THE ANGEL AND THE SOLDIER BOY

At the end of the 80s, a movie production company, Grasshopper productions, launched a serie of short animation movies. They also released the soundtracks on vynil and cd, all containing two tracks: the instrumental version and the one with a narrator. One of them was the excellent "Thumbelina", composed and played by Mark Isham with the voice of Kelly Mc Gillis released in 1994, but the best output was in my opinion this "The Angel And The Soldier Boy". Even if compacted into a single track, the various parts of the soundtrack are tied together in a 25 minutes suite, not totally instrumental, as there are parts sung by Maire Brennan.

The music is soft and melancholic as it has to fit with a fairytale for children, but the main theme is at the level of the best Clannad songs. The celtic element is obviously present but the music lends toward the progressive and the newage as many of the Clannad soundtracks of the period, full of keyboards and lacking of celtic harps..

The lineup is the "historical" one, with thee three Brennans and their two Duggan cousins, with the addition of Tony Conti as narrator on the second track.

The progheads shoudln't find too unusual listening to a fairytale while enjoying the music, so also the second track, which I admit I often skip, can be enjoyed if one finds the right moment and attitude.

If you don't want the fairytale, consider it as it was an EP with a 25 minutes suite. I've seen used copies sold by Amazon for about two US dollars, so I'm not worried about the risk of making somebody waste his bucks and rate The Angel and the Soldier Boy with 4 stars.

Another movie (this time animated) with music by Clannad that I never watched. Tried to find Alison De Vere's 'The Angel And The Soldier Boy' in DVD stores and even on pirate file exchange sites but failed. What a pity. There's obviously much to see there if the film is at least 50% worthy of its soundtrack. To my knowledge, it is the band's only experience in the genre of 'symphonic fairy tale for children' like Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. And this experience was crowned with success. Really fairy-tale melodies, moods and atmosphere. The instrumentation deftly imitates an instant orchestration though, as far as I can hear, everything is played by the band, no orchestra or chamber ensemble participates. A brilliant and unique album in Clannad's discography. The only fault is narrated story on side two (I had the original LP): the music 'can faintly be heard', while the narrator almost deafens with his heartfelt voice, many thanks to the sound engineer. This really disappoints, all the more that the music on side two (the narrated story with accompaniment) is not identical to the music on side one (the movie soundtrack).