LABYRINTH - ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

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This soundtrack holds some good tracks as the opener ("Opening Titles Including Underground") even if the disco beat is not the one that I praise exaggerately; but most of them belong to the worse of Bowie like "Magic Dance". It is an awful dance song which is hard to believe and impossible for me to bear. A great example of a press next song.

This work has to be taken for what it is: a second zone record which won't appeal traditional fans, and won't gather many new ones. David was quite inactive in terms of new albums in those days. Labyrinth was composed by David for the majority of the tracks and by Trevor Jones (who is a professional film music composer). I have to admit that the songs from the latter are the ones that I usually don't like (the sole exception being the opener, but it was co-written by David).

"Chilly Down" is not the best from Bowie either. It starts as an industrial tune and ends up in some sort of a "10CC" pastiche. I haven't seen the movie (which was a complete commercial failure by the way) but even if I can't relate the music with the picture , I can tell whether a track is good or not.

I far much prefer the ambient "Hallucination" and the more traditional "As The World Falls Down". At least it allows David to perform a fine vocal part and the melody is quite catchy. One of the few good songs featured on this album.

The favourable mood is of short length, unfortunately. We are brought back into the nightmare with "The Goblin Battle". At this time, the bombastic and melodic "Within You" is more than welcome and pushes the listener to go further on in his discovery.

Let's be honest: this isn't a great nor even good album. Jones's parts are too many here, and "Thirteen O' Clock" is another weak part. But there aren't many good ones. The closing Underground and its electro beat combined with some negro-spiritual parts is pretty much dispensable. But don't press next at this time since it is the last song from this very average album.

Thanks to some good songs, this album escapes the minimum rating. But two stars are more than sufficient.

Dance Magic Dance!

Honestly i am reviewing this album because i know the movie too well, i remember when i watched it for the first time several years ago, i didn't know Bowie was also an actor and that was funny, the movie Labyrinth has besides Bowie a young Jennifer Connelly as the main charachter, the other ones are puppets and the movie is directed by Jim Henson.

So this is not the typical David Bowie album, this is a soundtrack for a maybe kids and young audience, so the music has to be kind of easy listening and enjoyable. This time i am not reviewing song by song, first of all because i see no point of doing that since this is a progressive rock site, and this album has no prog songs, basically the music here is merely pop with some electronic things and danceable tunes, the lyrics has obviously to do with the movie scenes so if you want to understand this soundtrack is better to watch the movie.

Here, besides the music and lyrics by Bowie, the other person who paticipates is Trevor Jones who is the composer of the instrumental tracks, all those tracks have to be in the mood of the scene and the arrangements are very well done actually, the music for me is not bad at all, but of course not the best either, the vocal performance of Bowie is pretty average, my personal fav songs here are the silly Magic Dance, the beautiful As The World Falls Down and ther first and last song which are kind of the same, but it has it's terrible moments, like that song called Chilly Down, which is honestly awful, but it suits in the movie actually so that was the point i believe.

I personally love the movie, so i sympathize a lot with it's music and content, i like this soundtrack but that doesn't mean i have to give it a higher rating, not at all, in my opinion this deserves 2 stars, it is not prog rock first of all, secondly, it is not the best Bowie could offer to the listener, so thta means this album is not essential, i would probably suggest it only for those who like the movie and those die-hard Bowie fans.

2 stars!

However, enjoy it, and enjoy the film!