Intrada Soundtrack Forum

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Most Wanted: Moonraker - complete; Inside Moves (John Barry), Volunteers; The Hand; Brainstorm - complete (James Horner); MacArthur; Supergirl -expanded (Jerry Goldsmith).

Our humble review:

http://www.filmsonwax.co.uk/jaws/

Karol

Received my copy today and have listened to both discs. All I can say is: FANTASTIC. I can't imagine how anyone could or would be disappointed with this definitive presentation of one of the greatest scores ever written. Job well done Intrada Team.

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Top 10 Grails: Revenge of the Ninja/Less Than Zero/Making Contact/Cobra/Over the Top/Highlander/Time Bandits/Top Gun/Listen to Me
Last 5 purchased: Jaws/Jaws 2/Back to the Future II/Back to the Future III/Nightmare Elm Street Box/Amityville Horror

A stunning album for sure, and it's interesting to read that the source music was preserved in "split-mono" as were some other Universal recordings (e.g., select Galactica recordings).

I wouldn't do without either recording, but having heard both on this set, I now find myself gravitated more towards the film recording. It has all the sonic "bite" that I've come to expect from this score.

My goodness... what a release! The liner notes are even more informative than usual. Mr. Matessino really deserves a great big ice cream sundae for his work finessing unconventional source material into a terrific two-channel stereo mix for CD. Unbelievable. The story behind the restoration is a page turner. This is precisely the treatment this score deserves. The rest of the booklet is pretty wonderful too, especially the session photos courtesy Mr. Spielberg.

Huge thanks all around to the great team at Intrada, Mike M. and of course John Williams. A major, major gap in film score preservation and availability has now been properly remedied. It was worth the wait.

"Tourists on the Menu" sounds fantastic!

Just got this and part deux, and had to start with the original album program, probably my first absolute favorite album (followed by The Omen the following year, and then of course Star Wars the next year). And this is the one cue that above all others helped me learn two things: film composers are composers first, film craftsmen (and women) second. And what you get on album is not necessarily the same as what you hear in the film - sometimes it's BETTER.

For me this is Williams' very best neoclassical pastiche (though I adore them all, especially the Shark Cage Fugue). It ranks right up there with Prokofiev's Classical Symphony and Stravinsky's Pulcinella. But it has never sounded so authentic as it does now.

This alone was worth the $60 for both. Guess I'll have to hit repeat. Again.

I received this on Monday evening and have been listening to both discs almost nonstop since. When I got home from work last night, I was so amped up by alternating between the score and the album all day that I watched the movie (thankfully the Blu-ray has the original mono mix). I love this movie. I love this score.

This release is a fantastic presentation of a landmark work. I've had the album since as long as I can remember,* and the Decca CD since the day it came out in 2000, so how much one can really discover again from something so familiar?… and then a release like this comes along. which re-ignites all of the excitement.

I am over the moon with this set. While Mike Mattesino says he tweaked the album only a little bit, what he did counted. It certainly sounds like the low end is a bit better. This is a fine presentation of a Grammy-winning album, a great program that many of us grew up with. It's a great performance, and some of the expanded album arrangements make the album indispensable to any fan of the score.

The score itself finally has the punch it does in the mono mix of the film. “Man Against Beast” is one of my all-time favorite action cues, and to hear it finally sounding as thunderous as it ought to was extremely satisfying. I find the stereo spread works quite well, and the sound overall is a gigantic improvement over the Decca mix (and the 5.1 and 7.1 remixes of the film), which has always sounded weird for reasons that became apparent when I read the notes and the MM interview.

I finally have the Jaws I have always wanted.

I'd talk about it more, but I'm just going to go listen to it again.



* — The MCA cassette of Jaws was one of the worst tapes I ever bought. Not only was the sound quality pretty lousy, but instead of letting one side be slightly longer than the other, they fade out in the middle of one of the exciting chase cues at the end of side one, and fade in on it on side two, where it concludes. This has got to rank up there with one of the worst production decisions ever made.

I got the CD the other day and, once again, it sounds amazing. After finishing it, I went straight into all three sequels in chronological order. What a terrific year for your label! So many great albums I enjoyed and those two John Williams Jaws release are just cherries on top.

Karol

I… can't… stop… listening… to… this… CD…

I just can't get enough of this wonderful release.
It's a dream to listen to & everyone involved have really outdone themselves.
Intrada should be given an Oscar for best label.
This award winning score is right at home at here.
Doug & Co, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
2015 will be very hard to beat, but cannot wait to see you try

I wish we would have the 4.0 transfer of the original CD-4 LP masters on a DVD or a Blu-ray, that would have been so cooool.
Do you know if this master is nowhere to be found ? Doug, did you find this along all your researches for the best source possible for your CD ?

Mike Matessino mentions the quadraphonic mix in my interview with him for JWFan:

http://www.jwfan.com/?p=8269

Basically, no master element exists for it, nor the original master recording sessions for the LP. All that remains is the 1992 CD Master for the CD release of the stereo LP program.


My guess? Those original elements burned up in the Universal fire