Regular Columnists

Artist: Joe Kraemer
Website: http://www.joekraemer.com/
Genre: Movie Soundtrack
CD Review:
Joe's coming up in the world. From the composer of Kingpin now comes a 60 minute soundtrack of tension and high spookiness. I've not seen the film, but all the pictures in the cd booklet showing the guys holding guns with one arm straight out and the other arm bent tells me that here's a violent tale of the streets. However, this isn't David Michael Frank music. Rather than instrumentals you might hear when actually out walking around in bad neighborhoods, Joe gives us the orchestrated thriller version, but much more in the line of horror movie soundtracks I'd say. He keeps tracks like 'The Truck Stop' dark, sinister, slow stepping, low in the hole, high on the elongating strings. He keeps the action in the movie, and the underlining intensity within the soundtrack.

I didn't realize until glancing through the bio at his site that he was a singer/songwriter as well. With a new album out even. Well, scoring major movies can only help your career. And I hear a lot of good in the lad from John Williams to John Carpenter, nicely giving us more of a good thing than less. I mean: an hour's worth of scary underscoring? That's worthy of a belated Emmy in itself. Bravo, Mr. Kraemer.