Friday, April 08, 2011

Interesting (to me) musical trivia

I always thought this sounded familiar, but I never made the connection.



Now try this one. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, skip up to 1:10. This is the segue between "Krakatoa" and a short version of "The Hallelujah Chorus" from Styx's album The Serpent is Rising.


From the liner notes:
The Serpent is Rising concluded with an imposing choir-and-church-organ rendition of the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. Equally offbeat was Curulewski's bizarrely theatrical "Krakatoa," which incorporated a striking electronic riff borrowed from the pioneering duo Beaver and Krause, hence their credit as co-writers. Many years later, that passage would be used by filmmaker George Lucas as the sonic logo for his TXH theater sound system.
From Wikipedia, Beaver & Krause:
A variation of the end of their track "Spaced" from the Wild Sanctuary album became the dual gliding synthesizer soundtrack for the original THX Sound Logo in movie theaters.

So there you go. It sounds to me like the TXH version was sped up a little and "punched up" in the recording, but it's still the same. Now I have to go see if I can find some of Beaver & Krause's stuff.

The journey continues...

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