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Sunday, 02 February 2003 14:44

Review of the expanded Diamonds Are Forever

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Matt Manning
8 February 2003

coverAfter the sheer delight of finding the expanded OHMSS to be as good as I (and indeed ALL of us) had hoped it would be, I was expecting an equally fantastic ride with the new DAF and wasn't disappointed. Basically, everything you're hoping with this CD has been met, ALL the music you've been waiting for is now here so instead of me waffling on about how good each track is (you all know how good it is!) here's just a run-down of how they've structured this new CD (with some humble comments and conclusion from me).

Again we have the original album sequence followed by the bonus material and they have added new music to 6 of the original album tracks. Right from the word go as well: the Shirley Basey song is the one heard in the film opening with the huge clash of brass before gradually settling into the song proper. (The remastered sound unearths some extra instrumentaion I never knew was there before!)

"Bond Meets Bambi & Thumper" extends to the fight music as they throw him into the swimming pool (yes, at last, THAT long-lost fight music: you're gonna get no less than 3 renditions of it on this album).

"Moon Buggy Ride" now begins with Bond stealing the moon buggy from the astronaunt-training stage.

"Death At The Whyte House" opens with the eerie 'mountaineering outside the Whyte House' music.

What was previously just a second instrumental of the main theme is now "Diamonds Are Forever (Bond and Tiffany)" which bookcases the cruise ship lounge piece with the Wint & Kidd motif and the climatic fight between them and Bond.

And "To Hell With Blofeld" encompasses ALL of the music from the oil rig scenes before launching into the old "007" climatic battle music. Even before getting onto the rest of the bonus stuff, this new version of the old album alone demonstrates how gobsmackingly CRAP the score was represented on the original release!!!

The titles of the bonus tracks are all pretty much self-explanatory - what you think they might be, they ARE! ALL the music is there! "Slumber Inc." incoporates all the wonderfully delirious cremetorium music (the first time a choir was used in a Bond score?) and listening to it up-close makes me convinced it's "Mary - Queen Of Scots" in disguise!

The "Additional and Alternate Cue" track comprises of Wint & Kidd visiting Mrs. Whistler, an alternate "Bond Meets Bambi & Thumper" and alternate escape music after "Moon Buggy Ride" followed by source music from the Circus Circus scene (Tiffany at the shoot-the-balloon stand and even the metamorphosising gorilla cage! Yeeees!).

Hearing all this together on the same CD, I was struck for the first time by how wildly varying and tongue-in-cheek the whole score is (all that jazzy casino music, the quasi-religious cremetorium music, the Circus Circus music, the fights, the chases, the sex, the outer space music) and yet how superbly it all seems pulled together as a coherent whole! DAF is a score that demonstrates how amazingly versatile but, at the same time, unmistakably unique Barry could be under one roof!

Matt.

Read 48519 times Last modified on Wednesday, 08 April 2015 14:53

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