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Review of Vibes (James Horner)

1990 Varèse

2013 Varèse

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... only if you maintain an absolutely complete James Horner collection and wish to seek this score's historically elusive album for half an hour of rhythmic, flute-led jungle funk and odd ambient textures.

Avoid it... if Horner's early, improvised, electronically experimental works serve more as a curiosity for you rather than a necessity, in which case Vibes isn't worth your time.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Vibes: (James Horner) There are only two groups of people in the world who would have any reason to even want to remember the 1988 movie Vibes: Cyndi Lauper fans and James Horner collectors. The film was, for some reason, backed by Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment production company, with a horrendous script from two of the co-writers of Howard's Splash who were attempting, probably, to take advantage of the resurfacing popular interest in parapsychology and the supernatural at the time (spearheaded by the wildly successful Ghostbusters). The premise of the film involves two psychically gifted characters, one a hair-stylist played by Lauper and the other a museum expert played by Jeff Goldblum. They are conned into seeking adventure in Ecuador, thinking that they'd be helping someone find a lost child when indeed their psychic powers would be needed on a perilous mission to find a mystic pyramid of gold and unlock its powers. Along the same idea as Romancing the Stone, the two city folk in a jungle environment manage to hook up by the end of the film, a predictable but truly frightful event. For Lauper, the film represented her big screen debut, and for director Ken Kwapis, Vibes followed his own debut with the Sesame Street film Follow That Bird in 1985. Needless to say, the recipe was perfect for disaster. The summer 1988 release floundered and has long since been forgotten, with Lauper's career stalling and Kwapis sent back to the dark corners of television directing. The only notable aspect of the film that remains is the score by then upstart composer James Horner. Already nominated for Academy Awards for his work on An American Tail and Aliens, the composer had completed the most lengthy and ambitious score of his career, Willow, an enduring orchestral classic, the same year. The era of improvisational, electronically defined music in Horner's career, whether contemporary in tone or primitively ambient in intent, was waning. And the peasants rejoiced.

For Horner enthusiasts, 1988 marked the trailing years of the composer's heavy reliance on synthesizers as the sole instrumental spectrum on his lesser scores; many of his lower-budget efforts in the years to come would feature at least some moderately sized orchestra or more authentic-sounding samples. Even though it is based seemingly entirely in the electronic realm, Vibes does have more individual character than Horner's usual, drab synthetic efforts of the era, such as The Name of the Rose and Where the River Runs Black. While it was reported at the time that Horner employed a traditional string and brass section for some of the more supernaturally scary cues, what you hear are actually rather abrasive, primitive samples of those sounds. What does stand out from the synthetics are the use of a few select woodwinds, including a pan flute and Japanese sakauhachi flute (largely solidified in Horner's career that year). A significant array of percussive sounds, some strikingly electronic and some rattling with a little more authenticity, brings a vivid soundscape to the score during its jungle sequences. These elements are all placed over a rhythmic and early loop-based structure, often utilizing lengthy, repetitious, non-thematic performances improvised on the fly to carry a score heavy on ambience and short on character theme or romance. That said, Horner's Vibes does shine at its best when his melodic material for the score is carried by the flutes. Over the banjos, guitars, clapping sounds, whimsical high range woodwinds, wood blocks, bird calls, mid-range drums, and a vast collection of banging and tapping instruments, these flutes perform a few hopelessly chipper themes. Unfortunately, their exotic fun is restricted to the first half of the film, during which the characters first arrive in the Andes ("Andes Arrival" and "The Journey Begins"), and the score becomes much darker, atonal, and harshly electronic in the latter portions. This sinister half culminates in "Silvia's Vision," with heavy, atonal electronic droning accompanied by simple minor key alternations by synthetic brass and strings, joined by the disturbing sounds of dismembered voices, an unnerving sound remarkably unique to this particular score for Horner.

Despite the score's selling points, Horner allows Vibes to die miserably at its conclusion, with no resolution of ideas in the awful "End Title," which doesn't revisit the film or score's romantic moments at all. He seems to have gotten hung up on the artistically rich atmosphere of the location, for in the final cue, as he does throughout the entire work, Horner wanders from motif to motif, rhythm to rhythm, leaving the only connecting thread in the form of the score's inherently unique instrumentation. Overall, Vibes remains decades later as one of Horner's more bizarre efforts, exhibiting very few of the trademark commonalities that typically connect his other scores. Along those same lines, Vibes is also a score that devotees of the composer can use very effectively to combat arguments about the composer's relative lack of originality. Nothing in the world of digital age film scores sounds remotely like Vibes (though Thomas Newman might be the type to try someday), and Horner collectors specifically will be startled by the stark differences between this and the concurrently written Willow. On album, the awkward and disjointed score exists in short length, but it long endured as one of the most collectible CDs in the history of film music. Standing as the fourth entry in the Varèse Sarabande label's first set of CD Club releases in 1990, the pressing of Vibes was limited to an astonishingly low 1,000 copies. That slim pressing number was even surprising at the time, given that Horner had just stunned audiences with Glory and was sailing to the forefront of the industry. The album sold out as expected and fetched prices as high as $400 on the secondary market even after the proliferation of the score in bootleg form (which featured only the identical musical contents and, usually, the same copied packaging as well). In 2013, Varèse supplied an "Encore" release of another 2,000 copies of Vibes, with the same music, similar packaging, and no improvement in sound quality. The standard Lauper pop song from the film, "Hole in My Heart," understandably does not appear on either product. Despite the score's two melodically enticing cues amounting to over seven combined minutes, the entire work requires a mood of significant funk to appreciate from start to finish, and for most collectors it will reveal itself to be a curiosity rather than a necessity.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

All Albums:
Total Time: 35:40

• 1. Main Titles (4:40) • 2. Opening the Pyramid (2:06) • 3. Andes Arrival (1:36) • 4. Mountain Trek (4:55) • 5. The Secret Revealed (2:22)

• 6. The Lost City (8:24) • 7. The Journey Begins (5:57) • 8. Silvia's Vision (2:57) • 9. End Title (3:10)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert of the 2013 album replaced Kevin Mulhall's dated notes from the 1990 product with new commentary from Jim Lochner. Strangely, the 2013 album's insert contains no credits information about the score. The contents of the 1990 album's notation by Mulhall include the following:

James Horner has become one of the more prolific American composers currently working in film. Consequently, it is interesting to learn that he expressed little interest in film scoring prior to his first feature assignment, 'The Lady In Red (1979)'. In fact, Horner appeared to be headed for a life of academia and composition solely for the concert hall. Born in California in 1954, Horner acquired an impressive formal background in music, including early studies at London's Royal College of Music and later degree work at U.S.C. and U.C.L.A. However, after accepting several offers to score films, Horner developed an appreciation of the challenges and possibilities of working in cinematic composition and quickly assembled a voluminous filmography which includes such well known films as Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan (1982), 48 Hours (1982), Brainstorm (1983), Cocoon (1985), Field of Dreams (1989), and Glory (1989). One of the most recent additions to Horner's list of credits is Vibes (1988), directed by Ken Kwapis. Vibes introduces us to Sylvia (Cyndi Lauper, in her film debut) and Nick (portrayed by Jeff Goldblum), who meet at an institute designed to study persons endowed with extraordinary psychic abilities. They have both come to realize that, unfortunately, their special talents do not necessarily bring happiness and, with their lives in a state of disarray, agree to help a wise-cracking stranger named Harry (Peter Falk) search for his missing son in Ecuador. Adventure ensues as Sylvia and Nick realize they have been conned by Harry, who is searching the mountains not for his son but for the 'Room of Gold', which holds untold riches that are also being sought by other interested (and shady) parties.

James Horner's interestingly constructed score provides Vibes with an important source of atmospheric shading and a sense of local color. In the opening sequence, Horner uses a mixture of orchestral and electronic instruments to communicate an ethereal quality which suggests a mysterious presence in the mountains. The exotic and rhythmic music following the entourage's arrival in Ecuador is mostly electronic, but features the haunting sonority of a pan flute. At other times, the composer uses electronics exclusively to convey an otherwordliness about Sylvia and her paranormal friend Louise. The notable absence of music to document the growing love interest between Sylvia and Nick represents a shift from the conventions of film scoring in that Horner allows the script and performances to become the primary sources of romantic tension. Toward the conclusion of Vibes, Horner mixes portentous brass, atonal strings and a spray of electronic effects to support the pyrotechnics of Richard Edlund's visual effects and the expert camerawork of John Bailey. Ultimately, this score demonstrates the composer's ability to write music in many styles for a variety of ensembles.

James Horner's meteroic rise to the forefront of today's film composers is attributable to his solid education, his inherent musical talent, some good fortune and his understanding of the film scoring process. Ten years after his first project, Horner is now known for his willingness to compose large amounts of music (Willow, 1988) in short periods of time (Wolfen, 1981). Moreover, he has already been recognized with a Grammy award, an Oscar nomination for his contribution to the song 'Somewhere Out There' (from An American Tail, 1986), and an Academy Award nomination for his work on Aliens (1986). James Horner's well-crafted score for Vibes is yet another example of his diversified contribution to the art of scoring films.

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