For those of you itching to get your hands on the excellent soundtrack to Terminator, here's your chance. To my delight, I found that it features "Samson and Delilah" as performed by Shirley Manson in the episode of the same name. For that song alone, I want it! Go on and support the show and treat yourself.
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CHRONICLES SOUNDTRACK TO BE RELEASED BY
LA-LA LAND RECORDS
Soundtrack Features Original Score By Bear McCreary
With “Samson and Delilah” Performed By Season Two Star Shirley Manson
(December 2, 2008- Burbank, CA) – The soundtrack for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be released by La-La Land Records on December 16, 2008. Composer Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, Eureka), composed the original score. The soundtrack features original score from the first and second seasons of the hit FOX TV show, and also features the track “Samson and Delilah”, performed by season two star and Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson and arranged by McCreary.
Composer Bear McCreary is one of the top young composers working in Hollywood. His work on the television series Battlestar Galactica has been described as offering “some of the most innovative music on TV today,” by Variety, and his blog www.bearmccreary.com/blog, which features in-depth inside looks at the process of scoring Battlestar Galactica, was called "one of the best blogs in the business. It's a fascinating look at the process of making music for film and television and the care he takes with aligning the score with the twists and turns of each character's plot lines," by The Hollywood Reporter.
McCreary also scores the hit SCI FI series Eureka. His film credits include Wrong Turn 2 and the Rest Stop films. McCreary was among a handful of select protégés of late film music legend Elmer Bernstein (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) and is a classically trained composer with degrees in Composition and Recording Arts from the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music.
The 1984 film, The Terminator starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg killing machine known as a Terminator, sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (then-Linda Hamilton) before she gives birth to her son and future savior of the human race, John Connor. Sarah Connor morphs from timid waitress to kick-ass momma in the 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day, with the original Terminator reprogrammed and back to help Sarah protect her now pre-teen son from a different killing machine.
The events of the hit television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles begin a few years after Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The series begins again with a Terminator being sent back to kill the now teenage John (Thomas Dekker). The future John Connor has also sent back a Terminator (played by Serenity’s Summer Glau) to protect the younger version of himself and his mother Sarah (Lena Headey) as they plot to destroy Skynet and hope to prevent the impending Armageddon.
Because the music for the Terminator films was an important part of its spirit, composer Bear McCreary chose to incorporate references to Brad Fiedel’s score into the television series. Says McCreary, “Fiedel’s work elevated the art of synthesizers in film music, and forged a signature musical identity for the Terminator mythology. While his main melody is infinitely memorable, he also used sonic and textural colors in very characteristic ways. I set out to score Sarah Connor by keeping this soundscape intact: in essence to make this series feel like a credible heir to Terminator and Terminator 2.”
While Fiedel’s work focused on expressive synthesizers, McCreary decided to warm the sound up a bit, incorporating more live musicians in the studio. He orchestrated the music to include a string quartet, recorded playing together through pick-ups run through mic-ed amplifiers. The result “sounds lush and warm, a lyrical backdrop for the emotional story arcs of the series,” McCreary described. “But, these strings also feel manipulated, distorted by speakers and wires. In the same way that Cameron is a robot hidden beneath human flesh, the string ensemble is an electronic entity masked by acoustic instruments and live musicians.”
Executive Producer Josh Friedman couldn’t be more pleased with the musical landscape of the series. “What do I like most about Bear’s music?” he posits. “Well, for one, it’s smarter than I am. It manages to create a dialogue between past and present Terminator compositions (appropriate for a time travel franchise) without seeming to quote or steal or simply ignore. The music loves its family tree without being a slave to it.”
Series star Thomas Dekker agrees, “Bear’s simple assembly of notes and clever chord transition below it, changing at just the right time, and recurring in endless different incarnations, never ceases to give me chills.”
The La-La Land Records soundtrack features McCreary’s music from the first and second seasons of the series, and also the track “Samson and Delilah”, featured in the second season and performed by new cast member Shirley Manson. Friedman explains, “I think it goes very well with the season one material. It was conceived as a companion to the Johnny Cash “When the Man Comes Around” sequence that finished up our Season One finale.”
Shirley Manson, who joined the cast in season two as Catherine Weaver, is best known as the lead singer of the multi-platinum group Garbage. The group’s 1995 debut recording was a critical and commercial success. It spawned the hit single “Stupid Girl” and sold millions of albums worldwide. They followed it up with Version 2.0 which was nominated for two Grammy Awards. The group announced its hiatus in 2005 with Manson recording a solo album. In 2007 Absolute Garbage, a greatest hits retrospective was released.
Executive Producer Josh Friedman invited Manson out to dinner. She describes, “He took me to dinner under false pretences, leading me to believe it was my sparkling company and wit he sought. As it turns out he wanted me to sing this old folk song to accompany the first five minutes of footage that opens season two. I would have said no but for the copious glasses of champagne he had plied me with. I said yes.” The dinner led to the recording of “Samson and Delilah” and her casting for the second season as the mysterious ZeiraNet CEO Catherine Weaver. “And the rest, as they say, is showbiz!”
The second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles currently airs on FOX Monday nights 9PM. The first season is currently available on DVD. The original soundtrack will be available in stores or from www.lalalandrecords.com on December 16, 2008. Also available from La-La Land Records are the soundtracks for Battlestar Galactica Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Eureka, Wrong Turn 2, and Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back also composed by Bear McCreary.
