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Apocalypse Now Redux
Average Customer Rating:   
List Price:
$18.98
Asia Trips Trips Price: $18.98
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0075597964424
Format: Original recording remastered
Label: Nonesuch
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Nonesuch
Release Date: 2001-07-31
Studio: Nonesuch
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the mid to late '70s, director Francis Ford Coppola put his career on the line to complete Apocalypse Now, his quixotic attempt to variously document, deconstruct, and mythologize America's military involvement in Vietnam. The end result was a troubling masterpiece and technical tour de force whose use of sound and music influenced films for decades. As originally released, the soundtrack album was equally groundbreaking: an intriguing, dreamlike collage of dialogue, sound effects, and music that both evoked the film's artistic sensibility and underscored the innovative, Academy Award®-winning efforts of sound designer Walter Murch. Two decades later, Coppola revisited the project, adding nearly an hour of previously unseen footage and revamping its soundtrack release as well. But while the film may have taken on fresh new dimensions, the new soundtrack album seems stripped of virtually all of Murch's key contributions. What remains is primarily music--and a telling argument for the notion that the whole is considerably more than the sum of its parts. Inspired by synthesist Isao Tomita's '70s classical adaptations, Coppola hired father Carmine to write an orchestra score, and then set about synthesizing it. The Doors' "The End" remains an iconic touchstone, but removed from the context of the film (and its original album release), much of the Coppola music all too clearly reveals its inspirations (Tomita, Holst, Wagner, Stravinsky) and the technical limitations of the relatively primitive synth technology involved (mirrored in a pair of newly recorded tracks as well). --Jerry McCulley
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Stil Strange After All These Years
Comment: The soundtrack to "Apocalypse Now" has probably undergone as much remixing, remastering, revising and restoring as the film it's derived from. According to the liner notes, director Francis Ford Coppola originally approached Japanese composer Isao Tomita to do an all-electronic score for his epic Vietnam film. But due to prior commitments and the laborious nature of his work, that was impossible. Instead, he collaborated with his father Carmine on a symphonic score that would then be played into the latest (for 1979) synthesizers. With additional sounds courtesy of the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Wagner, and U.S. Army helicopters. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead also contributed various percussion effects that eventually became an album of its own ("The Apocalypse Now Sessions"). The result is music just as strange and hypnotic as the movie. The Doors got a major career revival thanks to this film and the version of "The End" here gives you a true sense of the journey you, as a listener, are about to undertake. Coppola remixes the original song with electronically treated sounds of helicopters flying across your speakers, jungle crickets and generous use of echo. The "Redux" version pares everything down to the music alone, adding 2 tracks not on the original double album ("Love Theme" from the French Plantation sequence, and "Clean's Funeral") But the MAJOR drawback here is the absence of Martin Sheen's spooky narration from the film that really underscored everything happening and gave you a better context as to where you were in the film's story. I can only imagine what Coppola could do with the samplers and computers of today. But knowing Francis, as we read this he's probably in his underground bunker/wine cellar hunkered over a KEM editing machine with Hendrix on in the background preparing the "absolute final cut" (for now) of "Apocalypse Now".
Customer Rating:
Summary: they should have invented this years ago
Comment: now we finally have all of the instrumental soundtrack remastered, without the narration or the sound effects. This should be an industry option for other great movies as well
Customer Rating:
Summary: Apocalypse Here and Now
Comment: I, too, like the other reviewers, had the original soundtrack recording (on 2 cassettes!) I enjoyed listening to it in the dark of my New York City apartment to re-experience the film and to also learn the dialogue.
However, when the Redux version came out on DVD, I also was looking forward to a newer re-issue of the soundtrack that highlighted the music and left the dialogue out.
I find the synthesized passages and some acoustic instrumentation in their impressive for their time surround sound-like quality quite amazing. The inclusion of the finale where Martin Sheen's character steps out in his "transformed assassin shadow glory" haunting and very moving. It is one of the great moments in modern cinema and in music soundtracks.
The only confusing aspect, which I eventually was able to figure out, was why this soundtrack did not include the really cool and disturbing end credits music. Then I learned that that piece and the others like it used throughout the film were recorded separately on a CD entitled, "The Apocalypse Now Sessions" by the Rhythm Devils. The end credits music appears on the end of that disc on the final track entitled "Napalm for Breakfast." Both these discs make an all around great soundtrack for what I judge as one of the great cinematic works of art.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love the movie but hate this sound track
Comment: The sound quality sucked.... when i listen to it it seems like it can't be the REAL music from the movie.
The tracks were unnecessarily short, I understand that some of the music in the movie repeated at times, but it was still unnecessarily short. The transition from Valkyries to Suzie Q is almost as horrible as the version of Suzie Q they use in this.
The opening is okay. The ride of the Valkyries is good while it lasts. Don't waste your money on this. Just buy the songs on other CDs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Apocolypse: Noun
Comment: Instead of paying $3.99 for a CD featuring "Ride of the Valkyries" I bought this whole CD. It was actually a gift for my Father. I think perhaps it might be improved with the addition of more songs from the era that evoke the sense of futility and dread conjured by the film itself...thus expanding the CD play time to equal the length of the Redux...which was in turn only marginally shorter than the actual war. Not necessarily songs INCLUDED in the film, but rather music you know the guys were listening too. All in all, however, it is almost worth the price...it puts you in the same place as the movie, and that's worth something.
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