What A Good Score! – #39: Angel Heart by Trevor Jones & V/A
What A Good Score is a new series here at Off The Tracks – looking at movie soundtracks, the good, the band and the astounding…
I can’t remember when I saw Angel Heart, but it was a long while back, not quite when it was released (1987) but sometime in the early 90s. I watched anything and everything featuring Mickey Rourke for a while there. Ditto DeNiro. So this was a no-brainer, then. On my mind in some way, too, would have been that this was an Alan Parker film. Midnight Express, Fame, Pink Floyd — The Wall, Birdy, and Mississippi Burning. There are more films from him, but that run there made him, for a time, a favourite filmmaker. So, yeah. Lots of reasons.
I also can’t remember when I got the Angel Heart soundtrack — but I know I had two copies for a while, and I used to take them out with me DJing even. I’d play bits of the wafty score (Courtney Pine is on saxophone throughout) at the start of the evening, and I’d sometimes play some of the old blues standards that are interpolated around Trevor Jones’ score. I definitely gave away one of my copies, just because why not sure such great music. But I was always going to retain a copy for myself. I’ve never watched the film again — but I do think about it from time to time. The score certainly brings back aspects of the film whenever I listen to it.
Part of that is because there’s dialogue and even ‘scenes’ (scored) on the soundtrack LP. I normally don’t like that, but it works with Jones’ material.
I love the way Trevor Jones was all across the 1980s with these great scores to a range of incredible movies (Time Bandits, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Mississippi Burning, Sea of Love). I feel like he was one of the composers I was listening to even when I wasn’t fully listening out every time for the film’s music. He was there, in the background, doing the job — synths, strings, jazzy evocations, the works. And so much of his material is still very much on the regular rotate for me. But it’s this and Mississippi Burning for sure.
Both do an amazing job of integrating some old blues standards within the ‘new world’ of the film’s score.
