CD REVIEW - Gabriel Yared Film Music Vol.5 - Music for Animated Film
Cinefonia Records CFY-005 (France)
33 Tracks 73:00 mins

This album presents music for Rene Laloux's 1987 animated films Gandahar and Wang-Fo, and as such is dedicated to the man, who sadly died in 2004. The former was a feature-length adaptation of Jean Pierre Andrevon's fantasy novel Les Hommes Machines contre Gandahar and the first nine tracks on the album present Gabriel Yared's music for the film.
Yared's admiration for the work of the likes of Scott Bradley, Carl Stalling, Milton Franklin and Oliver Wallace, is evident in his music for animation, particularly in relation to his score for the third production on this album, the TV series Ernest the Vampire. Having said that, the composer was denied the luxury of orchestra that those gentleman had, with all the music presented here being realised electronically. But, to return to Gandahar, the composer commences his score with a busy march theme, but the cue then turns somewhat ethereal, a quality present in other cues from the score, like the romantic Les Reves d'Airelle. Le Metamorphe is an interesting track, its initial atonality giving way to building expectancy, along with some strange breathing effects. There is plenty of movement, initially rhythmic, progressing lightly, then turning to conflict in La Bataille des crabes; whilst Airelle et Sylvain also features an airy lightness before becoming purposeful; and La Marche des transformes ends things with a light and busy march.
Two cues from Wang-Fo, Main Title, with its bombastic opening then airy lightness, and End Titles, with its piano-lead love theme, give a flavour of the score for this short film, which played as support for Gandahar.
In 1987 Laloux launched the TV animation show On the Other Side, which served as a showcase for French animation and its creators, like Francois Bruel, who came up with Ernest the Vampire, an unusual bloodsucker in that he had elephant ears and tusks. For his two-minute misadventures, Yared came up with a two-part theme, a catchy little introductory motif, followed by an equally infectious melody, first heard as a Joplinesque piano rag in Main Title. The composer proceeds to write all manner of entertaining variations on this theme throughout the subsequent 21 tracks presented here. The many different styles and settings are quite delightful and too numerous to go into individual detail. Suffice to say, that the music is a sheer delight and worth the price of the album alone.
Once again, the accompanying booklet features Gabriel Yared's fascinating notes on his music.