I was paying far too much attention to Éric Serra's awful score, more so than the action that it was accompanying on the big screen. Some are of the belief that it sounded fresh back in '95 forgetting that synth scores in their entirety had been around at the start of the Eighties and throughout. It didn't sound fresh. It sounded totally misplaced for a high-quality production that had already set the musical benchmark extremely high. And to cap it all off, we got Éric Serra hammering his final nail into the soundtrack coffin by singing the closing credits with his doleful rendition of "The Experience Of Love". A song that got zero UK radio airplay in '95 and has been largely forgotten by anyone with a modicum of musical taste.
I've seen it many times in the iceberg memes and into my curiosity, I've searched it, they called it as the 'The Goldeneye Sound'.
In this score, you would hear a sound of pipe echo or something like that, then a little tambourine shake sound.
I love that sound! One of those little things that gives GE that post-industrial look and feel.
Now I’ve heard it in other Serra scores too. At the start of this cue from Léon, for instance:
It also makes a return in the TND videogame (it can be heard from 2:10 onwards):
Both are also great scores on their own and well-worth checking out (as are all Bond EA game scores and most certainly all Eric Serra scores of course ;) )
The GE score is pretty decent too, IMO, though it probably didn't meet my expectations as an early Serra fan at the time.
I think there’s no other composer I more regularly listen to as Eric Serra (Barry and Arnold being a close second and third because of all the other Bond scores of course), love all of those soundtracks and I own most of them.
Quite liked the scores for Subway, Jeanne d’Arc and Anna too. Though I think his very best is Nikita, probably my favourite film score of all time.
And even if Zimmer was still the electronics guy, it's somewhat ironic to compare him unfavourably to Serra because of that. After all, Serra also belongs to that school of synth and electronics, much more so than any other Bond composer ever.
I like both scores, to be honest. And to prove that I'm not here to diss Serra, let me throw in another confession that will really earn me a few kicks in the back: I like The Experience Of Love. There, I said it. And while I'm courting hell, let me take it one step further: I also like Serra's Little Light Of Love, which he composed (and performed) for THE 5TH ELEMENT. I know that TEOL forces many Bond fans to press the STOP button before the end titles roll on GE, or to at least turn off the volume. ;-) I'm not one of them. TEOL is a quiet ballad that takes me back to '95. The vocals aren't the greatest, and when we jump half an octave higher, even I cringe, but I nevertheless can't hear what's so dreadful about the song. It's not exactly a traditional Bond song -- nothing about GE's music is traditional -- but I still enjoy it.
Agreed 100% on K.D. Lang. I know they want "big names" for the opening credits, and Sheryl Crow was a big name in '97, but Surrender has always been my favourite of the two TND songs. In fact, I'd rather have put Moby over the end credits myself. ;-)
Really, sir, a disdain for Zimmer? ;-) I used to think him the lesser of all working composers, but somewhere after 2004 he started to grow on me again. Doesn't matter. I'm not sure he'll be back for the next Bond film.
As for Zimmer I never disliked any of his scores, they just lack personality for me. Electronic or orchestral hasn’t got much to do with it I’m afraid, he’s just not for me.
It's not really about electronic/orchestral, more that he just didn't come up with much that was distinctive for NTTD.
Yes I kind of like it too, although it's arguable whether he came up with it for GoldenEye..! :)
I can respect that. Artificial would be an apt way to describe Zimmer's scores. In some cases, though, I think artificial is the way to go. Films like Inception, Interstellar, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune for example benefit from the 'coldness' of Zimmer's music, at least in my opinion.
But for Bond, I wouldn't mind a different sound next time.
@mtm
I agree about the "distinctness" of the NTTD score. In addition to NTTD, I'd say the SP score (which I really like) and SF, as well as TWINE and DAD, failed in that sense too.
Barry had the gift of being able to compose really distinct scores. Same guy, unique sound each time. Arnold's scores for TND, CR and QOS achieve the same goal IMO.
Yeah. Serra's GE score is good. Don't know if calling it Avant-Garde would be too much. But it does have that feel. Oh, like Kamen's LTK, I have surprisingly come to love Conti's FYEO. Also, being a Zimmer fan, I love his NTTD score. I know he's capable of doing better, but evidently...with the Oscar win, his heart was clearly more in Dune, that he had to even turn down Nolan's Tenet.
Always have been. I was never overly fond of the score, but it's far from the musical disaster it is sometimes said to be. Not Serra's best, IMO, but somehow perfect for GE.
You and I both! It's not the best the series has to offer but it's not even close to the worst. It's an amazing slice of '90s work and I'll always defend it.